========================================================================= Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2007 23:59:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ALDON L NIELSEN Subject: MLA Off Site Reading -- give it a listen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 I've just used the YouSendIt site to send Peter Durgin the recording of the reading in Chicago. If I understand correctly, the file will remain available to anyone for download for the next 14 days at this link: http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F If your computer isn't plugged into decent speakers, you may want to listen through headphones to get good volume. I haven't taken time to track this, so it's one continuous recording. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> We are enslaved by what makes us free -- intolerable paradox at the heart of speech. --Robert Kelly Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ Aldon L. Nielsen Kelly Professor of American Literature The Pennsylvania State University 116 Burrowes University Park, PA 16802-6200 (814) 865-0091 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 00:18:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: Notice: Mudlark MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed New and On View: Mudlark Flash No. 44 (2008) Mark Edmund Doten | Blackbird (Five Prose Poems) Blackbird | All The Way To The Security Cam At [tk] Blvd Rite Aid You May Not Miss Your | The Thinker | Witness Protection Mark Edmund Doten is enrolled in Columbia University's MFA writing program. His fiction has appeared in Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground, ed. by Dennis Cooper (Akashic Books), Word Riot, and Web del Sol site The Potomac where he is a contributing editor. His interviews with Edmund White and Rick Moody have appeared in Internet publications. In June 2007 New York Magazine ran an excerpt from his fiction as part of a profile that named him one of six "future stars" of New York area writing programs. His website is greenzonekidz.blogspot.com. 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, 1 Jan 2008 01:34:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Happy 2008!!! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed a small image of thought and thought only http://www.alansondheim.org/year.jpg ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 05:17:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: /Installations for El Duende in Garcia Lorca's Home in La Huerta by 30 International Artiists MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/arts/design/01lorca.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=login--- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 16:56:08 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pam Brown Subject: Calling Patrick Durgin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Poeticists, If you have an email address for Patrick Durgin could you send it to me on the backchannel please ? p.brown62@gmail.com Thanks, Pam Brown _____________________________________ blog : http://thedeletions.blogspot.com website : http://www.geocities.com/p.brown/ associate editor : http://jacketmagazine.com/ _____________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 10:30:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ALDON L NIELSEN Subject: Re: MLA Off Site Reading -- give it a listen In-Reply-To: 1199163573l.409838l.0l@psu.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 hmmmm -- When I emailed that message last night, it did not include the part that goes "A class=content" etc. -- the only operative part was the very last part, which was the link -- I have no idea what made the message come through with additional characters -- I'm pasting the link in again and hoping we don't see the same result. At any rate, the ONLY part that actually is the link reads: . I see that if you clicked on the first appearance of that string in the garbled message, you get a "page not found" message, whereas if you click on its last occurrence it works just fine -- odd -- still, the file is there waiting for any who want to download it -- http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F On Mon, Dec 31, 2007 11:59 PM, ALDON L NIELSEN wrote: > I've just used the YouSendIt site to send Peter Durgin the recording of the >reading in Chicago. If I understand correctly, the file will remain available >to anyone for download for the next 14 days at this link: > >onclick="window.open('http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F');return >false;" >href="http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F">http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F > >If your computer isn't plugged into decent speakers, you may want to listen through headphones to get good volume. I haven't taken time to track this, so it's one continuous recording. > ><> > >We are enslaved by >what makes us free -- intolerable >paradox at the heart of speech. >--Robert Kelly > >Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ > >Aldon L. Nielsen >Kelly Professor of American Literature >The Pennsylvania State University >116 Burrowes >University Park, PA 16802-6200 > >(814) 865-0091 > > > <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> We are enslaved by what makes us free -- intolerable paradox at the heart of speech. --Robert Kelly Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ Aldon L. Nielsen Kelly Professor of American Literature The Pennsylvania State University 116 Burrowes University Park, PA 16802-6200 (814) 865-0091 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 13:55:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: G Cleft MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Seasons Greetings & the Best for the New Year! With Peace from steve & Yuko photo - judith renlay new mexico 2007 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 17:36:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ALDON L NIELSEN Subject: Re: MLA Off Site Reading -- give it a look In-Reply-To: 1199201450l.593962l.0l@psu.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 I've uploaded a slideshow of photos taken at this year's MLA reading to my blog site: I think I managed to get pictures of all but two or three of the readers. If your browser works like most, just click on the arrow to start the slides. If there is a particular shot you want to download, you should be able to click on the picture, get to the web album and download from there. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> We are enslaved by what makes us free -- intolerable paradox at the heart of speech. --Robert Kelly Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ Aldon L. Nielsen Kelly Professor of American Literature The Pennsylvania State University 116 Burrowes University Park, PA 16802-6200 (814) 865-0091 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 18:52:11 -0500 Reply-To: tyrone williams Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: tyrone williams Subject: Re: MLA Off Site Reading -- give it a listen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I got it to work by copying and pasting the original link without its second iteration. Thanks Aldon for archiving all this... tyrone -----Original Message----- >From: ALDON L NIELSEN >Sent: Jan 1, 2008 10:30 AM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: MLA Off Site Reading -- give it a listen > >hmmmm -- When I emailed that message last night, it did not include the part >that goes "A class=content" etc. -- the only operative part was the very last >part, which was the link -- I have no idea what made the message come through >with additional characters -- I'm pasting the link in again and hoping we don't >see the same result. At any rate, the ONLY part that actually is the link >reads: . I see that if you >clicked on the first appearance of that string in the garbled message, you get >a "page not found" message, whereas if you click on its last occurrence it >works just fine -- odd -- still, the file is there waiting for any who want to >download it -- > > >onclick="window.open('http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F');return >false;" >href="http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F">http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F > > > >On Mon, Dec 31, 2007 11:59 PM, ALDON L NIELSEN wrote: > >> I've just used the YouSendIt site to send Peter Durgin the recording of the >>reading in Chicago. If I understand correctly, the file will remain available >>to anyone for download for the next 14 days at this link: >> >>>onclick="window.open('http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F');return >>false;" >>href="http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F">http://download.yousendit.com/78BFA8162312959F >> >>If your computer isn't plugged into decent speakers, you may want to listen through headphones to get good volume. I haven't taken time to track this, so it's one continuous recording. >> >><> >> >>We are enslaved by >>what makes us free -- intolerable >>paradox at the heart of speech. >>--Robert Kelly >> >>Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ >> >>Aldon L. Nielsen >>Kelly Professor of American Literature >>The Pennsylvania State University >>116 Burrowes >>University Park, PA 16802-6200 >> >>(814) 865-0091 >> >> >> > > > ><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > >We are enslaved by >what makes us free -- intolerable >paradox at the heart of speech. >--Robert Kelly > >Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ > >Aldon L. Nielsen >Kelly Professor of American Literature >The Pennsylvania State University >116 Burrowes >University Park, PA 16802-6200 > >(814) 865-0091 Tyrone Williams ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 19:11:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: my super wall, simply superior MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed my super wall, simply superior search find classmates coworkers advanced browse applications edit photos groups events marketplace video ilike x me most creative people funwall magnetic words my questions movies filthbook books iread posted items notes super wall more profileeditfriendso status updatesonline nowrecently updatedaddedall invite networksbrownjoin a networkinboxmessage sent messagesnotificationscompose homeaccountprivacylogoutalan's hide your old developer api back to profile alan sondheim send graffitispam control text displaying posts - of i knew one bailanta tight we tripped but was the that blushed different era and wagged his an intelligent sparkle had glance when said him if it wanted dance with put speak jung freud lacan idiosincracia caused much grace turning intellectual cumbiera simone de beauvoir gothe beckett cosmos gershwin kurt weill guggenheim well-known something seeing letter philosophy studied race little pretty hechizera their contoneada eyes lynx crossed tried bring closer arm miller anais nin picasso dared try rob kiss read neruda verses did badly cannot forget paul klee before garmaz kandinsky diego fridha tolstoi bolshoi terry gilliam shakespeare william he go cinema rich see kusturica are going smell flowers spoke virginia wolf its loves requested teaches use mouse single wants bauhaus asked were chorra or rockera gertrude stein re-tortillera do not want you think so am say santo can be loosen normal jarmusch cousteau cocteau arto maguy marin twyla tharp gilda visconti gismonti learned certain hesse thomas mann everything german existencialismo she body continues giving chair day luckily although once while re musician because songs like this which barely understand intelectual lyrics everybody lets get started what movie titles come up here's rules titleany title add between legs titleill goincontinue gift good will hunting ittisak shall melissa transformer cindy c die hard sam know last summer gail gone seconds rush hour patrick wind carl finding nemo damian- mad max david- armageddon andre trace dirty dancing amy bill ted's excellent adventure jordy midnight express joshua training callie cruel intentions tom final fantasy garrett abyss ji belinda fast furious zac- san-dodge ball norman phantom menace jazz city lost children aileen crouching tiger hidden dragon pik choo chrisc man fire candle warlords kp kingdom ung soh fong there's about mary yvy lord rings eelynn unrest conrad magical mystery tour ayu hapsari bastien naud top gun ashley superbad martin- legend nada%ula dolce vita hahahahaaa take care friends- max/xo maxxo's louise desrenards pm just coming martine barrat's from harlem bronx wish happy year -- course them too yet they adults crossing over paris at martine's great exhibition maison europenne photographie --till january th louise's val ry grancher best for monty cantsin anyone else sees sir john it's monty's pardon friends obscure intellectually overwrought messages trying learn how talk myself own superwall quoting artpapers didn't realize i'd pressed dread all key guy debord concisely defined paradox heart twentieth-century art practices uthe demand impossible permanent revolution mediation unmediated authentic experience constant pull both past future progress decadence recent spate artists' re-enactments historical performances seems caught dialectic haunted by debord's paralyzing circular discourse writing history time claims modern subordinated pseudo-cycles work leisure as such fads consumerist seasons remakes retro fashions imposed capitalism interesting don't agree though analogy less useless science makes sense better remain absence metaphor comparison any deep misrecognition chris hamilton-emery chris's jerry everard jerry's iluveric advertisers developers page built jacki apple wroteat on december only minds jeffrey wang- is weird cool thing check out same fi yuo cna raed tihs hvae sgtrane mnid olny plepoe cdnuolt blveiee taht cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht rdanieg phaonmneal pweor hmuan aoccdrnig rscheearch cmabrigde uinervtisy dseno't mtaetr in oerdr ltteres wrod iproamtnt tihng frsit lsat ltteer rghit pclae rset taotl mses sitll whotuit pboerlm bcuseae huamn deos ervey lteter istlef wlohe azanmig huh yaeh awlyas tghuhot slpeling ipmorantt forwrad forward wall-to-wall write jacki's give props ry's sylvie fortin what's wrong here aaa bbb ccc ddd eee fff ggg hhh iii jjj kkk lll mmm nnn ooo ppp qqq rrr sss ttt uuu vvv www xxx yyy zzz % ucsd students could error above repost click answer really obvious you've been pin girl years pass greetings adolescent karen's new friend hello luther regards press dissapeard than sec grafittitegneverkt bare klistra sammen til et bilde alison's nina svenne november nei jeg har ikke tegna menna sj l dem ligger inne p nina's i'm passing onif some boycalled chapman adds u accept hacker tell everyone list somebody he'll figure id computer address copy paste even cause hacks email mail annie abrahams annie's philippe boisnard vive les pommes ls vegetables bon week end mam'zelle philippe's dirk real her hair lovely very slightly plane brushed off conspirators compeung promised land neoism true immortality center rebaptised sawang brightlight meeting local we'll mountains tomorrow north bottom no tourists revolutionaries hope doing well should have neoist event sometime near let's spread word cheeerrrrss nick carbo thanks nick's life death chorus strange song enjoy helen shimmying pink foam businessesfacebooktermshelp rebecca seiferle october poetry daily monday wwwpoemscom today s poem falling down precipice wild tongue copper canyon featured poet author four poems twotranslations sar vallejo founding editor journal drunken boat book bitter withering irony eye shocking beauty cuts straight emotionally honest kernel within family spirit myth publishers weekly http//wwwpoemscom/ rebecca's georg ladanyi georg's andrew lundwall thought share friendshave sunday andrew's collection wwwcoppercanyonpressorg vekemans september models using drawing practice draw s-pose vispo these gals hundreds glitter bunny ears & cost either poser d software dirk's jeremy james hight july halooks busy cables alone zombies surely make roadiestoo slow setting cymbals mikes let wires jeremy's sandi kasey youtube videos ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 00:43:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Binary meditation on abstract art MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Binary meditation on abstract art: http://vispo.com/dbcinema/abstractart 42 images, 1280x1024 Screenshots from dbCinema movies generated by typing in "abstract art" as the concept. dbCinema proceeds to download images from the net somehow relating to "abstract art" and, while this is happening creates a painterly movie using the downloaded images as 'paint'. With an opening salvo of fireworks for 2008. All the best, ja http://vispo.com/dbcinema/meditations.htm ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 10:06:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: Jenny Holzer, etc. In-Reply-To: <121160.72578.qm@web31105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit David - with much respect for much of what you deliver to this list, I think your take on Holzer is 'off' - not 'on' - Jenny Holzer's projections of Rumsfeld's quotes. Unlike the whoever's who made and supported celebratory little operas or chamber events of R's phrasings when the R charade masqued (criminally, as such) what was really happening in Iraq - the Holzer at MassMOCA does not strike me at all as either disingenous, or a way to secure cash from the Art World. (I don't know of any artist who makes money directly off installation art as such. Spin-offs, maybe. But I don't how many folks want to live with Rumsfeld in their living room - even as a miniature, that would be still like having a monster in the house.) To confuse Holzer's intentions - which I think are genuinely political - with say that of Damien Hirst - takes the eye way off the value of the work. Stephen V http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Thomas savage wrote:I have seen several of Jenny Holzer's New York shows and loved them. One was composed of hundreds of messages on plaques. I bought several "copies" of these and have used them as reminders of things ever since: Protect Me From What I Want; The Beginnings of the War Will Be Secret; and Ownership Created Crime. I made xerox copies of these and put them on my wall; the first of these on the inside of my door to prevent me from leaving my apartment to buy things on impulse that I don't really need and won't even want for very long. I'm very sorry the current show isn't coming to New York City as I would love to see it. I read the review and it sounds fascinating. Regards, Tom Savage David Chirot wrote: Dear Stephen: I recently an interesting short piece by the American Indian writer James Welch regarding the Jewish novel and "Novels of Assimilation" among others which dominated the literary news of his youth. "The assimilation into American life"--Welch writes--for an Indian as THE American does not exist. "American life" is foreign life, and a foreign life in which the Indian has never been wante and in which the Indian does not want to be. . Portnoy had a complaint, Welch notes, and it is heard and sells in the millions, it becomes a "great book." An Indian has no complaint, Welch says, because a complaint, like everything else, would be taken away. Some one else would take it away and make millions and have it be called "a great book." So an Indian has no complaint, no assimilation. Something other, else, has to be found, already existing, being made, moving among knowns and unknowns, the first and existing "America". "O, say can you see . . ." Reading through the various articles about the "Projections" show and looking at the images in photos. one finds an immediate and unquestioning "belief" in the Institutionalized Aestheticization of words and images which on their first appearance in newspapers, tv screens were greeted with much the same unquestioning and immediate belief. The reviews of Holzer's show echo the rave reviews for going to War with Iraq, Home of the Worst Monster in the World and the untold horrors threatening WMD extinction of Israel, Great Britain and the USA. While the reception is the same, there is the literally BIG difference between the old Rumsfield documents and the new Holzer ones in that the new ones are no longer "lies" and "mistakes" but Great Works of Art . These will make a bundle for Ms Holzer, her galleries and associates, and find ultimately , like the politicos involved, "good private/corporate homes" to "pass the rest of their days in." The giant paintings made of memos taken from cyber space images--how different are they from the online images and documents that Curveball used to give to the German BND who passed on this "intelligence" to the CIA, DIA, and other American organizations and created these very memos? This already-on-line "intelligence" was used to start the Invasion/Occupation campaign for the Iraq war, just as the "intelligence" Holzer uses becomes a new American installation campaign for Ms Holzer. (All the review and articles note this is her first American installation of the "Projections" works, as well as the use of a Real Poet's words used in place of her own "more moralistic" ones being new) "Won't get fooled again,"!! the reviewers and public cry who troop to see the same documents which fooled them the first around. No, this time the same words and images used to slaughter millions and cost trillions will be turned to the quiet business of making "art world" money and "selling" the public on "being able to distinguish the difference between a big painting and a virtual version of a small document." Different media, different objectives, same campaign: SELL the reviewers and public on the "Installation" of these words and images as Truth. First Rumsfield & Co's Truth, now Holzer's Truth. The Artist, Art World and Art Market "Triumph" and profit, from this "sleight of hand". Mean while the politicians and military attempt to "surge" forward from the jaws of near defeat. To make up for the former "wrong belief" of cheering the documents' Truth, the reviewers and public may now witness and rave about the "purifying of the language of the tribe" via a Very Highly and Institutionally Approved Artist's "renditions" of "bad words" into an Aesthetic-Ethical Realm of the Good. Beholding one's own now Light-Bath cleansed reflection in the Image which has cleansed the Words,--is this not "Good?" (For the soul, the pocketbook, the Institutions, the Artist, America?) The art works may also be seen another way. What if the viewer is a True Believer in the Greatness of the War and its Architects, its Document Makers? Then do not these art works confirm the Heroic Status of those involved--Rummie, Bush, et alia? The manner of the presentation, which the Times reviewer likens to a post apocalyptic, empty political or rock'rool' stadium--doesn't it echo magnificently the Art and Architecture of Leni Riefenstahl and Albert Speer? To further enhance the aestheticization of the political, (which Walter Benjamin noted is the Fascist way), the spectator is bathed in rippling waves of words made of letters of light--and not just any words--but the "impressionistic" lyric poetry of a Nobel Prize Winner. The "impressionistically" lyricized and lit spectator advances--or is ensconced, agog, in the the "artfully scattered" giant bean bag chairs often found in front of the "Home" TVs of the Homeland----into the Spectacular Light Show glorifying the paintings. "Let there be Light"--and the documents are now "up-lifted" in Moral Aesthetic parlance, in to the realms of High Art, into the Aura of Great Art and the Great Artist. (For were not Speer and Riefenstahl the Artists who transformed the works of the "failed artist" into Great Works of Art glorifying his ascension into the Being of Supreme Artist?) Behold O spectator, O puny being of lyrical lightness--the great tablets of Mammon, Deity of War and Art. Behold the dirty Rumsfield Files metastasized, the blood lusting documents Super Steroid Sized, and the Return of the Aura of the Original to what had once been mere copies of copies of copies based on forgeries, faulty analysis, deliberate mistranslations, in turn based on copies of copies of things which were interpreted to be something else other than what they were subsequently found and/or not found to be. Where the "original" WMDS were not found, are found now Temples of Art where the Resurrection of Death's Documents is accomplished, the redemption of Lying Copies achieved and the wiping clean of guilt accomplished in the Triumphant Celebration of the Signature of Art and Artist over the Signature of mere Party hacks. What was once copies, forgeries, lies, is now made Original, Truth, Art. ("O say can you see . . . ") And as the lyric-and light-bathed spectator lifts an adoring and completely Believing gaze to the Aestheticized Political Documents, near-starvation homeless farmers and imported near-slave laborers under the dangerous watch of Contractors like Black Water are digging up the last vestiges of the vast historical strati of Iraqi history. These rapidly dwindling supplies of artifacts and documents in the world's oldest writing are being shipped out and sold off to the highest or most closely associated bidder. ("O say, can you see . . . ") While a civilization vanishes, its destroyers celebrate its destruction with the Spectacular Exhibition of their discredited war plans raised to the status of Art. ("O, say can you see . . . ") High Art, Art of Great Value and Importance, Art of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. One feels a Patriotic swelling in the breast, the genesis of the Patriotic Act and the Patriot Act. The right hand goes almost automatically to its place above the heart and--standing at attention--one joins in the Mighty Choir of "Projections" and Lights: Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On Dec 28, 2007 3:03 PM, Stephen Vincent wrote: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/arts/design/26holz.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin > > I hope this link will work to get folks over to the review of Jenny > Holzer's show at MASS MOCA - particular where the projections make use of > Iraq related war plans - Rumsfeld and company's langauge of conquest, > objectives, etc. Hats off to Holzer for taking on the subject - elevating > the invisible 'footnotes' (as this Administration wanted them no doubt to > remain) into a VizPo spectacle of national embarassment (which this > Administration will never acknowledge). Holzer seems to have elevated > so-called and dismissed "hind sight" into the glaring receptacle of the > present. > Hats off to Holzer. And thanks to Ron Silliman for bringing it to the > fore - I missed it somehow. & wish I could go there! > > For more tidy holiday fare, I recommend Starting Out One Evening as a > terrific literaly 'literary' movie. Description will make it not > interesting. Touching and funny. And for those of us who grew up in the era > - hegemony? - of "The Jewish Novel" - it's a kind of discrete elegy for the > passing of a time and space in New York letters. (Yes, very upper west side > without the W Allen anxious antics). > > I hear the Schnabel film is wonderful, as well. Next on the list. > > Stephen Vincent > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 12:40:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Skip Fox Subject: Re: [BULK] Re: second life third life In-Reply-To: <295359D1-725A-46CA-8C69-91DCA472B052@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Can that work with a proportional font? -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On Behalf Of Halvard Johnson Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 9:22 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: [BULK] Re: second life third life Importance: Low second rate third life second life third rate life second rate third rate second life third second rate life third third second life rate life third rate second rate life third second &c. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 14:19:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Kelleher Subject: Literary Buffalo Newsletter 01.02.08-01.06.08 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 LITERARY BUFFALO 01.02.08-01.06.08 HAPPY 2008 EVERYONE=21 LOTS OF GREAT STUFF HAPPENING THIS WINTER SPRING=21 Derek Walcott and Kiran Desai read in the Babel Series Tyrone Williams, Gina Myers, Laynie Browne, Sina Queyras, Steve Zultanski, = Chris Fritton, Matt Timmons, Joseph Makkos, Peter Conners and Brian Mornar = read in the Small Press Poetry Series The Buffalo Small Press Book Fair returns in March Also in March, a night of Flarf, featuring: Rod Smith, Nada Gordon, Gary Su= llivan, Anne Boyer and Mel Nichols Carol Novack reads in the Flash Fiction Series David Landrey and David Lampe read in the Gray Hair Series Gary Ross, Janna Willoughby, Bill Sylvestor and Lisa Forrest read in the ne= w/reNEW Lidia Yuknavitch, Irving Feldman, Sean Thomas Dougherty and Rebecca Maslin = read at Medaille College Jim Daniels, Heid Erdrich, and Sebastian Barry read at Canisius College Chris Mazza and Lawrence Norfolk read in the exhibit X Series Plus open readings continue at Tru-teas, The Screening Room, Allentown Hard= ware, and The Center For Inquiry. Which brings me to one bit of news regarding Just Buffalo's open reading se= ries... OPEN READINGS As of today, Just Buffalo's Open Reading series is no longer active. Lee F= arallo has told us that he needs a change. We are grateful for all the year= s he has put in and wish him luck as he moves on. At present, there is no = one to take over for Lee, so we are suspending the third Sunday readings at= Rust Belt Books and the second Wednesday readings at the Carnegie Art Cent= er indefinitely. If these events become active again, we will let you know= =2E Meantime, we are still sponsoring two open mic readings a month - one a= t Center for Inquiry on the first Wednesday, and one at Tru-teas on the fir= st Sunday of each month. ___________________________________________________________________________ BABEL WE ARE NOW OFFERING A 2-EVENT SPRING SUBSCRIPTION FOR =2440. Tickets for individual Babel events are also on sale. Call 832-5400 or visi= t http://www.justbuffalo.org/babel. March 13 Derek Walcott, St. Lucia, Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize =2425 April 24 Kiran Desai, India, Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize =2425 ___________________________________________________________________________ EVENTS THIS WEEK 01.02.08-01.06.08 01.02.08 Center for Inquiry/Just Buffalo Literary Cafe Marilyn Martinez-Saroff And Robin Farrah Brox Wednesday, January 2, 7:30 P. M. Center For Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Road, Amherst 8 Slots for Open Readers 01.06.08 Tru-Teas/Just Buffalo Ed Taylor Sunday, Janaury 6, 4 p.m. Insite Gallery, 810, Elmwood Avenue ___________________________________________________________________________ JUST BUFFALO MEMBERS ONLY WRITER CRITIQUE GROUP Members of Just Buffalo are welcome to attend a free, bi-monthly writer cri= tique group in CEPA's Flux Gallery on the first floor of the historic Marke= t Arcade Building across the street from Shea's. Group meets 1st and 3rd We= dnesday at 7 p.m. Call Just Buffalo for details. ___________________________________________________________________________ WESTERN NEW YORK ROMANCE WRITERS group meets the third Wednesday of every m= onth at St. Joseph Hospital community room at 11a.m. Address: 2605 Harlem R= oad, Cheektowaga, NY 14225. For details go to www.wnyrw.org. ___________________________________________________________________________ JOIN JUST BUFFALO ONLINE=21=21=21 If you would like to join Just Buffalo, or simply make a massive personal d= onation, you can do so online using your credit card. We have recently add= ed the ability to join online by paying with a credit card through PayPal. = Simply click on the membership level at which you would like to join, log = in (or create a PayPal account using your Visa/Amex/Mastercard/Discover), a= nd voil=E1, you will find yourself in literary heaven. For more info, or t= o join now, go to our website: http://www.justbuffalo.org/membership/index.shtml ___________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE If you would like to unsubscribe from this list, just say so and you will b= e immediately removed. _______________________________ Michael Kelleher Artistic Director Just Buffalo Literary Center Market Arcade 617 Main St., Ste. 202A Buffalo, NY 14203 716.832.5400 716.270.0184 (fax) www.justbuffalo.org mjk=40justbuffalo.org ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 13:30:24 -0800 Reply-To: litsam@sbcglobal.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sam Subject: Sam Pereira reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sam Pereira will be reading from his just released book of poems, A = Caf=E9 in Boca, published by Tebot Bach = in Huntington Beach, CA, at 2:30 p.m. on February 27 in the library lounge = of California State University, Stanislaus. The campus is located on Monte Vista Avenue in Turlock, CA. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 15:23:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Evan Kennedy Subject: The Cheer-Up Book of Wounded Soldiers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Dirty Swan Projects announces the release of The Cheer-Up Book of Wounded Soldiers, a book of wartime conversations from the mouths of World War I deserters: Don't be unprepared for tomorrow's newspaper! After dissolving all borders by our cowardice, we deserters harnessed a hopeless cheer, a laughter of artillery-sized trembling. Want to learn a thing or two? No visit to our caves is required! Spend the day with our CHEER-UP BOOK ($8 USD). Read the newest pick-me-ups, speculations, and ephemera =96 fresh from No Man's Land. All returns from these CHEER-UP BOOKS will go to St. Dunstan's, a school established in 1915 to rehabilitate blinded soldiers. The purchase of two CHEER-UP BOOKS can equip a St. Dunstan's lad with a talking watch! War goes on, but so should good cheer! More information here: http://thecheer-upbook.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 18:25:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: editor@BOOGCITY.COM Subject: The Portable Boog Reader 2 Online PDF Now Available MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi all, Laura Elrick, Brenda Iijima, Mark Lamoureux, Christina Strong, Rodrigo =20 Toscano, and I have gathered work from 72 New York City poets for The =20 Portable Boog Reader 2, An Anthology of New York City Poetry, which =20 debuted yesterday at the Poetry Project's and Bowery Poetry Club's =20 annual New Year's Day marathons. Tomorrow it will be distributed will =20 be distributed at our drop spots throughout the East Village, and =20 Williamsburg, with it coming to Greenpoint, Brooklyn shortly thereafter. And right now the online pdf is available at: http://welcometoboogcity.com/boogpdfs/bc47.pdf We're all real excited to share this great work and to have an anthology available to so many people for free. The 72 contributors are: Bruce Andrews Ellen Baxt Jim Behrle Jen Benka Charles Bernstein Anselm Berrigan Charles Borkhuis Ana Bozicevic-Bowling Lee Ann Brown Allison Cobb Julia Cohen Todd Colby Brenda Coultas Alan Davies M=F3nica de la Torre LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs Thom Donovan Joe Elliot Robert Fitterman Corrine Fitzpatrick G.L. Ford Greg Fuchs Joanna Fuhrman Drew Gardner Eric Gelsinger Garth Graeper David Micah Greenberg E. Tracy Grinnell Christine Hamm Robert Hershon Mitch Highfill Bob Holman Paolo Javier Paul Foster Johnson Eliot Katz Erica Kaufman Amy King Bill Kushner Rachel Levitsky Andrew Levy Brendan Lorber Kimberly Lyons Dan Machlin Jill Magi Gillian McCain Sharon Mesmer Carol Mirakove Anna Moschovakis Murat Nemet-Nejat Cate Peebles Tim Peterson Simon Pettet Wanda Phipps Nick Piombino Kristin Prevallet Arlo Quint Evelyn Reilly Kim Rosenfield Lauren Russell Kyle Schlesinger Nathaniel Siegel Joanna Sondheim Chris Stackhouse Stacy Szymaszek Edwin Torres Anne Waldman Shanxing Wang Lewis Warsh Karen Weiser Angela Veronica Wong Matvei Yankelevich Lila Zemborain Happy New Year. as ever, David --=20 David A. Kirschenbaum, editor and publisher Boog City 330 W.28th St., Suite 6H NY, NY 10001-4754 For event and publication information: http://welcometoboogcity.com/ T: (212) 842-BOOG (2664) F: (212) 842-2429 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 04:17:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Jenny Holzer, etc. In-Reply-To: <398237.3865.qm@web82613.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit i remember that when schindler's list came out, the ending struck me as goofy odd and the whole thing seemed somehow odd to me. a friend remarked that it was a story of big money doing good. like spielberg with his movie. i think it's hard to create art that does not negate what it would affirm and affirm what it would negate in art of spectacle. in non-spectacle work also, but perhaps especially in spectacle. big budget art. we know that in any media, the artist has to grapple with the active principles of the media/um or they will hijack the work, being active. how much more challenging to deal in an art of political spectacle, as holzer has done here? the whole thing is ready to cave into any number of darknesses, pits, hypocrasies, fearfulnesses, compromises. very interesting exchange, david and vincent. thank you. ja ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 07:52:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carol Novack Subject: FRIDAY, FEB. 1ST: AWP PANEL in the morning; READING in the evening Comments: To: lit-events@yahoogroups.com, wom-po , e-pubs@yahoogroups.com, poetswearprada@yahoogroups.com, "M. Lin" , nycwriters MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline *Mad Hatters' Review Edgy & Enlightened Literature, Art & Music in the Age of Dementia Poetry, Prose & Anything Goes Reading Series* *************** Friday, February 1st, 2008, 7 =96 9 pm KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, N.Y.C. *(between Bowery & 2nd Ave. - subway F, V to 2nd Ave., exit 1st Ave. & Houston)* *Presenting online journal publishers/editors in the AWP panel (10:30 =96 11:45 am, Feb. 1st: Clinton Suite Hilton, 2nd Floor) Habitable Planets and Black Holes: Mapping the Expanding Cyber-Universe of the New Literary Media, & the fabul/ous/ist Rikki Ducornet.* ******* *Rikki Ducornet,* author of seven novels including the prize winning *Gazel= le, The Jade Cabinet*, and* The Fan Maker's Inquisition*. In 2004 she received the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. A third collection of short fictions has been published by The Dalkey Archive. Her drawings, lithographs, and paintings have been exhibited widely.. *Eric Melbye*, publisher of *Segue* and an associate professor of English/Creative Writing at Miami University Middletown. His novel *Tru* ha= s just been published by Flame Books; his co-edited anthology, *Under Our Skin: Literature of Breast Cancer*, was published in 2006 (The Illuminati Press). *Carol Novack*, publisher/editor of *Mad Hatters' Review*, author of a poetry chapbook, collaborative films and CDs. Whatnots may or will be found in *American Letters & Commentary, Fiction International, First Intensity, Diagram, Gargoyle, LIT, Notre Dame Review, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Segue*, et al. http://carolnovack.blogspot.com. *Jonathan Penton,* publisher of *Unlikely Stories*, which has been publishing transgressive literature since 1998, and film, music, visual art= , cultural essays, and chapbooks since 2004. He worked on *Big Bridge* for five years. Jonathan's own poetry chapbooks are *Last Chap* (2004), *Blood*= and *Salsa and Painting Rust* (2006), and* Prosthetic Gods* (2008). *Charles P. Ries*, poetry editor of *Word Riot*. His poetry, reviews and short stories have appeared throughout the small press and he has accumulated several Pushcart nominations. Charles is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes. Find more at: http://www.literati.net/Ries. *Tamara Kaye Sellman*, publisher of *Periphery* and the director of MRCentral.net , a global network focused on magical realism. Her work has appeared widely in the US, Canada, Mexico, th= e UK, and Malaysia, most recently in *Terrain, The Hiss Quarterly, Long Story Short*, and *Cantaraville II*. She's received two Pushcart Prize nominations. *Anmarie Trimble*, publisher of the innovative multi-media *Born Magazine*. She teaches interdisciplinary studies at Portland State University. Her poetry has appeared in *Black Warrior Review, Field: Contemporary Poetry an= d Poetics*, and other publications. *Publications by the authors will be offered for sale by Mobile Libris .* For further info, email: madhattersreview@gmail.com (type *READINGS* in the subject line) --=20 MAD HATTERS' REVIEW: Edgy & Enlightened Literature, Art & Music in the Age of Dementia: http://www.madhattersreview.com KEEP THE MAD HATTERS ALIVE! MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION HERE: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/contribute/donate/580 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 08:40:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: elegy for Boojum, our companion cat, we are all poor MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed elegy for Boojum, our companion cat, we are all poor, 'i can't do elegy' - this is a poor and sleepless poem - when something's at the limit there's nothing more to say - for a moment i might have reversed the process but heard nothing more than wailing or sounds like an animal - nothing of crying, just tattered sound - nothing of warning, fear, existence, trepidation - nothing can be said on either side of death - neither this one nor that one - neither this nor the other - death is an other - (eighteen years, and death is an other) - death is everywhere, death is not around - (eighteen years, and death is everywhere, death is poor, death is not around) - always already other can't speak can't hear can't see - double needles, of sedative, of anesthetic overdose - doubled needles - who are these people & their kindness - (eighteen years and the kindness of strangers) - i'm done with it, the other's never done with it - always the last trip last day last night last meal last touch last scent last sound - (eighteen years and the last day and night, last touch and meal, last scent and sound) - in and out of the thick of it - the thick of it never changed - it stayed dry, viscous, substance and fissure - it's uncomfortable, stains, sticks to everything - lives on in us, exchanged, drops to the ground - crawls out, walks to the sea, drops to the ground - i can't drop to the ground, i drop to the ground - there's an elegy on, everyone's there - she says i think we're at the beginning of speech - she says she's very sad and wants to go hone - she stood dry, unattended - (eighteen years and dry and unattended, accompanied and unaccompanied, who can go into and out of the world) - the fire went out, into the world -- today someone counted elements, earth, fire, water, wind, air, heat, dearth, wood, & metal - (eighteen years and the counting of elements) - how was the air, the air was cold, bitter, the wind harsh, we turned the carrier against the wind, dearth of it all, harboring a flame until the last, dying in our arms, the metal table, off to a far wood of hunting - the world is filled with secret coordinates - impermanence of the metallic - she says she thought of the limit - in a small heaven somewhere - & now we are silent in the night, existence is silent - existence crawls, we heard her cries, the catheter carefully inserted elsewhere in the building - we held her heat against us, we exchanged heat - the tablets - prayer wheel spinning above a slow flame - we couldn't bear to empty her water, clean her bowl of food, now despair reigns, & in our arms nothing happened, everything seized -- 'this is a poor and sleepless poem' - without goodbyes, with ill-knowledge, with infinite regret, with the world undone - (eighteen years and the world undone) - ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 09:50:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Kelleher Subject: Snowman Slam MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=UTF-8 From Buffalo Slammaster Gabrielle Bouliane... The Nickel City Poetry Slam is proud to bring you one of our top events of = the season: The First Annual Regional Snowman Slam=21 (Only the strong surv= ive=21) =C2=A0 If you didn=E2=80=99t get enough at the Ice Bowl, Friday, January 4, three = regional slam teams are coming to Buffalo, NY to duke it out to see who=E2= =80=99s going to be eligible for the National Poetry Slam=21 The event is i= mportant to the Nickel City Slam because it helps to determine our eligibil= ity to compete at the National Poetry Slam in August 2008. The better we pl= ace, the better our chances to compete at the National level=21 Please come= out and support our team in their quest=21=C2=A0 As ever, YOU will be the = judge=21 (Well, five randomly chosen audience members, anyway.) Buffalo=E2= =80=99s team of poets who have qualified through our monthly slams has been= coached by Vonetta T. Rhodes, and is hungry for action=21 =C2=A0 This special show will NOT be held at the Albright-Knox, which is closed fo= r the holiday. See the attached press release for more details=21 =C2=A0 Friday, January 4, 2008, 7-11pm Smith Theater at Shea=E2=80=99s Performing Arts Center (access on Main Stre= et, next to Shea=E2=80=99s ticket booth) 660 Main Street Buffalo, New York 14202 =2410, a fundraiser for the Nickel City Slam Team All Ages =E2=80=93 Bar available for 21+ =C2=A0 7:00 - 7:30 PM =C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2= =A0 Doors open 7:30 - 8:00 PM=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0= =C2=A0 Features =C2=A0=E2=80=93 Mike McGee and Robbie Q Telfer, from San Jo= se, CA and Chicago, IL=21 8:15 - 10:00 PM=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0 REGIO= NALS SLAM=21 =C2=A0 =E2=80=A6 with your host, ANNETTE DANIELS-TAYLOR=21 =C2=A0 This month=E2=80=99s features are =E2=80=9CMighty=E2=80=9D Mike McGee, from= San Jose, CA and Robbie Q. Telfer, from, from Chicago, IL=21 If you caught= this multi-title duo last year, you won=E2=80=99t have forgotten their cha= rming and humorous style and their incredible poetry. Now they are back and= better than ever, setting off our slam with the highest possible quality= =21 =C2=A0 Robbie Q. Telfer is an American poet and poetry slam performer. He has been= a featured performer in the poetry shows of over 30 major North American c= ities, including the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City and The Green Mill= in Chicago. His work can be found in several slam poetry anthologies, onli= ne journals, and the American Book Review. Recently he has worked on severa= l projects with the Speak'Easy Poetry Ensemble under the direction of slam = poetry founder Marc Smith. In 2007, he placed 8th overall at the National P= oetry Slam in Austin, TX. His second self-published book of poetry My Huge = Heart Still Has No Room for You was published in 2006 through lulu.com. Web= site: www.robbieq.net =C2=A0 =E2=80=9CMighty=E2=80=9D Mike McGee Bio: 2006 San Jose Poetry Slam Individual Champion 2006 Indivdual World Poetry Slam Champion 2006 World Poetry Slampionship (2nd place) 2004 San Jose Grand Slam Champion 2003 National Poetry Slam Individual Grand Champion 2003 San Jose Grand Slam Champion 2003 San Francisco Grand Slam Champion =C2=A0 =22Mighty=22 Mike McGee is an international spoken word artist, writer, per= former, speaker, slam poet and comic. He has performed in thousands of venu= es all over North America, and was one of the first Americans ever to perfo= rm poetry at the University la Sorbonne in Paris, France. Website: www.mike= mcgee.net =C2=A0 =C2=A0 Sponsored by Just Buffalo Literary Center and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery SEE YOU AT THE SLAM=21 =C2=A0 Questions? Call Gabrielle at 884-0225 or email at multimediagrl=40hotmail.c= om. =C2=A0 First Annual =E2=80=9CSnowman Slam=E2=80=9D Brings New Voices to Buffalo Buffalo, NY, December 18, 2007: On Friday, January 4, 2008, Buffalo will experience a literary first =E2= =80=93 four poetry slam teams from around the regional will face off in the= first annual =E2=80=9CSnowman Slam=E2=80=9D to try and qualify for partici= pation at the National Poetry Slam in Madison, WI in August of 2008. =C2=A0 =E2=80=9CPoetry slam has grown so much around the country, that there are c= urrently 110 venues registered with Poetry Slam, Inc., and only 75 slots at= the annual competition. The Slam Family created this Regionals system to h= elp deal with the increase in participation,=E2=80=9D said Nickel City Slam= Founder, Gabrielle Bouliane. =E2=80=9CBuffalo is one of the newest certifi= ed venues in the nation, so it=E2=80=99s a big deal to be able to host this= event.=E2=80=9D =C2=A0 Poets from Dayton, Cleveland, and Toronto will pack their bags and bring th= eir best to Shea=E2=80=99s historic Smith Theater, giving Buffalo its first= taste of a larger team-style competition. Teams will participate in four r= ounds, with each team getting one slot per round. Teams can compete with on= e poet or a group in their slot, hoping to get the highest score per round = and get the highest total score at the end of the night. The top two scorin= g teams will be guaranteed slots at the National Poetry Slam, with third an= d fourth place going on a waiting list. Scoring is done by five judges rand= omly chosen from the audience, on a scale of one through ten, Olympics styl= e, with the high and low score being dropped. =E2=80=9CThis is what has mad= e the poetry slam so controversial in the academic world, and yet so compel= ling =E2=80=93 it was meant to involve a =E2=80=9Cregular guy=E2=80=9D audi= ence in poetry, which had become something completely removed from everyday= life. Poets have to connect with their audience immediately, be entertaini= ng and enlightening to get the elusive perfect 30,=E2=80=9D Gabrielle conti= nued. =E2=80=9CObviously it=E2=80=99s working, or we wouldn=E2=80=99t need = Regionals.=E2=80=9D =C2=A0 Getting the event off to a hot start are two performers sure to set the bar= high =E2=80=93 two-time national individual champion and Def Poet Mike McG= ee (San Jose), and national individual finalist Robbie Q. Telfer (Chicago).= =E2=80=9CBoth Mike and Robbie are not what you think of when you hear the = word =E2=80=98poetry=E2=80=99,=E2=80=9D says Bouliane. =E2=80=9CThey talk a= bout everything from pudding to MuppetsTM, will have you rolling in the ais= les, then spin their words into something that changes how you see everyday= life. They=E2=80=99re awesome.=E2=80=9D =C2=A0 While the competition is important, especially to Buffalo poets hoping to m= ake =E2=80=9Cthe Big Show=E2=80=9D, just as important are the friendships a= nd contacts made during the event. Says Bouliane. =E2=80=9CIn my 11 years w= ith the poetry slam, I=E2=80=99ve travelled to 29 cities and made hundreds = of friends. I hope that for these poets, this show is just the beginning.= =E2=80=9D =C2=A0 The fun begins at 7pm on Friday, January 4, 2008, at Shea=E2=80=99s Smith T= heater, 660 Main Street. Tickets are =2410 and are available at the door. F= or more information, please contact Gabrielle Bouliane at 716.884-0225 or m= ultimediagrl=40hotmail.com. =C2=A0 The Nickel City Slam is sponsored by both Just Buffalo Literary Center, and= their venue, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The regular monthly show takes= place First Fridays, at the Gusto at the Gallery Series. =C2=A0 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 18:47:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: The Portable Boog Reader 2 Online PDF Now Available MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit any one out there with rodrigo's email i lost it in ols machine thanks dalachinsky On Wed, 2 Jan 2008 18:25:31 -0500 editor@BOOGCITY.COM writes: > Hi all, > > Laura Elrick, Brenda Iijima, Mark Lamoureux, Christina Strong, > Rodrigo > Toscano, and I have gathered work from 72 New York City poets for > The > Portable Boog Reader 2, An Anthology of New York City Poetry, which > > debuted yesterday at the Poetry Project's and Bowery Poetry Club's > > annual New Year's Day marathons. Tomorrow it will be distributed > will > be distributed at our drop spots throughout the East Village, and > Williamsburg, with it coming to Greenpoint, Brooklyn shortly > thereafter. > > And right now the online pdf is available at: > > http://welcometoboogcity.com/boogpdfs/bc47.pdf > > > We're all real excited to share this great work and to have an > anthology > available to so many people for free. The 72 contributors are: > > Bruce Andrews Ellen Baxt > Jim Behrle Jen Benka > Charles Bernstein Anselm Berrigan > Charles Borkhuis Ana Bozicevic-Bowling > Lee Ann Brown Allison Cobb > Julia Cohen Todd Colby > Brenda Coultas Alan Davies > Mónica de la Torre LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs > Thom Donovan Joe Elliot > Robert Fitterman Corrine Fitzpatrick > G.L. Ford Greg Fuchs > Joanna Fuhrman Drew Gardner > Eric Gelsinger Garth Graeper > David Micah Greenberg E. Tracy Grinnell > Christine Hamm Robert Hershon > Mitch Highfill Bob Holman > Paolo Javier Paul Foster Johnson > Eliot Katz Erica Kaufman > Amy King Bill Kushner > Rachel Levitsky Andrew Levy > Brendan Lorber Kimberly Lyons > Dan Machlin Jill Magi > Gillian McCain Sharon Mesmer > Carol Mirakove Anna Moschovakis > Murat Nemet-Nejat Cate Peebles > Tim Peterson Simon Pettet > Wanda Phipps Nick Piombino > Kristin Prevallet Arlo Quint > Evelyn Reilly Kim Rosenfield > Lauren Russell Kyle Schlesinger > Nathaniel Siegel Joanna Sondheim > Chris Stackhouse Stacy Szymaszek > Edwin Torres Anne Waldman > Shanxing Wang Lewis Warsh > Karen Weiser Angela Veronica Wong > Matvei Yankelevich Lila Zemborain > > > Happy New Year. > > as ever, > David > > -- > David A. Kirschenbaum, editor and publisher > Boog City > 330 W.28th St., Suite 6H > NY, NY 10001-4754 > For event and publication information: > http://welcometoboogcity.com/ > T: (212) 842-BOOG (2664) > F: (212) 842-2429 > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 17:42:27 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mIEKAL aND Subject: contact info for Barbara Rosenthal Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Does anyone have contact info (email or phone) for Barbara Rosenthal, the photographer who worked with Hannah Weiner in the 80s... I've tried a couple different addresses & nothing seems to work. Back channel please... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 16:14:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Evans Subject: Sylvester Pollet Remembered Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Donna Gold has written a lovely tribute to Sylvester Pollet for the pages of his hometown newspaper, the Ellsworth American. http://ellsworthmaine.com/site/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=12036&Itemid=185 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 14:35:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Fwd: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Chirot Date: Jan 3, 2008 12:57 PM Subject: Fwd: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? To: david.chirot@gmail.com ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Chirot Date: Jan 3, 2008 12:54 PM Subject: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? To: david.chirot@gmail.com Dear Stephen and Friends-- Priez que le Bon Dieu m'absoudre--pray the Good Lord forgives me--for havin= g mentioned filthy lucre in the same breath with the Purity and Sanctity of the "intentions" and "political" aspects of the mass event sized , marshale= d and lit "Projections". "Perish the thought." (Just kidding--) In psychological terms, as a friend suggested to think on, a "Projection" i= s a defense mechanism by means of which a person projects on to another their own most unacceptable and feared inner desires. In which case, perhaps the artist is Projecting on to Rumsfeld what she most despises and fears in herself? Or--on to the spectators? Or- are the spectators passively gazing in rapt Belief at the icons of Holzer duplicating those of Rumsfeld =96 lifting up shining eyes reflecting back the Projection into its own eyes- and seeing there the reflection of Rummie's memos reflected in "Holzer's eyes----so that it then becomes a "triangle" in which Rummie, Holzer and spectator are all involved. A "m=E9nage a trois" or a "Nuclear Family" tripping the Light Fantastic? Are the spectators reflecting Projections which simultaneously carry the conflicted emotions of "for" and "against" the others and themselves? A Projection-Spectacle in which abasement and elevation are at once murky and calling out for a "black and white" division between "good" and "evil"? A separation of "us" from "them"? Holzer reflecting via Projections the same sense of "opposition" as Rummie & Co demand? The "Opposition" between "us" and them"=97an opposition of passive spectatorships occurring only "in the = eye of the beholder"?=97 One thinks of Lacan's ideas re Poe's "Purloined Letter," in which the Lette= r is moving through the doubled scenes of purloining, is folded in on itself, reversed and hididen in plain sight for the with/holding of its Power. The "action" of the "plot" being to re-purloin, unfold, reverse bac= k its original state and return the Letter to its correct "address"--that of its destination, the "rightful" Power. (One also recalls that for Poe/Dupin/Lacan--what brings the Letter "to light"--is the Detective's reflection on it in the dark which brings to light the reversed and hidden-in-plain-sight nature of its location hidden in plain sight, in the light of day. This making use of the darkness to see what is hidden in the light is the reverse of "Projectons'" massive display of Light--which is what leads one to think not that something is "revealed," but that something is hidden in all these pyrotechnics--which is that spectators cannot see their own powerlessness, can only see and Believe in the Power of Authority, of Control, of conformity. Projections and reflections, a doubling of the same memos, a doubling of their "interpretations," a doubling of their receptions, a doubling of Authority Figures--=97in al of this doubling is there not the opportunity f= or the "double cross"? For a "Smoke and Mirrors" Light Show not unlike the ol= d Shell game, in which it is proven once again that the hand is quicker than the eye? And what is returned to the correct address is always the same: Power. "The names may change, but the game remains the same." Or, as the Italians say, "to change everything so that nothing is changed." It's disturbing to me that the reception of the work is a repeat of the reception on the whole of the reasons, the memos, for the War in Iraq and the War on Terror. At first Rummie's words and those of the administration--the speech by Powe= l to the UN, Bush's famous "16 words" which were based on the known-to-be forged "Italian Letter," mixed in with the faked intelligence of "Curveball,"-were embraced as "Truth"=97 And now, five years later, known to be "lies" and "mistakes" they are embraced in Holzer's "Projections" as "Truth" all over again, simply becaus= e while the words remain the same, the Belief in them shifts from a Belief in Rummie's use of them to a Belief in Holzer's use of them What remains the same is the Belief in Power, Authority and the "Truth" of the one who is currently in possesion of the "Letters/memos" This is like Poe's Purloined Letter=97changing the addresses where Power resides=97from the Pentagon to the Museum--while not changing Power itself = one whit=97so that it arrives at its destination-- Rummie's writings have come full circle and repeated themselves in being found first as "found art" and now found again as words "writ large"--installed inside another institutional environment of Power, the Museum-- Rummie's words, repudiated as "Truth," become "Truth" yet again, only now one that "belongs" to Holzer and the Museum, to the High Art World, to the High "value" which Stephen ascribes to them=97 The memos are returned to the correct address=97an Institution of Power and Authority, and given the full opprobrium of the media-- which had the first time around given the same treatment to the memos when they "belonged" to Rumsfeld-- from the Pentagon and White House to the Museum-- from the tv screen and newspaper image in the privacy of the home--seeing the memos there-first---and now seeing them writ large=97( so we don't "mi= ss the message"?) in the privatized paying customer "public" Spectacularly Lit sphere of the Museum-- It is not only Power which remains the same, it's also the unquestioning Belief in it-and in the Figure of Authority which is representing it in an Officially Sanctioned Institution of High Art, High "Values"-- "replaying" Shock and Awe's bombardments and flows of Light=97to ensure that the pacifi= ed spectator "gets the message"-- after thirty years of exposure to a brand name designated "Holzer" many hav= e come to Believe that its "words" are Truth-- one "invests" them with a Power due to their being presented, represented b= y the signature brand name "Holzer," which is equated with being the "opposite" of, or "oppositional" to, the "reverse" of the Power of anothe= r brand name and its "values"- that this is "True" is shown by the mass scale of the "Projections" and where they are installed--in an Institutional setting which the reviewer likens to sites for rock concerts or political rallies--and are not unlike the Light Shows and massive set-up's, the "Projections" that Speer constructed for Hitler-- the setting, the lighting, the rapt Belief that one is in the Presence of a Figure of Authority and Bearer of Truth. supported and buttressed by the Authority of the Museum and the Institutions of High Art--all of these ramify, magnify, glorify Belief in Power, in Authority, in the Rummie/Jenny Artist, in the Institution=97in the Projection Before Our Very Eyes=97of th= e spectacle that is "in denial" in these-Projections=97that is, the spectacle= of one's conformity, one's obeisance, one's adoration and assent=97one's abasement=97before Power=97itself-- from the point of view of Power--what could be more desirable than this situation-- that the "opposition" is a mass of spectators prostrate before the "Truth" of their "Belief" in Authority-- to Power, this Belief in Authority is the "sign" of the passivity of the "opposition" every bit as much as it is the sign of the Believer in Rummie-- when "oppositional" views are hanging in Museums for all to see and give unquestioning Belief to, with the idea that by doing so the spectators are participating in 'resistance"-- this is the ultimate triumph for Power-- that the opposition is safely ensconced in rapt Belief and contemplation in a Museum-- NOT outside in the streets demonstrating or trashing government offices, NO= T actively engaged in "change on the ground" but simply content with the "change" of the mis-en-scene of the contemplation of Power=97of Authority-- the "assent" to the Power in the Museum is no different from this viewpoint than the "assent of the governed"-- while the Constitution is being shredded, and every day it seems more right= s taken away, trembling on the verge of disappearance, when the checks and balances on an Imperial Presidency aka Dictatorship are being hacked away s= o that barely a few threads remain to be severed for an "elected" president t= o declare themselves the Dear Leader- -while al this serious business is going on--the spectator is finding "freedom" and "dissent" in the contemplation of Belief in a "Truth" hanging inside a Museum and lit for all the world like a mock up model for a truly Great Spectacle--of the enshrinement of Total Power=97 Perhaps even a "trial run"-- (Hitler accomplished this, even pointing out that now that the laws had given him the means to attain total power, he could of course do away with the laws--since he now had the power to do so with their very own legal consent) The "being moved" and Believing one is "seeing the Truth" that the spectator experiences before the Museum display is what one is supposed to feel at the exhibition of Power--that one is "moved," that one finds one's Beliefs confirmed--and raised to a High Art, to a Truth=97a "real value" "w= e all share"=97 It is an emotion almost the same as an unquestioning Patriotism that the spectator is supposed to feel in the Museum--that indeed one reads in the words of the reviewers=97 (this is why I quoted from the "Star Spangled Banner" previously--) and just as one runs afoul of Power in being critical of the president or o= f several other agencies of Power, it apparently is almost sacrilegious to question the Purity and "value" of Holzer's "intentions"--to not be "for" the Museum installation is to be "against them"--and so an "enemy combatant= " as it were--because one refuses to be a blind Believer in Power=97 to think that one is "resisting" and "oppositional" by "agreeing" with and Believing in what bears the label of "opposition" and "appears to be" manifesting the signs of this--not the action of it, but the signs of it as read within the "Friendly Confines" of the Museum, of the Stadium=97of Homeland Security=97 "rooting for the home team" as it were-- means rooting for "our" "freedom" --to be spectators=97at the spectacle of the unfreedom of "our" own conformity=97"our own" passivity=97"our own" unquestioning Belief in Author= ity and Security-- Power itself could not be more happy--to see that those thinking of themselves as being "resistant" to it--are simply passive spectators, payin= g customers, i.e. consumers--lining up to have a rapt time of unbridled Belie= f before the Icons and Figures of Authority within the safe confines and powerful embrace of state and corporate funded Institutions-- Power, seeing how easily "the people' can be led around by the nose--one moment unquestioningly Believing in the War and the Government's "Truth" an= d the next in the "Truth" of the same documents simply displayed differently at a different point of time, when Rummie is safely out of office and gone to join Marjorie Perloff at Stanford- Power, Seeing this, -then Power knows there is nothing to fear at all--from within--as long as Fear is kept up by those Evils without=97i.e. it's now Iran's turn to be the Great Fear---the "new Hitler"=97 (remember when the "new Nixon" was elected?=97"Nixon Mach IV" as Hunter S. Thompson dubbed that particular model) --Iran--which Bush is attending meetings about in Israel next week=97(last week Israeli intelligence visited Washington)-Israel has openly announced it intends to attack Iran no matter what the latest American intelligence reports say--because, having been wrong before, why should they be right now?=97 which means in reverse that they "were right the first time"-- much in the way the Rummie memos, being "right" then "wrong" become "right= " again when hung in the Museum--when right/wrong have been shown to have bee= n based on false premises--why should right/wrong the next time around be Believed in as "True"=97yet their very "falsity" the first time around=97be= comes turned into "Truth" the second time around=97in the Museum=97in an attack o= n Iran-- Power, seeing the workings of this running so smoothly, will feel no compunction in launching another War--having seen that "resistance" and "opposition" are safely ensconced in Museums=97 in Museums, mind you--like "Old Masters"--and "Mummies"--the infantilized a= s a friend wrote--spectator there before the First Authorities--Daddy and Mommy-- is not this the complete triumph of Power, of Authority and is it not fitting that the Museum installation be so reminiscent of those constructed for the Daddy of the Third Reich/--managed and documented by Leni Reifenstahl--lit by Speer=97as the plans are laid for the attack on "the ne= w Hitler"?-- one imagines if there were anyone in Power with any kind of sense of humor--they would be laughing themselves silly at the realization of how pacified and passive the population has become, when it thinks it is "free" and "resisting" and "voicing opposition" in the contemplation of works on a massive scale within the walls of the Museum, the ultimate receptacle of th= e Past--the symbol of Historical Archives , of "purifying of the language of the tribe" =96of the Mummies and Old Masters of "our" Culture-- Purifying and Canonizing, Sanctifying , so that "lies" and mistakes" become washed clean in the Baptismal Baths of Light and become "Projections" of the feared and despised hidden "Truth"=97that the spectators have become "helpless children" in the Presence of Authority=97obedient, conformist, "enthralled" by the spectacle of their own "being good children" and Believing in the "Truth" and "Authority" of the Institutionalized Power of Rummie and Mummie=97manifested in their sharing the same memos=97 . . . ."politics makes strange bedfellows" after all-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 18:06:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eric Elshtain Subject: Huckabee Goes Electric MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Please read Beard of Bees' latest number; it is so timely you can set your watch by it. http://www.beardofbees.com/regan.html Happy Caucusing! Eric Elshtain Editor Beard of Bees Press http://www.beardofbees.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 01:46:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Ciccariello Subject: Mapping Emerson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Mapping Emerson - Peter Ciccariello Invisible Notes ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 02:35:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1252 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit love it. it occurs to me, in reading your post, david, that it rarely goes well for many poets because they find themselves with such very unpopular thoughts. poetry as the art of unpopular thoughts. or, half relatedly, as gerry gilbert said, "Poetry, the trick to read what can't be read, quick to write what can't be said." isn't it possible, though, david, that rather than operating as you have detailed (or perhaps not 'rather than' but something else), holzer's piece seeks to expose the lies and perfidy of the administration, to hold inexcusable actions up to the light? so that they be held accountable. i know the art world would settle for much less with its art, but might it be what holzer is trying to bring about with art? ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 12:15:25 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: Fwd: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable David, I think the real essence of your critique comes when you say that Po= wer triumphs when the Opposition is inside the museum and not in the street= s--which is true, or would be if one could so easily reify Power and Opposi= tion, as if there were not many powers and many oppositions and as if they = could not change places--but when there is no opposition in the streets, wo= uld you rather there be no opposition at all instead of opposition in the m= useum? And if you are not yourself "trashing government offices" so that ot= hers could at least begin to gauge the utility of this gesture, do you real= ly have any ground to criticize others for not doing so?=0A=0A=0A----- Orig= inal Message ----=0AFrom: David Chirot =0ATo: POETI= CS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: Thursday, January 3, 2008 10:35:52 PM=0ASub= ject: Fwd: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family?=0A= =0A---------- Forwarded message ----------=0AFrom: David Chirot =0ADate: Jan 3, 2008 12:57 PM=0ASubject: Fwd: Holzer, Rummie &= Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family?=0ATo: david.chirot@gmail.com= =0A=0A=0A=0A=0A---------- Forwarded message ----------=0AFrom: David Chirot= =0ADate: Jan 3, 2008 12:54 PM=0ASubject: Holzer, R= ummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family?=0ATo: david.chirot@gma= il.com=0A=0A=0ADear Stephen and Friends--=0A=0APriez que le Bon Dieu m'abso= udre--pray the Good Lord forgives me--for having=0Amentioned filthy lucre i= n the same breath with the Purity and Sanctity of=0Athe "intentions" and "p= olitical" aspects of the mass event sized , marshaled=0Aand lit "Projection= s". "Perish the thought." (Just kidding--)=0A=0AIn psychological terms, as= a friend suggested to think on, a "Projection" is=0Aa defense mechanism by= means of which a person projects on to another their=0Aown most unacceptab= le and feared inner desires. In which case, perhaps the=0Aartist is Projec= ting on to Rumsfeld what she most despises and fears in=0Aherself?=0A=0AOr-= -on to the spectators?=0A=0AOr- are the spectators passively gazing in rapt= Belief at the icons of=0AHolzer duplicating those of Rumsfeld =E2=80=93 li= fting up shining eyes reflecting=0Aback the Projection into its own eyes- a= nd seeing there the reflection of=0ARummie's memos reflected in "Holzer's e= yes----so that it then becomes a=0A"triangle" in which Rummie, Holzer and s= pectator are all involved. A=0A"m=C3=A9nage a trois" or a "Nuclear Family= " tripping the Light Fantastic?=0A=0AAre the spectators reflecting Projecti= ons which simultaneously carry the=0Aconflicted emotions of "for" and "agai= nst" the others and themselves? A=0AProjection-Spectacle in which abasem= ent and elevation are at once murky and=0Acalling out for a "black and whit= e" division between "good" and "evil"? A=0Aseparation of "us" from "them"? = Holzer reflecting via Projections the same=0Asense of "opposition" as Rummi= e & Co demand? The "Opposition" between "us"=0Aand them"=E2=80=94an opposi= tion of passive spectatorships occurring only "in the eye=0Aof the beholder= "?=E2=80=94=0A=0A=0A=0AOne thinks of Lacan's ideas re Poe's "Purloined Lett= er," in which the Letter=0Ais moving through the doubled scenes of purloini= ng, is folded in on=0Aitself, reversed and hididen in plain sight for th= e with/holding of its=0APower. The "action" of the "plot" being to re-purl= oin, unfold, reverse back=0Aits original state and return the Letter to its= correct "address"--that of=0Aits destination, the "rightful" Power.=0A=0A = (One also recalls that for Poe/Dupin/Lacan--what brings the Letter "to=0Al= ight"--is the Detective's reflection on it in the dark which brings to=0Ali= ght the reversed and hidden-in-plain-sight nature of its location hidden= =0Ain plain sight, in the light of day. This making use of the darkness to= =0Asee what is hidden in the light is the reverse of "Projectons'" massive= =0Adisplay of Light--which is what leads one to think not that something is= =0A"revealed," but that something is hidden in all these pyrotechnics--whic= h=0Ais that spectators cannot see their own powerlessness, can only see an= d=0ABelieve in the Power of Authority, of Control, of conformity.=0A=0AProj= ections and reflections, a doubling of the same memos, a doubling of=0Athei= r "interpretations," a doubling of their receptions, a doubling of=0AAuthor= ity Figures--=E2=80=94in al of this doubling is there not the opportunity f= or=0Athe "double cross"? For a "Smoke and Mirrors" Light Show not unlike t= he old=0AShell game, in which it is proven once again that the hand is quic= ker than=0Athe eye?=0A=0A=0A=0AAnd what is returned to the correct address = is always the same: Power.=0A=0A"The names may change, but the game remain= s the same." Or, as the Italians=0Asay, "to change everything so that nothi= ng is changed."=0A=0A=0A=0AIt's disturbing to me that the reception of the = work is a repeat of the=0Areception on the whole of the reasons, the memos,= for the War in Iraq and=0Athe War on Terror.=0A=0AAt first Rummie's words = and those of the administration--the speech by Powel=0Ato the UN, Bush's fa= mous "16 words" which were based on the known-to-be=0Aforged "Italian Lette= r," mixed in with the faked intelligence of=0A"Curveball,"-were embraced as= "Truth"=E2=80=94=0A=0A=0AAnd now, five years later, known to be "lies" and= "mistakes" they are=0Aembraced in Holzer's "Projections" as "Truth" all ov= er again, simply because=0Awhile the words remain the same, the Belief in t= hem shifts from a Belief in=0ARummie's use of them to a Belief in Holzer's = use of them=0A=0AWhat remains the same is the Belief in Power, Authority an= d the "Truth" of=0Athe one who is currently in possesion of the "Letters/me= mos"=0A=0AThis is like Poe's Purloined Letter=E2=80=94changing the addresse= s where Power=0Aresides=E2=80=94from the Pentagon to the Museum--while not= changing Power itself one=0Awhit=E2=80=94so that it arrives at its destina= tion--=0A=0A=0ARummie's writings have come full circle and repeated themsel= ves in being=0Afound first as "found art" and now found again as words "wri= t=0Alarge"--installed inside another institutional environment of Power, th= e=0AMuseum--=0A=0ARummie's words, repudiated as "Truth," become "Truth" yet= again, only now=0Aone that "belongs" to Holzer and the Museum, to the High= Art World, to the=0AHigh "value" which Stephen ascribes to them=E2=80=94= =0A=0A=0A=0AThe memos are returned to the correct address=E2=80=94an Instit= ution of Power and=0AAuthority, and given the full opprobrium of the media= --=0Awhich had the first time around given the same treatment to the memos = when=0Athey "belonged" to Rumsfeld--=0A=0Afrom the Pentagon and White House= to the Museum--=0A=0Afrom the tv screen and newspaper image in the privacy= of the home--seeing=0Athe memos there-first---and now seeing them writ la= rge=E2=80=94( so we don't "miss=0Athe message"?) in the privatized paying c= ustomer "public" Spectacularly Lit=0Asphere of the Museum--=0A=0AIt is not = only Power which remains the same, it's also the unquestioning=0ABelief in= it-and in the Figure of Authority which is representing it in an=0AOfficia= lly Sanctioned Institution of High Art, High "Values"-- "replaying"=0AShock= and Awe's bombardments and flows of Light=E2=80=94to ensure that the pacif= ied=0Aspectator "gets the message"--=0A=0Aafter thirty years of exposure to= a brand name designated "Holzer" many have=0Acome to Believe that its "wor= ds" are Truth--=0Aone "invests" them with a Power due to their being presen= ted, represented by=0Athe signature brand name "Holzer," which is equated w= ith being the=0A"opposite" of, or "oppositional" to, the "reverse" of th= e Power of another=0Abrand name and its "values"-=0A=0A=0Athat this is "Tr= ue" is shown by the mass scale of the "Projections" and=0Awhere they are in= stalled--in an Institutional setting which the reviewer=0Alikens to sites f= or rock concerts or political rallies--and are not unlike=0Athe Light Shows= and massive set-up's, the "Projections" that Speer=0Aconstructed for Hitle= r--=0A=0Athe setting, the lighting, the rapt Belief that one is in the Pres= ence of a=0AFigure of Authority and Bearer of Truth. supported and buttress= ed by the=0AAuthority of the Museum and the Institutions of High Art--all o= f these=0Aramify, magnify, glorify Belief in Power, in Authority, in the Ru= mmie/Jenny=0AArtist, in the Institution=E2=80=94in the Projection Before Ou= r Very Eyes=E2=80=94of the=0Aspectacle that is "in denial" in these-Project= ions=E2=80=94that is, the spectacle of=0Aone's conformity, one's obeisance,= one's adoration and assent=E2=80=94one's=0Aabasement=E2=80=94before Power= =E2=80=94itself--=0A=0Afrom the point of view of Power--what could be more = desirable than this=0Asituation--=0Athat the "opposition" is a mass of spec= tators prostrate before the "Truth"=0Aof their "Belief" in Authority--=0A= =0Ato Power, this Belief in Authority is the "sign" of the passivity of the= =0A"opposition" every bit as much as it is the sign of the Believer in=0AR= ummie--=0A=0Awhen "oppositional" views are hanging in Museums for all to se= e and give=0Aunquestioning Belief to, with the idea that by doing so the sp= ectators are=0Aparticipating in 'resistance"--=0A=0Athis is the ultimate = triumph for Power--=0Athat the opposition is safely ensconced in rapt Belie= f and contemplation in=0Aa Museum--=0A=0ANOT outside in the streets demonst= rating or trashing government offices, NOT=0Aactively engaged in "change on= the ground" but simply content with the=0A"change" of the mis-en-scene of = the contemplation of Power=E2=80=94of Authority--=0A=0Athe "assent" to the = Power in the Museum is no different from this viewpoint=0Athan the "assent = of the governed"--=0A=0Awhile the Constitution is being shredded, and every= day it seems more rights=0Ataken away, trembling on the verge of disappear= ance, when the checks and=0Abalances on an Imperial Presidency aka Dictator= ship are being hacked away so=0Athat barely a few threads remain to be seve= red for an "elected" president to=0Adeclare themselves the Dear Leader-=0A= =0A=0A=0A-while al this serious business is going on--the spectator is find= ing=0A"freedom" and "dissent" in the contemplation of Belief in a "Truth" h= anging=0Ainside a Museum and lit for all the world like a mock up model for= a truly=0AGreat Spectacle--of the enshrinement of Total Power=E2=80=94=0A= =0APerhaps even a "trial run"--=0A=0A(Hitler accomplished this, even pointi= ng out that now that the laws had=0Agiven him the means to attain total pow= er, he could of course do away with=0Athe laws--since he now had the power = to do so with their very own legal=0Aconsent)=0A=0AThe "being moved" and B= elieving one is "seeing the Truth" that the=0Aspectator experiences before= the Museum display is what one is supposed to=0Afeel at the exhibition of = Power--that one is "moved," that one finds one's=0ABeliefs confirmed--and r= aised to a High Art, to a Truth=E2=80=94a "real value" "we=0Aall share"=E2= =80=94=0A=0A=0AIt is an emotion almost the same as an unquestioning Patriot= ism that the=0Aspectator is supposed to feel in the Museum--that indeed one= reads in the=0Awords of the reviewers=E2=80=94=0A=0A(this is why I quoted = from the "Star Spangled Banner" previously--)=0A=0Aand just as one runs afo= ul of Power in being critical of the president or of=0Aseveral other agenci= es of Power, it apparently is almost sacrilegious to=0Aquestion the Purity = and "value" of Holzer's "intentions"--to not be "for"=0Athe Museum installa= tion is to be "against them"--and so an "enemy combatant"=0Aas it were--bec= ause one refuses to be a blind Believer in Power=E2=80=94=0A=0A=0Ato think = that one is "resisting" and "oppositional" by "agreeing" with and=0ABelievi= ng in what bears the label of "opposition" and "appears to be"=0Amanifestin= g the signs of this--not the action of it, but the signs of it as=0Aread wi= thin the "Friendly Confines" of the Museum, of the Stadium=E2=80=94of=0AHom= eland Security=E2=80=94=0A=0A=0A"rooting for the home team" as it were-- me= ans rooting for "our" "freedom"=0A--to be spectators=E2=80=94at the spectac= le of the unfreedom of "our" own=0Aconformity=E2=80=94"our own" passivity= =E2=80=94"our own" unquestioning Belief in Authority=0Aand Security--=0A=0A= Power itself could not be more happy--to see that those thinking of=0Athems= elves as being "resistant" to it--are simply passive spectators, paying=0Ac= ustomers, i.e. consumers--lining up to have a rapt time of unbridled Belief= =0Abefore the Icons and Figures of Authority within the safe confines and= =0Apowerful embrace of state and corporate funded Institutions--=0A=0APower= , seeing how easily "the people' can be led around by the nose--one=0Amomen= t unquestioningly Believing in the War and the Government's "Truth" and=0At= he next in the "Truth" of the same documents simply displayed differently= =0Aat a different point of time, when Rummie is safely out of office and go= ne=0Ato join Marjorie Perloff at Stanford-=0A=0A=0A=0APower, Seeing this, -= then Power knows there is nothing to fear at all--from=0Awithin--as long as= Fear is kept up by those Evils without=E2=80=94i.e. it's now=0AIran's tur= n to be the Great Fear---the "new Hitler"=E2=80=94=0A=0A=0A=0A(remember whe= n the "new Nixon" was elected?=E2=80=94"Nixon Mach IV" as Hunter S.=0AThomp= son dubbed that particular model)=0A=0A=0A=0A--Iran--which Bush is attendin= g meetings about in Israel next week=E2=80=94(last=0Aweek Israeli intellige= nce visited Washington)-Israel has openly announced=0Ait intends to attack= Iran no matter what the latest American intelligence=0Areports say--becaus= e, having been wrong before, why should they be right=0Anow?=E2=80=94=0A=0A= =0Awhich means in reverse that they "were right the first time"--=0A=0A=0A= =0Amuch in the way the Rummie memos, being "right" then "wrong" become "ri= ght"=0Aagain when hung in the Museum--when right/wrong have been shown to h= ave been=0Abased on false premises--why should right/wrong the next time ar= ound be=0ABelieved in as "True"=E2=80=94yet their very "falsity" the first = time around=E2=80=94becomes=0Aturned into "Truth" the second time around=E2= =80=94in the Museum=E2=80=94in an attack on=0AIran--=0A=0APower, seeing the= workings of this running so smoothly, will feel no=0Acompunction in launch= ing another War--having seen that "resistance" and=0A"opposition" are safel= y ensconced in Museums=E2=80=94=0A=0A=0Ain Museums, mind you--like "Old Mas= ters"--and "Mummies"--the infantilized as=0Aa friend wrote--spectator there= before the First Authorities--Daddy and=0AMommy--=0Ais not this the comple= te triumph of Power, of Authority and is it not=0Afitting that the Museum i= nstallation be so reminiscent of those constructed=0Afor the Daddy of the T= hird Reich/--managed and documented by Leni=0AReifenstahl--lit by Speer=E2= =80=94as the plans are laid for the attack on "the new=0AHitler"?--=0A=0Aon= e imagines if there were anyone in Power with any kind of sense of=0Ahumor-= -they would be laughing themselves silly at the realization of how=0Apacifi= ed and passive the population has become, when it thinks it is "free"=0Aand= "resisting" and "voicing opposition" in the contemplation of works on a=0A= massive scale within the walls of the Museum, the ultimate receptacle of th= e=0APast--the symbol of Historical Archives , of "purifying of the language= of=0Athe tribe" =E2=80=93of the Mummies and Old Masters of "our" Culture-= -=0A=0A=0A=0APurifying and Canonizing, Sanctifying , so that "lies" and mis= takes" become=0Awashed clean in the Baptismal Baths of Light and become "P= rojections" of=0Athe feared and despised hidden "Truth"=E2=80=94that the sp= ectators have become=0A"helpless children" in the Presence of Authority=E2= =80=94obedient, conformist,=0A"enthralled" by the spectacle of their own "b= eing good children" and=0ABelieving in the "Truth" and "Authority" of the = Institutionalized Power of=0ARummie and Mummie=E2=80=94manifested in their = sharing the same memos=E2=80=94=0A=0A . . . ."politics makes strange b= edfellows" after all-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 22:08:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: xoxoxcom Subject: COUPREMINE - accepting submissions In-Reply-To: <20080103180651.AYO90355@m4500-00.uchicago.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit issue 4 is up accepting subs for issue 5 http://coupremine.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 21:49:18 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mez breeze Subject: _skeletal.etching_ [t_ransliteration:1] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline :: :sk:h:el:l:etal:sk:etching: :in: :b:road:broke:n:pla:gu:n:es :t:racings:down:re:moved:h:arms:+:frog:gling:twitch:ing:le:g:gs :et::sm:al:lnesses:nestle:+:skin:ur:awkward:t:rap:p:ed:other :no:pack:aging::here: :plaster:ed:ova:sen:t:s:meets:phero:monal:b:l:eats :r:n:ose:milked:blushings:mask:+:moo:tate: :pok:h:e:r:f:Ace:dr:awn:2:ward:s:mour:nings :gasping:bitten:words:in:crowl:r:a:ven:nd:dry:h:er:r:s :permanent:fake:manet:mo:de:mentedness :managing:teac:up::savagery: :c:limb:ing:cream.o:varied:sc:alps: :=::g:rasping:txt:hosiery :weird:c:l:ow:erings:in:ur: :h:c:ackling::carv:iolent:ed::c:wh:ore: :: -- : mmo.[s]tabbings.ripple+sh[ape.avian.l]ift : : http://netwurker.livejournal.com : http://disapposable.blogspot.com/ : http://twitter.com/netwurker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 10:07:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: susan maurer Subject: wild wanton wordsmith women MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable on 1-27 at the back fence in nyc i will be reading with beat poet brigid mu= rnaghan and jamie smith at 3pm. there is an open, so come say hello. susan = maurer _________________________________________________________________ Make distant family not so distant with Windows Vista=AE + Windows Live=99. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/digitallife/keepintouch.mspx?ocid=3DTXT_TA= GLM_CPC_VideoChat_distantfamily_012008= ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 10:27:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "St. Thomasino" Subject: a noun sing e=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=B7ratio?= 10 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v624) Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed a noun sing e=B7ratio 10 http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com edited by gregory vincent st. thomasino http://eratio.blogspot.com e=B7= ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 11:08:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Anyone have Kim Lyons' email address? b/c, please. Mark ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 08:12:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cunningham Subject: love poetry in the 21st C MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable This is unfinished as yet but a good start. No Man=92s Land: The Love Poem at the Start of the 21st Century =93Though, for the most part, nineteenth- and twentieth century women = writers have been far less confident of women=92s victory than their male = counterparts were, they nevertheless document the casualties of a battle of the = sexes, a battle over the zone that many men experienced as a no man=92s land = because it debilitated masculinity but that a number of women defined, if only fleetingly, as a no man=92s land because it seemed to herald=85a = =93Herland=94. Gilbert Susan M. and Gubar, Susan, No Man=92s Land, Volume 1: The War of = the Words, p. 66 The love poem has a long history both in English and in other languages = =96 and, for most of that history, it was the male of the species that was writing it. Long before Shakespeare and the Sonnet - a form borrowed = from the Italian - Dante, Petrarch, and a host of others, influenced by the troubadours and trouv=E8res, were creating amour courtois, defined by = the University of Reading=92s Department of French Studies in the internet syllabus to their course Medieval Love Literature as: Courtly love (amour courtois or in Proven=E7al fin=92amors) is thought = to have developed in the twelfth century in France. Its origins are obscure but = it seems to have been influenced both by the Latin love poetry of the = clerical schools of the period and by the Arab love songs and poetry which were popular in the courts of Spain where bilingual minstrels flourished. = Their work was also known in the courts of southern France where Proven=E7al = was used and where the troubadours flourished throughout the twelfth = century. Guillaume IX de Poitou was the first troubadour whose poetry survives. = From the troubadours came the concepts of mesure (mezura), prouesse = (proezia), courtoisie (cortezia) and jeunesse (joven) which lead to joie (joia). = These qualities lead to a spiritual enrichment of the lovers which has an uplifting effect on the society around them. The lovers are usually not married to each other, and in the south fin=92amors was between a = married woman and an unmarried, often younger, man who might well be slightly inferior in rank to her although still noble. Fin=92amors was often = platonic in the sense that it was unconsummated although the emotions expressed = by the troubadours were burningly passionate and carnal. Troubadour poetry = has been described as the =91poetry of frustration=92 as the poet derived = his inspiration from the unsatisfied longing which he felt for the beloved. Two things should be noted from the above: (1) the concept of the cougar = is not a new innovation although it has probably been carried to further extremes in the 20th C, and (2) this period and studies of the = Proven=E7al were major influences on Ezra Pound. On a more serious and more = important note, this was the period of the pedestal =96 something which has = haunted women since and which has created the image of a separate, superior = species, - woman as =91other=92 as Simone de Beauvoir would say several centuries = later - thus hampering attempts to gain equality. This is the background then for the love poem entering the trough of = English literature. Prior to Shakespeare and his Sonnets, we had Sir Gawain and = the Green Knight, Beowulf, Chaucer, etc =96 some of which may have been = bawdy but none of which could properly be called love poetry. These cats were more interested in fighting than fucking =96 more into the exploits of a = brave knight fighting against a formidable beast than into even braver nights fighting an even more formidable one but, at the same time, much more pleasurable and rewarding. Then Willy came along and the whole thing shifted. Inheriting the Italian legacy, he wrote sonnet after sonnet on = love =96 which was pretty amazing considering the number of plays he was able = to write while diddling =96 which he must have been quite prolific at = considering where his imagination lay most of the time. Following Willie (have you ever considered why he=92s called that?), = there was somewhat of a lull during which Edmund Spenser and his eunuch cronies perfected the iambic pentameter. Oh, sure, they had their moments but, = on the whole, they would have given their left nut for Viagra. Then came = John Donne and Andrew Marvell and the other metaphysical poets. John was a contemporary of Edmund but he knew how to do the horizontal mambo to = great effect. He could talk about compasses and make you horny. Then there was silence =96 at least in poetry. Certainly, the 18th C saw = Henry Fielding, writer of Tom Jones, and Daniel Defoe, who wrote Moll = Flanders, but he and his contemporaries wrote in prose, not poetry. These texts = were also about fucking and getting fucked rather than about love - which is = a completely different playground. The English poets seemingly forgot not = what it meant but how it felt to procreate. Oh, sure, D. H. Lawrence diddled = a little bit, having written Lady Chatterley=92s Lover, but he thought it = was dirty and was himself a misogynist. So it was left to a 20th Chilean = poet, Pablo Neruda, to teach those male poets of English ancestry (and here I = mean poets writing in English speaking countries) where their cajones were. You will note that I have been distinguishing male from female poets. = This is because there have been many fine female poets who have inherited the cajones of their male counterparts and have had no difficulty getting it = up and writing extremely sensuous, erotic love poetry. Elizabeth Olds, for = one, comes to mind although Sylvia Plath was no slouch. Nor was Denise = Levertov, etc. But all of that is mere preamble. The question is: Is a male poet in a post-feminist, politically correct mine field - one who has become completely confused as a result of the events of the last fifty odd = years or so when the second and third waves of feminism, or is it womanism?, hit = - one who, due to the virulent strains of radical feminism, and the = competing strains of feminist thought (Are women different (Irigaray) or not = (Judith Butler?)) doesn=92t know whether to shit or get off the pot and is = afraid to enter the bedroom because he is expected (What a fucking concept!) to, = god forbid, satisfy her - still permitted to write love poetry? And, if so, = how is this shell-shocked, PTSDed victim/survivor/hero (pick one) of the = sexual wars supposed to go about this - what are the restraints, the = prohibitions, the protocols? Does size matter? John Cunningham No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition.=20 Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1208 - Release Date: = 03/01/2008 3:52 PM =20 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 22:35:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Boojum MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Boojum Our cat, Boojum, had to be put to sleep today, in our arms, two days after her 18th birthday. We were closer to her than most people. She meditated. She taught patience. We're distraught; she was a good friend, a companion who helped us through bleak times. She loved olives, asparagus, tomato sauce. She was beginning to close down; her last purring was about ten days ago. Losing a companion (Haraway's companion species) is as bad a loss as any other (in spite of my father, who said, It's not like losing a person you know). I can't do elegy after days of crying, running to emer- gency rooms, trying different foods and medication. Below is her Internet Index, within the crabbed space of my webpage. her name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others hear the despair among the carbon cacti, boojum trees, even in the midst of the name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others her name, boojum, jean-paul, others hear the despair among the carbon cacti, boojum trees, even in the midst of the Aditya A boggart bogle bonachus bonasus bonedevil bonnacon boobrie boojum hear the despair among the carbon cacti, boojum trees, even in the midst forgotten. Now, 2007, we are bringing our cat Boojum, this May 29, to Hope 2003 Boojum the cat who adopted me in 1990, developed breast cancer. She The cat, Boojum, imagining her, the tenor of her fur, quality of her eyes, :Boojum Carter Comments by writer: Boojum is named after the Boojum tree in Baja fury of cancer and creation. Azure and I are beside ourselves, and Boojum Boojum, our cat, is checked now daily for a resurgence of cancer; we can't cat, Boojum, imagining her, the tenor of her fur, quality of her eyes, Boojum Carter Comments by writer: Boojum is named after the Boojum tree in Boojum Boojum, our cat, is checked now daily for a resurgence of cancer; cat, Boojum, imagining her, the tenor of her fur, quality of her eyes, Boojum Carter Comments by writer: Boojum is named after the Boojum tree in Boojum Boojum, our cat, is checked now daily for a resurgence of cancer; partner, Azure Carter, and their cat, Boojum. Boojum Carter (medical report four years ago) feline, aged 13 1/2, four years after our mother's death, biopsy diagnosed as follows: Microscopic: MAMMARY MASS ONE - This mass is demarcated and has a well localized appearance. It is comprised of a collection of neoplastic epithelial cells that are forming tubules. The tubules are separated by variably thick connective tissue septa. The neoplastic cells have ovoid stippled nuclei and a scant amount of eosinophilic cytoplasm. Cytoplasmic borders are distinct. The mitotic rate is low and ranges from 0-1 per high-power field. Nonneoplastic tissue is forming margins. There are scattered aggregates of lymphocytes and plasma cells surrounding the growth MAMMARY MASS TWO - This is the larger of the growths evaluated. There are several large cysts. There is a proliferating population of neoplastic epithelial cells. The cells are organized in the lobules that are forming occasional tubules. The central areas of the lobules are degenerate. Neoplastic cells exhibit invasion. One or two layers of cells line the tubules. The cells have large round vesicular nuclei with multiple nucleoli. The cytoplasm is eosinophilic, scant and cytoplasmic borders are distinct. The mitotic rate ranges up to six per high-power field. Nonneoplastic tissue is forming margins. DIAGNOSIS: MAMMARY MASS ONE- MAMMARY GLAD ADENOCARCINOMA, TUBULAR, LOW GRADE MAMMARY MASS TWO - MAMMARY GLAND ADENOCARCINOMA, TUBULAR CYSTIC PROGNOSIS: Guarded COMMENTS: Feline mammary malignancies should be considered capable of metastasis and warrant a guarded prognosis at best. The first smaller growth evaluated is well localized and is not exhibiting invasion. This appears to be a well-differentiated adenocarcinoma. The second growth is exhibiting invasion and this growth should be considered as having potential for metastasis. Lymphatic invasion is not identified with any of the sections evaluated. These growths appear to be excised. Comments by doctor: Guarded. Felines tend not to recover. She might live six months, several years, or less. There is no way to tell. She needs immune system fortification. The doctor wishes her news would have been better. The question is whether or not the tubules remain within the body. The cancer could spread rapidly or even go into remission. Comments by writer: Boojum is named after the Boojum tree in Baja California. She is thirteen and a half. She exhibits no signs of illness. She has been my companion and is highly sociable and nervous, She has the personality, if not the skills, of a brilliant writer. At the moment she is sleeping, recovering from the removal of her stitches. She travelled with us to Miami, where she encountered, even indoors, new and interesting forms of flora and fauna. Azure and I pray that she will live forever. Comments: That cancer is always the same, disordered, disorderly, a tough go whose treatment is violent and invasive as well. The well-defined structure of the body begins to collapse as tunnels are formed through highly-organized tissue. Every organism is a world of miracles, and every creature dissolves in the fury of cancer and creation. Azure and I are beside ourselves, and Boojum Carter dreams now, not of death. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 09:25:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: UbuWeb Subject: Henri Chopin (1922-2008) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit this just in from Brigitte Morton : I am Henri's daughter and I regret to inform you that Henri died yesterday (03/01/08), at home, with his family, peacefully. We will miss him greatly. UbuWeb http://ubu.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 10:20:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: Fwd: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? In-Reply-To: <957200.66382.qm@web86013.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit David, I love the Poe Purloined Letter Lacan 'projection' on to my monitor screen as per support of your argument. I think a fundamental flaw here is to assume the Museum goer as some hapless subject or, 'at best' performing an act of genunflection before the sanctified icons of the Museum quo Temple or Church. I don't think it's that passive - or why not see it as a dialog between object and viewer. Holzer's claim on righteousness of a sort has certainly pissed me off in the past. But certainly being pissed-off and/or critical ought to be part of the provocative context of the Museum (or poetry journal or poetry list or whatever). Yes, sabotage the audio guides, the authoritarian docents and other culture feeders and put 'the self' - all you bring into the Museum and make it part of the show! Stephen V - writing in wonderful hurricane (sort of) windy conditions in the City by the endangered Bay. http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Barry Schwabsky wrote:David, I think the real essence of your critique comes when you say that Power triumphs when the Opposition is inside the museum and not in the streets--which is true, or would be if one could so easily reify Power and Opposition, as if there were not many powers and many oppositions and as if they could not change places--but when there is no opposition in the streets, would you rather there be no opposition at all instead of opposition in the museum? And if you are not yourself "trashing government offices" so that others could at least begin to gauge the utility of this gesture, do you really have any ground to criticize others for not doing so? ----- Original Message ---- From: David Chirot To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2008 10:35:52 PM Subject: Fwd: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Chirot Date: Jan 3, 2008 12:57 PM Subject: Fwd: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? To: david.chirot@gmail.com ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Chirot Date: Jan 3, 2008 12:54 PM Subject: Holzer, Rummie & Spectator--menage a trois or Nuclear Family? To: david.chirot@gmail.com Dear Stephen and Friends-- Priez que le Bon Dieu m'absoudre--pray the Good Lord forgives me--for having mentioned filthy lucre in the same breath with the Purity and Sanctity of the "intentions" and "political" aspects of the mass event sized , marshaled and lit "Projections". "Perish the thought." (Just kidding--) In psychological terms, as a friend suggested to think on, a "Projection" is a defense mechanism by means of which a person projects on to another their own most unacceptable and feared inner desires. In which case, perhaps the artist is Projecting on to Rumsfeld what she most despises and fears in herself? Or--on to the spectators? Or- are the spectators passively gazing in rapt Belief at the icons of Holzer duplicating those of Rumsfeld – lifting up shining eyes reflecting back the Projection into its own eyes- and seeing there the reflection of Rummie's memos reflected in "Holzer's eyes----so that it then becomes a "triangle" in which Rummie, Holzer and spectator are all involved. A "ménage a trois" or a "Nuclear Family" tripping the Light Fantastic? Are the spectators reflecting Projections which simultaneously carry the conflicted emotions of "for" and "against" the others and themselves? A Projection-Spectacle in which abasement and elevation are at once murky and calling out for a "black and white" division between "good" and "evil"? A separation of "us" from "them"? Holzer reflecting via Projections the same sense of "opposition" as Rummie & Co demand? The "Opposition" between "us" and them"—an opposition of passive spectatorships occurring only "in the eye of the beholder"?— One thinks of Lacan's ideas re Poe's "Purloined Letter," in which the Letter is moving through the doubled scenes of purloining, is folded in on itself, reversed and hididen in plain sight for the with/holding of its Power. The "action" of the "plot" being to re-purloin, unfold, reverse back its original state and return the Letter to its correct "address"--that of its destination, the "rightful" Power. (One also recalls that for Poe/Dupin/Lacan--what brings the Letter "to light"--is the Detective's reflection on it in the dark which brings to light the reversed and hidden-in-plain-sight nature of its location hidden in plain sight, in the light of day. This making use of the darkness to see what is hidden in the light is the reverse of "Projectons'" massive display of Light--which is what leads one to think not that something is "revealed," but that something is hidden in all these pyrotechnics--which is that spectators cannot see their own powerlessness, can only see and Believe in the Power of Authority, of Control, of conformity. Projections and reflections, a doubling of the same memos, a doubling of their "interpretations," a doubling of their receptions, a doubling of Authority Figures--—in al of this doubling is there not the opportunity for the "double cross"? For a "Smoke and Mirrors" Light Show not unlike the old Shell game, in which it is proven once again that the hand is quicker than the eye? And what is returned to the correct address is always the same: Power. "The names may change, but the game remains the same." Or, as the Italians say, "to change everything so that nothing is changed." It's disturbing to me that the reception of the work is a repeat of the reception on the whole of the reasons, the memos, for the War in Iraq and the War on Terror. At first Rummie's words and those of the administration--the speech by Powel to the UN, Bush's famous "16 words" which were based on the known-to-be forged "Italian Letter," mixed in with the faked intelligence of "Curveball,"-were embraced as "Truth"— And now, five years later, known to be "lies" and "mistakes" they are embraced in Holzer's "Projections" as "Truth" all over again, simply because while the words remain the same, the Belief in them shifts from a Belief in Rummie's use of them to a Belief in Holzer's use of them What remains the same is the Belief in Power, Authority and the "Truth" of the one who is currently in possesion of the "Letters/memos" This is like Poe's Purloined Letter—changing the addresses where Power resides—from the Pentagon to the Museum--while not changing Power itself one whit—so that it arrives at its destination-- Rummie's writings have come full circle and repeated themselves in being found first as "found art" and now found again as words "writ large"--installed inside another institutional environment of Power, the Museum-- Rummie's words, repudiated as "Truth," become "Truth" yet again, only now one that "belongs" to Holzer and the Museum, to the High Art World, to the High "value" which Stephen ascribes to them— The memos are returned to the correct address—an Institution of Power and Authority, and given the full opprobrium of the media-- which had the first time around given the same treatment to the memos when they "belonged" to Rumsfeld-- from the Pentagon and White House to the Museum-- from the tv screen and newspaper image in the privacy of the home--seeing the memos there-first---and now seeing them writ large—( so we don't "miss the message"?) in the privatized paying customer "public" Spectacularly Lit sphere of the Museum-- It is not only Power which remains the same, it's also the unquestioning Belief in it-and in the Figure of Authority which is representing it in an Officially Sanctioned Institution of High Art, High "Values"-- "replaying" Shock and Awe's bombardments and flows of Light—to ensure that the pacified spectator "gets the message"-- after thirty years of exposure to a brand name designated "Holzer" many have come to Believe that its "words" are Truth-- one "invests" them with a Power due to their being presented, represented by the signature brand name "Holzer," which is equated with being the "opposite" of, or "oppositional" to, the "reverse" of the Power of another brand name and its "values"- that this is "True" is shown by the mass scale of the "Projections" and where they are installed--in an Institutional setting which the reviewer likens to sites for rock concerts or political rallies--and are not unlike the Light Shows and massive set-up's, the "Projections" that Speer constructed for Hitler-- the setting, the lighting, the rapt Belief that one is in the Presence of a Figure of Authority and Bearer of Truth. supported and buttressed by the Authority of the Museum and the Institutions of High Art--all of these ramify, magnify, glorify Belief in Power, in Authority, in the Rummie/Jenny Artist, in the Institution—in the Projection Before Our Very Eyes—of the spectacle that is "in denial" in these-Projections—that is, the spectacle of one's conformity, one's obeisance, one's adoration and assent—one's abasement—before Power—itself-- from the point of view of Power--what could be more desirable than this situation-- that the "opposition" is a mass of spectators prostrate before the "Truth" of their "Belief" in Authority-- to Power, this Belief in Authority is the "sign" of the passivity of the "opposition" every bit as much as it is the sign of the Believer in Rummie-- when "oppositional" views are hanging in Museums for all to see and give unquestioning Belief to, with the idea that by doing so the spectators are participating in 'resistance"-- this is the ultimate triumph for Power-- that the opposition is safely ensconced in rapt Belief and contemplation in a Museum-- NOT outside in the streets demonstrating or trashing government offices, NOT actively engaged in "change on the ground" but simply content with the "change" of the mis-en-scene of the contemplation of Power—of Authority-- the "assent" to the Power in the Museum is no different from this viewpoint than the "assent of the governed"-- while the Constitution is being shredded, and every day it seems more rights taken away, trembling on the verge of disappearance, when the checks and balances on an Imperial Presidency aka Dictatorship are being hacked away so that barely a few threads remain to be severed for an "elected" president to declare themselves the Dear Leader- -while al this serious business is going on--the spectator is finding "freedom" and "dissent" in the contemplation of Belief in a "Truth" hanging inside a Museum and lit for all the world like a mock up model for a truly Great Spectacle--of the enshrinement of Total Power— Perhaps even a "trial run"-- (Hitler accomplished this, even pointing out that now that the laws had given him the means to attain total power, he could of course do away with the laws--since he now had the power to do so with their very own legal consent) The "being moved" and Believing one is "seeing the Truth" that the spectator experiences before the Museum display is what one is supposed to feel at the exhibition of Power--that one is "moved," that one finds one's Beliefs confirmed--and raised to a High Art, to a Truth—a "real value" "we all share"— It is an emotion almost the same as an unquestioning Patriotism that the spectator is supposed to feel in the Museum--that indeed one reads in the words of the reviewers— (this is why I quoted from the "Star Spangled Banner" previously--) and just as one runs afoul of Power in being critical of the president or of several other agencies of Power, it apparently is almost sacrilegious to question the Purity and "value" of Holzer's "intentions"--to not be "for" the Museum installation is to be "against them"--and so an "enemy combatant" as it were--because one refuses to be a blind Believer in Power— to think that one is "resisting" and "oppositional" by "agreeing" with and Believing in what bears the label of "opposition" and "appears to be" manifesting the signs of this--not the action of it, but the signs of it as read within the "Friendly Confines" of the Museum, of the Stadium—of Homeland Security— "rooting for the home team" as it were-- means rooting for "our" "freedom" --to be spectators—at the spectacle of the unfreedom of "our" own conformity—"our own" passivity—"our own" unquestioning Belief in Authority and Security-- Power itself could not be more happy--to see that those thinking of themselves as being "resistant" to it--are simply passive spectators, paying customers, i.e. consumers--lining up to have a rapt time of unbridled Belief before the Icons and Figures of Authority within the safe confines and powerful embrace of state and corporate funded Institutions-- Power, seeing how easily "the people' can be led around by the nose--one moment unquestioningly Believing in the War and the Government's "Truth" and the next in the "Truth" of the same documents simply displayed differently at a different point of time, when Rummie is safely out of office and gone to join Marjorie Perloff at Stanford- Power, Seeing this, -then Power knows there is nothing to fear at all--from within--as long as Fear is kept up by those Evils without—i.e. it's now Iran's turn to be the Great Fear---the "new Hitler"— (remember when the "new Nixon" was elected?—"Nixon Mach IV" as Hunter S. Thompson dubbed that particular model) --Iran--which Bush is attending meetings about in Israel next week—(last week Israeli intelligence visited Washington)-Israel has openly announced it intends to attack Iran no matter what the latest American intelligence reports say--because, having been wrong before, why should they be right now?— which means in reverse that they "were right the first time"-- much in the way the Rummie memos, being "right" then "wrong" become "right" again when hung in the Museum--when right/wrong have been shown to have been based on false premises--why should right/wrong the next time around be Believed in as "True"—yet their very "falsity" the first time around—becomes turned into "Truth" the second time around—in the Museum—in an attack on Iran-- Power, seeing the workings of this running so smoothly, will feel no compunction in launching another War--having seen that "resistance" and "opposition" are safely ensconced in Museums— in Museums, mind you--like "Old Masters"--and "Mummies"--the infantilized as a friend wrote--spectator there before the First Authorities--Daddy and Mommy-- is not this the complete triumph of Power, of Authority and is it not fitting that the Museum installation be so reminiscent of those constructed for the Daddy of the Third Reich/--managed and documented by Leni Reifenstahl--lit by Speer—as the plans are laid for the attack on "the new Hitler"?-- one imagines if there were anyone in Power with any kind of sense of humor--they would be laughing themselves silly at the realization of how pacified and passive the population has become, when it thinks it is "free" and "resisting" and "voicing opposition" in the contemplation of works on a massive scale within the walls of the Museum, the ultimate receptacle of the Past--the symbol of Historical Archives , of "purifying of the language of the tribe" –of the Mummies and Old Masters of "our" Culture-- Purifying and Canonizing, Sanctifying , so that "lies" and mistakes" become washed clean in the Baptismal Baths of Light and become "Projections" of the feared and despised hidden "Truth"—that the spectators have become "helpless children" in the Presence of Authority—obedient, conformist, "enthralled" by the spectacle of their own "being good children" and Believing in the "Truth" and "Authority" of the Institutionalized Power of Rummie and Mummie—manifested in their sharing the same memos— . . . ."politics makes strange bedfellows" after all-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 13:17:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ann Bogle Subject: AWP 2008 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" AWP announced at its website yesterday that registration for the upcoming conference in NY is closed.? I had planned to register at the site as I did last year.? This will not be possible.? Of course, non-registered participants may attend offsite readings, hotel parties, and go to bars & restaurants.? Please post or backchannel announcements of after-hours and offsite events.? Much appreciated.? Ann Bogle ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 14:18:16 -0500 Reply-To: az421@freenet.carleton.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob McLennan Subject: a recent poem Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT rereading paige ackerson-kiely on the airplane back to edmonton if this delay were darkness, it would never dawn. a series of delays, which in the end, make up a single wait. a star would not abandon. air & dust combine into immediate creation: a baby, a magazine, plastic tumbler of gin. books become unreadable; small bricks. my whole life on this solid earth & four hours more, the ground become unbearable. I was not looking at her fingers, but I know where they were. all the beautiful things might move. http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2008/01/rereading-paige-ackerson-kiely-on.html -- poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 14:39:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Rumble Subject: Fwd: [Lucipo] HERE WE ARE NOW! In-Reply-To: <86359.32221.qm@web36510.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kate Pringle Date: Jan 4, 2008 11:28 AM Subject: [Lucipo] HERE WE ARE NOW! To: Lucifer Poetics Group , maggie z < minor.american@gmail.com>, kathrynlpringle@gmail.com JANUARY 12th, 2008: ANNE BOYER & KEN RUMBLE! the minor american reading series is back! bring yr bottles and yr musical instruments to 811 wilkerson ave at 7:30 for: Anne Boyer was born in Topeka, Kansas, raised in Salina, Kansas, and educated at the public universities of Kansas. She now lives in Overland Park, Kansas, and teaches writing and other things at the Kansas City Art Institute. With K. Silem Mohammad she edits the poetry journal Abraham Lincoln and with Robert J. Baumann she curates An Actual Kansas Reading Series in Lawrence, Kansas. Anne Boyer's works include Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse (Effing 2006),Selected Dreams with a Note on Phrenology (Dusie 2007), and The Romance of Happy Workers (Coffee House 2008). She is at work on many projects including a novel, Joan, a book of poetry, Ma Vie en Bling, a book of imagined things, Art is War, and a book of bad translations, Ill New Wave Ho. Ken Rumble is the author of Key Bridge (Carolina Wren Press, 2007) which one reviewer describes as an "exuberant free-verse tour of Washington, D.C." He works as the marketing director for the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art and lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his daughter. His poems have appeared in the literary journals Octopus, Fascicle, Coconut, Cutbank, Parakeet, the tiny, Carolina Quarterly, and others. : Of magic and sorcery the arts are twofold, for the soul is subject to its errors, and opinion is subject to its deceptions. : the Sophist Gorgias : There seems to be no limit to what tropes can get away with : Paul de Man. :http://minoramerican.blogspot.com: ------------------------------ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. _______________________________________________ Lucipo mailing list Lucipo@lists.ibiblio.org http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/lucipo -- Check out my new book Key Bridge: http://www.carolinawrenpress.org/books.html And I'm on the road giving readings!: Portland, OR: Sunday, December 9, 7:30 pm Reviews of Key Bridge: Ron Silliman: http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-know-ken-rumble-originally-from-his.html Kevin Killian: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0932112544/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_top/002-7537401-5750437?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books#customerReviews ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 12:45:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: Re: love poetry in english, by men & then the 21st C MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline in this argument, the love poem entered English through the romance languages to the Elizabethans (itself arguable) at the beginning of the twentieth century the love poem enters the poet who would write love poetry from a variety of times and places -- and sources -- previous poets were not able to access who is Elizabeth Olds? -- All best, Catherine Daly c.a.b.daly@gmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 14:50:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: AWP 2008 In-Reply-To: <8CA1D152542D35F-F04-1737@webmail-me03.sysops.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit A while back I looked at the list and schedule for AWP's Panels. With few exceptions am I wrong to imagine that anything that happens "off-site" will be a major piece of fresh-air?! Frankly the program - and much of the poetry under celebraton - looked like Iowa (the writing program) before Ted Berrigan momentarily crashed through the Iowa City limits circa 1975! This is definitely ol' boys territory. Fortunately it looks like a great number of good small presses will be represented. Maybe there will be spontaneous panels around Publishers' tables! At least the exchange of something Fresh. I guess it's only emblematic that "quiet" programming like this is happening in the final year of the Bush Reich. By the way, a delight to read Susan Stewart's Nation essay on Ben Freidlander's Selected Robert Creeley for UC Press - and that Peter Gizzi is now on board as the Nation's Poetry Editor! Stephen Vincent http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Ann Bogle wrote:AWP announced at its website yesterday that registration for the upcoming conference in NY is closed.? I had planned to register at the site as I did last year.? This will not be possible.? Of course, non-registered participants may attend offsite readings, hotel parties, and go to bars & restaurants.? Please post or backchannel announcements of after-hours and offsite events.? Much appreciated.? Ann Bogle ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 18:06:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetry Project Subject: Events at The Poetry Project January In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Happy New Year! These are the upcoming events at The Poetry Project. See you here. Monday, January 7, 8 PM Open Reading Reader Sign-In 7:45 PM Wednesday, January 9, 8 PM Joel Lewis & Chris Martin When not doing battle with the truants on Staten Island in his guise as a mild-mannered social worker, Joel Lewis can be found criss-crossing the Jersey landscape via bus, train, PATH and light rail -- transfers and tickets in pocket and an unlined, softback Moleskine notebook at the ready with a Waterman rollerball pen in his right hand. His latest book, Learning From New Jersey (Talisman House) is an all-NJ hejira that saves the reader tunnel and Turnpike tolls. Previous books of poetry include House Rent Boogie and Vertical's Currency. He has edited the anthology of contemporary New Jersey poets, Bluestones and Salt Hay, along with the selected poems of Walter Lowenfels and the selected talks of Ted Berrigan. Chris Martin is th= e author of American Music, recipient of the Hayden Carruth Award and published this year by Copper Canyon Press. His poetry has appeared in Jacket, Cannibal, Aufgabe, Lungfull!, and Swerve. His discourse on the phenomenology of rap recently appeared in Poiesis, a journal of philosophy. He is the editor of Puppy Flowers, an online magazine of the arts. After living in Colorado Springs, San Francisco, and St. Paul, he is now five years deep into Brooklyn. Friday, January 11, 10 PM Filip Marinovic & Ariana Reines Fil Marinovich lives in New York City and would like to thank his friends for living there and elsewhere too, we do love challenges don't we, he says= . Ariana Reines is the author of The Cow (Alberta Prize, FenceBooks 2006) and Coeur de Lion (Mal-o-Mar 2007). Writing has appeared in Skanky Possum, WebConjunctions, Soft Targets, Action, Yes, tema celeste, etc. A book of stories, THANK YOU, is forthcoming from Mal-o-Mar, and a translation of the carnet noir of Griselidis Real is due sometime in 2009, from Semiotext(e). Become a Poetry Project Member! http://poetryproject.com/membership.php Fall Calendar: http://www.poetryproject.com/calendar.php The Poetry Project is located at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery 131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue New York City 10003 Trains: 6, F, N, R, and L. info@poetryproject.com www.poetryproject.com Admission is $8, $7 for students/seniors and $5 for members (though now those who take out a membership at $85 or higher will get in FREE to all regular readings). We are wheelchair accessible with assistance and advance notice. For more info call 212-674-0910. If you=B9d like to be unsubscribed from this mailing list, please drop a line at info@poetryproject.com. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 20:47:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: love poetry in english, by men & then the 21st C In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed A car model? At 03:45 PM 1/4/2008, you wrote: >in this argument, the love poem entered English through the romance >languages to the Elizabethans (itself arguable) > >at the beginning of the twentieth century the love poem enters the poet who >would write love poetry from a variety of times and places -- and sources -- >previous poets were not able to access > >who is Elizabeth Olds? > >-- >All best, >Catherine Daly >c.a.b.daly@gmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 23:22:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: intolerable. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed intolerable. always, I thought, intolerable. I cried intolerable, it was a sound. it is intolerable to decide for or against death. if I leave a house, I may or may not return. things may not return exactly, but most often they may return. death is intolerable. death does not return. I may decide, I will harbor this animal, this person, this cause. caring, giving, are implicated; sympathy, and perhaps empathy. this is a tending, not a shepherding or stewardship. or a mutual tending, shepherding, stewardship. this is a continuity, this is constant. the decision for death is instantaneous at the moment of death. it is intolerable to make these decisions. a decision for life may be revoked. then, again, at the moment of death, implying already decided. or that action or performative accompanying. I saw the sedative administered, needle and catheter. even then, I could have stayed that other, harboring the moment. I went through with it into eternal darkness. surely Boojum did not suffer, just as surely she wanted to live. I made a decision, for her, and against her living. for in the theater of steel, she resisted everything and strongly. she defended herself, lovingly as usual, her claws withdrawn, her mind full, commodious, insistent. she defended herself, death was the last thing on her mind. and we held her and tried to comfort her, she growled slowly, and then lay down and then not at all. it is intolerable to make these decisions! one should kill oneself after such decisions! I am a coward! one should not make these decisions! for one universe has ended and why should another continue? WHY? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 00:12:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: AWP 2008 Comments: To: steph484@PACBELL.NET Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Yeah well it was the same in 2003 when the conference was held in = Baltimore just as US/Britain were getting ready to invade Iraq. Because = the programming is proposed like 7-9 months ahead, there was NOTHING = relevant to the political situation in those dozens & dozens (hundreds?) = of events. I organized a largeish panel/reading in the Enoch Pratt Free = Library ("Barbaric Yawps") & David Fenza came through at the last minute = with a conference slot for us (because of a cancellation). The AWP is a = monster, already ancient by the time it hatches. There's life at the = fringes & in the joints. Last year in Atlanta I participated in the great = reading at Eyedrum -- thanks to the Atlanta Poetry Group. From the vivid = but almost derelict territory outside Eyedrum, I could see the AWP hotel = in the FAR distance: marooned on a traffic island of similar hotels. = Poetry goes to big ugly hotels (actually I though John Portman's hotel in = Atlanta was STUPENDOUS!!) immune from city communities? I don't think so. = AWP I'm going again this year, briefly, but .... Mairead >>> Stephen Vincent 01/04/08 5:50 PM >>> A while back I looked at the list and schedule for AWP's Panels. With few = exceptions am I wrong to imagine that anything that happens "off-site" = will be a major piece of fresh-air?! Frankly the program - and much of = the poetry under celebraton - looked like Iowa (the writing program) = before Ted Berrigan momentarily crashed through the Iowa City limits = circa 1975! This is definitely ol' boys territory. Fortunately it looks = like a great number of good small presses will be represented. Maybe there = will be spontaneous panels around Publishers' tables! At least the = exchange of something Fresh. =20 I guess it's only emblematic that "quiet" programming like this is = happening in the final year of the Bush Reich.=20 =20 By the way, a delight to read Susan Stewart's Nation essay on Ben = Freidlander's Selected Robert Creeley for UC Press - and that Peter Gizzi = is now on board as the Nation's Poetry Editor! =20 Stephen Vincent http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ =20 =20 Ann Bogle wrote:AWP announced at its website yesterday = that registration for the upcoming conference in NY is closed.? I had = planned to register at the site as I did last year.? This will not be = possible.? Of course, non-registered participants may attend offsite = readings, hotel parties, and go to bars & restaurants.? Please post or = backchannel announcements of after-hours and offsite events.? Much = appreciated.? Ann Bogle ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail= .aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 06:01:28 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Crockett Subject: a slice of life vignette MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Every third or fifth year, I go in for a meeting & battery of tests with a clinical psychologist, to determine if my government disability benefits get re-instated for another several years. I went in last month, talked for about fifteen minutes from the most superficial vantage to my daily life, then three hours of tests: intelligence, motor skills, auditory. I went back in yesterday for the results. The practitioner, a middle aged man who drives a silver corvette, said: "Well, you're 14% more intelligent than the average Ph.D, you've got the motor skills of an aircraft mechanic, and your hearing is OK." I just looked at him for a minute, then asked what's next. "Oh, your benefits are re-instated. Honestly, I never revoke them from anyone who's ever been diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. You're free to go. See you in five years." Also, it's a big thing this year that they're increasing benefits by 2 or 3 percent (as they do each year). I guess the Bush administration wanted to embellish this routine adjustment. They even fooled NPR. I laughed. Including Medicare / Medicaid, you could say I'm actually above the poverty line. Some nice social workers even talk that way, like I'm earning it. Most, in fact. I love social workers. I wonder what planet they come from... Jess denacht.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 07:28:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Recent Nomadics Posts Comments: cc: Nicole Brossard , "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) A Happy New Year to one & all. Do check out these recent posts on Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com Henri Chopin (1922-2008) A Nappy Ewe's Hear 373 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in 2007 Internet Lights Up / Lights Out... Julien Gracq (1910-2007) Another go at my favorite "Books of 2007" Christian Bourgois (1933-2007) Be well & keep warm, Pierre ___________________________________________________________ The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan ___________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris 244 Elm Street Albany NY 12202 h: 518 426 0433 c: 518 225 7123 o: 518 442 40 71 Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 email: joris@albany.edu http://pierrejoris.com Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 06:51:23 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cunningham Subject: Re: love poetry in english, by men & then the 21st C In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.1.20080104204659.06269a68@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1250" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To the person who wrote "Who is Elizabeth Olds?", thank you. I was studying Elizabeth Bishop's poetry at the time and, without realizing it, conflated the two names. I appreciate your catching that error as I probably would not have even on editing. john -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On Behalf Of Mark Weiss Sent: January 4, 2008 7:47 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: love poetry in english, by men & then the 21st C A car model? At 03:45 PM 1/4/2008, you wrote: >in this argument, the love poem entered English through the romance >languages to the Elizabethans (itself arguable) > >at the beginning of the twentieth century the love poem enters the poet who >would write love poetry from a variety of times and places -- and sources -- >previous poets were not able to access > >who is Elizabeth Olds? > >-- >All best, >Catherine Daly >c.a.b.daly@gmail.com No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1208 - Release Date: 03/01/2008 3:52 PM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1209 - Release Date: 04/01/2008 12:05 PM ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 05:49:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: editor@BOOGCITY.COM Subject: Instance Press AWP Eve W/Moldy Peach Goodshank In-Reply-To: <8CA1D152542D35F-F04-1737@webmail-me03.sysops.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable AWP Eve Event: Please forward ---------------- Boog City presents d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press Instance Press (Boulder, Colo., New York City, Oakland Calif.) Tues. Jan. 29, 6:00 p.m. sharp, free ACA Galleries 529 W.20th St., 5th Flr. NYC Event will be hosted by Instance Press co-editor Stacy Szymaszek Featuring readings from Kimberly Lyons Kevin Varrone Craig Watson and music from The Moldy Peaches? Toby Goodshank There will be wine, cheese, and crackers, too. Curated and with an introduction by Boog City editor David Kirschenbaum ------ http://www.instancepress.com/ ---- Directions: C/E to 23rd St., 1/9 to 18th St. Venue is bet. 10th and 11th avenues Next event: Tues. Feb. 26, 2008 Punch Press/Damn the Caesars (Buffalo, N.Y.) http://damnthecaesars.org/ -- David A. Kirschenbaum, editor and publisher Boog City 330 W.28th St., Suite 6H NY, NY 10001-4754 For event and publication information: http://www.welcometoboogcity.com T: (212) 842-BOOG (2664) F: (212) 842-2429 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 16:29:38 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "sgambito@juno.com" Subject: Application to Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii hello all, please feel free to forward widely. best, sarah *************** Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat June 25 - 29, 2008 University of Virginia, Charlottesville In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets, Kun= diman sponsors an annual Poetry Retreat at The University of Virginia. D= uring the Retreat, nationally renowned Asian American poets will conduct= workshops and provide one-on-one mentorship sessions with participants.= Readings and informal social gatherings will also be scheduled. Through= this Retreat, Kundiman hopes to provide a safe and instructive environm= ent that identifies and addresses the unique challenges faced by emergin= g Asian American poets. This 5-day Retreat will take place from Wednesda= y to Sunday. Workshops will be conducted from Thursday to Saturday. Work= shops will not exceed six students. 2008 Faculty Bei Dao is the author of poems that were a major source of inspiration d= uring the April Fifth Democracy Movement of 1976, a peaceful demonstrati= on in Tiananmen Square. His books of poetry include Unlock (2000); At th= e Sky=92s Edge: Poems 1991-1996 (1996), for which David Hinton won the H= arold Morton Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets= ; Landscape Over Zero (1995); Forms of Distance (1994); Old Snow (1991);= and The August Sleepwalker (1990). His awards and honors include the Ar= agana Poetry Prize from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablan= ca, Morocco, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been a candidate severa= l times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was elected an honorary m= ember of The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tan Lin is a writer, artist, and critic. He is the author of the poetry = collections Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe (Sun & Moon Press) and BlipSoak01 (a= telos). His visual and video work has been exhibited at the Yale Art Mus= eum (New Haven), the Sophienholm (Copenhagen), and the Marianne Boesky G= allery (New York City). His writing has appeared in a variety of contemp= orary literary and cultural journals, including Conjunctions, Purple, Bl= ack Book, and Cabinet. He is a professor of English and creative writing= at New Jersey City University. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of At the Drive-In Volcano and Mirac= le Fruit (Tupelo Press), winner of the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize, the F= oreWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in poetry, and the Global Filipi= no Award. Her poetry and essays have been widely anthologized and have a= ppeared in Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, FIELD, Mid-American R= eview and Tin House. She is associate professor of English at the State = University of New York-Fredonia, where she is a recipient of the campus-= wide Hagan Young Scholar Award and the SUNY Chancellor's Medal of Schola= rly and Creative Activities. = Application Process Send five to seven (5-7) paginated, stapled pages of poetry, with your n= ame included on each page. Include a cover letter with your name, addres= s, phone number, e-mail address and a brief paragraph describing what yo= u would like to accomplish at the Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat= . Include a SAS postcard if you want an application receipt. Manuscripts= will not be returned. No electronic submissions, please. Mail application to: Kundiman 245 Eighth Avenue #151 New York, NY 10011 Submissions must be postmarked between February 1, 2008 and March 1, 200= 8. Fees Tuition: Free to accepted fellows through donations from foundation, cor= porate and government sources, and the generosity of individuals. Room & Board: Room and Board for the retreat is $325. = Questions? Please e-mail any questions to info@kundiman.org More on the retreat can be found here: http://www.kundiman.org/%5BCLB%5D= _Brightside/1.Source/retreat.html ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 12:12:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Recent Nomadics Posts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit BACK AT YA PIERRE AND ALL On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 07:28:00 -0500 Pierre Joris writes: > A Happy New Year to one & all. > Do check out these recent posts on Nomadics blog: > http://pjoris.blogspot.com > > Henri Chopin (1922-2008) > A Nappy Ewe's Hear > 373 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in 2007 > Internet Lights Up / Lights Out... > Julien Gracq (1910-2007) > Another go at my favorite "Books of 2007" > Christian Bourgois (1933-2007) > > Be well & keep warm, > > Pierre > ___________________________________________________________ > > The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan > ___________________________________________________________ > Pierre Joris > 244 Elm Street > Albany NY 12202 > h: 518 426 0433 > c: 518 225 7123 > o: 518 442 40 71 > Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 > email: joris@albany.edu > http://pierrejoris.com > Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com > ____________________________________________________________ > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 14:29:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Application to Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat In-Reply-To: <20080105.112938.9646.0@webmail05.dca.untd.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I am sorry to say that the word "Asian" is being used to refer to countries mostly around the Pacific rim and ending basically somewhere at Himalyas, excluding everything west of that, for instance, Pakistan, India?, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, etc. This points to a narrowness of vision (partly, the way the United States assumes it is America) to combat which I believe Kundiman was originally established. I have thought of saying something about it for a while now. This is as good an occasion as any. Ciao, Murat On Jan 5, 2008 11:29 AM, sgambito@juno.com wrote: > hello all, > > please feel free to forward widely. > > best, > sarah > > *************** > Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat > > June 25 - 29, 2008 > University of Virginia, Charlottesville > > In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets, > Kundiman sponsors an annual Poetry Retreat at The University of Virginia. > During the Retreat, nationally renowned Asian American poets will conduct > workshops and provide one-on-one mentorship sessions with participants. > Readings and informal social gatherings will also be scheduled. Through this > Retreat, Kundiman hopes to provide a safe and instructive environment that > identifies and addresses the unique challenges faced by emerging Asian > American poets. This 5-day Retreat will take place from Wednesday to Sunday. > Workshops will be conducted from Thursday to Saturday. Workshops will not > exceed six students. > > > 2008 Faculty > > Bei Dao is the author of poems that were a major source of inspiration > during the April Fifth Democracy Movement of 1976, a peaceful demonstration > in Tiananmen Square. His books of poetry include Unlock (2000); At the Sky's > Edge: Poems 1991-1996 (1996), for which David Hinton won the Harold Morton > Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets; Landscape Over > Zero (1995); Forms of Distance (1994); Old Snow (1991); and The August > Sleepwalker (1990). His awards and honors include the Aragana Poetry Prize > from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablanca, Morocco, and a > Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been a candidate several times for the Nobel > Prize in Literature, and was elected an honorary member of The American > Academy of Arts and Letters. > > Tan Lin is a writer, artist, and critic. He is the author of the poetry > collections Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe (Sun & Moon Press) and BlipSoak01 > (atelos). His visual and video work has been exhibited at the Yale Art > Museum (New Haven), the Sophienholm (Copenhagen), and the Marianne Boesky > Gallery (New York City). His writing has appeared in a variety of > contemporary literary and cultural journals, including Conjunctions, Purple, > Black Book, and Cabinet. He is a professor of English and creative writing > at New Jersey City University. > > Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of At the Drive-In Volcano and Miracle > Fruit (Tupelo Press), winner of the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize, the ForeWord > Magazine Book of the Year Award in poetry, and the Global Filipino Award. > Her poetry and essays have been widely anthologized and have appeared in > Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, FIELD, Mid-American Review and Tin > House. She is associate professor of English at the State University of New > York-Fredonia, where she is a recipient of the campus-wide Hagan Young > Scholar Award and the SUNY Chancellor's Medal of Scholarly and Creative > Activities. > > > > Application Process > > Send five to seven (5-7) paginated, stapled pages of poetry, with your > name included on each page. Include a cover letter with your name, address, > phone number, e-mail address and a brief paragraph describing what you would > like to accomplish at the Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat. Include a > SAS postcard if you want an application receipt. Manuscripts will not be > returned. No electronic submissions, please. > > Mail application to: > > Kundiman > 245 Eighth Avenue #151 > New York, NY 10011 > > > Submissions must be postmarked between February 1, 2008 and March 1, 2008. > > > Fees > > Tuition: Free to accepted fellows through donations from foundation, > corporate and government sources, and the generosity of individuals. > > Room & Board: Room and Board for the retreat is $325. > > > Questions? > Please e-mail any questions to info@kundiman.org > > More on the retreat can be found here: > http://www.kundiman.org/%5BCLB%5D_Brightside/1.Source/retreat.html > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 14:36:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Application to Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat Comments: cc: sgambito@juno.com In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801051129t47a9498amd05ceba905170aa@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Of course, to this list of Asian countries we can add many from former Turkic Republics, Kazakstan, Ozbekistan, Kyrgizistan, Turkmanstan, in addition to Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, in further north, Ukraine (?), etc. Ciao, Murat On Jan 5, 2008 2:29 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > I am sorry to say that the word "Asian" is being used to refer to > countries mostly around the Pacific rim and ending basically somewhere at > Himalyas, excluding everything west of that, for instance, Pakistan, India?, > Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, etc. This points to a narrowness of vision > (partly, the way the United States assumes it is America) to combat which I > believe Kundiman was originally established. > > I have thought of saying something about it for a while now. This is as > good an occasion as any. > > Ciao, > > Murat > > > > On Jan 5, 2008 11:29 AM, sgambito@juno.com wrote: > > > hello all, > > > > please feel free to forward widely. > > > > best, > > sarah > > > > *************** > > Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat > > > > June 25 - 29, 2008 > > University of Virginia, Charlottesville > > > > In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets, > > Kundiman sponsors an annual Poetry Retreat at The University of Virginia. > > During the Retreat, nationally renowned Asian American poets will conduct > > workshops and provide one-on-one mentorship sessions with participants. > > Readings and informal social gatherings will also be scheduled. Through this > > Retreat, Kundiman hopes to provide a safe and instructive environment that > > identifies and addresses the unique challenges faced by emerging Asian > > American poets. This 5-day Retreat will take place from Wednesday to Sunday. > > Workshops will be conducted from Thursday to Saturday. Workshops will not > > exceed six students. > > > > > > 2008 Faculty > > > > Bei Dao is the author of poems that were a major source of inspiration > > during the April Fifth Democracy Movement of 1976, a peaceful demonstration > > in Tiananmen Square. His books of poetry include Unlock (2000); At the Sky's > > Edge: Poems 1991-1996 (1996), for which David Hinton won the Harold Morton > > Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets; Landscape Over > > Zero (1995); Forms of Distance (1994); Old Snow (1991); and The August > > Sleepwalker (1990). His awards and honors include the Aragana Poetry Prize > > from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablanca, Morocco, and a > > Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been a candidate several times for the Nobel > > Prize in Literature, and was elected an honorary member of The American > > Academy of Arts and Letters. > > > > Tan Lin is a writer, artist, and critic. He is the author of the poetry > > collections Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe (Sun & Moon Press) and BlipSoak01 > > (atelos). His visual and video work has been exhibited at the Yale Art > > Museum (New Haven), the Sophienholm (Copenhagen), and the Marianne Boesky > > Gallery (New York City). His writing has appeared in a variety of > > contemporary literary and cultural journals, including Conjunctions, Purple, > > Black Book, and Cabinet. He is a professor of English and creative writing > > at New Jersey City University. > > > > Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of At the Drive-In Volcano and > > Miracle Fruit (Tupelo Press), winner of the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize, the > > ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in poetry, and the Global Filipino > > Award. Her poetry and essays have been widely anthologized and have appeared > > in Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, FIELD, Mid-American Review and > > Tin House. She is associate professor of English at the State University of > > New York-Fredonia, where she is a recipient of the campus-wide Hagan Young > > Scholar Award and the SUNY Chancellor's Medal of Scholarly and Creative > > Activities. > > > > > > > > Application Process > > > > Send five to seven (5-7) paginated, stapled pages of poetry, with your > > name included on each page. Include a cover letter with your name, address, > > phone number, e-mail address and a brief paragraph describing what you would > > like to accomplish at the Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat. Include a > > SAS postcard if you want an application receipt. Manuscripts will not be > > returned. No electronic submissions, please. > > > > Mail application to: > > > > Kundiman > > 245 Eighth Avenue #151 > > New York, NY 10011 > > > > > > Submissions must be postmarked between February 1, 2008 and March 1, > > 2008. > > > > > > Fees > > > > Tuition: Free to accepted fellows through donations from foundation, > > corporate and government sources, and the generosity of individuals. > > > > Room & Board: Room and Board for the retreat is $325. > > > > > > Questions? > > Please e-mail any questions to info@kundiman.org > > > > More on the retreat can be found here: > > http://www.kundiman.org/%5BCLB%5D_Brightside/1.Source/retreat.html > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 14:43:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian Stefans Subject: Kluge: new intro Comments: To: Anick Bergeron , Nick Montfort , noah wardrip-fruin , "daniel c. howe" , strickla@mail.slc.edu, Scott Rettberg , Robert Coover , Thom Swiss MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've put a new introduction to Kluge which I think is worth looking at: http://www.arras.net/kluge/ Still working on some of the programming, but it's nearly done, though I've had to shelve the video fish and other elements that some of you might have seen at presentations of mine recently. Computers are just not there yet (or maybe I just can't program for shite). Hope you like, Brian ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 10:06:05 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Webster Schultz Subject: Sidewalk Blogger News: 1/5/08 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit SIDEWALK BLOGGER NEWS: first installment of 2008 The Place Names Series: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=503225&id=654553661#pid=439188 Happy new year to all. aloha, sms PS Share photos, but not the name, please. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 20:27:21 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Fw: PHILOSOPHICAL POETS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ----- Forwarded Me= Poets get talked about, but don't get to talk...=0A=0A=0A----- Forwarded Me= ssage ----=0AFrom: Ray Brassier =0ATo: Ray Brassier <= R.Brassier@mdx.ac.uk>=0ASent: Saturday, 5 January, 2008 5:03:36 PM=0ASubjec= t: FW: PHILOSOPHICAL POETS=0A=0A=0A=0A-----Original Message-----=0AFrom: = Philosophy in Europe on behalf of Nick Bunnin=0ASent: Sat 1/5/2008 4:05= PM=0ATo: PHILOS-L@liverpool.ac.uk=0ACc: =0ASubject: PHILOSOPHICAL= POETS=0A=0AForum for European Philosophy=0ACentre for Literature and Philo= sophy, University of Sussex=0A=0APHILOSOPHICAL POETS=0AA Free One-Day Confe= rence=0ASaturday 9 February 2008=0A10:00 am - 5:00 pm=0AChichester Lecture = Theatre=0AUniversity of Sussex=0A=0AProfessor Angela Livingstone, Universit= y of Essex=0A BORIS PASTERNAK: WHAT IS ART IF NOT PHILOSOPHY IN A STATE OF= ECSTASY?=0AProfessor Joe Friggieri, University of Malta=0A MONTALE'S META= PHYSICS =0AHilary Lawson=0A THE POETIC STRATEGY =0AProfessor Simon Critchl= ey, New School for Social Research=0A A FEW POEMS BY FERNANDO PESSOA, ONE = BY WALLACE STEVENS AND A BRIEF SKETCH =0A OF A POETIC ONTOLOGY=0AProfesso= r Ulrich Schoedlbauer, Fern University Hagen=0A APPROACHES TO PHILOSOPHICA= L POETRY=0ADr. Nicholas Bunnin University of Oxford, Chair=0A PANEL DISCUS= SION & QUESTIONS=0A=0APHILOSOPHICAL POETS draws inspiration from Three Phil= osophical Poets, the 1910 =0Avolume in which George Santayana discussed Luc= retius, Dante and Goethe. Our =0Apresentations and panel discussion on mode= rn poets will explore different ways =0Athat poets can be philosophical poe= ts, that poetry can be seen as philosophy =0Aand that philosophical and poe= tic analysis can be related in understanding the =0Aworks of the featured p= oets. We shall have readings of some of the poems we =0Adiscuss in English = and the original language.=0A=0AFurther information about the Forum for Eur= opean Philosophy can be found on the =0Awebsite: www.philosophy-forum.org. = Further information about the Centre for =0ALiterature and Philosophy can b= e found on the website www.sussex.ac.uk/clp/. =0AConference details are po= sted at these websites. =0A=0ATo book a place, contact: Katerina Deligiorgi= =0A=0AMessages to the list are archived at http= ://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html.=0AProlonged discussions shoul= d be moved to chora: enrol via=0Ahttp://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.h= tml.=0AOther philosophical resources on the Web can be found at http://www.= liv.ac.uk/pal. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 13:13:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Spoofing Inaugural Poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Is there such a thing as a good Inaugural Poem? How many people can remember which poet read for what prez? I remember Maya Angelo's insufferable poem during the Clinton Inaugural. I don't remember if Bush had anyone read. Dickey read for Jimmy Carter. I believe it was Robert Frost who read for Kennedy. Imagine an Ashberry poem, or something dark & ironic, say, a Baraka poem if Obama wins. Better still, a Ginsberg clone reads for a hyper conservative Republican. --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 13:17:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: elegy for Boojum, our companion cat, we are all poor In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit wonderful poem. didn't John Clare dedicate a poem to his cat? Alan Sondheim wrote: elegy for Boojum, our companion cat, we are all poor, 'i can't do elegy' - this is a poor and sleepless poem - when something's at the limit there's nothing more to say - for a moment i might have reversed the process but heard nothing more than wailing or sounds like an animal - nothing of crying, just tattered sound - nothing of warning, fear, existence, trepidation - nothing can be said on either side of death - neither this one nor that one - neither this nor the other - death is an other - (eighteen years, and death is an other) - death is everywhere, death is not around - (eighteen years, and death is everywhere, death is poor, death is not around) - always already other can't speak can't hear can't see - double needles, of sedative, of anesthetic overdose - doubled needles - who are these people & their kindness - (eighteen years and the kindness of strangers) - i'm done with it, the other's never done with it - always the last trip last day last night last meal last touch last scent last sound - (eighteen years and the last day and night, last touch and meal, last scent and sound) - in and out of the thick of it - the thick of it never changed - it stayed dry, viscous, substance and fissure - it's uncomfortable, stains, sticks to everything - lives on in us, exchanged, drops to the ground - crawls out, walks to the sea, drops to the ground - i can't drop to the ground, i drop to the ground - there's an elegy on, everyone's there - she says i think we're at the beginning of speech - she says she's very sad and wants to go hone - she stood dry, unattended - (eighteen years and dry and unattended, accompanied and unaccompanied, who can go into and out of the world) - the fire went out, into the world -- today someone counted elements, earth, fire, water, wind, air, heat, dearth, wood, & metal - (eighteen years and the counting of elements) - how was the air, the air was cold, bitter, the wind harsh, we turned the carrier against the wind, dearth of it all, harboring a flame until the last, dying in our arms, the metal table, off to a far wood of hunting - the world is filled with secret coordinates - impermanence of the metallic - she says she thought of the limit - in a small heaven somewhere - & now we are silent in the night, existence is silent - existence crawls, we heard her cries, the catheter carefully inserted elsewhere in the building - we held her heat against us, we exchanged heat - the tablets - prayer wheel spinning above a slow flame - we couldn't bear to empty her water, clean her bowl of food, now despair reigns, & in our arms nothing happened, everything seized -- 'this is a poor and sleepless poem' - without goodbyes, with ill-knowledge, with infinite regret, with the world undone - (eighteen years and the world undone) - ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 16:53:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ALDON L NIELSEN Subject: New Hampshire etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 SUGGESTED SLOGAN FOR THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN (would work for Clinton, too, I suppose). IN CASE OF EMERGENCEY, BREAK GLASS CEILING. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> We are enslaved by what makes us free -- intolerable paradox at the heart of speech. --Robert Kelly Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ Aldon L. Nielsen Kelly Professor of American Literature The Pennsylvania State University 116 Burrowes University Park, PA 16802-6200 (814) 865-0091 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 19:27:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aryanil Mukherjee Subject: break glass ceiling In-Reply-To: <1199569997l.790606l.0l@psu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit break glass ceiling ! .........reminded me of an Adrienne Rich poem That I can look through glass into my neighbor's house but not my neighbor's life That glass is sometimes broken to save lives That a word can be crushed like a goblet underfoot is only what it seems, part question, part answer: how you live it ----- Original Message ----- From: "ALDON L NIELSEN" To: Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2008 4:53 PM Subject: New Hampshire etc. > SUGGESTED SLOGAN FOR THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN (would work for Clinton, too, I > suppose). > > IN CASE OF EMERGENCEY, BREAK GLASS CEILING. > > <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > > We are enslaved by > what makes us free -- intolerable > paradox at the heart of speech. > --Robert Kelly > > Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ > > Aldon L. Nielsen > Kelly Professor of American Literature > The Pennsylvania State University > 116 Burrowes > University Park, PA 16802-6200 > > (814) 865-0091 > > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1210 - Release Date: 1/5/2008 > 11:46 AM > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 19:03:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Readability MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Nothing is readable. Everything is readable. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 22:23:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <895892.4172.qm@web52411.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > Is there such a thing as a good Inaugural Poem? How many people can > remember which poet read for what prez? I remember Maya Angelo's > insufferable poem during the Clinton Inaugural. It's called "On the Pulse of Morning," and it is bearable only if you immediately afterward read the n+7 version by Charles Bernstein (and what collaborator?), "On the Pumice of Morons." The latter version is utterly brilliant, just better in many ways -- if I recall correctly, "created only a little lower than the angels" becomes "than the angiosperm." Gwyn+7 McVay ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 01:15:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit obama'a clumsy mlk rap a few nites ago in ioaw might of made a good one HA On Sat, 5 Jan 2008 13:13:54 -0800 steve russell writes: > Is there such a thing as a good Inaugural Poem? How many people can > remember which poet read for what prez? I remember Maya Angelo's > insufferable poem during the Clinton Inaugural. I don't remember if > Bush had anyone read. Dickey read for Jimmy Carter. I believe it was > Robert Frost who read for Kennedy. Imagine an Ashberry poem, or > something dark & ironic, say, a Baraka poem if Obama wins. Better > still, a Ginsberg clone reads for a hyper conservative Republican. > > --------------------------------- > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 15:56:51 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Switaj Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <895892.4172.qm@web52411.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On Jan 6, 2008 5:13 AM, steve russell wrote: > Is there such a thing as a good Inaugural Poem? How many people can > remember which poet read for what prez? I remember Maya Angelo's > insufferable poem during the Clinton Inaugural. As I recall, that poem made God so angry that he smote the wrong Washington. :( We didn't have power for almost a week, but it was kinda fun watching the trees fall. Imagine if we inaugurated a president Adrienne Rich would be willing to read for. "Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage." Elizabeth Kate Switaj www.elizabethkateswitaj.net ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 03:29:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <50889.71.173.183.153.1199589799.squirrel@webmail.patriot.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Clark Coolidge and Larry Fagin. On Jan 5, 2008 10:23 PM, Gwyn McVay wrote: > > Is there such a thing as a good Inaugural Poem? How many people can > > remember which poet read for what prez? I remember Maya Angelo's > > insufferable poem during the Clinton Inaugural. > > It's called "On the Pulse of Morning," and it is bearable only if you > immediately afterward read the n+7 version by Charles Bernstein (and what > collaborator?), "On the Pumice of Morons." The latter version is utterly > brilliant, just better in many ways -- if I recall correctly, "created > only a little lower than the angels" becomes "than the angiosperm." > > Gwyn+7 McVay > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 02:43:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: akshaya kamalnaath Subject: Re: Application to Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801051129t47a9498amd05ceba905170aa@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I totally agree. I was eagerly scanning the entire mail for any mention of 'India' but I was very disappointed. Akshaya Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: I am sorry to say that the word "Asian" is being used to refer to countries mostly around the Pacific rim and ending basically somewhere at Himalyas, excluding everything west of that, for instance, Pakistan, India?, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, etc. This points to a narrowness of vision (partly, the way the United States assumes it is America) to combat which I believe Kundiman was originally established. I have thought of saying something about it for a while now. This is as good an occasion as any. Ciao, Murat On Jan 5, 2008 11:29 AM, sgambito@juno.com wrote: > hello all, > > please feel free to forward widely. > > best, > sarah > > *************** > Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat > > June 25 - 29, 2008 > University of Virginia, Charlottesville > > In order to help mentor the next generation of Asian-American poets, > Kundiman sponsors an annual Poetry Retreat at The University of Virginia. > During the Retreat, nationally renowned Asian American poets will conduct > workshops and provide one-on-one mentorship sessions with participants. > Readings and informal social gatherings will also be scheduled. Through this > Retreat, Kundiman hopes to provide a safe and instructive environment that > identifies and addresses the unique challenges faced by emerging Asian > American poets. This 5-day Retreat will take place from Wednesday to Sunday. > Workshops will be conducted from Thursday to Saturday. Workshops will not > exceed six students. > > > 2008 Faculty > > Bei Dao is the author of poems that were a major source of inspiration > during the April Fifth Democracy Movement of 1976, a peaceful demonstration > in Tiananmen Square. His books of poetry include Unlock (2000); At the Sky's > Edge: Poems 1991-1996 (1996), for which David Hinton won the Harold Morton > Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets; Landscape Over > Zero (1995); Forms of Distance (1994); Old Snow (1991); and The August > Sleepwalker (1990). His awards and honors include the Aragana Poetry Prize > from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablanca, Morocco, and a > Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been a candidate several times for the Nobel > Prize in Literature, and was elected an honorary member of The American > Academy of Arts and Letters. > > Tan Lin is a writer, artist, and critic. He is the author of the poetry > collections Lotion Bullwhip Giraffe (Sun & Moon Press) and BlipSoak01 > (atelos). His visual and video work has been exhibited at the Yale Art > Museum (New Haven), the Sophienholm (Copenhagen), and the Marianne Boesky > Gallery (New York City). His writing has appeared in a variety of > contemporary literary and cultural journals, including Conjunctions, Purple, > Black Book, and Cabinet. He is a professor of English and creative writing > at New Jersey City University. > > Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of At the Drive-In Volcano and Miracle > Fruit (Tupelo Press), winner of the Tupelo Press Judge's Prize, the ForeWord > Magazine Book of the Year Award in poetry, and the Global Filipino Award. > Her poetry and essays have been widely anthologized and have appeared in > Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, FIELD, Mid-American Review and Tin > House. She is associate professor of English at the State University of New > York-Fredonia, where she is a recipient of the campus-wide Hagan Young > Scholar Award and the SUNY Chancellor's Medal of Scholarly and Creative > Activities. > > > > Application Process > > Send five to seven (5-7) paginated, stapled pages of poetry, with your > name included on each page. Include a cover letter with your name, address, > phone number, e-mail address and a brief paragraph describing what you would > like to accomplish at the Kundiman Asian American Poetry Retreat. Include a > SAS postcard if you want an application receipt. Manuscripts will not be > returned. No electronic submissions, please. > > Mail application to: > > Kundiman > 245 Eighth Avenue #151 > New York, NY 10011 > > > Submissions must be postmarked between February 1, 2008 and March 1, 2008. > > > Fees > > Tuition: Free to accepted fellows through donations from foundation, > corporate and government sources, and the generosity of individuals. > > Room & Board: Room and Board for the retreat is $325. > > > Questions? > Please e-mail any questions to info@kundiman.org > > More on the retreat can be found here: > http://www.kundiman.org/%5BCLB%5D_Brightside/1.Source/retreat.html > --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 07:56:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz Subject: Reminder: Society and Sensoria: Books at the Speed of the Senses Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Call for Papers: Society and Sensoria: Books at the Speed of the Senses =93=85for the skin is faster than the word=94 =96Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual The 10th Biennial Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair and Conference November 2008, in the Washington DC area The intent of this conference is to advance a critical language for =20 artists=92 books that emphasizes both sensory-based and social =20 perspectives. Considering our societal trajectory for electronic =20 communication, as well as the increasing speed through which we =20 correspond by electronic means, we see the field confronted with the =20 following questions: What is artistic communication, and what is its =20 place or role in society? Are the uses of slower, =93handmade,=94 or =20 historical processes, often involved in the production of books, an =20 emerging form of protest or a simple refusal of technological change? =20= How are books resisting or embracing the rapidly paced exchange of =20 information? What do the often slow, time-consuming methods =20 surrounding the production and reception of artists=92 books mean for an = =20 electronic society where the distribution and intensity of sensory =20 stimuli appear to be shifting? How is the reception of artists=92 books, = =20 and the literacy they promote, affected by a potential sensory shift =20 into areas beyond the visual, in a society still dominated by visual =20 imagery? Are artists=92 books a reaction against, or a reinforcement =20= of, what we might call an overly visualized society? How does our =20 sense of touch relate to the predominately visual language of artists=92 = =20 books? What is our phenomenological understanding of artists=92 books =20= into a context of an expanded sensorium? We are looking for papers and creative panels committed to rethinking =20= artists=92 books as socially synthesized media devices with themes that =20= foreground speed, touch and rhythm. We invite artists, writers, =20 critics, publishers, activists, students, and educators, to articulate =20= how we experience books under the particular conditions of handling, =20 reading, and viewing, in a context of social interconnection and =20 difference. We encourage presentations from, but not limited to, the following =20 areas: artists=92 books, visual and performing arts, visual and cultural = =20 studies, visual anthropology, cognitive science, sociology, analytic =20 philosophy, comparative literature, literary theory, linguistics, =20 political science and activism. The following are examples of potential topics. Presenters, however, =20= are in no way limited by them: =B7 Speed of space and rhythm in books =B7 Haptic interface and books =B7 Phenomenology of artists=92 books =B7 Embodiment and books =B7 Devotion to craft as content =B7 Time-consumption and memory =B7 E-flux versus paper permanence =B7 Techno culture as a site of confrontation with books =B7 Synthesis of electronic information into non-electronic books The conference runs in tandem with a biennial fair for well-known and =20= emerging artists, publishers and dealers in the field of artists=92 =20 books. We intend to create synergy between the fair and conference by =20= extending lines of communication between the various parties involved =20= in the fair and will make special effort to link books exhibited in =20 the fair to the conference presentations. We encourage conference =20 presenters to consider such a link as they develop their papers. Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words by JANUARY 15, 2008 to: Tate Shaw and Ward Tietz pyramidatlantic08@gmail.com With your proposal, please include a current CV. The conference will provide a modest honorarium, though we strongly =20 encourage participants to apply for funding in their home regions and/=20= or through institutions with which they are affiliated. Please do not =20= hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. Pyramid Atlantic Conference Committee http://www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org/= ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 05:02:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sheila black Subject: inaugural poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Robert Frost wrote a poem called "Dedication" for JFK's inauguration but because he was old (87) and because the sun was shining on the page, plus his unfamiliarity with the new poem, he recited from memory a poem called "The Gift Outright" instead, which was a better poem anyway. Sheila Black "Dedication" "... The glory of a next Augustan age Of a power leading from its strength and pride, Of young amibition eager to be tried, Firm in our free beliefs without dismay, In any game the nations want to play. A golden age of poetry and power Of which this noonday's the beginning hour." and ~ The Gift Outright ~ The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people. She was ours In Massachusetts, in Virginia. But we were England's, still colonials, Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. Something we were withholding made us weak. Until we found out that it was ourselves We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender. Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become. ~ Robert Frost; 1874-1963 ~ Sheila Black --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 11:26:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Sokolowski Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <50889.71.173.183.153.1199589799.squirrel@webmail.patriot.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On the Pumice of Morons (The Figures, 1993) was by Clark Coolidge and Larry Fagin. The format & design mirrored the pompous Angelou volume down to smallest detail. michael Gwyn McVay wrote: > It's called "On the Pulse of Morning," and it is bearable only if you > immediately afterward read the n+7 version by Charles Bernstein > (and what > collaborator?), "On the Pumice of Morons." The latter version is > utterly > brilliant, just better in many ways -- if I recall correctly, "created > only a little lower than the angels" becomes "than the angiosperm." Steve Russell: > Is there such a thing as a good Inaugural Poem? How many people can > remember which poet read for what prez? I remember Maya Angelo's > insufferable poem during the Clinton Inaugural. I don't remember if > Bush had anyone read. Dickey read for Jimmy Carter. I believe it > was Robert Frost who read for Kennedy. Imagine an Ashberry poem, or > something dark & ironic, say, a Baraka poem if Obama wins. Better > still, a Ginsberg clone reads for a hyper conservative Republican. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 11:34:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Camille Martin Subject: Camille Martin at the Tree Reading Series in Ottawa MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Content-disposition: inline Camille Martin reads at the Tree Reading Series in Ottawa on Tuesday=2C January 8 I=27ll read from my recently published Codes of Public Sleep (BookThug=2C= 2007 - it=27s a beauty of a design!) and some edgy new sonnets (some pu= blished or forthcoming in The Walrus=2C The Literary Review of Canada=2C= This Magazine=2C West Coast Line=2C White Wall Review=2C and 5=5FTrope)= =2E Codes of Public Sleep will be available at the reading for a 25=25 disco= unt (=2415)=2E From the back cover=3A Codes of Public Sleep breaks open the code of private thought to modes o= f knowing catastrophe that defy insufficient isolating sagas=2E Camille = Martin=27s poetry is the shattering signal from a laudably wild tongue t= hat will not keep still for our death-drive culture=2E This is a remarka= ble collection=2E =96Carla Harryman Tree Readings are held in the downstairs function room of the Royal Oak = II pub=2C located at 161 Laurier Avenue East=2C Ottawa=2E Doors open at 7=3A30=2C open mic at 8=3A00=2C reading at about 8=3A30=2E= ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 10:33:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <50889.71.173.183.153.1199589799.squirrel@webmail.patriot.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT N+7 poems are stupid, one and all. There is no cleverness, no craft, no wit, no art, in any of them. Art is not, and cannot be, random, because an endeavor based on randomness is mere time-wasting: the results cannot be significant or important. In particular, N+7 cannot "spoof" anything because the very notion of a parody or spoof is to be an intentionally significant (and maybe an important) act. No N+7 substitution can be either significant or important because art is a matter of human intentions, not a matter of the mere propinquity of words in a particular edition of a particular dictionary. Removing human intention from the endeavor removes the possibility of art. What's clever or witty about a mechanical change of "pulse of morning" to "pumice of morons"? Nothing, unless you thought it up yourself. As an act of human creativity to go on from you'd have something to go forward with. But of course the N+7 method offers nothing even faintly resembling a way to go forward with, and even less of human creativity. And what is clever or even interesting about mechanically substituting "a little lower than the angiosperm" for "a little lower than the angels"? Again, if you'd thought it up, it might be an interesting place to go forward from, but it is not gone forward from. Worse, it has no meaningful connection to the "pumice of morons". Neither phrase has the least wit or art when the result of merely mechanical selection because without human intention the entire enterprise is dead on arrival. Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. N+7 offers nothing whatever since the idea of parody or spoof is to show, by human intention, how badly some other human intention has gone wrong. N+7 is no more a parody or spoof of anything than mowing the lawn is a parody or spoof of grass. Mechanical word substitutions do not create parodies -- people of accomplishment do -- and they must, since the nature of parodies and spoofs requires that the writer and reader are familiar with the original, with the context in which the original was offered, and the changed context in which the parody is offered. N+7 not only is no satire, no parody, and no spoof, but it cannot be: to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and then purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered because you'd get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. It is no accomplishment. For people who want to be thought of as people of accomplishment it's worse than that: it's inviting your friends over for dinner and serving them the excrement you've fished out of your toilet bowl instead: it's an insult to your friends, not to the notion of dinner. In short, N+7 is self-evident incompetence. Randomness as the basis for art is the first refuge of scoundrels and the last word in confidence tricks. Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 09:31:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: Rumzer/Holfeld & Borges, Bartleby, Bolano, Bernstein, Marinetti & copying and interrogating texts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Thank you Jim, Barry and Stephen for your responses-- perhaps new forms of "travel literature" need to be invented for the voyage to the end of the infinite, into the unknown, which is signalled by the "Projections" and their "oppositions" via doublings and reversals, mirrorings and copyings . . . . "he did not want to compose another *Don Quixote*--which would be easy--but*the Don Quixote. *It is unnecessary to add that his aim was never to produce a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable ambition was to produce pages which would coincide,--word for word and line for line--with those of Miguel de Cervantes." --Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard" 'He was obliged to *express *himself in a a language of *non-expression*, to make himself *understood* by the same means he had and sought and tested in order *not to be understood*. He had to communicate through the language of non-communication. Out of necessity. That is through censorship and self-censorship. As a prisoner. As a spy in enemy territory and under enemy supervision." -Leonarado Sciascia, *The Moro Affair* * *Often what is written is "unreadable" because other aspects of it are more easily "read into," thus producing a text which though unwritten is read in preference to that which is written but "unreadable." Reading and unreadability may indeed co-exist simply as things "in the mind and eye of the beholder." One may read into texts things not there, in the desire of finding them--as the Bush administration's pressured intelligence agencies felt happened to their "findings" and memos- which had, by virtue of said pressures, turned into "evidences" used for War--regardless of their being forgeries or outright raving lies---and at the same time remark on the "unreadability" of what one does not want to read, or does not know how to read. Much that is written is unwritten and much that is read is unread. What is written that is read is often the area in which "unreadability" is discussed, for only in that area of supreme certainty can such judgement be passed. For who would want to read an unreadable text on unreadability? Other than a non-writer of readable works.? Or a non-reader of written works, or even better, a non-writer of non-readable books. The dilemma of "criticism" is trying to chose which "readings" it will "write about" when copying or interrogating a text. After all, the highly trained expert cannot admit to an "unwritability" on his or her own part, whatever merits of readability the text may posses!! The primary concern in writing re the Rumsfeld/Holzer memos collaborative "Projections" is that in all the reading produced by the writings of the pair, the spectator/reader is "written out" and "condemned" as it were to the nether worlds of "unwritability," a relatively "quiet" zone as in a library where the readers are instructed to remain as hushed as possible. The spectator literally carries the "burden" of the projected lines of the for the most part unwritten about poetry of "a Nobel Prize Winner," (cited as though certifying the pedigree of the "show" dog and horse at a dog and pony show), which are "lost in translation" in the transition from "lines" and "letters" to "light" and "shadows" moving disembodiedly about on the "lit" and "shrouded" bodies of the "visitors" to the "morgue" of "dead civilizations" which a Museum was often seen as being by "avant-gardes of the past" that have become the "retro-fashions" of the "near Future" of "next season's shows," and "upcoming revivals." Bartleby, who had once worked in the "Dead Letters Office, " perished in the Egyptian darknesses of The Tombs, having decided he would "prefer not to" be a copier of other's "deadly" memos any more. Perhaps the "Projections" signal the opposite. {re unreadbaility from a different aspect : *UNREADABILITY On the Road from Alexia to Zaum *www.pd.org/topos/perforations/perf26/*chirot*.html } In Borges' story of Pierre Menard, a "minor" French belle-lettriste devotes his life to producing thousands of pages of writing that he destroys, while managing along the way to produce, word for word, some complete chapters of the Quixote of Cervantes. Yet while each word is the same in the two versions, Menard's, Borges' narrator tells us, is infinitely richer. While Cervantes' text, written in the colloquial language of his time, is unremarkable for this very reason, Menard's text, written centuries later by a foreigner to the language and culture, brings a life to Cervantes' text which it never before possessed. The platitudes and cliched phrasings of the "idees recues" of the times which one finds in the Quixote of Cervantes, become, written by Menard during the modern era of William James--(and around the time of Unamuno's Cervantes text)-- words of a challenging depth and insight. The Menard, in short, is in every way the superior work,leaving Cervantes' far behind, in the dustbins of history, relegated to the status of an old paperweight for the more cumbersome heaps of "dead letters" littering the busy desks of the omnivorous reader. In short, by writing word for word the Quixote, Menard has surpassed it, rendering the original superfluous, and created a new text which via its "redoubling of effort" is infinitely richer in meaning, superior in style and pregnant with provocative and philosophical thoughts. By reversing and doubling Rummie's memos, has not Holzer become the Menard to his Cervantes? Are we not now witnessing an infinitely richer, stylistically superior and much more philosophically provocative work in Holzer's "Projections" of the mere "common, everday, colloquial" words and marks of the discredited former Secretary? And is not this massive copying and projecting, this huge display of a "redoubling of effort" quite the opposite of Bartelby's obscure and shadowy "I prefer not to", which fades away into nothingness in The Tombs, the mirroring doubled reversal of the Museum? The Prison as mirror to the Museum---- The "Egyptian" Tombs with their living dead and the Modern Museums with their "living dead"--the Still Living Great Artists now hobnobbing quite fashionably and familiarly with the Great Deads of the Past, all under the sign of the Timelessness of Great and Eternal Art. As Henri Rousseau remarked with great feeling to Picasso: "We are the great painters of our Epoch. You in the Egyptian style, and I in the Modern." For Bartleby, as for Melville, death came to an almost entirely forgotten being. Only in the Eternal Timelessness of Art do we find them "emblematic" and "significant" and "connect with them." Paul Metcalf in a letter noted that the "South Sea Island Romances" of his great-grandfather were being taught at a college in Missouri alongside the "Hawiian Films of Elvis Presley" as examples images of the Pacific in American culture. Rather than censorship, the nature of Interrogation and the Interrogation of the Text, is to FORCE THE PRISONER/TEXT TO SPEAK. It does not matter if what the prisoner/text says is a reversed doubling of "giving them what they want to hear" or perhaps a "hitherto concealed secret," for these are the same thing. What matters is that silence has been unsilenced, broken, literally and figuratively, and there is THE PRODUCTION OF LANGUAGE, OF TEXT, which is now in the Interrogator's possession. Copying the text, "interrogating the text," what is the goal if not the production of a replacement text, to replace silence, to replace "the original?" And, in full possession of the"infinitely richer," stylistically superior and philosophically more provocative "copy" or "confession," is it not more than high time to broadcast this to the world via "Projections," in a spectacle of a "Triumph of the Will?" The corollary to the "Projections'" enthusiastically embraced exhibition is the the discomfort with which the Guantanamo Poems The Detainees Speak volume was received. A book that most do not want to and will not read, and claim that by not reading it, they are "not missing anything" because they have read or heard it is "bad poetry" and as well, a "production of the Pentagon," if not of Satan and "Islamo-Fascism." On the one hand, the copying of the words of the discredited Secretary of Defense and their "Projections" are considered "Great Art," while the words of detainees FORCED TO SPEAK, then only allowed to be translated by non-literary translators under strict supervision are of course exactly what the Pentagon and the Poetry World want them to be--"bad poetry" by "bad people" with whom there is a "clash of cultures" in which "they" don't Support or Believe in the same wonders "we" do--i.e. the originals and the copies of Rumsfield/Holzer's memos, the beauties and phliosophical inquiries of "Projections" of the Language of the State as the State of the Language, poetic and otherwise. The writings produced by torture and interrogation which Rummie enthusiastically encouraged, and their interrogations as texts before, during and after their production, translation and publication, has subjected the Guantanamo poets and their texts to the full battery of the Projections of Shock and Awe. The electricity triumphantly illuminating the Rummie/Holzer collaborations viewed in the Museum setting of the Timelessness of Great Art, is the same electricity used to torture the detainees and essay the production of texts, any old texts, from their lips, let alone the damaged minds and hands of persons repeatedly subjected to the jolts of "Old Sparky's" cousins and the joys of Water Boarding which the new Attorney General at his confirmation hearings may have confused with a form of surfing on the beaches of Guantanamo Bay. The Museum texts bathed in light--and cells in which the lights never go off. Or, when off, may be off for months at a time. While the eyesight of the detainees is damaged, ad the text they hold Sacred is routinely abused in front of them, Museum goers find themselves in "awe" of the artistic handling of The secretary's texts, subtly modulated, enriched, nuanced, deep with cultural resonances echoing in the vast halls as they are projected for an enthusiastic and respectful hushed paying audience. The complex and ambiguous play of "oppositions" among the doublings, mirrorings and reversals creates a pleasantly narcotic euphoria, a sort of "higher consciousness" via a language of "unforgetfulness" which is "safe and secure from all alarm" and at the same time poised at the ready for the sounds of alarm. For who knows when the next Attack on Homeland Security may occur and the Museum itself be targeted? In which case, the "Projections" turn readily into into Super High Beam Search Lights fingering the sky as hitherto concealed anti-aircraft guns appear with astounding speed from behind the Paintings of the Memos. On the one hand, everything possible is done to "torture" the poetry out of poetry, to create a non-poetry for non-readers. On the other hand, a poetry of reversed and doubled projections of the memos of Power, accepted as a New Art that is "infinitely richer" and "more powerful more eloquent" than any words of any "enemy combatant" could never be. On the one hand the "barbaric writing" of the detainees, non-writing for non-readers,(which is to be "the end of literature") in the same formulation that "barbaric writing" is described in an essay written under a pseudonym by the Chilean Air Force Lieutenant torturer, serial killer and "poet" Carlos Wieder in Roberto Bolano's *Distant Star*--and on the other, the "civilized" Museum of "Projections" accorded the full opprobrium of the culture's elites combining as they do the elite of the Government and that of the Art World. The larger the "Projections" "broadcast" their messages, the more they project unreadability on to the bodies and eyes of the spectators. The flowing letters of light of the poetry of Szymborska vanish into the "stability" of the enlarged lettering of the memos. And what are memos for but to ensure and reinforce "unforgetfullness"? That is, the "unforgettably" of the "twice amplified" memos and the "forgetability" of the "unreadable" poetry. As Jack Spicer said, looking out over the Pacific Ocean: "No one listens to poetry." And many years later in the film "Atlantic City," Burt Lancaster gazed out in the opposite direction and murmured, "Not even the Atlantic Ocean is what it used to be." Meanwhile, discredited as military man, a "failure" in the eyes of a mocking world, --and what easier time to kick a man in a Museum than when he is down--"Rummie" has none the less heard the Call of Vocation and resettled at Stanford, there to go into Post Doctoral Poetics Studies with Dr Perloff. By using the methods of one her favorite "radical Artificers," Charles Bernstein, Dr Perloff and Rumzer (as he is now known, in defference to Holfeld) are hoping to capitalize on the recognitions accorded his memos and find ways to turn his military "misfortune" into the Future of Poetry, a "Restoration of Futurism" via the hindsight of the 21st Century. For in the foresight born of hindsight lies the restoration of the future as a superior copy of the past. As Dr Perloff outlines briefly in a memo subtly echoing those of the Secretary, the method Bernstein takes in hand is the old "bait and switch," in which cliches and "official verse"are reversed, "doubling their pleasure, doubling their fun" by this clever method of "turning them inside out." The redoubling of cliches and platitudes, their mirrorings and reversals, allows Bernstein to produce the same "truisms" as now infinitely richer and wittier poetic and philosophical paradigms, which if "reverse engineered" also allow one to produce from the same "anti-capitalist" reversed words the stunning High Capitalist High Art moment of advertising for the Yellow Pages of Businesses during the Corporate Non Plus Ultra Half Time of the Super Bowl. This ultimate in Big Screen Big Audience "Projection," Rumzer is beginning to see, is what makes the possibilities of this method so "infinitely richer," stylistically superior and fraught with philosophical significance. In a moment of breathless anticipation too great to stifle,Dr Perloff has even let Rumzer know that no matter who if anyone is "elected," or,even if there is an "election," the Inaugural Poem will be from now on the sole provenance of Dr Bernstein, the Old Master of turning doggerel into an Inaugural and vice versa. "I'm beginning to catch your drift--" Rumzer writes back, deliberately re-using the same but now "infinitely richer" Rumzer colloquialisms as before, just as he re-uses with stylistic superiority the same set of memo papers he once did in the Office, (now sold, even blank, as Collector's Items on EBay) having left Office with hundreds of boxes of them. "See you tonight at eight. Or make that ate," he adds with a "poetic" flourish, ravenous already for his "dinner date." Clinking their cut glass crystal chalices of wine, ever mindful of the starched white expanses of table linen, the "couple at the corner table" reserved for those deserving of privacy for their intimate tete-a-tetes, gaze assertively and affirmingly into each other's eyes, their free hands poised in intimate proximity with pencils at the ready beside the finest specimens of handmade paper. In the enveloping warmth of the vast dining room, basking in the fragrance of the very best fresh cut flowers, Dr and Secretary set to work with pencils, knives and forks at the task of creating the New Extreme Experimental American Poetry. O Museum Muse, by whom MEMO is reversed as "O mem(e)!" O reversed mirrored double image"Projected" onto the bodies of spectators so that Rummie becomes an "artist known as Rumzer" reversed into a "Secretary of Defense" known as Holfeld projected on to the "screens" of their eyes. Eyes which now "see" Rumzer's words as "art" and Holfeld's as a "new American military," "mobilized" and "light"--easily able to be "launched" from any of close to 700 "military bases" worldwide--now reversed into "museums"--in the reversal of Marinetti's "war the world's hygiene," which does away with Museums--now the Museum is the projector of a "hygienic war" which "cleanses" "enemy combatants" and makes them into "spectators of art"-- in fact, one might envision the good Dr. suggesting to the former Secretary that a study of Marinetti's Futurist "Parole in Liberta" (precursor of Il Maestro Fondatore's Parole in Liberace, in turn Il Fondatore's contribution to "The Grand Piano" and included in its archives) , with its battlefield sounds and arrows pointing directions of attacks, placements of artillery, "bombs bursting in air," might be of some real use and interest in the Secretary's development of the "sketches" of the memos into a more sustained "elaboration" --"con vivo" --of his already extensive and barely tapped "command" of military nomenclature and rhythms. And so, this surprising and intriguing "Dynamic Duo," working long hours after hours at an "undisclosed location," proceed with the production of a "Tour de Force," powerful generator of a "Coup d'Etat," a "Regime Change" within the hierarchies of American Poetics and the MLA ushering in the era of the New Extreme Experimental American poetry. And as Secretary of The Projections of a New American Military, Ms. Holfeld and Dr Bernstein assume their rightful places in the Coup d"Etat of a New Regime of the American Extreme Experimental Democratic Republic . "this is my last communique from the planet of the monsters. Never again will I immerse myself in literature's bottomless cesspools. I will go back to writing my poems, such as they are, find a job to keep body and soul together, and make no attempt to be published." --Roberto Bolano, Distant Star t ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 13:06:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Amanda Earl Subject: Re: Camille Martin at the Tree Reading Series in Ottawa In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable hurray! i'll be there. and i have Codes of Public=20 Sleep, which I've started and am enjoying very=20 much. another fine Book Thug publication...this one with added gloss. see you at the reading. best, Amanda Earl At 11:34 AM 06/01/2008, you wrote: >Camille Martin reads >at the Tree Reading Series in Ottawa >on Tuesday, January 8 > >I'll read from my recently published Codes of=20 >Public Sleep (BookThug, 2007 - it's a beauty of=20 >a design!) and some edgy new sonnets (some=20 >published or forthcoming in The Walrus, The=20 >Literary Review of Canada, This Magazine, West=20 >Coast Line, White Wall Review, and 5_Trope). > >Codes of Public Sleep will be available at the=20 >reading for a 25% discount ($15). > > From the back cover: > >Codes of Public Sleep breaks open the code of=20 >private thought to modes of knowing catastrophe=20 >that defy insufficient isolating sagas. Camille=20 >Martin's poetry is the shattering signal from a=20 >laudably wild tongue that will not keep still=20 >for our death-drive culture. This is a remarkable collection. =ADCarla= Harryman > >Tree Readings are held in the downstairs=20 >function room of the Royal Oak II pub, located=20 >at 161 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa. > >Doors open at 7:30, open mic at 8:00, reading at about 8:30. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 10:17:16 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Webster Schultz Subject: Sidwalk blogger link MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I fear I sent out an "inside" link yesterday. For those of you not among the facebook self-electerati, please click here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=21060&l=285f3&id=654553661 aloha, sms ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 14:20:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rebecca Weaver Subject: new issue midway and submissions In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hello all, best wishes to everyone for the new year! I'm happy to announce that Midway's new issue is now up (www.midwayjournal.com) and that we're now open for submissions. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 15:41:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: info Subject: Fw: PHILOSOPHICAL POETS In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I'd love to read these papers. Will they be made available? Andrea Baker > Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 20:27:21 +0000 > From: Barry Schwabsky > Subject: Fw: PHILOSOPHICAL POETS > AProfessor Angela Livingstone, Universit= > y of Essex=0A BORIS PASTERNAK: WHAT IS ART IF NOT PHILOSOPHY IN A STATE OF= > ECSTASY?=0AProfessor Joe Friggieri, University of Malta=0A MONTALE'S META= > PHYSICS =0AHilary Lawson=0A THE POETIC STRATEGY =0AProfessor Simon Critchl= > ey, New School for Social Research=0A A FEW POEMS BY FERNANDO PESSOA, ONE = > BY WALLACE STEVENS AND A BRIEF SKETCH =0A OF A POETIC ONTOLOGY=0AProfesso= > r Ulrich Schoedlbauer, Fern University Hagen=0A APPROACHES TO PHILOSOPHICA= > L POETRY=0ADr. Nicholas Bunnin University of Oxford, Chair=0A PANEL DISCUS= > SION & QUESTIONS=0A=0APHILOSOPHICAL POETS draws inspiration from Three Phil= > osophical Poets, the 1910 =0Avolume in which George Santayana discussed Luc= > retius, Dante and Goethe. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 16:41:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <4780AE5D.31737.197AED4@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I'm so glad we have you here to define art for us. Thank you. Parody too. Great allusion to the Samuel Johnson quote. Very clever. And the zinger: "Removing human intention from the endeavor removes the possibility of art." Absolutely ridiculous. That intention be equated to the artist's "meaning to," as in, I meant for this poem to be about a one-eyed kitten that I found while walking in my field of barley or whatever rather than the art of the absurd: the ridiculousness of writing about dead kittens and one-eyed, is absurd. Even more so is the notion that had I not gone walking and had I not discovered said maimed -- now dead -- kitten, I'd never write what some might consider a work of art. So where does the removal of normatively "inaugural" phrases and ideas and replacing them with nullified "substitutes" fall on the scale of spoof/parody? If anything, spoofing the haughty and pseudo-epic language of inaugural poems certainly seems needed. And this is where I really disagree: On the Pumice of Morons isn't a parody, but a way to declaw the uselessness of On the Pulse of Morning. It doesn't have to represent the text it attempts to subvert. It becomes the text it subverts. It's a substitute teacher whose job is to ruin what you know about Pulses and Mornings, a red red herring. Art comes from many angles, usually where it's needed, regardless of intention. If manipulation of an image (as in CGI, or computer generated image, based on programs, code and algorithms) is free of intention, is it not art? What of the endless future possibilities of its art-ness? I see the N+7 as --at worst-- a prompt. At best, it's a way to remove false language from its speaker. Namely, language used not to speak of the situation to be described, but to reflect back onto the speaker. This is what politicians do. I'm wondering what the point of your outrage might be? If I like country music and you hate it is it your duty to insult my taste (with irrational appeals) until you convert me? Is the N+7 representative of something that you really hate that much? Best, Ryan Daley On Jan 6, 2008 10:33 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > N+7 poems are stupid, one and all. There is no cleverness, no craft, no > wit, no > art, in any of them. Art is not, and cannot be, random, because an > endeavor > based on randomness is mere time-wasting: the results cannot be > significant > or important. In particular, N+7 cannot "spoof" anything because the very > notion of a parody or spoof is to be an intentionally significant (and > maybe an > important) act. No N+7 substitution can be either significant or important > because art is a matter of human intentions, not a matter of the mere > propinquity of words in a particular edition of a particular dictionary. > Removing > human intention from the endeavor removes the possibility of art. > > What's clever or witty about a mechanical change of "pulse of morning" to > "pumice of morons"? Nothing, unless you thought it up yourself. As an act > of > human creativity to go on from you'd have something to go forward with. > But > of course the N+7 method offers nothing even faintly resembling a way to > go > forward with, and even less of human creativity. > > And what is clever or even interesting about mechanically substituting "a > little > lower than the angiosperm" for "a little lower than the angels"? Again, if > you'd > thought it up, it might be an interesting place to go forward from, but it > is not > gone forward from. Worse, it has no meaningful connection to the "pumice > of > morons". Neither phrase has the least wit or art when the result of merely > mechanical selection because without human intention the entire enterprise > is > dead on arrival. Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > N+7 offers nothing whatever since the idea of parody or spoof is to show, > by > human intention, how badly some other human intention has gone wrong. N+7 > is no more a parody or spoof of anything than mowing the lawn is a parody > or > spoof of grass. > > Mechanical word substitutions do not create parodies -- people of > accomplishment do -- and they must, since the nature of parodies and > spoofs > requires that the writer and reader are familiar with the original, with > the > context in which the original was offered, and the changed context in > which > the parody is offered. N+7 not only is no satire, no parody, and no spoof, > but it > cannot be: to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and then > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered because you'd > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. It is no accomplishment. For > people who want to be thought of as people of accomplishment it's worse > than > that: it's inviting your friends over for dinner and serving them the > excrement > you've fished out of your toilet bowl instead: it's an insult to your > friends, not to > the notion of dinner. > > In short, N+7 is self-evident incompetence. Randomness as the basis for > art is > the first refuge of scoundrels and the last word in confidence tricks. > > Marcus > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 16:47:40 -0500 Reply-To: az421@freenet.carleton.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob McLennan Subject: dg jones Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Canadian poet D.G. (Doug) Jones recently awarded the Order of Canada: http://www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=5252 his bio, list of titles, etc: http://www.poets.ca/Linktext/direct/jones.htm & some recent poems of his, on Australia's Jacket: http://jacketmagazine.com/34/c-jones.shtml alberta rob -- poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 14:57:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: Rumzer/Holfeld & Borges, Bartleby, Bolano, Bernstein, Marinetti & copying and interrogating texts In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit For who would want to read an unreadable text on unreadability? Perhaps the late Samuel Beckett. As usual, cool essay. David Chirot wrote: Thank you Jim, Barry and Stephen for your responses-- perhaps new forms of "travel literature" need to be invented for the voyage to the end of the infinite, into the unknown, which is signalled by the "Projections" and their "oppositions" via doublings and reversals, mirrorings and copyings . . . . "he did not want to compose another *Don Quixote*--which would be easy--but*the Don Quixote. *It is unnecessary to add that his aim was never to produce a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable ambition was to produce pages which would coincide,--word for word and line for line--with those of Miguel de Cervantes." --Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard" 'He was obliged to *express *himself in a a language of *non-expression*, to make himself *understood* by the same means he had and sought and tested in order *not to be understood*. He had to communicate through the language of non-communication. Out of necessity. That is through censorship and self-censorship. As a prisoner. As a spy in enemy territory and under enemy supervision." -Leonarado Sciascia, *The Moro Affair* * *Often what is written is "unreadable" because other aspects of it are more easily "read into," thus producing a text which though unwritten is read in preference to that which is written but "unreadable." Reading and unreadability may indeed co-exist simply as things "in the mind and eye of the beholder." One may read into texts things not there, in the desire of finding them--as the Bush administration's pressured intelligence agencies felt happened to their "findings" and memos- which had, by virtue of said pressures, turned into "evidences" used for War--regardless of their being forgeries or outright raving lies---and at the same time remark on the "unreadability" of what one does not want to read, or does not know how to read. Much that is written is unwritten and much that is read is unread. What is written that is read is often the area in which "unreadability" is discussed, for only in that area of supreme certainty can such judgement be passed. For who would want to read an unreadable text on unreadability? Other than a non-writer of readable works.? Or a non-reader of written works, or even better, a non-writer of non-readable books. The dilemma of "criticism" is trying to chose which "readings" it will "write about" when copying or interrogating a text. After all, the highly trained expert cannot admit to an "unwritability" on his or her own part, whatever merits of readability the text may posses!! The primary concern in writing re the Rumsfeld/Holzer memos collaborative "Projections" is that in all the reading produced by the writings of the pair, the spectator/reader is "written out" and "condemned" as it were to the nether worlds of "unwritability," a relatively "quiet" zone as in a library where the readers are instructed to remain as hushed as possible. The spectator literally carries the "burden" of the projected lines of the for the most part unwritten about poetry of "a Nobel Prize Winner," (cited as though certifying the pedigree of the "show" dog and horse at a dog and pony show), which are "lost in translation" in the transition from "lines" and "letters" to "light" and "shadows" moving disembodiedly about on the "lit" and "shrouded" bodies of the "visitors" to the "morgue" of "dead civilizations" which a Museum was often seen as being by "avant-gardes of the past" that have become the "retro-fashions" of the "near Future" of "next season's shows," and "upcoming revivals." Bartleby, who had once worked in the "Dead Letters Office, " perished in the Egyptian darknesses of The Tombs, having decided he would "prefer not to" be a copier of other's "deadly" memos any more. Perhaps the "Projections" signal the opposite. {re unreadbaility from a different aspect : *UNREADABILITY On the Road from Alexia to Zaum *www.pd.org/topos/perforations/perf26/*chirot*.html } In Borges' story of Pierre Menard, a "minor" French belle-lettriste devotes his life to producing thousands of pages of writing that he destroys, while managing along the way to produce, word for word, some complete chapters of the Quixote of Cervantes. Yet while each word is the same in the two versions, Menard's, Borges' narrator tells us, is infinitely richer. While Cervantes' text, written in the colloquial language of his time, is unremarkable for this very reason, Menard's text, written centuries later by a foreigner to the language and culture, brings a life to Cervantes' text which it never before possessed. The platitudes and cliched phrasings of the "idees recues" of the times which one finds in the Quixote of Cervantes, become, written by Menard during the modern era of William James--(and around the time of Unamuno's Cervantes text)-- words of a challenging depth and insight. The Menard, in short, is in every way the superior work,leaving Cervantes' far behind, in the dustbins of history, relegated to the status of an old paperweight for the more cumbersome heaps of "dead letters" littering the busy desks of the omnivorous reader. In short, by writing word for word the Quixote, Menard has surpassed it, rendering the original superfluous, and created a new text which via its "redoubling of effort" is infinitely richer in meaning, superior in style and pregnant with provocative and philosophical thoughts. By reversing and doubling Rummie's memos, has not Holzer become the Menard to his Cervantes? Are we not now witnessing an infinitely richer, stylistically superior and much more philosophically provocative work in Holzer's "Projections" of the mere "common, everday, colloquial" words and marks of the discredited former Secretary? And is not this massive copying and projecting, this huge display of a "redoubling of effort" quite the opposite of Bartelby's obscure and shadowy "I prefer not to", which fades away into nothingness in The Tombs, the mirroring doubled reversal of the Museum? The Prison as mirror to the Museum---- The "Egyptian" Tombs with their living dead and the Modern Museums with their "living dead"--the Still Living Great Artists now hobnobbing quite fashionably and familiarly with the Great Deads of the Past, all under the sign of the Timelessness of Great and Eternal Art. As Henri Rousseau remarked with great feeling to Picasso: "We are the great painters of our Epoch. You in the Egyptian style, and I in the Modern." For Bartleby, as for Melville, death came to an almost entirely forgotten being. Only in the Eternal Timelessness of Art do we find them "emblematic" and "significant" and "connect with them." Paul Metcalf in a letter noted that the "South Sea Island Romances" of his great-grandfather were being taught at a college in Missouri alongside the "Hawiian Films of Elvis Presley" as examples images of the Pacific in American culture. Rather than censorship, the nature of Interrogation and the Interrogation of the Text, is to FORCE THE PRISONER/TEXT TO SPEAK. It does not matter if what the prisoner/text says is a reversed doubling of "giving them what they want to hear" or perhaps a "hitherto concealed secret," for these are the same thing. What matters is that silence has been unsilenced, broken, literally and figuratively, and there is THE PRODUCTION OF LANGUAGE, OF TEXT, which is now in the Interrogator's possession. Copying the text, "interrogating the text," what is the goal if not the production of a replacement text, to replace silence, to replace "the original?" And, in full possession of the"infinitely richer," stylistically superior and philosophically more provocative "copy" or "confession," is it not more than high time to broadcast this to the world via "Projections," in a spectacle of a "Triumph of the Will?" The corollary to the "Projections'" enthusiastically embraced exhibition is the the discomfort with which the Guantanamo Poems The Detainees Speak volume was received. A book that most do not want to and will not read, and claim that by not reading it, they are "not missing anything" because they have read or heard it is "bad poetry" and as well, a "production of the Pentagon," if not of Satan and "Islamo-Fascism." On the one hand, the copying of the words of the discredited Secretary of Defense and their "Projections" are considered "Great Art," while the words of detainees FORCED TO SPEAK, then only allowed to be translated by non-literary translators under strict supervision are of course exactly what the Pentagon and the Poetry World want them to be--"bad poetry" by "bad people" with whom there is a "clash of cultures" in which "they" don't Support or Believe in the same wonders "we" do--i.e. the originals and the copies of Rumsfield/Holzer's memos, the beauties and phliosophical inquiries of "Projections" of the Language of the State as the State of the Language, poetic and otherwise. The writings produced by torture and interrogation which Rummie enthusiastically encouraged, and their interrogations as texts before, during and after their production, translation and publication, has subjected the Guantanamo poets and their texts to the full battery of the Projections of Shock and Awe. The electricity triumphantly illuminating the Rummie/Holzer collaborations viewed in the Museum setting of the Timelessness of Great Art, is the same electricity used to torture the detainees and essay the production of texts, any old texts, from their lips, let alone the damaged minds and hands of persons repeatedly subjected to the jolts of "Old Sparky's" cousins and the joys of Water Boarding which the new Attorney General at his confirmation hearings may have confused with a form of surfing on the beaches of Guantanamo Bay. The Museum texts bathed in light--and cells in which the lights never go off. Or, when off, may be off for months at a time. While the eyesight of the detainees is damaged, ad the text they hold Sacred is routinely abused in front of them, Museum goers find themselves in "awe" of the artistic handling of The secretary's texts, subtly modulated, enriched, nuanced, deep with cultural resonances echoing in the vast halls as they are projected for an enthusiastic and respectful hushed paying audience. The complex and ambiguous play of "oppositions" among the doublings, mirrorings and reversals creates a pleasantly narcotic euphoria, a sort of "higher consciousness" via a language of "unforgetfulness" which is "safe and secure from all alarm" and at the same time poised at the ready for the sounds of alarm. For who knows when the next Attack on Homeland Security may occur and the Museum itself be targeted? In which case, the "Projections" turn readily into into Super High Beam Search Lights fingering the sky as hitherto concealed anti-aircraft guns appear with astounding speed from behind the Paintings of the Memos. On the one hand, everything possible is done to "torture" the poetry out of poetry, to create a non-poetry for non-readers. On the other hand, a poetry of reversed and doubled projections of the memos of Power, accepted as a New Art that is "infinitely richer" and "more powerful more eloquent" than any words of any "enemy combatant" could never be. On the one hand the "barbaric writing" of the detainees, non-writing for non-readers,(which is to be "the end of literature") in the same formulation that "barbaric writing" is described in an essay written under a pseudonym by the Chilean Air Force Lieutenant torturer, serial killer and "poet" Carlos Wieder in Roberto Bolano's *Distant Star*--and on the other, the "civilized" Museum of "Projections" accorded the full opprobrium of the culture's elites combining as they do the elite of the Government and that of the Art World. The larger the "Projections" "broadcast" their messages, the more they project unreadability on to the bodies and eyes of the spectators. The flowing letters of light of the poetry of Szymborska vanish into the "stability" of the enlarged lettering of the memos. And what are memos for but to ensure and reinforce "unforgetfullness"? That is, the "unforgettably" of the "twice amplified" memos and the "forgetability" of the "unreadable" poetry. As Jack Spicer said, looking out over the Pacific Ocean: "No one listens to poetry." And many years later in the film "Atlantic City," Burt Lancaster gazed out in the opposite direction and murmured, "Not even the Atlantic Ocean is what it used to be." Meanwhile, discredited as military man, a "failure" in the eyes of a mocking world, --and what easier time to kick a man in a Museum than when he is down--"Rummie" has none the less heard the Call of Vocation and resettled at Stanford, there to go into Post Doctoral Poetics Studies with Dr Perloff. By using the methods of one her favorite "radical Artificers," Charles Bernstein, Dr Perloff and Rumzer (as he is now known, in defference to Holfeld) are hoping to capitalize on the recognitions accorded his memos and find ways to turn his military "misfortune" into the Future of Poetry, a "Restoration of Futurism" via the hindsight of the 21st Century. For in the foresight born of hindsight lies the restoration of the future as a superior copy of the past. As Dr Perloff outlines briefly in a memo subtly echoing those of the Secretary, the method Bernstein takes in hand is the old "bait and switch," in which cliches and "official verse"are reversed, "doubling their pleasure, doubling their fun" by this clever method of "turning them inside out." The redoubling of cliches and platitudes, their mirrorings and reversals, allows Bernstein to produce the same "truisms" as now infinitely richer and wittier poetic and philosophical paradigms, which if "reverse engineered" also allow one to produce from the same "anti-capitalist" reversed words the stunning High Capitalist High Art moment of advertising for the Yellow Pages of Businesses during the Corporate Non Plus Ultra Half Time of the Super Bowl. This ultimate in Big Screen Big Audience "Projection," Rumzer is beginning to see, is what makes the possibilities of this method so "infinitely richer," stylistically superior and fraught with philosophical significance. In a moment of breathless anticipation too great to stifle,Dr Perloff has even let Rumzer know that no matter who if anyone is "elected," or,even if there is an "election," the Inaugural Poem will be from now on the sole provenance of Dr Bernstein, the Old Master of turning doggerel into an Inaugural and vice versa. "I'm beginning to catch your drift--" Rumzer writes back, deliberately re-using the same but now "infinitely richer" Rumzer colloquialisms as before, just as he re-uses with stylistic superiority the same set of memo papers he once did in the Office, (now sold, even blank, as Collector's Items on EBay) having left Office with hundreds of boxes of them. "See you tonight at eight. Or make that ate," he adds with a "poetic" flourish, ravenous already for his "dinner date." Clinking their cut glass crystal chalices of wine, ever mindful of the starched white expanses of table linen, the "couple at the corner table" reserved for those deserving of privacy for their intimate tete-a-tetes, gaze assertively and affirmingly into each other's eyes, their free hands poised in intimate proximity with pencils at the ready beside the finest specimens of handmade paper. In the enveloping warmth of the vast dining room, basking in the fragrance of the very best fresh cut flowers, Dr and Secretary set to work with pencils, knives and forks at the task of creating the New Extreme Experimental American Poetry. O Museum Muse, by whom MEMO is reversed as "O mem(e)!" O reversed mirrored double image"Projected" onto the bodies of spectators so that Rummie becomes an "artist known as Rumzer" reversed into a "Secretary of Defense" known as Holfeld projected on to the "screens" of their eyes. Eyes which now "see" Rumzer's words as "art" and Holfeld's as a "new American military," "mobilized" and "light"--easily able to be "launched" from any of close to 700 "military bases" worldwide--now reversed into "museums"--in the reversal of Marinetti's "war the world's hygiene," which does away with Museums--now the Museum is the projector of a "hygienic war" which "cleanses" "enemy combatants" and makes them into "spectators of art"-- in fact, one might envision the good Dr. suggesting to the former Secretary that a study of Marinetti's Futurist "Parole in Liberta" (precursor of Il Maestro Fondatore's Parole in Liberace, in turn Il Fondatore's contribution to "The Grand Piano" and included in its archives) , with its battlefield sounds and arrows pointing directions of attacks, placements of artillery, "bombs bursting in air," might be of some real use and interest in the Secretary's development of the "sketches" of the memos into a more sustained "elaboration" --"con vivo" --of his already extensive and barely tapped "command" of military nomenclature and rhythms. And so, this surprising and intriguing "Dynamic Duo," working long hours after hours at an "undisclosed location," proceed with the production of a "Tour de Force," powerful generator of a "Coup d'Etat," a "Regime Change" within the hierarchies of American Poetics and the MLA ushering in the era of the New Extreme Experimental American poetry. And as Secretary of The Projections of a New American Military, Ms. Holfeld and Dr Bernstein assume their rightful places in the Coup d"Etat of a New Regime of the American Extreme Experimental Democratic Republic . "this is my last communique from the planet of the monsters. Never again will I immerse myself in literature's bottomless cesspools. I will go back to writing my poems, such as they are, find a job to keep body and soul together, and make no attempt to be published." --Roberto Bolano, Distant Star t --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 18:07:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <4780AE5D.31737.197AED4@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and then > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered because you'd > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. That's the point! "The pumice of morons" means nothing in particular -- and neither does "the pulse of morning." "Created only a little lower than the angiosperm" is random, but in its randomness, actually more provocative than the original trite glurge, "than the angels." Angelou is the one who essentially crapped on a plate and handed it to the whole country. What we ought to be offended by is the notion that her boring-ass poem (which I would think would have pissed you off the more by being itself so utterly devoid of craft and relying instead on a long list of People We Ought to Include) was worth something in the first place. Coolidge and Fagin (as was pointed out, the little saddle-stapled booklet, down to the typefaces and such, looked almost identical to that in which the Angelou poem was published) merely held up the mirror to the great icon standing there with her platter of crap. Gwyn, who has the name thing straight now, McVay ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 16:17:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: Re: AWP 2008 In-Reply-To: <477ECB8A0200001E00003709@risd.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline 1) it says on the site that you can still buy your way in on site; in years past, it has been ridiculously easy for the public (my mom! and dad!) to sneak in 2) thanks; I'm on two panels, poetry and visual art, with some poetics listmembers, and marianne moore 3) I spend most of my time (and money) in the book fair, which is really wonderful -- if I want to hear a paper or attend a reading, I don't need to go to AWP, I can scratch that itch at smaller conferences -- ten minute talks and five minute readings are rarely as interesting to me as really getting to have a conversation with someone I've read but never met -- -- All best, Catherine Daly c.a.b.daly@gmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 19:51:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <4780AE5D.31737.197AED4@marcus.designerglass.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) so Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, the Oulipo people, the surrealists, Dada, i.e. the core of 20th century experimental poets are all scoundrels & con men? Come on, Marcus, you seem to have missed a whole century in poetry, Pierre On Jan 6, 2008, at 10:33 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > N+7 poems are stupid, one and all. There is no cleverness, no craft, > no wit, no > art, in any of them. Art is not, and cannot be, random, because an > endeavor > based on randomness is mere time-wasting: the results cannot be > significant > or important. In particular, N+7 cannot "spoof" anything because the > very > notion of a parody or spoof is to be an intentionally significant > (and maybe an > important) act. No N+7 substitution can be either significant or > important > because art is a matter of human intentions, not a matter of the mere > propinquity of words in a particular edition of a particular > dictionary. Removing > human intention from the endeavor removes the possibility of art. > > What's clever or witty about a mechanical change of "pulse of > morning" to > "pumice of morons"? Nothing, unless you thought it up yourself. As > an act of > human creativity to go on from you'd have something to go forward > with. But > of course the N+7 method offers nothing even faintly resembling a > way to go > forward with, and even less of human creativity. > > And what is clever or even interesting about mechanically > substituting "a little > lower than the angiosperm" for "a little lower than the angels"? > Again, if you'd > thought it up, it might be an interesting place to go forward from, > but it is not > gone forward from. Worse, it has no meaningful connection to the > "pumice of > morons". Neither phrase has the least wit or art when the result of > merely > mechanical selection because without human intention the entire > enterprise is > dead on arrival. Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > N+7 offers nothing whatever since the idea of parody or spoof is to > show, by > human intention, how badly some other human intention has gone > wrong. N+7 > is no more a parody or spoof of anything than mowing the lawn is a > parody or > spoof of grass. > > Mechanical word substitutions do not create parodies -- people of > accomplishment do -- and they must, since the nature of parodies and > spoofs > requires that the writer and reader are familiar with the original, > with the > context in which the original was offered, and the changed context > in which > the parody is offered. N+7 not only is no satire, no parody, and no > spoof, but it > cannot be: to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and then > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered because > you'd > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. It is no accomplishment. > For > people who want to be thought of as people of accomplishment it's > worse than > that: it's inviting your friends over for dinner and serving them > the excrement > you've fished out of your toilet bowl instead: it's an insult to > your friends, not to > the notion of dinner. > > In short, N+7 is self-evident incompetence. Randomness as the basis > for art is > the first refuge of scoundrels and the last word in confidence tricks. > > Marcus ___________________________________________________________ The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan ___________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris 244 Elm Street Albany NY 12202 h: 518 426 0433 c: 518 225 7123 o: 518 442 40 71 Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 email: joris@albany.edu http://pierrejoris.com Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 15:12:39 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alison Croggon Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <9778b8630801061341h2e2cc97dt24a402f9bca5413d@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline > Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. But what if people are algorithms? I've sometimes wondered. -- Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 19:19:52 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Webster Schultz Subject: n+7 poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Marcus and others: I found (by accident) that n+7 poems are a wonderful teaching method. I had a group of students doing substitutions one day years ago, when one of them said it was difficult because they'd been punished in school by being forced to look up words in the dictionary. This exercise cured them. "Look at THIS word!" they kept saying to each other. Happens every time. Great method. aloha, Susan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 14:00:12 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Switaj Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On Jan 7, 2008 12:12 PM, Alison Croggon wrote: > > Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > But what if people are algorithms? I've sometimes wondered. If we are algorithms, they're algorithms that will always be too difficult for mere algorithms like us to figure out. Elizabeth Kate Switaj www.elizabethkateswitaj.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 01:09:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Alison, Rodney Koeneke seems to be on the same page: http://modampo.blogspot.com/2007/12/what-if.html -Ryan On Jan 6, 2008 11:12 PM, Alison Croggon wrote: > > Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > But what if people are algorithms? I've sometimes wondered. > > > -- > Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au > Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com > Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 15:58:18 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Glass Subject: A Delicious New E-Chap From Ahadada Books: T.A. Noonan's Darjeeling--And it's Free! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Go to www.ahadadabooks.com and sip away! (Click Downloads and see what else we have on our e-books shelf.) Jess ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 02:24:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit pierre fill me in on oulipo second time it's passed my way thisd month On Sun, 6 Jan 2008 19:51:55 -0500 Pierre Joris writes: > so Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, the Oulipo people, the surrealists, > Dada, i.e. the core of 20th century experimental poets are all > scoundrels & con men? Come on, Marcus, you seem to have missed a > whole > century in poetry, > > Pierre > > On Jan 6, 2008, at 10:33 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > N+7 poems are stupid, one and all. There is no cleverness, no > craft, > > no wit, no > > art, in any of them. Art is not, and cannot be, random, because an > > > endeavor > > based on randomness is mere time-wasting: the results cannot be > > significant > > or important. In particular, N+7 cannot "spoof" anything because > the > > very > > notion of a parody or spoof is to be an intentionally significant > > > (and maybe an > > important) act. No N+7 substitution can be either significant or > > > important > > because art is a matter of human intentions, not a matter of the > mere > > propinquity of words in a particular edition of a particular > > dictionary. Removing > > human intention from the endeavor removes the possibility of art. > > > > What's clever or witty about a mechanical change of "pulse of > > morning" to > > "pumice of morons"? Nothing, unless you thought it up yourself. As > > > an act of > > human creativity to go on from you'd have something to go forward > > > with. But > > of course the N+7 method offers nothing even faintly resembling a > > > way to go > > forward with, and even less of human creativity. > > > > And what is clever or even interesting about mechanically > > substituting "a little > > lower than the angiosperm" for "a little lower than the angels"? > > > Again, if you'd > > thought it up, it might be an interesting place to go forward > from, > > but it is not > > gone forward from. Worse, it has no meaningful connection to the > > > "pumice of > > morons". Neither phrase has the least wit or art when the result of > > > merely > > mechanical selection because without human intention the entire > > enterprise is > > dead on arrival. Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > > > N+7 offers nothing whatever since the idea of parody or spoof is > to > > show, by > > human intention, how badly some other human intention has gone > > wrong. N+7 > > is no more a parody or spoof of anything than mowing the lawn is a > > > parody or > > spoof of grass. > > > > Mechanical word substitutions do not create parodies -- people of > > accomplishment do -- and they must, since the nature of parodies > and > > spoofs > > requires that the writer and reader are familiar with the > original, > > with the > > context in which the original was offered, and the changed context > > > in which > > the parody is offered. N+7 not only is no satire, no parody, and > no > > spoof, but it > > cannot be: to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and > then > > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered > because > > you'd > > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by > > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. It is no > accomplishment. > > For > > people who want to be thought of as people of accomplishment it's > > > worse than > > that: it's inviting your friends over for dinner and serving them > > > the excrement > > you've fished out of your toilet bowl instead: it's an insult to > > > your friends, not to > > the notion of dinner. > > > > In short, N+7 is self-evident incompetence. Randomness as the > basis > > for art is > > the first refuge of scoundrels and the last word in confidence > tricks. > > > > Marcus > > ___________________________________________________________ > > The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan > ___________________________________________________________ > Pierre Joris > 244 Elm Street > Albany NY 12202 > h: 518 426 0433 > c: 518 225 7123 > o: 518 442 40 71 > Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 > email: joris@albany.edu > http://pierrejoris.com > Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com > ____________________________________________________________ > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 07:20:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Dr. Barry S. Alpert" Subject: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Just encountered this germane formulation, but am skeptical whether it hold= s up to rigorous analysis. =20 =20 =20 At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton skewered O= bama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as his vote in favor= of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she described as "Dick Chene= y's energy bill." She never mentioned Obama's name but left no doubt about = whom she was discussing."You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clin= ton said. =20 =20 Barry Alpert _________________________________________________________________ Watch =93Cause Effect,=94 a show about real people making a real difference= . http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=3Dtext_watchcause= ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 04:56:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit i don't share marcus's perspective on the random and algorithms in writing and art, but he raises some interesting issues. i sent his post to someone i know who is considering doing a doctoral thesis on randomness in art. i can remember having a perspective very similar to marcus's concerning randomness and algorithms. i wonder if anyone knows of any insightful books that addresses the sorts of issues marcus raises? i thought about responding to marcus's post but it seems like a lot of work to do it well. it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the random in art that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it offers perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods. it gives one a different perspective on one's own work, for instance. so that we can begin to be a bit more objective about our own writing, see it from other points of view where our intentions are less precious and the words we've written and their dynamics perhaps more or differently evident. it can also open up the notion of voice, for instance, into undiscovered areas. and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious part of the universe into the writing process. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 08:50:12 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Trigilio Organization: http://www.starve.org Subject: Spring '08, Columbia College Chicago: Pafunda, Greenstreet, Nezhukumatathil, Robins, Zucker, Notley, and more MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Spring 2008 Poetry Readings at Columbia College Chicago All readings free and open to the public For more information: 312-344-8819 ***************************************** DANIELLE PAFUNDA Wednesday, February 6, 2008, 5:30 p.m. Lecture: "Stunt Doubles, Companion Species, and the Lyric" Music Center Concert Hall 1014 South Michigan Avenue RELEASE PARTY AND POETRY READING: COURT GREEN #5 (Sylvia Plath Dossier) Monday, February 11, 2008, 5:30 p.m. Film Row Cinema 1014 South Wabash Avenue, 8th floor KATE GREENSTREET, AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL, & MICHAEL ROBINS POETRY READING Wednesday, March 5, 2008, 5:30 p.m. Music Center Concert Hall 1014 South Michigan Avenue NINTH ANNUAL CITYWIDE UNDERGRADUATE POETRY FESTIVAL Thursday, April 3, 2008, 5:30 p.m. Music Center Concert Hall 1014 South Michigan Avenue ALICE NOTLEY & RACHEL ZUCKER ELMA STUCKEY MEMORIAL POETRY READING Wednesday, April 9, 2008, 5:30 p.m. Music Center Concert Hall 1104 South Michigan Avenue RELEASE PARTY & POETRY READING: COLUMBIA POETRY REVIEW #21 Thursday, May 1, 2008, 5:30 p.m. Sherwood Conservatory Recital Hall 1312 South Michigan Avenue ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:58:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On 6 Jan 2008 at 19:51, Pierre Joris wrote: > so Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, the Oulipo people, the surrealists, > Dada, i.e. the core of 20th century experimental poets are all > scoundrels & con men? Come on, Marcus, you seem to have missed a > whole century in poetry, > Pierre so Jacquard Mace Lower, Joint Cain, the Ouster pepsin, the surtaxes, daguerrotype, i.e. the corked of twiddle cereal expletive pois are all scowls and concave menarches? Come on, Margrave, you seem to have missed a whole cereal in poi. Here is an N+7 substitution for your original, and thus I refute your assertion that any N+7 substitution is great art that reveals the essential nonsense of the original. Say, no wonder you postmodernists like this kind of thing -- it's so easy! No thinking, no art, no work involved. Just look things up in the dictionary! Real class, that. What are you going to do, Pierre, write 4'34"? Maybe 4'35" as a topper? Yes, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, the Oulipo people, the surrealists, Dada, the whole core of 20th century experimental poets are all scoundrels and con men. They are laughing up their sleeves at the extraordinary ease that your bourgeois M. Joudainist gullibility fell for their Tartuffian schemes: why, you've been speaking Poetry all this time! Marcus > > On Jan 6, 2008, at 10:33 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > N+7 poems are stupid, one and all. There is no cleverness, no > craft, > > no wit, no > > art, in any of them. Art is not, and cannot be, random, because an > > endeavor > > based on randomness is mere time-wasting: the results cannot be > > significant > > or important. In particular, N+7 cannot "spoof" anything because > the > > very > > notion of a parody or spoof is to be an intentionally significant > > (and maybe an > > important) act. No N+7 substitution can be either significant or > > important > > because art is a matter of human intentions, not a matter of the > mere > > propinquity of words in a particular edition of a particular > > dictionary. Removing > > human intention from the endeavor removes the possibility of > art. > > > > What's clever or witty about a mechanical change of "pulse of > > morning" to > > "pumice of morons"? Nothing, unless you thought it up yourself. As > > an act of > > human creativity to go on from you'd have something to go forward > > with. But > > of course the N+7 method offers nothing even faintly resembling a > > way to go > > forward with, and even less of human creativity. > > > > And what is clever or even interesting about mechanically > > substituting "a little > > lower than the angiosperm" for "a little lower than the angels"? > > Again, if you'd > > thought it up, it might be an interesting place to go forward > from, > > but it is not > > gone forward from. Worse, it has no meaningful connection to the > > "pumice of > > morons". Neither phrase has the least wit or art when the result > of > > merely > > mechanical selection because without human intention the entire > > enterprise is > > dead on arrival. Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > > > N+7 offers nothing whatever since the idea of parody or spoof is > to > > show, by > > human intention, how badly some other human intention has gone > > wrong. N+7 > > is no more a parody or spoof of anything than mowing the lawn is a > > parody or > > spoof of grass. > > > > Mechanical word substitutions do not create parodies -- people > of > > accomplishment do -- and they must, since the nature of parodies > and > > spoofs > > requires that the writer and reader are familiar with the > original, > > with the > > context in which the original was offered, and the changed context > > in which > > the parody is offered. N+7 not only is no satire, no parody, and > no > > spoof, but it > > cannot be: to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and > then > > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered > because > > you'd > > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by > > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. It is no > accomplishment. > > For > > people who want to be thought of as people of accomplishment it's > > worse than > > that: it's inviting your friends over for dinner and serving them > > the excrement > > you've fished out of your toilet bowl instead: it's an insult to > > your friends, not to > > the notion of dinner. > > > > In short, N+7 is self-evident incompetence. Randomness as the > basis > > for art is > > the first refuge of scoundrels and the last word in confidence > tricks. > > > > Marcus > > ___________________________________________________________ > > The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan > ___________________________________________________________ > Pierre Joris > 244 Elm Street > Albany NY 12202 > h: 518 426 0433 > c: 518 225 7123 > o: 518 442 40 71 > Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 > email: joris@albany.edu > http://pierrejoris.com > Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com > ____________________________________________________________ > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: > 1/7/2008 9:14 AM > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:58:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <50491.71.173.183.153.1199660826.squirrel@webmail.patriot.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Marcus Bales wrote: > > to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and then > > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered > > because you'd get the same proportion of the same sorts of > > ridiculousnesses by mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. On 6 Jan 2008 at 18:07, Gwyn McVay wrote: > That's the point! "The pumice of morons" means nothing in particular > -- and neither does "the pulse of morning." "Created only a little lower > than the angiosperm" is random, but in its randomness, actually more > provocative than the original trite glurge, "than the angels." You're saying the point is that since you can get equal ridiculousness by N+7 substitutions for ANY poem, that therefore by using N+7 substitutions to mock Angelou's poem means you have done something significant or important or even interesting? That's like claiming that your bowel movement was signifricant or important or interesting on the grounds that since everyone has bowel movements yours are particularly interesting. It's not only nonsense, it's nonsense on stilts. The only way "pumice of morons" or "lower than the angiosperm" would be interesting, significant, or important would be if someone thought them up as ways to mock Angelou's poem -- but no one thought them up. They are the result of an N+7 mechanical process and are, therefore, even more meaninglessly trite (however trite you may think it) because at least Angelou was writing her own stuff. It took two postmodernists to look words up in the dictionary (it took two! postmodernists must be in even sadder shape than I thought) were merely looking words up in the dictionary and substituting them in someone else's original work. There's nothing significant, important, or even interesting in that -- anyone, well, okay, if it's postmodernists, any two can do it. Anything that anyone, or even any two (allowing postmodernists their handicap), can do can't be, by definition, significant or important. The claim that looking words up in the dictionary is a significant artistic act is paradigmatic of the aesthetic bankruptcy of the postmodern worldview. The sadder thing is that that may be the very best that postmodernists can do. > Angelou is the one who essentially crapped on a plate and handed it > to the whole country. What we ought to be offended by is the notion that > her boring-ass poem (which I would think would have pissed you off the > more by being itself so utterly devoid of craft and relying instead on a > long list of People We Ought to Include) was worth something in the first > place.< So, an interesting, significant, or important critique of crap is to provide more and bigger crap? By that standard, which seems to be the standard of postmodernists everywhere, it's a race to the bottom of the art endeavor: who can do the most bad work the worst? It's not merely wrong-headed, it's pathetic. Sturgeon's Law applies to poetry as well as to everything else -- 90% of everything, even poetry, is crap. But one does not better distinguish the crap from the valuable by producing more and worse crap as fast as one can. It's the fundamental fallacy of the entire postmodern world view that by practicing to do more worse crap faster that one will thereby produce something valuable. Postmodernism is among the 90% of the crappy world views. Get over it. Look for something better. Marcus On 6 Jan 2008 at 18:07, Gwyn McVay wrote: > > to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and then > > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered > because you'd > > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by > > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. > > That's the point! "The pumice of morons" means nothing in particular > -- > and neither does "the pulse of morning." "Created only a little > lower than > the angiosperm" is random, but in its randomness, actually more > provocative than the original trite glurge, "than the angels." > > Angelou is the one who essentially crapped on a plate and handed it > to the > whole country. What we ought to be offended by is the notion that > her > boring-ass poem (which I would think would have pissed you off the > more by > being itself so utterly devoid of craft and relying instead on a > long list > of People We Ought to Include) was worth something in the first > place. > Coolidge and Fagin (as was pointed out, the little saddle-stapled > booklet, > down to the typefaces and such, looked almost identical to that in > which > the Angelou poem was published) merely held up the mirror to the > great > icon standing there with her platter of crap. > > Gwyn, who has the name thing straight now, McVay > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: > 1/7/2008 9:14 AM > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 09:09:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Borges and the Foreseeable Future -{Jorge Luis as Internet Prophet} New York Times MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline The visions of a blind writer "materialize" in virtuality!!!! "a great story"!! Rereading Borges the last months, his works strike me as "ever more significant"-- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/06cohenintro.html?em&ex=1199854800&en=917df56734c4747e&ei=5087%0A--- spent ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:57:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Kelleher Subject: Literary Buffalo Newsletter 1.07.08-1.13.08 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 LITERARY BUFFALO 01.07.08-01.13.08 ___________________________________________________________________________ BABEL WE ARE NOW OFFERING A 2-EVENT SPRING SUBSCRIPTION FOR =2440. Tickets for individual Babel events are also on sale. Call 832-5400 or visi= t http://www.justbuffalo.org/babel. March 13 Derek Walcott, St. Lucia, Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize =2425 April 24 Kiran Desai, India, Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize =2425 BABEL EXTRA A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman Documentary Film Screening Saturday, January 19, 8 p.m. =247, =245 stu./sen., =244 mem. Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware =40 Tupper ___________________________________________________________________________ OPEN READINGS As of January, Just Buffalo's Open Reading series is no longer active. Lee= Farallo has told us that he needs a change. We are grateful for all the ye= ars he has put in and wish him luck as he moves on. At present, there is n= o one to take over for Lee, so we are suspending the third Sunday readings = at Rust Belt Books and the second Wednesday readings at the Carnegie Art Ce= nter indefinitely. If these events become active again, we will let you kn= ow. Meantime, we are still sponsoring two open mic readings a month - one a= t Center for Inquiry on the first Wednesday, and one at Tru-teas on the fir= st Sunday of each month. ___________________________________________________________________________ EVENTS 01.09.07 Earth's Daughter's Gray Hair Reading Series David Landrey and David Lampe_ Poetry Reading_ Wednesday, January 9, 7:30 p.m._ Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware =40 Tupper 01.13.08 Spoken Word Sundays N'Tare Ali Gault and James Cooper Sunday, January 13, 8 p.m. Allen Street Hardware, 245 Allen St. Slots for open readers available ___________________________________________________________________________ WESTERN NEW YORK BOOK ARTS WORKSHOPS The Western NY Book Arts Collaborative presents its Winter 2008 book arts S= aturday workshop series in the Buffalo NY area. We have spaces available st= ill for all workshops, however space is limited, so please sign up soon if = you are interested. All workshops are intro level and open to members and n= on-members. The workshops begin this Saturday. For more details, registration information & additional events: http://www.wnybookarts.org/events.php ___________________________________________________________________________ JUST BUFFALO MEMBERS ONLY WRITER CRITIQUE GROUP Members of Just Buffalo are welcome to attend a free, bi-monthly writer cri= tique group in CEPA's Flux Gallery on the first floor of the historic Marke= t Arcade Building across the street from Shea's. Group meets 1st and 3rd We= dnesday at 7 p.m. Call Just Buffalo for details. ___________________________________________________________________________ WESTERN NEW YORK ROMANCE WRITERS group meets the third Wednesday of every m= onth at St. Joseph Hospital community room at 11a.m. Address: 2605 Harlem R= oad, Cheektowaga, NY 14225. For details go to www.wnyrw.org. ___________________________________________________________________________ JOIN JUST BUFFALO ONLINE=21=21=21 If you would like to join Just Buffalo, or simply make a massive personal d= onation, you can do so online using your credit card. We have recently add= ed the ability to join online by paying with a credit card through PayPal. = Simply click on the membership level at which you would like to join, log = in (or create a PayPal account using your Visa/Amex/Mastercard/Discover), a= nd voil=E1, you will find yourself in literary heaven. For more info, or t= o join now, go to our website: http://www.justbuffalo.org/membership/index.shtml ___________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE If you would like to unsubscribe from this list, just say so and you will b= e immediately removed. _______________________________ Michael Kelleher Artistic Director Just Buffalo Literary Center Market Arcade 617 Main St., Ste. 202A Buffalo, NY 14203 716.832.5400 716.270.0184 (fax) www.justbuffalo.org mjk=40justbuffalo.org ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 10:15:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas savage Subject: Re: Borges and the Foreseeable Future -{Jorge Luis as Internet Prophet} New York Times In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I'm so glad you posted this on the listserv. I saw it in the Times yesterday and was hoping someone would. Thanks again. It's the best thing I've read in The Times in a very long time. Regards, Tom Savage David Chirot wrote: The visions of a blind writer "materialize" in virtuality!!!! "a great story"!! Rereading Borges the last months, his works strike me as "ever more significant"-- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/06cohenintro.html?em&ex=1199854800&en=917df56734c4747e&ei=5087%0A--- spent --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 13:16:59 -0500 Reply-To: Robin Hamilton Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robin Hamilton Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <47821403.3263.70CBFD3@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > On 6 Jan 2008 at 19:51, Pierre Joris wrote: >> so Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, the Oulipo people, the surrealists, >> Dada, i.e. the core of 20th century experimental poets are all >> scoundrels & con men? Come on, Marcus, you seem to have missed a >> whole century in poetry, >> Pierre > > so Jacquard Mace Lower, Joint Cain, the Ouster pepsin, the surtaxes, > daguerrotype, i.e. the corked of twiddle cereal expletive pois are all > scowls > and concave menarches? Come on, Margrave, you seem to have missed a > whole cereal in poi. Right on, Marcus -- this is brill! I specially like "the corked of twiddle cereal expletive pois," where the first phrase seems to have an intertextual resonance with Jack Sheppard indulging in a jorrum of diddle in Newgate, the evening before he was sent to morris at the nubbing cheat before the hundreds of Drury, a.k.a. the hoy polloy, who no doubt had their expletives deleted for the occasion. Robin ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:03:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amy king Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems -- Marcus' Premise and the Poetics List In-Reply-To: <47821403.945.70CBF51@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Marcus, You determined that because "pumice of morons" was arrived at through chance methods, rather than someone "thinking them up" like Angelou (as you state below), the results are not significant. This type of elementary attack against exploratory poetics recurs on occasion here, but your gross characterizations and belligerent accusations of "crap" ultimately mire any merit your posts might have in useless defensiveness and your anger, rather than furthering constructive discussion. The purpose of the list is not to repeatedly defend why innovative techniques exist as there are other forums for those general discussions. Please note: "The Poetics List is not a forum for a general discussion of poetry or for the exchange of poems. Our aim is to support, inform, and extend those directions in poetry that are committed to innovations, renovations, and investigations of form and/or/as content, to the questioning of received forms and styles, and to the creation of the otherwise unimagined, untried, unexpected, improbable, and impossible. While we recognize that other lists may sponsor other possibilities for exchange, we request that those participating in this forum keep in mind the specialized and focused nature of this project and respect our decision to operate a moderated list. The Poetics List exists to support and encourage divergent points of view on innovative forms of modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, and we are committed to do what is necessary to preserve this space for such dialog." --from Poetics List Welcome Message http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/welcome.html Marcus Bales wrote: The only way "pumice of morons" or "lower than the angiosperm" would be interesting, significant, or important would be if someone thought them up as ways to mock Angelou's poem -- but no one thought them up. They are the result of an N+7 mechanical process and are, therefore, even more meaninglessly trite (however trite you may think it) because at least Angelou was writing her own stuff. --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 14:26:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Alicia Kozameh MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline If anyone here has Alicia Kozameh's contact info, please backchannel. Thanks. -Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:10:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Thanks for passing this on Barry. I may have to write about it more. Did Hilary mean the "you" as a negative thing, something she =20 disagrees with (that the 'inexperienced' Obama does, for instance), =20 or did she mean it as a self-characterization? As something "one" does? Chris On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Dr. Barry S. Alpert wrote: > Just encountered this germane formulation, but am skeptical whether =20= > it holds up to rigorous analysis. > > > At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton =20 > skewered Obama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as =20= > his vote in favor of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she =20= > described as "Dick Cheney's energy bill." She never mentioned =20 > Obama's name but left no doubt about whom she was discussing."You =20 > campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clinton said. > > > Barry Alpert > _________________________________________________________________ > Watch =93Cause Effect,=94 a show about real people making a real =20 > difference. > http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=3Dtext_watchcause ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:48:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I don't see why being attentive to randomness should be regarded as a disregard of craft. One chooses, assembles, & no matter how seemingly random, things take on some sort of shape. DA DA started to hint strongly towards the often violent dis locations that would shape modernity. so why not involve our friend the machine? Jim Andrews wrote: i don't share marcus's perspective on the random and algorithms in writing and art, but he raises some interesting issues. i sent his post to someone i know who is considering doing a doctoral thesis on randomness in art. i can remember having a perspective very similar to marcus's concerning randomness and algorithms. i wonder if anyone knows of any insightful books that addresses the sorts of issues marcus raises? i thought about responding to marcus's post but it seems like a lot of work to do it well. it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the random in art that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it offers perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods. it gives one a different perspective on one's own work, for instance. so that we can begin to be a bit more objective about our own writing, see it from other points of view where our intentions are less precious and the words we've written and their dynamics perhaps more or differently evident. it can also open up the notion of voice, for instance, into undiscovered areas. and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious part of the universe into the writing process. ja http://vispo.com --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 14:37:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems Comments: cc: Daniel Zimmerman MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1; reply-type=original Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Marcus, While I agree with you that N+7 has little chance of producing 'artistic' results, I would not dismiss the possibility that it might do so-especially with small samples of text, perhaps run through several different dictionaries (some of which might yield interesting results for various samples). I don't necessarily agree that randomness has no place in creativity-a position you seem to take; rhyme and meter, certainly, have rather arbitrary roots. Orthography, too-especially in English!-has an arbitrary quality (I don't mean here to confuse the arbitrary with the random, but in many cases, such as the one I will offer, the distinction means little). I would like to know your response to an anagrammatic form I invented ten years ago, examples of which appear on the Beard of Bees web site at http://www.beardofbees.com/zimmerman.html. By constructing 4x4 word squares, running them through an online anagram generator (which produced thousands of lines of words using the same 16 letters), selecting those that seem grammatically and otherwise interesting, and combining some of them, I have created a form that requires many of the same kinds of decisions that traditional poetic composition involves. Also, the form invites others to run the word squares through the anagram generator, select other (or even the same) lines, and create a sibling or Isotope poem, perhaps 'better' than my original. I don't write many poems in this form (nor do I write sestinas), but I regard the form as at least as legitimate as other forms (including the sestina, which shares some of the difficulty of writing an Isotope; try one yourself if you don't believe me). ~ Dan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcus Bales" To: Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 11:58 AM Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems > Marcus Bales wrote: >> > to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and then >> > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered >> > because you'd get the same proportion of the same sorts of >> > ridiculousnesses by mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. > > On 6 Jan 2008 at 18:07, Gwyn McVay wrote: >> That's the point! "The pumice of morons" means nothing in particular >> -- and neither does "the pulse of morning." "Created only a little lower >> than the angiosperm" is random, but in its randomness, actually more >> provocative than the original trite glurge, "than the angels." > > You're saying the point is that since you can get equal ridiculousness by > N+7 > substitutions for ANY poem, that therefore by using N+7 substitutions to > mock > Angelou's poem means you have done something significant or important or > even interesting? That's like claiming that your bowel movement was > signifricant or important or interesting on the grounds that since > everyone has > bowel movements yours are particularly interesting. It's not only > nonsense, it's > nonsense on stilts. > > The only way "pumice of morons" or "lower than the angiosperm" would be > interesting, significant, or important would be if someone thought them up > as > ways to mock Angelou's poem -- but no one thought them up. They are the > result of an N+7 mechanical process and are, therefore, even more > meaninglessly trite (however trite you may think it) because at least > Angelou > was writing her own stuff. It took two postmodernists to look words up in > the > dictionary (it took two! postmodernists must be in even sadder shape than > I > thought) were merely looking words up in the dictionary and substituting > them > in someone else's original work. There's nothing significant, important, > or even > interesting in that -- anyone, well, okay, if it's postmodernists, any two > can do > it. Anything that anyone, or even any two (allowing postmodernists their > handicap), can do can't be, by definition, significant or important. > > The claim that looking words up in the dictionary is a significant > artistic act is > paradigmatic of the aesthetic bankruptcy of the postmodern worldview. The > sadder thing is that that may be the very best that postmodernists can do. > >> Angelou is the one who essentially crapped on a plate and handed it >> to the whole country. What we ought to be offended by is the notion that >> her boring-ass poem (which I would think would have pissed you off the >> more by being itself so utterly devoid of craft and relying instead on a >> long list of People We Ought to Include) was worth something in the first >> place.< > > So, an interesting, significant, or important critique of crap is to > provide more > and bigger crap? By that standard, which seems to be the standard of > postmodernists everywhere, it's a race to the bottom of the art endeavor: > who > can do the most bad work the worst? It's not merely wrong-headed, it's > pathetic. > > Sturgeon's Law applies to poetry as well as to everything else -- 90% of > everything, even poetry, is crap. But one does not better distinguish the > crap > from the valuable by producing more and worse crap as fast as one can. > It's > the fundamental fallacy of the entire postmodern world view that by > practicing > to do more worse crap faster that one will thereby produce something > valuable. Postmodernism is among the 90% of the crappy world views. Get > over it. Look for something better. > > Marcus > > > > > On 6 Jan 2008 at 18:07, Gwyn McVay wrote: > >> > to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and then >> > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered >> because you'd >> > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by >> > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. >> >> That's the point! "The pumice of morons" means nothing in particular >> -- >> and neither does "the pulse of morning." "Created only a little >> lower than >> the angiosperm" is random, but in its randomness, actually more >> provocative than the original trite glurge, "than the angels." >> >> Angelou is the one who essentially crapped on a plate and handed it >> to the >> whole country. What we ought to be offended by is the notion that >> her >> boring-ass poem (which I would think would have pissed you off the >> more by >> being itself so utterly devoid of craft and relying instead on a >> long list >> of People We Ought to Include) was worth something in the first >> place. >> Coolidge and Fagin (as was pointed out, the little saddle-stapled >> booklet, >> down to the typefaces and such, looked almost identical to that in >> which >> the Angelou poem was published) merely held up the mirror to the >> great >> icon standing there with her platter of crap. >> >> Gwyn, who has the name thing straight now, McVay >> >> >> -- >> No virus found in this incoming message. >> Checked by AVG Free Edition. >> Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: >> 1/7/2008 9:14 AM >> ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 11:51:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <20080107.023425.2156.13.skyplums@juno.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit One of its members wrote a novel avoiding the wicked vowel E. "steve d. dalachinsky" wrote: pierre fill me in on oulipo second time it's passed my way thisd month On Sun, 6 Jan 2008 19:51:55 -0500 Pierre Joris writes: > so Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, the Oulipo people, the surrealists, > Dada, i.e. the core of 20th century experimental poets are all > scoundrels & con men? Come on, Marcus, you seem to have missed a > whole > century in poetry, > > Pierre > > On Jan 6, 2008, at 10:33 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > N+7 poems are stupid, one and all. There is no cleverness, no > craft, > > no wit, no > > art, in any of them. Art is not, and cannot be, random, because an > > > endeavor > > based on randomness is mere time-wasting: the results cannot be > > significant > > or important. In particular, N+7 cannot "spoof" anything because > the > > very > > notion of a parody or spoof is to be an intentionally significant > > > (and maybe an > > important) act. No N+7 substitution can be either significant or > > > important > > because art is a matter of human intentions, not a matter of the > mere > > propinquity of words in a particular edition of a particular > > dictionary. Removing > > human intention from the endeavor removes the possibility of art. > > > > What's clever or witty about a mechanical change of "pulse of > > morning" to > > "pumice of morons"? Nothing, unless you thought it up yourself. As > > > an act of > > human creativity to go on from you'd have something to go forward > > > with. But > > of course the N+7 method offers nothing even faintly resembling a > > > way to go > > forward with, and even less of human creativity. > > > > And what is clever or even interesting about mechanically > > substituting "a little > > lower than the angiosperm" for "a little lower than the angels"? > > > Again, if you'd > > thought it up, it might be an interesting place to go forward > from, > > but it is not > > gone forward from. Worse, it has no meaningful connection to the > > > "pumice of > > morons". Neither phrase has the least wit or art when the result of > > > merely > > mechanical selection because without human intention the entire > > enterprise is > > dead on arrival. Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > > > N+7 offers nothing whatever since the idea of parody or spoof is > to > > show, by > > human intention, how badly some other human intention has gone > > wrong. N+7 > > is no more a parody or spoof of anything than mowing the lawn is a > > > parody or > > spoof of grass. > > > > Mechanical word substitutions do not create parodies -- people of > > accomplishment do -- and they must, since the nature of parodies > and > > spoofs > > requires that the writer and reader are familiar with the > original, > > with the > > context in which the original was offered, and the changed context > > > in which > > the parody is offered. N+7 not only is no satire, no parody, and > no > > spoof, but it > > cannot be: to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and > then > > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered > because > > you'd > > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by > > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. It is no > accomplishment. > > For > > people who want to be thought of as people of accomplishment it's > > > worse than > > that: it's inviting your friends over for dinner and serving them > > > the excrement > > you've fished out of your toilet bowl instead: it's an insult to > > > your friends, not to > > the notion of dinner. > > > > In short, N+7 is self-evident incompetence. Randomness as the > basis > > for art is > > the first refuge of scoundrels and the last word in confidence > tricks. > > > > Marcus > > ___________________________________________________________ > > The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan > ___________________________________________________________ > Pierre Joris > 244 Elm Street > Albany NY 12202 > h: 518 426 0433 > c: 518 225 7123 > o: 518 442 40 71 > Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 > email: joris@albany.edu > http://pierrejoris.com > Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com > ____________________________________________________________ > > --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 12:05:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems/a few books-- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline (the best "Inauguration" piece i know of is Burroughs's "Roosevelt After Inauguration" The "Commissioner of Sewers" is also highly recommended--the latter is available at you tube) Andre Breton stated at one point in Surrealism's development that the perfect Surrealist act would be to go into a crowd with a revolver and begin firing at random (when Goering and others embraced the phrase, taken from a stage play,"When I hear the word "culture" i reach for my revolver" this put a different angle on the proposition and Breton later with drew it-- For in words there are consequences-- yet consider this: "Targeted assassination" a war crime, is "made" in a way similar to that of the approach Marcus writes of--considerable work, planning, "revising," "craft" and "intelligence" goes into this-- yet at the same time that it occurs there is the random--the people close by--(One is after all firing missiles into the world's most densely populated area)--are killed or wounded, buildings and other vehicles are damaged, and the psychological effect of terror is inflicted on the population-- (studies of the children of Gaza have found for example that close to 90% already have Post Traumatic Stress Disorders--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan the number of very young children traumatized by wars as soldiers and victims both creates a "future" in large part destroyed well before its arrival--a continual trauma ready to explode at any moment over and over again--) To combine the chosen and worked at, planned and crafted with the random creates a "collective punishment"--a war crime The change in Breton's view on this particular example of randomness and its effects, consequences, even and especially when "planned"--reveals the madness-- All the same random shootings in crowded areas have turned from being Surrealists acts into "the daily news"-- When there are outbreaks of what seem "random events" this causes the search for "connections," "patterns of behaviours," and "means to identify the symptoms ahead of time"-- which "push the envelope" of "acceptable" and "unacceptable methods" for doing so-- In working for a very long long time with chance, found, random materials, i have the sense often that there develops a "synchronicity" with which one is working-- things found seem to be "just what i needed" (NOT "what i wanted")-- they seem to fall into place--or to open the way where there had been the possibility of a cul-de-sac-- it's this area which i think is related with what Jim writes of as "magic"--and the sense of "something other" working with one--making suggestions, suddenly appearing--"collaborating"--participating" with one and the materials-- an encounter of oneself and the materials which enters into an areas of "collaboration" not unlike that of Burroughs and Gysin's working together which resulted in The Third Mind-- one can achieve the Third Mind by oneself also and the materials also, as Burroughs himself showed-- working with the found for me is the opening into what is hidden in plain site/sight/cite I've never had any interest in "programmed chance operations" or using systems to "find chance" or the random-- ("programming chance" seems too controlled--) these things are "already t/here" all around one-- even in lock-in, barely any thing of"interest" in a blank space under too bright light--one finds things going on, to work with-- working with the found around one where on is at that moment is a way of opening awareness with the arrangements already existing in the randomness of being-- which at the same time humans for ever have found patterns, meanings, visions, "a sense of purpose/direction/fate" in-- it is the areas where it is indeterminate that one moves--where the random and the pattern are co-existing, not yet separated, sorted out, defined-- the one person whom i have read on this that is very good --for a writer and visual/sound/writing artist, including tape recordings, films, etc)--is William S. Burroughs--In pieces included in the Word Virus collection, The Job, The Third Mind and scattered through out interviews and many other works-- Picasso said--"I do not seek, I find"-- of course one could say that Burroughs, Picasso and myself all developed methods that issued from and worked with the found-- so there is in a sense a "method"--of one's own that one arrives at through time--yet it can be changed simply by coming across something which suddenly reveals something "new" and "unknown" and at the same time--strangely familiar--The Uncanny-- which will confront one with what i call "necessity, the motherfucker of invention"-because the methods one used suddenly are not immediately applicable and one has "come up with something else"--which emerges from the possibilities within the limits of the materials-- in a sense, working with the found, one is an "attarctor' for the kinds of things which seem to be "passing through one's mind" at the moment--some theme--some floating desire or fascination which the oddly reappearing examples of a certain word or type of sidewalk crack, the way a leaf fell and its shadows outlined a space in which there are "things never before seen yet here al the time"--open out-- a great deal of thinking and work is set up so that one is most often going to see what one set out to see-- even in "seeking" there is a desired to goal to "arrive at"-- so "programming chance" to me--this is just myself personally--too much like "seeking the random" rather than finding it--already all around one-- so i think that even working with the found--what it is that is found in a sense is responding with and calling out to--something which is within one in some way uncannily recognized back and forth among the things the sites/sights/cites , the events, and the person-- at a certain level it is an acceptance of the simultaneous randomness and "serendipity" as the poet Larry Eigner called it, in al that is going on around one-- the more one develops an awareness within this, the less there is an "intentionality" or a planned randomness--a method of "generating randomness"-- the more one voyages into these areas, the more such questions of things like "plots" and "plot less" become intertwined--allowing for ever more "viewpoints" "angles'--and a sense of the reversibility and doubling, mirroring, "simulating," camouflaging and dis-and-re-appearing aspects of the neg entropy going on continually "making itself available to be found"-- The Pre_Socratics have many interesting writings on this interplay among the random and the "destined" so to speak-- Heraclitus: The most beautiful world is heap of rubble tossed down at random. Three other books of great interest and use i can think of are Hans Richter Dada Art and Anti-Art, The Writings of Robert Smithson and Rudolf Arnheim's Art and Entropy and parts of Order Out of Chaos by Stengers and Prigogine though in a sense they "explain" what is "hidden in plain site/sight/cite" continually-- On Jan 7, 2008 4:56 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: > i don't share marcus's perspective on the random and algorithms in writing > and art, but he raises some interesting issues. i sent his post to someone > i > know who is considering doing a doctoral thesis on randomness in art. > > i can remember having a perspective very similar to marcus's concerning > randomness and algorithms. > > i wonder if anyone knows of any insightful books that addresses the sorts > of > issues marcus raises? > > i thought about responding to marcus's post but it seems like a lot of > work > to do it well. > > it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the random in > art > that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it offers > perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful > regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods. it > gives > one a different perspective on one's own work, for instance. so that we > can > begin to be a bit more objective about our own writing, see it from other > points of view where our intentions are less precious and the words we've > written and their dynamics perhaps more or differently evident. it can > also > open up the notion of voice, for instance, into undiscovered areas. > > and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious > part of the universe into the writing process. > > ja > http://vispo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 12:07:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Grieco Subject: Peter Grieco's Rooftop reading 23 January In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The Rooftop Poetry Club at Bufflo State College has announced its next season of open readings, workshops, and performances. Beginning Wednesday, January 23, with writers Peter Grieco and Irving Massey and concluding Wednesday, April 30, with a reading from poet Ethan Paquin, a complete schedule is available on the Rooftop Poetry Club's Web site. http://www.buffalostate.edu/library/rooftop/ 1/23: Peter Grieco & Irving Massey International Students Reading Area, 3rd Floor SE Butler Library, 4:30 pm Buffalo State College pjgrieco@yahoo.com 228 Lexington Ave Apt 2 Buffalo. NY 14222-1759 716 884 5254 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 15:51:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Melnicove Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire In-Reply-To: 8AA2FE98-1D10-4720-9EEA-5B2082755C88@earthlink.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable She must have meant it as a negative. And Mario Cuomo said it years ago. (Did she attribute the quote to him= =3F) And it displays a slapdash ignorance of the possibilities of poetry. (I = hear Shelley turning over in his grave.) Mark =5F=5F=5F=5F=5F =20 From: Chris Stroffolino [mailto:cstroffo@EARTHLINK.NET] To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Sent: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:10:05 -0500 Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire Thanks for passing this on Barry. I may have to write about it more. Did Hilary mean the "you" as a negative thing, something she =20 disagrees with (that the 'inexperienced' Obama does, for instance), = =20 or did she mean it as a self-characterization=3F As something "one" do= es=3F =20 Chris On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Dr. Barry S. Alpert wrote: =20 > Just encountered this germane formulation, but am skeptical whether = =20 > it holds up to rigorous analysis. > > > At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton =20 > skewered Obama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as = =20 > his vote in favor of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she = =20 > described as "Dick Cheney's energy bill." She never mentioned =20 > Obama's name but left no doubt about whom she was discussing."You = =20 > campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clinton said. > > > Barry Alpert > =5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F= =5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F= =5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F=5F > Watch =E2=80=9CCause Effect,=E2=80=9D a show about real people makin= g a real =20 > difference. > http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/=3Fsource=3Dtext=5Fwatchcause =20 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 21:39:28 +0000 Reply-To: editor@fulcrumpoetry.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fulcrum Annual Subject: Nikolayev reviewed in Jacket MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Philip Nikolayev's latest poetry collection, Letters from Aldenderry, has received a glowing online review from Larissa Shmailo in the current issue of Jacket magazine: http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844712796.htm For more information about the book and its author, visit http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844712796.htm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 17:39:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: editor@BOOGCITY.COM Subject: Roommate sought, Chelsea, NYC In-Reply-To: <8AA2FE98-1D10-4720-9EEA-5B2082755C88@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Large room for rent in beautiful Chelsea apartment, parquet floors, eat-in kitchen, Empire State Building views, front and back yards. Includes cable tv, cable modem, and utilities. Available immediately Email editor@boogcity.com or call 212-842-2664 as ever, David ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 14:47:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Alison Croggon wrote: >> Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > But what if people are algorithms? I've sometimes wondered. > We aren't, and there are a couple of great books on the subject. If you haven't got the patience to wade through Heidegger's "Being and Time" then the more readable, fun, and interesting version of the story can be found in Hubert Dreyfus's "What Computers Can't Do." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 14:51:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed aleatory is a paintbrush. like any other paintbrush it's suited to certain jobs better than others. i think it would be a little bit short sighted for a painter to say "I'm never ever going to splatter paint on a canvas" although one notes that most perfectly good and interesting painters go whole careers without using the technique, while others find lots of interesting ways of using it, and still more overfocus on it to the point of silliness. same thing with Aleatory in poetry. On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > i don't share marcus's perspective on the random and algorithms in writing > and art, but he raises some interesting issues. i sent his post to someone i > know who is considering doing a doctoral thesis on randomness in art. > > i can remember having a perspective very similar to marcus's concerning > randomness and algorithms. > > i wonder if anyone knows of any insightful books that addresses the sorts of > issues marcus raises? > > i thought about responding to marcus's post but it seems like a lot of work > to do it well. > > it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the random in art > that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it offers > perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful > regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods. it gives > one a different perspective on one's own work, for instance. so that we can > begin to be a bit more objective about our own writing, see it from other > points of view where our intentions are less precious and the words we've > written and their dynamics perhaps more or differently evident. it can also > open up the notion of voice, for instance, into undiscovered areas. > > and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious > part of the universe into the writing process. > > ja > http://vispo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 18:01:09 -0500 Reply-To: az421@freenet.carleton.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob McLennan Subject: new(ish) on rob's clever blog Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT new(ish) on rob's clever blog -- ongoing notes: some recent American poetry collections by Zawacki, Padgett, Young & Byrne -- 12 or 20 questions: with Rachel Zucker -- rereading paige ackerson-kiely / on the airplane back to edmonton [poem] -- my daughter's 17th birthday -- 12 or 20 questions: with Greg Hollingshead -- ongoing notes: some (more) magazines [west coast line, NOON, filling station, arc] -- Ottawa Poet Laureate (redux); -- ongoing notes: some magazines; [cv2, The Capilano Review, The New Quarterly, Matrix] -- another christmas in old glengarry -- newly released: Poetics.ca #8 -- some recent poetry collections; [ryan fitzpatrick, FAKE MATH; Michael Blouin, I'm not going to lie to you; Diane Guichon, Birch Split Bark] -- some (further) Edmonton (and Calgary, and Ottawa) readings; -- I don't normally post cartoons, but; -- rob's novel reviewed in the globe & mail! -- The Peter F. Yacht Club #8 -- Edmontons Mark McCawley, Urban Graffiti and greensleeve editions -- The Factory (West) Reading Series -- The 2008 Guerilla Magazine Micro-fiction Contest -- White Pelican: year one -- the power of blogging www.robmclennan.blogspot.com + some other new things at the alberta, writing blog www.albertawriting.blogspot.com + some other new things at ottawa poetry newsletter, www.ottawapoetry.blogspot.com + some other other new things at the Chaudiere Books blog, www.chaudierebooks.blogspot.com -- poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 15:08:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems/a few books-- In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed This reminded me of possibly the best lyrical poem to emerge from the US post-punk movement in the early eighties. I won't bore everyone who doesn't share my belief that poetry is by and large alive and well and living in pop music, but I will link you to a performance of it if you're curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzMu6ugTNfA On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, David Chirot wrote: > (the best "Inauguration" piece i know of is Burroughs's "Roosevelt After > Inauguration" The "Commissioner of Sewers" is also highly recommended--the > latter is available at you tube) > > > Andre Breton stated at one point in Surrealism's development that the > perfect Surrealist act would be to go into a crowd with a revolver and > begin firing at random > > (when Goering and others embraced the phrase, taken from a stage play,"When > I hear the word "culture" i reach for my revolver" this put a different > angle on the proposition and Breton later with drew it-- > > For in words there are consequences-- > > yet consider this: > > "Targeted assassination" a war crime, is "made" in a way similar to that of > the approach Marcus writes of--considerable work, planning, "revising," > "craft" and "intelligence" goes into this-- > yet at the same time that it occurs there is the random--the people close > by--(One is after all firing missiles into the world's most densely > populated area)--are killed or wounded, buildings and other vehicles are > damaged, and the psychological effect of terror is inflicted on the > population-- > (studies of the children of Gaza have found for example that close to 90% > already have Post Traumatic Stress Disorders--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, > Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan the number of very young children traumatized by wars > as soldiers and victims both creates a "future" in large part destroyed well > before its arrival--a continual trauma ready to explode at any moment over > and over again--) > > To combine the chosen and worked at, planned and crafted with the random > creates a "collective punishment"--a war crime > > The change in Breton's view on this particular example of randomness and its > effects, consequences, even and especially when "planned"--reveals the > madness-- > > All the same random shootings in crowded areas have turned from being > Surrealists acts into "the daily news"-- > > When there are outbreaks of what seem "random events" this causes the search > for "connections," "patterns of behaviours," and "means to identify the > symptoms ahead of time"-- > which "push the envelope" of "acceptable" and "unacceptable methods" for > doing so-- > > In working for a very long long time with chance, found, random materials, i > have the sense often that there develops a "synchronicity" with which one is > working-- > > things found seem to be "just what i needed" (NOT "what i wanted")-- > they seem to fall into place--or to open the way where there had been the > possibility of a cul-de-sac-- > > it's this area which i think is related with what Jim writes of as > "magic"--and the sense of "something other" working with one--making > suggestions, suddenly appearing--"collaborating"--participating" with one > and the materials-- > an encounter of oneself and the materials which enters into an areas of > "collaboration" not unlike that of Burroughs and Gysin's working together > which resulted in The Third Mind-- > > one can achieve the Third Mind by oneself also and the materials also, as > Burroughs himself showed-- > > working with the found for me is the opening into what is hidden in plain > site/sight/cite > I've never had any interest in "programmed chance operations" or using > systems to "find chance" or the random-- > > ("programming chance" seems too controlled--) > > these things are "already t/here" all around one-- > even in lock-in, barely any thing of"interest" in a blank space under too > bright light--one finds things going on, to work with-- > > working with the found around one where on is at that moment is a way of > opening awareness with the arrangements already existing in the randomness > of being-- > which at the same time humans for ever have found patterns, meanings, > visions, "a sense of purpose/direction/fate" in-- > > it is the areas where it is indeterminate that one moves--where the random > and the pattern are co-existing, not yet separated, sorted out, defined-- > > > the one person whom i have read on this that is very good --for a writer > and visual/sound/writing artist, including tape recordings, films, etc)--is > William S. Burroughs--In pieces included in the Word Virus collection, The > Job, The Third Mind and scattered through out interviews and many other > works-- > > Picasso said--"I do not seek, I find"-- > of course one could say that Burroughs, Picasso and myself all developed > methods that issued from and worked with the found-- > > so there is in a sense a "method"--of one's own that one arrives at through > time--yet it can be changed simply by coming across something which suddenly > reveals something "new" and "unknown" and at the same time--strangely > familiar--The Uncanny-- > > which will confront one with what i call "necessity, the motherfucker of > invention"-because the methods one used suddenly are not immediately > applicable and one has "come up with something else"--which emerges from the > possibilities within the limits of the materials-- > > in a sense, working with the found, one is an "attarctor' for the kinds of > things which seem to be "passing through one's mind" at the moment--some > theme--some floating desire or fascination which the oddly reappearing > examples of a certain word or type of sidewalk crack, the way a leaf fell > and its shadows outlined a space in which there are "things never before > seen yet here al the time"--open out-- > > a great deal of thinking and work is set up so that one is most often going > to see what one set out to see-- > even in "seeking" there is a desired to goal to "arrive at"-- > > so "programming chance" to me--this is just myself personally--too much like > "seeking the random" rather than finding it--already all around one-- > > so i think that even working with the found--what it is that is found in a > sense is responding with and calling out to--something which is within one > in some way uncannily recognized back and forth among the things the > sites/sights/cites , the events, and the person-- > > at a certain level it is an acceptance of the simultaneous randomness and > "serendipity" as the poet Larry Eigner called it, in al that is going on > around one-- > > the more one develops an awareness within this, the less there is an > "intentionality" or a planned randomness--a method of "generating > randomness"-- > > the more one voyages into these areas, the more such questions of things > like "plots" and "plot less" become intertwined--allowing for ever more > "viewpoints" "angles'--and a sense of the reversibility and doubling, > mirroring, "simulating," camouflaging and dis-and-re-appearing aspects of > the neg entropy going on continually "making itself available to be > found"-- > > The Pre_Socratics have many interesting writings on this interplay among the > random and the "destined" so to speak-- > Heraclitus: The most beautiful world is heap of rubble tossed down at > random. > > Three other books of great interest and use i can think of are Hans Richter > Dada Art and Anti-Art, The Writings of Robert Smithson and Rudolf Arnheim's > Art and Entropy and parts of Order Out of Chaos by Stengers and Prigogine > though in a sense they "explain" what is "hidden in plain site/sight/cite" > continually-- > > On Jan 7, 2008 4:56 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: > >> i don't share marcus's perspective on the random and algorithms in writing >> and art, but he raises some interesting issues. i sent his post to someone >> i >> know who is considering doing a doctoral thesis on randomness in art. >> >> i can remember having a perspective very similar to marcus's concerning >> randomness and algorithms. >> >> i wonder if anyone knows of any insightful books that addresses the sorts >> of >> issues marcus raises? >> >> i thought about responding to marcus's post but it seems like a lot of >> work >> to do it well. >> >> it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the random in >> art >> that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it offers >> perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful >> regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods. it >> gives >> one a different perspective on one's own work, for instance. so that we >> can >> begin to be a bit more objective about our own writing, see it from other >> points of view where our intentions are less precious and the words we've >> written and their dynamics perhaps more or differently evident. it can >> also >> open up the notion of voice, for instance, into undiscovered areas. >> >> and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the >> writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious >> part of the universe into the writing process. >> >> ja >> http://vispo.com >> > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 23:58:25 +0000 Reply-To: editor@fulcrumpoetry.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fulcrum Annual Subject: correct URL for review of Nikolayev in Jacket MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Apologies for the error! The correct URL for Larissa Shmailo's Jacket review of Philip Nikolayev's Letters from Aldenderry is this: http://jacketmagazine.com/34/shmailo-nikolayev.shtml The book itself may be viewed here: http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/1844712796.htm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 20:16:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems/a few books-- In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline David, "Not what one wants" but what one needs. I think you hit exactly on the serendipitous mystery of discovering what one needs. That way the randomness of one's surrounding gains shape, which seems itself to be no shape at all (possibly an aura, what holds electrons together. I am thinking of Joseph Cornell's constructions. David, how much walking (the original flaneur of urban life, later perhaps the trash collector, the clochard) become the method implicit in the madness. Aren't't perhaps digressions the core of random thinking for us? Great post. Murat On Jan 7, 2008 3:05 PM, David Chirot wrote: > (the best "Inauguration" piece i know of is Burroughs's "Roosevelt After > Inauguration" The "Commissioner of Sewers" is also highly > recommended--the > latter is available at you tube) > > > Andre Breton stated at one point in Surrealism's development that the > perfect Surrealist act would be to go into a crowd with a revolver and > begin firing at random > > (when Goering and others embraced the phrase, taken from a stage > play,"When > I hear the word "culture" i reach for my revolver" this put a different > angle on the proposition and Breton later with drew it-- > > For in words there are consequences-- > > yet consider this: > > "Targeted assassination" a war crime, is "made" in a way similar to that > of > the approach Marcus writes of--considerable work, planning, "revising," > "craft" and "intelligence" goes into this-- > yet at the same time that it occurs there is the random--the people close > by--(One is after all firing missiles into the world's most densely > populated area)--are killed or wounded, buildings and other vehicles are > damaged, and the psychological effect of terror is inflicted on the > population-- > (studies of the children of Gaza have found for example that close to 90% > already have Post Traumatic Stress Disorders--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, > Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan the number of very young children traumatized by > wars > as soldiers and victims both creates a "future" in large part destroyed > well > before its arrival--a continual trauma ready to explode at any moment over > and over again--) > > To combine the chosen and worked at, planned and crafted with the random > creates a "collective punishment"--a war crime > > The change in Breton's view on this particular example of randomness and > its > effects, consequences, even and especially when "planned"--reveals the > madness-- > > All the same random shootings in crowded areas have turned from being > Surrealists acts into "the daily news"-- > > When there are outbreaks of what seem "random events" this causes the > search > for "connections," "patterns of behaviours," and "means to identify the > symptoms ahead of time"-- > which "push the envelope" of "acceptable" and "unacceptable methods" for > doing so-- > > In working for a very long long time with chance, found, random materials, > i > have the sense often that there develops a "synchronicity" with which one > is > working-- > > things found seem to be "just what i needed" (NOT "what i wanted")-- > they seem to fall into place--or to open the way where there had been the > possibility of a cul-de-sac-- > > it's this area which i think is related with what Jim writes of as > "magic"--and the sense of "something other" working with one--making > suggestions, suddenly appearing--"collaborating"--participating" with one > and the materials-- > an encounter of oneself and the materials which enters into an areas of > "collaboration" not unlike that of Burroughs and Gysin's working together > which resulted in The Third Mind-- > > one can achieve the Third Mind by oneself also and the materials also, as > Burroughs himself showed-- > > working with the found for me is the opening into what is hidden in plain > site/sight/cite > I've never had any interest in "programmed chance operations" or using > systems to "find chance" or the random-- > > ("programming chance" seems too controlled--) > > these things are "already t/here" all around one-- > even in lock-in, barely any thing of"interest" in a blank space under too > bright light--one finds things going on, to work with-- > > working with the found around one where on is at that moment is a way of > opening awareness with the arrangements already existing in the randomness > of being-- > which at the same time humans for ever have found patterns, meanings, > visions, "a sense of purpose/direction/fate" in-- > > it is the areas where it is indeterminate that one moves--where the random > and the pattern are co-existing, not yet separated, sorted out, defined-- > > > the one person whom i have read on this that is very good --for a writer > and visual/sound/writing artist, including tape recordings, films, > etc)--is > William S. Burroughs--In pieces included in the Word Virus collection, The > Job, The Third Mind and scattered through out interviews and many other > works-- > > Picasso said--"I do not seek, I find"-- > of course one could say that Burroughs, Picasso and myself all developed > methods that issued from and worked with the found-- > > so there is in a sense a "method"--of one's own that one arrives at > through > time--yet it can be changed simply by coming across something which > suddenly > reveals something "new" and "unknown" and at the same time--strangely > familiar--The Uncanny-- > > which will confront one with what i call "necessity, the motherfucker of > invention"-because the methods one used suddenly are not immediately > applicable and one has "come up with something else"--which emerges from > the > possibilities within the limits of the materials-- > > in a sense, working with the found, one is an "attarctor' for the kinds of > things which seem to be "passing through one's mind" at the moment--some > theme--some floating desire or fascination which the oddly reappearing > examples of a certain word or type of sidewalk crack, the way a leaf fell > and its shadows outlined a space in which there are "things never before > seen yet here al the time"--open out-- > > a great deal of thinking and work is set up so that one is most often > going > to see what one set out to see-- > even in "seeking" there is a desired to goal to "arrive at"-- > > so "programming chance" to me--this is just myself personally--too much > like > "seeking the random" rather than finding it--already all around one-- > > so i think that even working with the found--what it is that is found in a > sense is responding with and calling out to--something which is within one > in some way uncannily recognized back and forth among the things the > sites/sights/cites , the events, and the person-- > > at a certain level it is an acceptance of the simultaneous randomness and > "serendipity" as the poet Larry Eigner called it, in al that is going on > around one-- > > the more one develops an awareness within this, the less there is an > "intentionality" or a planned randomness--a method of "generating > randomness"-- > > the more one voyages into these areas, the more such questions of things > like "plots" and "plot less" become intertwined--allowing for ever more > "viewpoints" "angles'--and a sense of the reversibility and doubling, > mirroring, "simulating," camouflaging and dis-and-re-appearing aspects of > the neg entropy going on continually "making itself available to be > found"-- > > The Pre_Socratics have many interesting writings on this interplay among > the > random and the "destined" so to speak-- > Heraclitus: The most beautiful world is heap of rubble tossed down at > random. > > Three other books of great interest and use i can think of are Hans > Richter > Dada Art and Anti-Art, The Writings of Robert Smithson and Rudolf > Arnheim's > Art and Entropy and parts of Order Out of Chaos by Stengers and Prigogine > though in a sense they "explain" what is "hidden in plain site/sight/cite" > continually-- > > On Jan 7, 2008 4:56 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: > > > i don't share marcus's perspective on the random and algorithms in > writing > > and art, but he raises some interesting issues. i sent his post to > someone > > i > > know who is considering doing a doctoral thesis on randomness in art. > > > > i can remember having a perspective very similar to marcus's concerning > > randomness and algorithms. > > > > i wonder if anyone knows of any insightful books that addresses the > sorts > > of > > issues marcus raises? > > > > i thought about responding to marcus's post but it seems like a lot of > > work > > to do it well. > > > > it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the random in > > art > > that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it > offers > > perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite > useful > > regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods. it > > gives > > one a different perspective on one's own work, for instance. so that we > > can > > begin to be a bit more objective about our own writing, see it from > other > > points of view where our intentions are less precious and the words > we've > > written and their dynamics perhaps more or differently evident. it can > > also > > open up the notion of voice, for instance, into undiscovered areas. > > > > and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the > > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious > > part of the universe into the writing process. > > > > ja > > http://vispo.com > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 20:23:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Jim, "and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious part of the universe into the writing process." Randomness has something to do, it seems to me, with the disintegration, destruction of the ego, which is an essential concept both in Sufism and perhaps Buddhism. In Sufism, this loss of ego (which , specifically in poetry, leads to Eda, a transformation in the concept of the lyric "I") opens up the spirit to divine consciousness. Ciao, Murat On Jan 7, 2008 7:56 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: > i don't share marcus's perspective on the random and algorithms in writing > and art, but he raises some interesting issues. i sent his post to someone > i > know who is considering doing a doctoral thesis on randomness in art. > > i can remember having a perspective very similar to marcus's concerning > randomness and algorithms. > > i wonder if anyone knows of any insightful books that addresses the sorts > of > issues marcus raises? > > i thought about responding to marcus's post but it seems like a lot of > work > to do it well. > > it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the random in > art > that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it offers > perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful > regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods. it > gives > one a different perspective on one's own work, for instance. so that we > can > begin to be a bit more objective about our own writing, see it from other > points of view where our intentions are less precious and the words we've > written and their dynamics perhaps more or differently evident. it can > also > open up the notion of voice, for instance, into undiscovered areas. > > and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious > part of the universe into the writing process. > > ja > http://vispo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 12:54:55 -0800 Reply-To: layne@whiteowlweb.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Layne Russell Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I would think her words meant something like: You (one) can (or might) = campaign in poetry, but you (one) must govern in prose. And yes, surely = she was referring to Obama - to be more specific and clear. Not very raucous really, despite a couple moments where all four = candidates were talking strongly at once. Layne ----- Original Message -----=20 From: Chris Stroffolino=20 To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=20 Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 11:10 AM Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire Thanks for passing this on Barry. I may have to write about it more. Did Hilary mean the "you" as a negative thing, something she =20 disagrees with (that the 'inexperienced' Obama does, for instance), =20 or did she mean it as a self-characterization? As something "one" = does? Chris On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Dr. Barry S. Alpert wrote: > Just encountered this germane formulation, but am skeptical whether = > it holds up to rigorous analysis. > > > At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton =20 > skewered Obama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as = > his vote in favor of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she = > described as "Dick Cheney's energy bill." She never mentioned =20 > Obama's name but left no doubt about whom she was discussing."You =20 > campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clinton said. > > > Barry Alpert ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 23:34:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire In-Reply-To: <20080107205128.1639f8f8@mail.fps.k12.me.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable It's gonna cost her a lot of poet votes. At 03:51 PM 1/7/2008, you wrote: >She must have meant it as a negative. > > >And Mario Cuomo said it years ago. (Did she attribute the quote to him?) > > >And it displays a slapdash ignorance of the=20 >possibilities of poetry. (I hear Shelley turning over in his grave.) > > >Mark > _____ > >From: Chris Stroffolino [mailto:cstroffo@EARTHLINK.NET] >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU >Sent: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:10:05 -0500 >Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire > >Thanks for passing this on Barry. I may have to write about it more. > Did Hilary mean the "you" as a negative thing, something she > disagrees with (that the 'inexperienced' Obama does, for instance), > or did she mean it as a self-characterization? As something "one" does? > > Chris > On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Dr. Barry S. Alpert wrote: > > > Just encountered this germane formulation, but am skeptical whether > > it holds up to rigorous analysis. > > > > > > At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton > > skewered Obama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as > > his vote in favor of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she > > described as "Dick Cheney's energy bill." She never mentioned > > Obama's name but left no doubt about whom she was discussing."You > > campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clinton said. > > > > > > Barry Alpert > > _________________________________________________________________ > > Watch =E2=80=9CCause Effect,=E2=80=9D a show about real people making= a real > > difference. > > http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=3Dtext_watchcause > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 23:35:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems -- Marcus' Premise and the Poetics List In-Reply-To: <381817.22423.qm@web83303.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline "The Poetics List is not a forum for a general discussion of poetry or for the exchange of poems. 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." Isn't what Marcus doing exactly this kind of questioning, regardless of whether one agrees with him or not? Ciao, Murat On Jan 7, 2008 2:03 PM, amy king wrote: > Marcus, > > You determined that because "pumice of morons" was arrived at through > chance methods, rather than someone "thinking them up" like Angelou (as you > state below), the results are not significant. This type of elementary > attack against exploratory poetics recurs on occasion here, but your gross > characterizations and belligerent accusations of "crap" ultimately mire any > merit your posts might have in useless defensiveness and your anger, rather > than furthering constructive discussion. > > The purpose of the list is not to repeatedly defend why innovative > techniques exist as there are other forums for those general discussions. > Please note: > > "The Poetics List is not a forum for a general discussion of > poetry or for the exchange of poems. Our aim is to support, inform, > and extend those directions in poetry that are committed to innovations, > renovations, and investigations of form and/or/as content, to the > questioning of received forms and styles, and to the creation of > the otherwise unimagined, untried, unexpected, improbable, and > impossible. While we recognize that other lists may sponsor other > possibilities for exchange, we request that those participating in > this forum keep in mind the specialized and focused nature of this > project and respect our decision to operate a moderated list. The > Poetics List exists to support and encourage divergent points of > view on innovative forms of modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, > and we are committed to do what is necessary to preserve this space for > such > dialog." > > --from Poetics List Welcome Message > http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/welcome.html > > > Marcus Bales wrote: > The only way "pumice of morons" or "lower than the angiosperm" would be > interesting, significant, or important would be if someone thought them up > as ways to mock Angelou's poem -- but no one thought them up. They are the > result of an N+7 mechanical process and are, therefore, even more > meaninglessly trite (however trite you may think it) because at least > Angelou was writing her own stuff. > > > --------------------------------- > Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! > Search. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 22:16:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > >> Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > > > But what if people are algorithms? I've sometimes wondered. > > > > We aren't, and there are a couple of great books on the subject. > If you haven't got the patience to wade through Heidegger's > "Being and Time" then the more readable, fun, and interesting > version of the story can be found in Hubert Dreyfus's "What > Computers Can't Do." There is no proof, and probably never will be, that there are any thought processes of which humans are capable and computers are not. There are things that computers can't do. But there is no proof that humans can do them either. Turing devised the Turing machine (though he didn't call them Turing machines), which is a mathematical construct, not a material machine, as a means to show that there are some tasks that no algorithm can accomplish. More particularly, he showed that there cannot exist any algorithm of the type requested by David Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem ). In other words, Turing invented computers somewhat incidentally; he invented them as a theoretical means to solve the Entscheidungsproblem, which was one of the outstanding mathematical problems of its day. And it's rather delicious that he invented the Turing machine to show that there are some things that algorithms cannot accomplish. Computers were invented incidentally as a means to show there are some things computers can't do. So we have known from the very start of the theory of computation that there are some things that computers/algorithms cannot accomplish. But there is absolutely no proof that humans can do any of these things either. There are many claims to the contrary, but to date, they are all fallacious. It would be front page news if Computer Scientists verified any of these claims. Because it would mean that the human mind is truly more advanced than any computer will ever be, can ever be. Many people really want to believe this is true. But I think it unlikely. Which doesn't make us any less marvelous than we truly are. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 18:54:26 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alison Croggon Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline It takes a very simple algorithm to make very complex and unpredictable patterns. Though actually, I wasn't thinking of computers at all, but of the biological processes that, for example, lead to spots on cows. All best Alison On Jan 8, 2008 9:47 AM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Alison Croggon wrote: > > >> Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > > > But what if people are algorithms? I've sometimes wondered. > > > > We aren't, and there are a couple of great books on the subject. If you > haven't got the patience to wade through Heidegger's "Being and Time" then > the more readable, fun, and interesting version of the story can be found in > Hubert Dreyfus's "What Computers Can't Do." > -- Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 09:38:22 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: death of a Persian modernist MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable The Guardian reports the death of a "leading light of the modernist movemen= t in Persian poetry":=0A=0Ahttp://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,22= 36844,00.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 05:28:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801071723n2ab5ab38vfc57b5c6e7f77e3a@mail.gmail.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > Jim, > > "and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on the > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious > part of the universe into the writing process." > > Randomness has something to do, it seems to me, with the disintegration, > destruction of the ego, which is an essential concept both in Sufism and > perhaps Buddhism. In Sufism, this loss of ego (which , specifically in > poetry, leads to Eda, a transformation in the concept of the lyric "I") > opens up the spirit to divine consciousness. > > Ciao, > > Murat Murat, Journalists try not to write themselves into the story. That is a kind of destruction of the ego, at least in the piece itself, in the sense that they or their editors edit out/destroy any personal reference. This is not what you're talking about, I realize, but it nonetheless is a sort of "disintegration, destruction of the ego". Or perhaps more typically a veiling of the ego. In William S. Burroughs's trilogy of cutup novels (The Ticket that Exploded, Nova Express, and The Soft Machine), one of the effects of the cutup is indeed a disintegration or destruction of the distinction between the characters, sometimes. You can see how this might work. The reference is unclear, often, because of the cutup (and Burroughs's decision to go with it and shape it) as to whether this or that character is being referred to. So that, in a sense, the cutup merges the characters into one character. It's a rather cosmic thing. Or so it seemed at the time I read it! Brilliant! Whether one is a journalist or a novelist or a painter or poet or whatever, we realize it isn't really about us. Our work attempts to be involved with and to involve others and ideas, as well as the 'beyond us' in another sense, whether a religious sense or whatever one's notion is of what is beyond us, ourselves, what is powerful and at work in things, in us, in the world, in the cosmos. And random methods can be useful in this regard. Burroughs felt that to get beyond one's wee self and habits, limitations, acknowleged and unacknowleged intentions, the cutup was useful. And so it is in his work. He was one of the more interesting writers about the poetics of the random. I gather John Cage is another. And undoubtedly some of the Oulipo poets. The book of Burroughs I'm familiar with where he talks about this sort of thing is The Job, which I found fascinating. What are some of the other books by others where the poetics of the random is written about insightfully? Here are some pieces and tools on vispo.com that involve the random. There are many other pieces on the site that use the random() function, but it isn't a focus of the piece. Often I use it simply to provide a bit of range in the behavior and a selection is made among similar things. But the random plays a different role in the below pieces, is more central. Or, in the case of the stir fry texts, there isn't any use of the random() function but its very combinatorial. LEE WORDEN'S CUTUP ENGINE 2.0 http://vispo.com/cgi-bin/wonder/cutup/cutup.cgi This is a superior implementation of a Burroughs-related cutup engine by Lee Worden. THE IDEA OF ORDER AT KEY WEST REORDERED http://vispo.com/vismu/stevens.htm Stevens reading his poem randomly reordered. Click around on the waveform. Speakers on. THE STIR FRY TEXTS http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts Combinatoriums of writing. All of these are interactive. Try these out, Marcus, if you like. They make decisions for you, but you also have to make decisions. ja ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:23:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ann Bogle Subject: Reading Stain Bar Jan. 20 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" -----Original Message----- From: Carol Novack To: AMBogle@aol.com Sent: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 1:49 am Subject: reading announcement ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nita Noveno / Caroline Berger Date: Jan 6, 2008 1:44 AM Subject: Re: reading announcement? To: Carol Novack Hi Carol, Here's info. on the upcoming Salon (that I sent to Time Out NY): We're starting the new year off with a multi-talented lineup of writers at the next Sunday Salon on January 20th, 7pm. At Stain Bar, 766 Grand St. (take "L" to Grand, walk one block west past Humboldt St.) in Williamsburg. *** Named by New York Press as The Best Writer You've Never Heard of But Should Go Read Right Now, Ellis Avery ?is a Sunday Salon veteran and the author of a first novel called THE TEAHOUSE FIRE.??Recently out in paperback from Riverhead Books, THE TEAHOUSE FIRE?won two awards last year and is being translated into six languages.??Ellis lives in Manhattan and teaches creative writing at Columbia.? ( www.ellisavery.com) Carol Novack is a former criminal defense/constitutional lawyer, an occasional instructor in lyrical fiction writing, and the publisher of Mad Hatters' Review. She's also a former grant recipient, and the author of a chapbook of poetry, a play, and several collaborative projects Carol's been featured in many reading series in NYC and elsewhere. Recent writings in print may or will be found in journals including American Letters & Commentary, Fiction International, First Intensity, Gargoyle, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Knock, LIT, Notre Dame Review, and in the anthology, Online Writings The Best of the First Years. Links to online publications are accessible via Carol's blog. Ann Bogle's short stories have appeared in?The Quarterly, Fiction International, Gulf Coast, Washington Revew, Black Ice, Big Bridge, Submodern Fiction, among other journals.? Her prose poem chapbook, XAM: Paragraph Series was published by Xexoxial Editions in 2005.? Nicole Fix lives, writes and plays softball in Brooklyn.? In 2006, she was awarded a scholarship to attend the SLS Kenya Writers' Conference.? Her screenplay Toy Fair and short story Fish were finalists for The Chesterfield Writer's Film Project Fellowship. ? As a producer with Page 73 Productions, she has presented the critically acclaimed show and Pulitzer finalist Elliot A Soldier's Fugue.? She is currently working on her first novel and will be traveling to Eastern Europe and Israel to complete research. ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:24:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: memorial for Booujum, our cat, 01/02/08 and address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed memorial for Booujum, our cat, 01/02/08 http://www.alansondheim.org/boojumm.mp4 we're now at 718-813-3285 address Alan Sondheim and Azure Carter 813 Charles Avenue Morgantown, WV, 26505 apologies for slow responding; we don't have net access at the house yet. - Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:12:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: "... it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the random= in art that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it offers= perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods." That=B4s sort of like believing that God will correct any errors in your s= cientific methodology to ensure that it comes out all right, and then using that God= - corrected methodology to show there is no God. It=B4s trying to have it bo= th ways. On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: "... and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on t= he writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious p= art of the universe into the writing process." "As though" but not really. You seem to be saying that "the random" is a mental trick you use to deceive yourself into letting your own practice expertise seem to you as if it were not a part of you in order to give you= rself permission to write what you might not have written otherwise? I have no k= ick with using random elements to kick-start the creative process. My objectio= n is to the N+7 (and any other similar) claim that by a purely mechanical rando= m process one can create art. On 7 Jan 2008 steve russell wrote: I don't see why being attentive to randomness should be regarded as a disregard of craft. One chooses, assembles ..." But "attentive to randomness" is not the same as "randomness itself create= s art". It is the choosing and assembling to which you refer, done by a huma= n to appeal to humans, that is a necessary (though not sufficient) requirement = for art. My objection is to the notion that randomness can, all by itself, cre= ate art in general, and in particular to the notion that a mechanistic replacement= of nouns in any poem by a random method can make an interesting, significant,= or important, or any satire, parody, or spoof of that original poem. The methodology will make hash of ANY poem because it makes hash of ALL poems, and not because any given particular original poem is in some way defective. The method makes equal hash of all poems, good or bad - and thus cannot be counted in any way, by any means, to be an effective parody= or spoof of a particular poem. On 7 Jan 2008 steve russell wrote: "& no matter how seemingly random, things take on some sort of shape. DADA started to hint strongly towards the often violent dislocations that = would shape modernity. so why not involve our friend the machine?" If things take on some sort of consistent shape then they cannot really be= random. Things that take on randomly changing shapes aren=B4t the same things any more because they change from thing to thing as they change fro= m shape to shape. Once again, you=B4re trying to have it both ways, and it w= on=B4t do. I have no objection to asking a machine to pick six words, for example, randomly, using which you then write a sestina, because the randomness is heuristic not causative. You still have to write the sestina, making all t= he rest of the choices. Even when you=B4re done, it may not be a very good sestina= , though, since part of the quality of a good sestina is the exercise of goo= d judgment about the choice of those six words. Still, I agree there is a ch= ance that a good sestina may be written using six words randomly chosen. But t= he sestina is a piece of art, if it turns out to be one instead of a mere exe= rcise, because of the choices the artist makes, not because of the randomness of the choice of the words. On 7 Jan 2008 Daniel Zimmerman wrote: "While I agree with you that N+7 has little chance of producing 'artistic'= results, I would not dismiss the possibility that it might do so - especia= lly with small samples of text, perhaps run through several different dictionaries (some of which might yield interesting results for various samples)." I dismiss the possibility because an algorithm doesn=B4t produce art, peop= le do. Art is a human-only endeavor. If a machine ever produces art, we=B4ll have= to call it human, and change our definition of human to include the kind of machine that can produce art. Such a machine would be human: it would be able to lie, to refuse to do work assigned to it, to control whether it co= uld be turned off or not, and so forth - it would be autonomous. Imagine if your computer could tell you it preferred not to reproduce the poem you just ty= ped in, or that it could lie and cheat, and send your poem off to a magazine u= nder its own name, and so on. Such computers would be useless as machines, as computers. They would be autonomous human agents, free from the slavery that being a machine entailed. The production of `artistic=B4 results for N+7 after a human, using small = samples of text run through a variety of dictionaries, exercising human judgment a= bout which products warranted another run-through, or warranted saving, is not = the same as the claim that the N+7 method of noun replacement in and of itself= creates a piece of art that spoofs or parodies a particular poem. Since th= e N+7 and other such algorithms will make the same kind of hash out of ANY poem, good or bad, it is a false claim that such a hash is a spoof or paro= dy of a particular poem, irrespective of how bad the N+7 writers or readers beli= eve the original poem to be. The N+7 method says NOTHING AT ALL about any particular poem=B4s qualities. It merely creates a random hash of ANY poem= - it makes ANY poem look bad. On 7 Jan 2008 Daniel Zimmerman wrote: "I don't necessarily agree that randomness has no place in creativity -- a= position you seem to take; rhyme and meter, certainly, have rather arbitra= ry roots." I do not say that randomness has no place in creativity; I say that the N+= 7 method, and similar methods, cannot create art; I further say that such randomness methods cannot even create spoofs or parodies of particular poems because their very methodology makes a hash of any poem, not only bad poems. I would like to know your response to an anagrammatic form I invented ten years ago, examples of which appear on the Beard of Bees web site at http://www.beardofbees.com/zimmerman.html. By constructing 4x4 word squares, running them through an online anagram generator (which produced thousands of lines of words using the same 16letters), selecting those tha= t seem ..." The moment you start selecting using your brain instead of a randomizing algorithm, you have ceased to claim that the algorithm alone is creating t= he poem. I have no problem with using randomness as a heuristic part of the creative process; what I reject, and what I object to, is the notion that randomness can, of itself and by itself, create a work of art. On 7 Jan 2008 Jason Quackenbush wrote: Aleatory is a paintbrush. like any other paintbrush it's suited to certain= jobs better than others. ... same thing with Aleatory in poetry. Once again, this is a different claim than that randomness in and of itsel= f can create art. A Jackson Pollock painting requires a Jackson Pollock to paint= it, not a paint-spattering algorithm. Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 21:50:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Luong?= Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable It seems that in the discussion of the n+7 constraint, the role of mathemat= ics in OuLiPo has been forgotten. The majority of the readers of this list = already know the following, but this is for Marcus: there is nothing random= about the method. OuLiPians abhorred the randomness of the Surrealists and= Dada (see the introduction to the Oulipo Compendium, edited by Harry Mathe= ws). What they sought was to instill a mathematical rigor and consistency t= o their study and writing of mathematics. What the n+7 method reveals (beca= use there is a scientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians did) is how synt= ax and meaning have a relationship, based on certain social conditions (her= e, the dictionary).=0A=0AAgain, here is the explanation of the method from = the Oulipo Compendium:=0A=0AN+7 (S+7). A method invented by Jean Lescure th= at "consists" (in Queneau's terse definition) "in replacing each noun (N) w= ith the seventh following it in a dictionary."=0ABefore beginning the opera= tion, it is obviously necessary to choose a text and a dictionary. (...) Wh= en choosing the dictionary, it is useful to remember that the smaller it is= , the greater the alphabetic distance between the original word and its rep= lacement and the simpler the words found."=0A=0AYou're not going to have th= e same results by choosing the Littr=E9 or the Laffont dictionaries. In an = American context, the word-results are going to differ on the choice betwee= n a more "progressive" dictionary like the American Heritage and a more "co= nservative" one like the OED (not quite sure why I am putting quotation mar= ks).=0A=0AIt is also important to remember that Oulipo has two components t= o its activities: an analytic one and a synthetic one. It therefore does no= t fall into a Romantic model of the poet role where the poet is "inspired" = to write something original. Rather, it seeks to study the rules of languag= e so as to not be enslaved by them.=0A=0AThat being said, why should Angelo= u be superior to Jean Lescure because she came up with her individual poems= "on her own"? Did Lescure come up with his procedure on his own too? Does = he not deserve the merit of originality too?=0A=0ACheers,=0A=0Afran=E7ois l= uong=0A=0APS: Of course, this was a lot of paraphrasing. I'm not even appro= aching Oulipo's connection to the Coll=E8ge de 'Pataphysique.=0A=0A=0A=0A= =0A=0A=0A ____________________________________________________________= ________________________=0ANever miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. = =0Ahttp://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:38:37 -0500 Reply-To: nickpiombino Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: nickpiombino Subject: Ron Silliman reviews OCHO 14 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I guest edited an issue of OCHO (#14) (the Mipoesias print companion) and i= t was reviewed on Ron Silliman's blog on December 27. Ron writes "The jolt = I felt was as tho I had a new issue of a language poetry journal in my hand= s for the first time in years. It was like a huge rush of adrenalin as I lo= oked at its table of contents & began to dive right in. It=E2=80=99s a terr= ific issue, with nothing but good work from cover to cover. After reading i= t, tho, I realized that my jolt, or at least my sense of this as the latest= thing in langpo, was something I brought to the occasion. For as good as O= cho 14 is, it really is something else." http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/12/one-reason-that-it-seems-clear-to-m= e.html Nick Piombino=20 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:33:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems -- Marcus' Premise and the Poetics List In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801072035h594b569al968d8c4c4cade6b0@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I agree with Murat. If the quoted is so sacrosanct, why are we discussing Hillary Clinton's comments in NH? -Rd On Jan 7, 2008 11:35 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > "The Poetics List is not a forum for a general discussion of > poetry > or for the exchange of poems. 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." > > Isn't what Marcus doing exactly this kind of questioning, regardless of > whether one agrees with him or not? > > Ciao, > > Murat > > On Jan 7, 2008 2:03 PM, amy king wrote: > > > Marcus, > > > > You determined that because "pumice of morons" was arrived at through > > chance methods, rather than someone "thinking them up" like Angelou (as > you > > state below), the results are not significant. This type of elementary > > attack against exploratory poetics recurs on occasion here, but your > gross > > characterizations and belligerent accusations of "crap" ultimately mire > any > > merit your posts might have in useless defensiveness and your anger, > rather > > than furthering constructive discussion. > > > > The purpose of the list is not to repeatedly defend why innovative > > techniques exist as there are other forums for those general > discussions. > > Please note: > > > > "The Poetics List is not a forum for a general discussion of > > poetry or for the exchange of poems. Our aim is to support, inform, > > and extend those directions in poetry that are committed to > innovations, > > renovations, and investigations of form and/or/as content, to the > > questioning of received forms and styles, and to the creation > of > > the otherwise unimagined, untried, unexpected, improbable, and > > impossible. While we recognize that other lists may sponsor > other > > possibilities for exchange, we request that those participating > in > > this forum keep in mind the specialized and focused nature of > this > > project and respect our decision to operate a moderated list. > The > > Poetics List exists to support and encourage divergent points > of > > view on innovative forms of modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, > > and we are committed to do what is necessary to preserve this space > for > > such > > dialog." > > > > --from Poetics List Welcome Message > > http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/welcome.html > > > > > > Marcus Bales wrote: > > The only way "pumice of morons" or "lower than the angiosperm" would be > > interesting, significant, or important would be if someone thought them > up > > as ways to mock Angelou's poem -- but no one thought them up. They are > the > > result of an N+7 mechanical process and are, therefore, even more > > meaninglessly trite (however trite you may think it) because at least > > Angelou was writing her own stuff. > > > > > > --------------------------------- > > Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! > > Search. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 09:50:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Halvard Johnson Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) "Take two algorithms and call me in the morning," saith the doctor. "On the blessed wave of fire I write your name." --Paul =C9luard Halvard Johnson =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D halvard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html http://entropyandme.blogspot.com http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com http://www.hamiltonstone.org http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html On Jan 8, 2008, at 12:16 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: >> We aren't, and there are a couple of great books on the subject. >> If you haven't got the patience to wade through Heidegger's >> "Being and Time" then the more readable, fun, and interesting >> version of the story can be found in Hubert Dreyfus's "What >> Computers Can't Do." > > There is no proof, and probably never will be, that there are any =20 > thought > processes of which humans are capable and computers are not. > > There are things that computers can't do. But there is no proof that =20= > humans > can do them either. > > Turing devised the Turing machine (though he didn't call them Turing > machines), which is a mathematical construct, not a material =20 > machine, as a > means to show that there are some tasks that no algorithm can =20 > accomplish. > More particularly, he showed that there cannot exist any algorithm =20 > of the > type requested by David Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem (see > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem ). > > In other words, Turing invented computers somewhat incidentally; he =20= > invented > them as a theoretical means to solve the Entscheidungsproblem, which =20= > was one > of the outstanding mathematical problems of its day. And it's rather > delicious that he invented the Turing machine to show that there are =20= > some > things that algorithms cannot accomplish. Computers were invented > incidentally as a means to show there are some things computers =20 > can't do. > > So we have known from the very start of the theory of computation =20 > that there > are some things that computers/algorithms cannot accomplish. > > But there is absolutely no proof that humans can do any of these =20 > things > either. > > There are many claims to the contrary, but to date, they are all =20 > fallacious. > It would be front page news if Computer Scientists verified any of =20 > these > claims. Because it would mean that the human mind is truly more =20 > advanced > than any computer will ever be, can ever be. Many people really want =20= > to > believe this is true. But I think it unlikely. Which doesn't make us =20= > any > less marvelous than we truly are. > > ja > http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 10:02:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cunningham Subject: Re: death of a Persian modernist In-Reply-To: <305706.67083.qm@web86015.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1250" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thank you for letting us know about this. Are there any of her works available in translation which capture her writing style and poetic form? John Cunningham -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On Behalf Of Barry Schwabsky Sent: January 8, 2008 3:38 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: death of a Persian modernist The Guardian reports the death of a "leading light of the modernist movement in Persian poetry": http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2236844,00.html No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: 07/01/2008 9:14 AM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: 07/01/2008 9:14 AM ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 08:21:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amy king Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems -- Marcus' Premise and the Poetics List In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801072035h594b569al968d8c4c4cade6b0@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Marcus' posts, before today, were riddled with name-calling, among other insults, and an anger against the poetics many list members engage in. That kind of anger reminds me of the historical problems the Poetics List has experienced, especially before the list was moderated. Such attacks have sufficiently silenced members in the past, and so, my post was a reminder of the supportive aim of the Poetics List, most especially, "The Poetics List exists to support and encourage divergent points of view on innovative forms of modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, and we are committed to do what is necessary to preserve this space for such dialog." Anyone can challenge the very existence of these poetics, but I am certain that since most members engage in these practices, he can do so respectfully and with civility. Amy Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: "The Poetics List is not a forum for a general discussion of poetry or for the exchange of poems. 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." Isn't what Marcus doing exactly this kind of questioning, regardless of whether one agrees with him or not? Ciao, Murat On Jan 7, 2008 2:03 PM, amy king wrote: > Marcus, > > You determined that because "pumice of morons" was arrived at through > chance methods, rather than someone "thinking them up" like Angelou (as you > state below), the results are not significant. This type of elementary > attack against exploratory poetics recurs on occasion here, but your gross > characterizations and belligerent accusations of "crap" ultimately mire any > merit your posts might have in useless defensiveness and your anger, rather > than furthering constructive discussion. > > The purpose of the list is not to repeatedly defend why innovative > techniques exist as there are other forums for those general discussions. > Please note: > > "The Poetics List is not a forum for a general discussion of > poetry or for the exchange of poems. Our aim is to support, inform, > and extend those directions in poetry that are committed to innovations, > renovations, and investigations of form and/or/as content, to the > questioning of received forms and styles, and to the creation of > the otherwise unimagined, untried, unexpected, improbable, and > impossible. While we recognize that other lists may sponsor other > possibilities for exchange, we request that those participating in > this forum keep in mind the specialized and focused nature of this > project and respect our decision to operate a moderated list. The > Poetics List exists to support and encourage divergent points of > view on innovative forms of modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, > and we are committed to do what is necessary to preserve this space for > such > dialog." > > --from Poetics List Welcome Message > http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/welcome.html > > > Marcus Bales wrote: > The only way "pumice of morons" or "lower than the angiosperm" would be > interesting, significant, or important would be if someone thought them up > as ways to mock Angelou's poem -- but no one thought them up. They are the > result of an N+7 mechanical process and are, therefore, even more > meaninglessly trite (however trite you may think it) because at least > Angelou was writing her own stuff. > > > --------------------------------- > Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! > Search. > --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 11:27:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <117832.66642.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline > > "Did Lescure come up with his procedure on his own too? Does he not > deserve the merit of originality too? > Does this mean that each subsequent N+7 endeavor lacks originality? I would say there a whole lot more --not to take issue with Fran=E7ois, sin= ce the paraphrasal was mentioned-- involved in the method than just which dictionary you grab. Namely, the text you choose to N+7. Fagin and Coolidge chose Angelou's for a reason. I suspect it mostly had to do with the fact o= f what they knew: that Angelou was treating language as a marker of distinction; that I speak and you listen to me because of who I am, not wha= t I'm saying. They found (I assume) the idea preposterous. It's a resting on one's linguistic (not to mention, societal) laurels. The text On the Pulse of Morning -- granted, in my humble opinion -- is a reminder that intelligent people can become lazy (and cheesy, sentimental, etc) when they assume their every word is received with epic weight. N+7 really functions as a teaching mode (again, imho) when students learn exactly what is changed when syntax and meaning are altered. Some words don't change a sentence's "weight" all that much, and they then attempt to resolve why that is... -rd On Jan 8, 2008 12:50 AM, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > It seems that in the discussion of the n+7 constraint, the role of > mathematics in OuLiPo has been forgotten. The majority of the readers of > this list already know the following, but this is for Marcus: there is > nothing random about the method. OuLiPians abhorred the randomness of the > Surrealists and Dada (see the introduction to the Oulipo Compendium, edit= ed > by Harry Mathews). What they sought was to instill a mathematical rigor a= nd > consistency to their study and writing of mathematics. What the n+7 metho= d > reveals (because there is a scientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians d= id) > is how syntax and meaning have a relationship, based on certain social > conditions (here, the dictionary). > > Again, here is the explanation of the method from the Oulipo Compendium: > > N+7 (S+7). A method invented by Jean Lescure that "consists" (in Queneau'= s > terse definition) "in replacing each noun (N) with the seventh following = it > in a dictionary." > Before beginning the operation, it is obviously necessary to choose a tex= t > and a dictionary. (...) When choosing the dictionary, it is useful to > remember that the smaller it is, the greater the alphabetic distance betw= een > the original word and its replacement and the simpler the words found." > > You're not going to have the same results by choosing the Littr=E9 or the > Laffont dictionaries. In an American context, the word-results are going = to > differ on the choice between a more "progressive" dictionary like the > American Heritage and a more "conservative" one like the OED (not quite s= ure > why I am putting quotation marks). > > It is also important to remember that Oulipo has two components to its > activities: an analytic one and a synthetic one. It therefore does not fa= ll > into a Romantic model of the poet role where the poet is "inspired" to wr= ite > something original. Rather, it seeks to study the rules of language so as= to > not be enslaved by them. > > That being said, why should Angelou be superior to Jean Lescure because > she came up with her individual poems "on her own"? Did Lescure come up w= ith > his procedure on his own too? Does he not deserve the merit of originalit= y > too? > > Cheers, > > fran=E7ois luong > > PS: Of course, this was a lot of paraphrasing. I'm not even approaching > Oulipo's connection to the Coll=E8ge de 'Pataphysique. > > > > > > > > ________________________________________________________________________= ____________ > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. > http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 11:50:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Luong and Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <117832.66642.qm@web35605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > It seems that in the discussion of the n+7 constraint, the role of > mathematics in OuLiPo has been forgotten. ... OuLiPians abhorred > the randomness of the Surrealists and Dada (see the introduction to > the Oulipo Compendium, edited by Harry Mathews). What they sought > was to instill a mathematical rigor and consistency to their study > and writing of mathematics.< There had been, of course, no rigor or consistency to the study and writin= g of mathematics prior to 1960, so thank god for the oulipians, eh? On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > What the n+7 method reveals (because > there is a scientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians did) is how > syntax and meaning have a relationship, based on certain social > conditions (here, the dictionary).< There is no scientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians did -- there is a = social hypothesis, but no scientific one. Science is a different endeavor from ar= t primarily because one cannot make a testable hypothesis and a replicable experiment that predicts how artists are going to act in any specific enou= gh way to be meaningful under any particular set of circumstances. Artists do= not orbit the sun or the like -- their acts are volitional, not mechanistic. P= seudo- science using scientific-sounding words, which are almost always in postmodernist practice either misunderstood or simply used wrong, is not t= he same as science. On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > ... here is the explanation of the method from the Oulipo > Compendium: > N+7 (S+7). A method invented by Jean Lescure that "consists" (in > Queneau's terse definition) "in replacing each noun (N) with the > seventh following it in a dictionary. ... Before beginning the operation= , > it is obviously necessary to choose > a text and a dictionary. (...) When choosing the dictionary, it is > useful to remember that the smaller it is, the greater the > alphabetic distance between the original word and its replacement > and the simpler the words found." Yes, yes, we all know what the N+7 method is. But it's still a claim that = by replacing nouns with the 7th following them in the dictionary one can crea= te a piece of art mechanically, without human choices in the process. Gwyn's cl= aim went even further -- she claimed that the N+7 process was an effective par= ody or spoof of a particular poem. My point is that that cannot be true even i= f you accept N+7 as a valid artistic procedure because the N+7 method makes a hash of ANY poem, not just bad poems. There is nothing in the N+7 method that distinguishes between good and bad poems and makes good poems better and bad poems worse. The method treats all poems the same, and equally makes a hash of good ones and bad ones. On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > It is also important to remember that Oulipo has two components to > its activities: an analytic one and a synthetic one. It therefore > does not fall into a Romantic model of the poet role where the poet > is "inspired" to write something original. Rather, it seeks to study > the rules of language so as to not be enslaved by them. Studying the rules of language and seeking not to be enslaved by them doesn't sound like much of an aesthetic manifesto, does it. As a pedagogic= al tool (as someone has posted) to get kids to use the dictionary and become more interested in language and words, the N+7 method has obvious merit --= but its merit consists in comparing how words work within a grammar, and n= ot in creating a new piece of art. As a philosophical experiment to examine h= ow dictionaries work, or how language works, the N+7 method may have merit, too -- but, once again, it's not the merit of creating new works of art. On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > That being said, why should Angelou be superior to Jean Lescure > because she came up with her individual poems "on her own"? Did > Lescure come up with his procedure on his own too? Does he not > deserve the merit of originality too? Coming up with a poem on your own is a different kind of endeavor from coming up with a procedure on your own, unless you're saying that the N+7 claim is that the procedure will always produce a work of art by mechanica= l application of its mechanistic process. Are you really saying that? If you're not, then writing a poem and initiating a procedure for examinin= g language are different endeavors. Lescure's creativity in philosophy is di= fferent from Angelou's creativity in poetry -- even if you claim, as it appears yo= u do, that Lescure's work compared to his philosophical colleagues' work is supe= rior in a way that Angelou's work compared to her poetic colleagues' work is no= t. In order to make the point you seem to be trying to make, that Oulipian wo= rks using the N+7 method are works of art in and of themselves as a result not= of any human choices, but rather by mechanistic reference to a particular boo= k, then any book-code must also be a work of art. That might also mean that a= ny code is a work of art. Do you claim either of those? I reject the notion that any algorithm is going to produce a work of art. = I do not reject the notion that algorithms are useful for any number of other sorts= of endeavor. I do not reject the notion that algorithms can be used heuristic= ally to jump-start the human creative process. But I do emphatically reject the no= tion that by applying the N+7 method to a poem that you can spoof or parody or create anything resembling a satire of that particular poem, because the N= +7 method makes the same KIND of hash out of ANY poem, not only out of bad ones. On 7 Jan 2008 at 20:23, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > Randomness has something to do, it seems to me, with the > disintegration, destruction of the ego, which is an essential concept > both in Sufism and perhaps Buddhism. In Sufism, this loss of ego (which = , > specifically in poetry, leads to Eda, a transformation in the concept of= the > lyric "I") opens up the spirit to divine consciousness.< First, I assert that there is no such thing as "divine consciousness". The= re is no god, of any sort. I think the feeling that is described as, for example= , "divind consciousness" or "afflatus", among others, is merely a psychological stat= e. It has no connection to any sort of divinity because there is no such thing a= s any kind of divinity. Second, the notion of destruction of ego seems to me to absolutely elimina= te the possibility of any art whatever. It is human striving that creates art= , and to eliminate one's humanity in the service of becoming so unaware, so unconscious, that one lives entirely in the moment, like an animal, must o= f necessity eliminate any capacity for making art. I suppose I must leave op= en the possibility that such a striving to eliminate one's humanity is in and= of itself an art, the artifact of which is an animal that outwardly resembles a huma= n being but which has, by art, sacrificed its humanity on the altar of the p= rocess, and is no longer capable of either art or humanity. I reject the entire notion of spirituality whole. Human beings create thei= r own meaning within an experience of the external world that is only a partiall= y accurate recreation of that external world internally. There is no meaning= either external or internal to a human being that a human being does not create -- but there is an external world which each human being experience= s more or less accurately depending on the various cultures he or she has be= en brought up and lives in. That external world is spectacularly unforgiving,= and often dangerous, which means that human beings have come up with a wide range of explanations for why what happens happens. Among the failed explanations are all sorts of divinity stories. The unive= rse, as JBS Haldane observed, is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer t= han we can imagine. Human beings will simply never understand it all, but some= explanations are more successful than others, and we should at least pursu= e those explanations that are more successful, and abandon those that are no= t. So it seems to me that since randomness is generally as unsuccessful, all = by itself, as any divinity story, it is unwise to privilege randomness with a= ny sort of sublime effects that approximate or replicate divinity stories. Not one of= you is really serious about randomness in your lives, or you'd never survive. If = you really believed in randomness as a path to divinity you'd eat, for example= , randomly -- not only with respect to time but with respect to what you put= in your mouth. You'd pee when you needed to and shit when you pleased, irrespective of any social conventions, which any devotee of randomness must regard as trivial nonsense. Since by the fact that you are successful= enough at western-style living to be subscribed to this list you are clear= ly not devotees of randomness, why theorize about how randomness might make art, when following randomness in life is so obviously a bad idea? Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 09:20:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Initially I thought this was just one more subtle attempt to achieve what some now say is possibly true: Algorithms = Al Gore Rhythms Ah, why people love to be around poets! (yaaa!) Stephen V http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Halvard Johnson wrote: "Take two algorithms and call me in the morning," saith the doctor. "On the blessed wave of fire I write your name." --Paul Éluard Halvard Johnson ================ halvard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html http://entropyandme.blogspot.com http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com http://www.hamiltonstone.org http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html On Jan 8, 2008, at 12:16 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: >> We aren't, and there are a couple of great books on the subject. >> If you haven't got the patience to wade through Heidegger's >> "Being and Time" then the more readable, fun, and interesting >> version of the story can be found in Hubert Dreyfus's "What >> Computers Can't Do." > > There is no proof, and probably never will be, that there are any > thought > processes of which humans are capable and computers are not. > > There are things that computers can't do. But there is no proof that > humans > can do them either. > > Turing devised the Turing machine (though he didn't call them Turing > machines), which is a mathematical construct, not a material > machine, as a > means to show that there are some tasks that no algorithm can > accomplish. > More particularly, he showed that there cannot exist any algorithm > of the > type requested by David Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem (see > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem ). > > In other words, Turing invented computers somewhat incidentally; he > invented > them as a theoretical means to solve the Entscheidungsproblem, which > was one > of the outstanding mathematical problems of its day. And it's rather > delicious that he invented the Turing machine to show that there are > some > things that algorithms cannot accomplish. Computers were invented > incidentally as a means to show there are some things computers > can't do. > > So we have known from the very start of the theory of computation > that there > are some things that computers/algorithms cannot accomplish. > > But there is absolutely no proof that humans can do any of these > things > either. > > There are many claims to the contrary, but to date, they are all > fallacious. > It would be front page news if Computer Scientists verified any of > these > claims. Because it would mean that the human mind is truly more > advanced > than any computer will ever be, can ever be. Many people really want > to > believe this is true. But I think it unlikely. Which doesn't make us > any > less marvelous than we truly are. > > ja > http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 02:34:32 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christophe Casamassima Subject: Call for Works in any medium Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 I'm currently moving to my own (finally) apartment. I'm sad there's such ba= re walls so I'm asking everyone on this list for some work. I want to creat= e a little studio in my dining room of art- and/or word-works that I can de= corate the room with. Any size will be fine, and any medium will be OK. I d= on't want to go out and buy shitty little candles or very expensive artwork= s so I'm soliciting free materials from everyone I know.=20 Please let me know if you want to send something so I can look out for it. = Thanks! Towson University 8000 York Road Towson, MD 21252 Attn: Cook Library c/o Christophe Casamassima =3D Search for products and services at:=20 http://search.mail.com --=20 Powered By Outblaze ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 14:02:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: susan maurer Subject: you tube entry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable thanks to roxanne hoffman of poets wear prada press for putting up the beau= tifully done record of my performance at the bowery poetry club.Now on you = tube. susan maurer =20 _________________________________________________________________ Watch =93Cause Effect,=94 a show about real people making a real difference= . http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=3Dtext_watchcause= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 13:05:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Crockett Subject: What I learned this month, a list. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear All, A list of things I've learned since last week, framed as 3 parts actual, 2 parts lunacy --- - That the dual equality operator ( === ) is only relevant in object oriented ((socially) progressive) programming methodology. - How to escape from writing static web pages in PHP, for Ruby, and Ruby on Rails. - How to make use of the fact that one plus one equals two. - How to make use of things that don't work if you need them to work. And more, on my blog: http://denacht.blogspot.com. All the best, Jesse ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 20:55:59 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: death of a Persian modernist MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ----- Original Messag= Even Googling her name draws only three hits.=0A=0A=0A----- Original Messag= e ----=0AFrom: John Cunningham =0ATo: POETICS@LI= STSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: Tuesday, 8 January, 2008 4:02:32 PM=0ASubject: R= e: death of a Persian modernist=0A=0AThank you for letting us know about th= is. Are there any of her works=0Aavailable in translation which capture her= writing style and poetic form?=0AJohn Cunningham=0A=0A-----Original Messag= e-----=0AFrom: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO= .EDU] On=0ABehalf Of Barry Schwabsky=0ASent: January 8, 2008 3:38 AM=0ATo: = POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASubject: death of a Persian modernist=0A=0AT= he Guardian reports the death of a "leading light of the modernist movement= =0Ain Persian poetry":=0A=0Ahttp://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2= 236844,00.html=0A=0ANo virus found in this incoming message.=0AChecked by A= VG Free Edition. =0AVersion: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Rel= ease Date: 07/01/2008=0A9:14 AM=0A=0A=0ANo virus found in this outgoing mes= sage.=0AChecked by AVG Free Edition. =0AVersion: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: = 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: 07/01/2008=0A9:14 AM ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 22:44:17 +0100 Reply-To: argotist@fsmail.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Side Subject: Review by Pam Brown of 'Carrier of the Seed' in Jacket Magazine Comments: To: British Poetics , Poetryetc , Womens Poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There is a review by Pam Brown of my ebook 'Carrier of the Seed' in Jacket Magazine: http://jacketmagazine.com/35/side-rb-brown.shtml ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 18:29:43 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Tom W. Lewis" Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <47821403.3263.70CBFD3@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >>is great art<< just happened to look at my List backlog and discovered this string -- will read further, but will comment here: I thought "great art"-ism had died off a while ago.=20 should I change tack midstream now and try to compose "great art" after all?=20 what a hang, if so.=20 tl -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On Behalf Of Marcus Bales Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 10:59 To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems On 6 Jan 2008 at 19:51, Pierre Joris wrote: > so Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, the Oulipo people, the surrealists,=20 > Dada, i.e. the core of 20th century experimental poets are all =20 > scoundrels & con men? Come on, Marcus, you seem to have missed a > whole century in poetry, > Pierre so Jacquard Mace Lower, Joint Cain, the Ouster pepsin, the surtaxes,=20 daguerrotype, i.e. the corked of twiddle cereal expletive pois are all scowls=20 and concave menarches? Come on, Margrave, you seem to have missed a=20 whole cereal in poi. Here is an N+7 substitution for your original, and thus I refute your assertion=20 that any N+7 substitution is great art that reveals the essential nonsense of=20 the original. Say, no wonder you postmodernists like this kind of thing -- it's so=20 easy! No thinking, no art, no work involved. Just look things up in the=20 dictionary! Real class, that. What are you going to do, Pierre, write 4'34"? Maybe 4'35" as a topper?=20 Yes, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, the Oulipo people, the surrealists, Dada,=20 the whole core of 20th century experimental poets are all scoundrels and con=20 men. They are laughing up their sleeves at the extraordinary ease that your=20 bourgeois M. Joudainist gullibility fell for their Tartuffian schemes: why, you've=20 been speaking Poetry all this time! Marcus =20 >=20 > On Jan 6, 2008, at 10:33 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: >=20 > > N+7 poems are stupid, one and all. There is no cleverness, no > craft, =20 > > no wit, no > > art, in any of them. Art is not, and cannot be, random, because an > > endeavor > > based on randomness is mere time-wasting: the results cannot be=20 > > significant > > or important. In particular, N+7 cannot "spoof" anything because > the =20 > > very > > notion of a parody or spoof is to be an intentionally significant=20 > > (and maybe an > > important) act. No N+7 substitution can be either significant or=20 > > important > > because art is a matter of human intentions, not a matter of the > mere > > propinquity of words in a particular edition of a particular =20 > > dictionary. Removing > > human intention from the endeavor removes the possibility of > art. > > > > What's clever or witty about a mechanical change of "pulse of =20 > > morning" to > > "pumice of morons"? Nothing, unless you thought it up yourself. As > > an act of > > human creativity to go on from you'd have something to go forward=20 > > with. But > > of course the N+7 method offers nothing even faintly resembling a=20 > > way to go > > forward with, and even less of human creativity. > > > > And what is clever or even interesting about mechanically =20 > > substituting "a little > > lower than the angiosperm" for "a little lower than the angels"?=20 > > Again, if you'd > > thought it up, it might be an interesting place to go forward > from, =20 > > but it is not > > gone forward from. Worse, it has no meaningful connection to the=20 > > "pumice of > > morons". Neither phrase has the least wit or art when the result > of =20 > > merely > > mechanical selection because without human intention the entire=20 > > enterprise is > > dead on arrival. Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. > > > > N+7 offers nothing whatever since the idea of parody or spoof is > to =20 > > show, by > > human intention, how badly some other human intention has gone =20 > > wrong. N+7 > > is no more a parody or spoof of anything than mowing the lawn is a > > parody or > > spoof of grass. > > > > Mechanical word substitutions do not create parodies -- people > of > > accomplishment do -- and they must, since the nature of parodies > and =20 > > spoofs > > requires that the writer and reader are familiar with the > original, =20 > > with the > > context in which the original was offered, and the changed context > > in which > > the parody is offered. N+7 not only is no satire, no parody, and > no =20 > > spoof, but it > > cannot be: to mechanically substitute N+7 to someone's poem and > then > > purport to laugh at the ridiculousnesses thereby engendered > because =20 > > you'd > > get the same proportion of the same sorts of ridiculousnesses by > > mechanically substituting N+7 for ANY poem. It is no > accomplishment. =20 > > For > > people who want to be thought of as people of accomplishment it's=20 > > worse than > > that: it's inviting your friends over for dinner and serving them=20 > > the excrement > > you've fished out of your toilet bowl instead: it's an insult to=20 > > your friends, not to > > the notion of dinner. > > > > In short, N+7 is self-evident incompetence. Randomness as the > basis =20 > > for art is > > the first refuge of scoundrels and the last word in confidence > tricks. > > > > Marcus >=20 > ___________________________________________________________ >=20 > The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan > ___________________________________________________________ > Pierre Joris > 244 Elm Street > Albany NY 12202 > h: 518 426 0433 > c: 518 225 7123 > o: 518 442 40 71 > Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 > email: joris@albany.edu > http://pierrejoris.com > Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com > ____________________________________________________________ >=20 >=20 > --=20 > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition.=20 > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: > 1/7/2008 9:14 AM >=20 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 18:33:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: UbuWeb Subject: UBUWEB :: Selected Resources - Jan 2008, by Alex Ross Comments: To: lowercase-sound@yahoogroups.com, silence@Virginia.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit UbuWeb http://ubu.com Selected Resources - Jan 2008, by Alex Ross 1. Robert Ashley "She Was a Visitor" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/extended_voices/Extended-Voices_4_Robert-Ashley.mp3 2. Kurt Schwitters "Sonata in Urlauten" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/schwitters_kurt/ursonate/Schwitters-Kurt_Ursonate_01_Einleitung_Und_Erster_Teil 3. John Cale "Loop" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/aspen/mp3/loopJ 4. The Films of Mauricio Kagel http://www.ubu.com/film/kagel.html" 5. Charles Amirkhanian "Dog of Stravinsky" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/amirkhanian_charles/mental_radio/Amirkhanian_Charles-Mental_Radio-03_Dog 6. Bernd Alois Zimmermann "Musique pour le soupers de Roi Ubu" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/zimmerman_ba/Zimmermann-Bernd-Alois_Roi-Ubu 7. Pauline Oliveros "Sound Patterns" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/extended_voices/Extended-Voices_1_Pauline-Oliveros 8. Ezra Pound "Sestina: Altaforte" http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Pound/1939/Pound-Ezra_01_Sestina-Altaforte_Harvard_1939 9. John Cage "4'33" http://ubu.com/film/cage_433.html 10. Robert Ashley "The Wolfman" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/source/Ashley-Robert_Wolfman Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His work has also appeared in The New Republic, The London Review of Books, Lingua Franca, and The Guardian. From 1992 to 1996 he was a critic at The New York Times. He has received two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism, fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for contributions to the field of contemporary music. He played keyboards in the noise band Miss Teen Schnauzer, which gave only one public performance, in 1991. His first book, "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century," a cultural history of music since 1900, was published in October 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Alex Ross' homepage: http://www.therestisnoise.com -- UbuWeb http://ubu.com UbuWeb http://ubu.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 22:41:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Luong and Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <478363A2.18134.C2BC2E8@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > Second, the notion of destruction of ego seems to me to absolutely > eliminate the possibility of any art whatever. Have you seen pictures of this really cool place called "Angkor Wat"? It is human striving that creates > art, and to > eliminate one's humanity in the service of becoming so unaware, so > unconscious, that one lives entirely in the moment, like an animal, *reaches for Zen stick, bonks you with it* We ARE animals. > I reject the entire notion of spirituality whole. How can you, when you flagrantly don't comprehend all of what you're rejecting? > You'd pee when you needed to and shit when you pleased, > irrespective of any social conventions, which any devotee of randomness > must regard as trivial nonsense. ... which any FUNDAMENTALIST of randomness, etc. Reductio ad absurdum. Gwyn (who feels responsible for this discussion's getting all the way here from Angelou) McVay ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 21:27:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jill Chan Subject: Call for submisions Comments: To: Women Poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Numinous:Spiritual Poetry, a new literary e-zine to be launched in June 2008. We publish all kinds of poems of a spiritual nature. Submissions now open. Send your original, previously unpublished poems and a short bio to numinousmagazine@yahoo.com Thank you. regards J Chan editor http://numinousmagazine.wordpress.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 01:30:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <4782BFD1.27343.9ABDD30@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline In what way is the argument on behalf N+7 creating art different from a monkey writing Hamlet (or a "critique" of it) given a typewrter and enough paper and time? One has to still locate "the Hamlet" among infnite numbers of paper (maybe a Boges library made up of pages typed by a compulsive obsessive monkey). I think that infinite endlessness of a seductively easy method (which may even appear like a revelation) that Marcus is reacting to= . Ciao, Murat On Jan 8, 2008 12:12 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > "... it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the rando= m > in art > that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it offer= s > perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful > regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods." > > That=B4s sort of like believing that God will correct any errors in your > scientific > methodology to ensure that it comes out all right, and then using that > God- > corrected methodology to show there is no God. It=B4s trying to have it b= oth > ways. > > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > "... and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating on > the > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysterious > part > of the universe into the writing process." > > "As though" but not really. You seem to be saying that "the random" is a > mental trick you use to deceive yourself into letting your own practice > expertise seem to you as if it were not a part of you in order to give > yourself > permission to write what you might not have written otherwise? I have no > kick > with using random elements to kick-start the creative process. My > objection is > to the N+7 (and any other similar) claim that by a purely mechanical > random > process one can create art. > > On 7 Jan 2008 steve russell wrote: > I don't see why being attentive to randomness should be regarded as a > disregard of craft. One chooses, assembles ..." > > But "attentive to randomness" is not the same as "randomness itself > creates > art". It is the choosing and assembling to which you refer, done by a > human to > appeal to humans, that is a necessary (though not sufficient) requirement > for > art. My objection is to the notion that randomness can, all by itself, > create art > in general, and in particular to the notion that a mechanistic replacemen= t > of > nouns in any poem by a random method can make an interesting, significant= , > or important, or any satire, parody, or spoof of that original poem. The > methodology will make hash of ANY poem because it makes hash of ALL > poems, and not because any given particular original poem is in some way > defective. The method makes equal hash of all poems, good or bad - and > thus cannot be counted in any way, by any means, to be an effective parod= y > or spoof of a particular poem. > > On 7 Jan 2008 steve russell wrote: > "& no matter how seemingly random, things take on some sort of shape. > DADA started to hint strongly towards the often violent dislocations that > would > shape modernity. so why not involve our friend the machine?" > > If things take on some sort of consistent shape then they cannot really b= e > random. Things that take on randomly changing shapes aren=B4t the same > things any more because they change from thing to thing as they change > from > shape to shape. Once again, you=B4re trying to have it both ways, and it > won=B4t > do. > > I have no objection to asking a machine to pick six words, for example, > randomly, using which you then write a sestina, because the randomness is > heuristic not causative. You still have to write the sestina, making all > the rest > of the choices. Even when you=B4re done, it may not be a very good sestin= a, > though, since part of the quality of a good sestina is the exercise of > good > judgment about the choice of those six words. Still, I agree there is a > chance > that a good sestina may be written using six words randomly chosen. But > the > sestina is a piece of art, if it turns out to be one instead of a mere > exercise, > because of the choices the artist makes, not because of the randomness of > the choice of the words. > > On 7 Jan 2008 Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > "While I agree with you that N+7 has little chance of producing 'artistic= ' > results, I would not dismiss the possibility that it might do so - > especially with > small samples of text, perhaps run through several different dictionaries > (some of which might yield interesting results for various samples)." > > I dismiss the possibility because an algorithm doesn=B4t produce art, peo= ple > do. > Art is a human-only endeavor. If a machine ever produces art, we=B4ll hav= e > to > call it human, and change our definition of human to include the kind of > machine that can produce art. Such a machine would be human: it would be > able to lie, to refuse to do work assigned to it, to control whether it > could be > turned off or not, and so forth - it would be autonomous. Imagine if your > computer could tell you it preferred not to reproduce the poem you just > typed > in, or that it could lie and cheat, and send your poem off to a magazine > under > its own name, and so on. Such computers would be useless as machines, as > computers. They would be autonomous human agents, free from the slavery > that being a machine entailed. > > The production of `artistic=B4 results for N+7 after a human, using small > samples > of text run through a variety of dictionaries, exercising human judgment > about > which products warranted another run-through, or warranted saving, is not > the > same as the claim that the N+7 method of noun replacement in and of itsel= f > creates a piece of art that spoofs or parodies a particular poem. Since > the > N+7 and other such algorithms will make the same kind of hash out of ANY > poem, good or bad, it is a false claim that such a hash is a spoof or > parody of > a particular poem, irrespective of how bad the N+7 writers or readers > believe > the original poem to be. The N+7 method says NOTHING AT ALL about any > particular poem=B4s qualities. It merely creates a random hash of ANY poe= m - > it > makes ANY poem look bad. > > On 7 Jan 2008 Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > "I don't necessarily agree that randomness has no place in creativity -- = a > position you seem to take; rhyme and meter, certainly, have rather > arbitrary > roots." > > I do not say that randomness has no place in creativity; I say that the > N+7 > method, and similar methods, cannot create art; I further say that such > randomness methods cannot even create spoofs or parodies of particular > poems because their very methodology makes a hash of any poem, not only > bad poems. > > I would like to know your response to an anagrammatic form I invented ten > years ago, examples of which appear on the Beard of Bees web site at > http://www.beardofbees.com/zimmerman.html. By constructing 4x4 word > squares, running them through an online anagram generator (which produced > thousands of lines of words using the same 16letters), selecting those > that > seem ..." > > The moment you start selecting using your brain instead of a randomizing > algorithm, you have ceased to claim that the algorithm alone is creating > the > poem. I have no problem with using randomness as a heuristic part of the > creative process; what I reject, and what I object to, is the notion that > randomness can, of itself and by itself, create a work of art. > > On 7 Jan 2008 Jason Quackenbush wrote: > Aleatory is a paintbrush. like any other paintbrush it's suited to certai= n > jobs > better than others. ... same thing with Aleatory in poetry. > > Once again, this is a different claim than that randomness in and of > itself can > create art. A Jackson Pollock painting requires a Jackson Pollock to pain= t > it, > not a paint-spattering algorithm. > > Marcus > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 01:36:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: death of a Persian modernist In-Reply-To: <832682.47158.qm@web86013.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Barry, This should be a lesson that google does not contain the whole world, even outside China. Ciao, Murat On Jan 8, 2008 3:55 PM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > ----- Original Messag > Even Googling her name draws only three hits. > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: John Cunningham > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Sent: Tuesday, 8 January, 2008 4:02:32 PM > Subject: Re: death of a Persian modernist > > Thank you for letting us know about this. Are there any of her works > available in translation which capture her writing style and poetic form? > John Cunningham > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On > Behalf Of Barry Schwabsky > Sent: January 8, 2008 3:38 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: death of a Persian modernist > > The Guardian reports the death of a "leading light of the modernist > movement > in Persian poetry": > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2236844,00.html > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: > 07/01/2008 > 9:14 AM > > > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1213 - Release Date: > 07/01/2008 > 9:14 AM > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 02:21:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Luong and Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <478363A2.18134.C2BC2E8@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Marcus, Your responses to my arguments are so packed with pithy assertions that it almost hurts me to unpack them, besides the fact that it may take me for more than a week. Therefere, I will only gently touch a few of your assertions: a) > Randomness has something to do, it seems to me, with the > disintegration, destruction of the ego, which is an essential concept > both in Sufism and perhaps Buddhism. In Sufism, this loss of ego (which , > specifically in poetry, leads to Eda, a transformation in the concept of the > lyric "I") opens up the spirit to divine consciousness.< First, I assert that there is no such thing as "divine consciousness". Ther= e is no god, of any sort. I think the feeling that is described as, for example, "divind consciousness" or "afflatus", among others, is merely a psychological state= . It has no connection to any sort of divinity because there is no such thing as any kind of divinity. "Divine consciousness" exists because it exists as a concept in Sufism. Do you mean that I made this whole assersion about Sufism up or only that the concept itself is an illusion? If it is the latter, is "a psychological state" then not merely a concept but something more? How is "a psychologica= l state" more real than "divine consciousness"? By your argument there is "a psychological state" but no "divinity"? How ar= e they different? Pray explain. b) "Second, the notion of destruction of ego seems to me to absolutely eliminate the possibility of any art whatever. It is human striving that creates art, and to eliminate one's humanity in the service of becoming so unaware, so unconscious, that one lives entirely in the moment, like an animal, must of necessity eliminate any capacity for making art. I suppose I must leave ope= n the possibility that such a striving to eliminate one's humanity is in and of itself an art, the artifact of which is an animal that outwardly resembles a human being but which has, by art, sacrificed its humanity on the altar of the process, and is no longer capable of either art or humanity." How did you come out with the definition "it is human striving which create= s art"? To expand on one of your metaphors, human striving might also be a solution to constipation, but is it art under the circumstances? Does it mean that if a poem is written easily, it is not an artistic poem? Or do yo= u mean that the subject of art should be about aspiring to something superior or out of ordinary, provided that abject is not divine; but it can be about a psychological state? How come you equate "living entirely in the moment" with being unconscious or being like an animal? Do you mean that a poem like Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" might as well have been written by an animal, devoid of wit or consciousness? Come to think of it, do animals live in the moment? Does one need language to say that? When we say an animal does not think of or know its death, do we not mean it has no language in relation to us? Doesn't being "conscious of one's death" by necessity imply the consciousness of deathlessness -in other words divinity- whether such a thing exists or not? It is 2:20 A.M. I have to go to bed. I will leave it here. Ciao, Murat On Jan 8, 2008 11:50 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > > It seems that in the discussion of the n+7 constraint, the role of > > mathematics in OuLiPo has been forgotten. ... OuLiPians abhorred > > the randomness of the Surrealists and Dada (see the introduction to > > the Oulipo Compendium, edited by Harry Mathews). What they sought > > was to instill a mathematical rigor and consistency to their study > > and writing of mathematics.< > > There had been, of course, no rigor or consistency to the study and > writing of > mathematics prior to 1960, so thank god for the oulipians, eh? > > On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > > What the n+7 method reveals (because > > there is a scientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians did) is how > > syntax and meaning have a relationship, based on certain social > > conditions (here, the dictionary).< > > There is no scientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians did -- there is a > social > hypothesis, but no scientific one. Science is a different endeavor from > art > primarily because one cannot make a testable hypothesis and a replicable > experiment that predicts how artists are going to act in any specific > enough > way to be meaningful under any particular set of circumstances. Artists d= o > not > orbit the sun or the like -- their acts are volitional, not mechanistic. > Pseudo- > science using scientific-sounding words, which are almost always in > postmodernist practice either misunderstood or simply used wrong, is not > the > same as science. > > On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > > ... here is the explanation of the method from the Oulipo > > Compendium: > > N+7 (S+7). A method invented by Jean Lescure that "consists" (in > > Queneau's terse definition) "in replacing each noun (N) with the > > seventh following it in a dictionary. ... Before beginning the > operation, > > it is obviously necessary to choose > > a text and a dictionary. (...) When choosing the dictionary, it is > > useful to remember that the smaller it is, the greater the > > alphabetic distance between the original word and its replacement > > and the simpler the words found." > > Yes, yes, we all know what the N+7 method is. But it's still a claim that > by > replacing nouns with the 7th following them in the dictionary one can > create a > piece of art mechanically, without human choices in the process. Gwyn's > claim > went even further -- she claimed that the N+7 process was an effective > parody > or spoof of a particular poem. My point is that that cannot be true even > if you > accept N+7 as a valid artistic procedure because the N+7 method makes a > hash of ANY poem, not just bad poems. There is nothing in the N+7 method > that distinguishes between good and bad poems and makes good poems > better and bad poems worse. The method treats all poems the same, and > equally makes a hash of good ones and bad ones. > > On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > > It is also important to remember that Oulipo has two components to > > its activities: an analytic one and a synthetic one. It therefore > > does not fall into a Romantic model of the poet role where the poet > > is "inspired" to write something original. Rather, it seeks to study > > the rules of language so as to not be enslaved by them. > > Studying the rules of language and seeking not to be enslaved by them > doesn't sound like much of an aesthetic manifesto, does it. As a > pedagogical > tool (as someone has posted) to get kids to use the dictionary and become > more interested in language and words, the N+7 method has obvious merit -= - > but its merit consists in comparing how words work within a grammar, and > not > in creating a new piece of art. As a philosophical experiment to examine > how > dictionaries work, or how language works, the N+7 method may have merit, > too -- but, once again, it's not the merit of creating new works of art. > > On 7 Jan 2008 at 21:50, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > > That being said, why should Angelou be superior to Jean Lescure > > because she came up with her individual poems "on her own"? Did > > Lescure come up with his procedure on his own too? Does he not > > deserve the merit of originality too? > > Coming up with a poem on your own is a different kind of endeavor from > coming up with a procedure on your own, unless you're saying that the N+7 > claim is that the procedure will always produce a work of art by > mechanical > application of its mechanistic process. Are you really saying that? > > If you're not, then writing a poem and initiating a procedure for > examining > language are different endeavors. Lescure's creativity in philosophy is > different > from Angelou's creativity in poetry -- even if you claim, as it appears > you do, > that Lescure's work compared to his philosophical colleagues' work is > superior > in a way that Angelou's work compared to her poetic colleagues' work is > not. > > In order to make the point you seem to be trying to make, that Oulipian > works > using the N+7 method are works of art in and of themselves as a result no= t > of > any human choices, but rather by mechanistic reference to a particular > book, > then any book-code must also be a work of art. That might also mean that > any > code is a work of art. Do you claim either of those? > > I reject the notion that any algorithm is going to produce a work of art. > I do not > reject the notion that algorithms are useful for any number of other sort= s > of > endeavor. I do not reject the notion that algorithms can be used > heuristically to > jump-start the human creative process. But I do emphatically reject the > notion > that by applying the N+7 method to a poem that you can spoof or parody or > create anything resembling a satire of that particular poem, because the > N+7 > method makes the same KIND of hash out of ANY poem, not only out of bad > ones. > > On 7 Jan 2008 at 20:23, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > Randomness has something to do, it seems to me, with the > > disintegration, destruction of the ego, which is an essential concept > > both in Sufism and perhaps Buddhism. In Sufism, this loss of ego (which > , > > specifically in poetry, leads to Eda, a transformation in the concept o= f > the > > lyric "I") opens up the spirit to divine consciousness.< > > First, I assert that there is no such thing as "divine consciousness". > There is > no god, of any sort. I think the feeling that is described as, for > example, "divind > consciousness" or "afflatus", among others, is merely a psychological > state. It > has no connection to any sort of divinity because there is no such thing > as any > kind of divinity. > > Second, the notion of destruction of ego seems to me to absolutely > eliminate > the possibility of any art whatever. It is human striving that creates > art, and to > eliminate one's humanity in the service of becoming so unaware, so > unconscious, that one lives entirely in the moment, like an animal, must > of > necessity eliminate any capacity for making art. I suppose I must leave > open > the possibility that such a striving to eliminate one's humanity is in an= d > of itself > an art, the artifact of which is an animal that outwardly resembles a > human > being but which has, by art, sacrificed its humanity on the altar of the > process, > and is no longer capable of either art or humanity. > > I reject the entire notion of spirituality whole. Human beings create > their own > meaning within an experience of the external world that is only a > partially > accurate recreation of that external world internally. There is no meanin= g > either external or internal to a human being that a human being does not > create -- but there is an external world which each human being > experiences > more or less accurately depending on the various cultures he or she has > been > brought up and lives in. That external world is spectacularly unforgiving= , > and > often dangerous, which means that human beings have come up with a wide > range of explanations for why what happens happens. > > Among the failed explanations are all sorts of divinity stories. The > universe, as > JBS Haldane observed, is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer > than > we can imagine. Human beings will simply never understand it all, but som= e > explanations are more successful than others, and we should at least > pursue > those explanations that are more successful, and abandon those that are > not. > > So it seems to me that since randomness is generally as unsuccessful, all > by > itself, as any divinity story, it is unwise to privilege randomness with > any sort of > sublime effects that approximate or replicate divinity stories. Not one o= f > you is > really serious about randomness in your lives, or you'd never survive. If > you > really believed in randomness as a path to divinity you'd eat, for > example, > randomly -- not only with respect to time but with respect to what you pu= t > in > your mouth. You'd pee when you needed to and shit when you pleased, > irrespective of any social conventions, which any devotee of randomness > must regard as trivial nonsense. Since by the fact that you are successfu= l > enough at western-style living to be subscribed to this list you are > clearly not > devotees of randomness, why theorize about how randomness might make > art, when following randomness in life is so obviously a bad idea? > > Marcus > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 00:23:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <4782BFD1.27343.9ABDD30@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT > "... it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with > the random in art > that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but > it offers > perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite useful > regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods." > > That´s sort of like believing that God will correct any errors in > your scientific > methodology to ensure that it comes out all right, and then using > that God- > corrected methodology to show there is no God. It´s trying to > have it both > ways. i presume (correct me if i'm wrong) you mean that magic and random methods are notions at odds with one another. a sort of einsteinian position--he said 'god does not play dice'. whereas heraclitus said 'time is a child playing at dice. the kingdom is a child's.' > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > "... and it is a kind of portal into another force or power > operating on the > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a > mysterious part > of the universe into the writing process." > > "As though" but not really. You seem to be saying that "the random" is a > mental trick you use to deceive yourself into letting your own practice > expertise seem to you as if it were not a part of you in order to > give yourself > permission to write what you might not have written otherwise? no, not really. in part it's a way of letting something other than me into the writing process. in a way that sometimes is more interesting than what was there or is sometimes a way to experience the writing afresh or a way to see how the language works at the level of the phrase (cutups seem to stress the phrase) or a way to ponder it or experience it from a different perspective. and other people who use random methods will have different reasons and approaches. just like different people will use the same brush differently. > I > have no kick > with using random elements to kick-start the creative process. My > objection is > to the N+7 (and any other similar) claim that by a purely > mechanical random > process one can create art. there's a type of art called 'generative art'. it needn't involve computers, but these days often it does. part of the idea of computer-based--or perhaps also other types of generative art--is to create algorithms interesting and rich enough that they do indeed either create art on their own or they do so with some sort of interaction with people. i'm working on a generative art piece at the mo called dbcinema. it is a program that creates images and movies. interactively. there are some pictures at http://vispo.com/dbcinema/meditations.htm that were created by dbCinema+me. natural processes such as evolution have been magnificently successful in creating the awesome diversity of amazing life on our planet. natural process is certainly enough to create art. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 14:52:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephanie Young Subject: Simulpoem now at Deep Oakland MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Deep Oakland is happy to announce the release of *Simulpoem*, a collaborative text edited by Dillon Westbrook and featuring the work of Chad Lietz, Chris Stroffolino, Dillon Westbrook, David Harrison Horton, J. D. Mitchell-Lumsden, Loretta Clodfelter and Lara Durback. Simulpoem can viewed/downloaded here: http://67.19.91.186/~deepoak/text?id=177 ***** Affiliated with neither the tourism nor better business bureaus, Deep Oakland seeks to create a compendium of inter-linked images, text and sound that represent the complications and vitality of Oakland's current moment. -- Deep Oakland www.deepoakland.org ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 18:55:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7ois_Luong?= Subject: In response to Marcus re: N+7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I receive the responses to the list in digest form, hence much copying and = pasting from the daily dispatch.=0A=0AMarcus wrote: "There had been, of cou= rse, no rigor or consistency to the study and writing of mathematics prior = to 1960, so thank god for the oulipians, eh?"=0A=0AThanks for reminding tha= t I should not respond to emails at 11:00pm and for pointing at a glaring t= ypo. Quite obviously, I never went to French medical school and never had a= n education in sciences and mathematics. Therefore, I have no clue who Bert= rand Russell, G=F6del or Wittgenstein are, or that both Leibniz and Newton = came up with calculus separately. Nor do I know how to calculate the deriva= tive of a complex trigonometric formula.=0A=0AMarcus wrote: "There is no sc= ientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians did -- there is a social =0Ahypot= hesis, but no scientific one. Science is a different endeavor from art =0Ap= rimarily because one cannot make a testable hypothesis and a replicable =0A= experiment that predicts how artists are going to act in any specific enoug= h =0Away to be meaningful under any particular set of circumstances. Artist= s do not =0Aorbit the sun or the like -- their acts are volitional, not mec= hanistic. Pseudo-=0Ascience using scientific-sounding words, which are almo= st always in =0Apostmodernist practice either misunderstood or simply used = wrong, is not the =0Asame as science."=0A=0AYou are missing my point, which= was to show that the n+7 procedure is not random, but deterministic. Secon= dly, you fail to explain how science is a "different endeavor from art," es= pecially in regards to Oulipo. You also seem to fail to understand the aims= of Oulipo, either by ignorance or bias. To paraphrase Popper, science is t= he process of creating a discourse to explain how things work, a discourse = that will be later falsified (much like Newton's physics were proved to be = inadequate in a certain frame of reference by Einstein's theory of relativi= ty). And since we are mentioning Einstein, he and Max Planck explain that t= he course of science followed a line f(x) limited by an asymptote between t= he real (the Universe as we perceive it) and reality (the Universe as it is= ).=0A=0AApplied to the analytic branch of Oulipo, we have already asserted = by their different procedures sought to provide a scientific method to the = study of literature. In turn, the synthetic branch of Oulipo, using those p= rocedures, sought to either revive older and abandoned forms or invent new = ones.=0A=0AMarcus wrote: "Yes, yes, we all know what the N+7 method is. But= it's still a claim that by =0Areplacing nouns with the 7th following them = in the dictionary one can create a =0Apiece of art mechanically, without hu= man choices in the process. Gwyn's claim =0Awent even further -- she claime= d that the N+7 process was an effective parody =0Aor spoof of a particular = poem. My point is that that cannot be true even if you =0Aaccept N+7 as a v= alid artistic procedure because the N+7 method makes a =0Ahash of ANY poem,= not just bad poems. There is nothing in the N+7 method =0Athat distinguish= es between good and bad poems and makes good poems =0Abetter and bad poems = worse. The method treats all poems the same, and =0Aequally makes a hash of= good ones and bad ones."=0A=0AYes, yes, I had already established in my pr= eface that most of us knew what the n+7 entailed. What is at issue here is = your definition of "art," or rather your constant flinging of the word with= out really defining what you mean by "art." Can art not be mechanistic? In = the use of the n+7 procedure, isn't a choice made, here in the choice of th= e Angelou text and the dictionary? And what about photography? Isn't it an = art that use a machine? And when a painter paints figuratively, does he not= act as a camera too, in a way?=0A=0ASince I am obviously very fond of quot= ing people, Adorno (I think it was him, feel free to correct me) wrote that= art could take misery from the world, thus keeping it there, but transform= ed. That being said, is that not that Oulipo (or Dada & surrealist) procedu= res do too? Take an existing object (here the Angelou poem) and transform i= t, with the shadow of its origin still lingering?=0A=0AI'm skipping your ne= xt passage, Marcus, because Oulipo has conducted many pedagogical/inquisiti= ve seminars, and therefore there isn't really anything to object to.=0A=0AY= ou wrote next: "Coming up with a poem on your own is a different kind of en= deavor from =0Acoming up with a procedure on your own, unless you're saying= that the N+7 =0Aclaim is that the procedure will always produce a work of = art by mechanical =0Aapplication of its mechanistic process. Are you really= saying that?"=0A=0AWhat about the sonnet then? Or better yet, the villanel= le, the pantoum or the sestina? Aren't they rule-bound procedures too? Leev= i Lehto has on his website many engines to have a computer write villanelle= s. Are they not objects of art too? If not, why?=0A=0AWhich brings to your = following point, that "any algorithm is [not] going to produce a work of ar= t." I find this assertion extremely problematic, as most linguists (at leas= t, those involved in Combinatory Categorical Grammar, or CCG) have shown th= at the sentence is an algorithm. I am not announcing anything new here, but= we will all agree that language is rule-bound. What this entails in relati= on to your statement is obvious: since no algorithm can produce a work of a= rt and since language is (partly) an algorithm (well, I don't need to copy = and paste the definition of the word, do I?), then poetry, as a product of = language, is no art.=0A=0AFinally, since you assert that the destruction of= ego destroys the possibility of art (again, which refers to a very Romanti= c notion of art and which, by the way, did not exist before a bunch of craz= y Italian painters decided to call them Artists in the Renaissance), what d= o you make of collaborative arts, like the ones made by the Neue Slowenisch= e Kunst, in theater, in comic books or in cinema?=0A=0ACheers,=0A=0Afran=E7= ois=0A=0A=0A=0A ______________________________________________________= ______________________________=0ABe a better friend, newshound, and =0Aknow= -it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=3DA= hu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ =0A ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 14:09:26 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: In response to Marcus re: N+7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Just one objection, Francois: There are many forms of destruction (or, as I= would prefer to say, transcendence) of the ego, and some of them are disti= nctly Romantic in their heritage. =0A=0A=0A----- Original Message ----=0AFr= om: Fran=C3=A7ois Luong =0ATo: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFA= LO.EDU=0ASent: Wednesday, 9 January, 2008 2:55:23 AM=0ASubject: In response= to Marcus re: N+7=0A=0AI receive the responses to the list in digest form,= hence much copying and pasting from the daily dispatch.=0A=0AMarcus wrote:= "There had been, of course, no rigor or consistency to the study and writi= ng of mathematics prior to 1960, so thank god for the oulipians, eh?"=0A=0A= Thanks for reminding that I should not respond to emails at 11:00pm and for= pointing at a glaring typo. Quite obviously, I never went to French medica= l school and never had an education in sciences and mathematics. Therefore,= I have no clue who Bertrand Russell, G=C3=B6del or Wittgenstein are, or th= at both Leibniz and Newton came up with calculus separately. Nor do I know = how to calculate the derivative of a complex trigonometric formula.=0A=0AMa= rcus wrote: "There is no scientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians did --= there is a social =0Ahypothesis, but no scientific one. Science is a diffe= rent endeavor from art =0Aprimarily because one cannot make a testable hypo= thesis and a replicable =0Aexperiment that predicts how artists are going t= o act in any specific enough =0Away to be meaningful under any particular s= et of circumstances. Artists do not =0Aorbit the sun or the like -- their a= cts are volitional, not mechanistic. Pseudo-=0Ascience using scientific-sou= nding words, which are almost always in =0Apostmodernist practice either mi= sunderstood or simply used wrong, is not the =0Asame as science."=0A=0AYou = are missing my point, which was to show that the n+7 procedure is not rando= m, but deterministic. Secondly, you fail to explain how science is a "diffe= rent endeavor from art," especially in regards to Oulipo. You also seem to = fail to understand the aims of Oulipo, either by ignorance or bias. To para= phrase Popper, science is the process of creating a discourse to explain ho= w things work, a discourse that will be later falsified (much like Newton's= physics were proved to be inadequate in a certain frame of reference by Ei= nstein's theory of relativity). And since we are mentioning Einstein, he an= d Max Planck explain that the course of science followed a line f(x) limite= d by an asymptote between the real (the Universe as we perceive it) and rea= lity (the Universe as it is).=0A=0AApplied to the analytic branch of Oulipo= , we have already asserted by their different procedures sought to provide = a scientific method to the study of literature. In turn, the synthetic bran= ch of Oulipo, using those procedures, sought to either revive older and aba= ndoned forms or invent new ones.=0A=0AMarcus wrote: "Yes, yes, we all know = what the N+7 method is. But it's still a claim that by =0Areplacing nouns w= ith the 7th following them in the dictionary one can create a =0Apiece of a= rt mechanically, without human choices in the process. Gwyn's claim =0Awent= even further -- she claimed that the N+7 process was an effective parody = =0Aor spoof of a particular poem. My point is that that cannot be true even= if you =0Aaccept N+7 as a valid artistic procedure because the N+7 method = makes a =0Ahash of ANY poem, not just bad poems. There is nothing in the N+= 7 method =0Athat distinguishes between good and bad poems and makes good po= ems =0Abetter and bad poems worse. The method treats all poems the same, an= d =0Aequally makes a hash of good ones and bad ones."=0A=0AYes, yes, I had = already established in my preface that most of us knew what the n+7 entaile= d. What is at issue here is your definition of "art," or rather your consta= nt flinging of the word without really defining what you mean by "art." Can= art not be mechanistic? In the use of the n+7 procedure, isn't a choice ma= de, here in the choice of the Angelou text and the dictionary? And what abo= ut photography? Isn't it an art that use a machine? And when a painter pain= ts figuratively, does he not act as a camera too, in a way?=0A=0ASince I am= obviously very fond of quoting people, Adorno (I think it was him, feel fr= ee to correct me) wrote that art could take misery from the world, thus kee= ping it there, but transformed. That being said, is that not that Oulipo (o= r Dada & surrealist) procedures do too? Take an existing object (here the A= ngelou poem) and transform it, with the shadow of its origin still lingerin= g?=0A=0AI'm skipping your next passage, Marcus, because Oulipo has conducte= d many pedagogical/inquisitive seminars, and therefore there isn't really a= nything to object to.=0A=0AYou wrote next: "Coming up with a poem on your o= wn is a different kind of endeavor from =0Acoming up with a procedure on yo= ur own, unless you're saying that the N+7 =0Aclaim is that the procedure wi= ll always produce a work of art by mechanical =0Aapplication of its mechani= stic process. Are you really saying that?"=0A=0AWhat about the sonnet then?= Or better yet, the villanelle, the pantoum or the sestina? Aren't they rul= e-bound procedures too? Leevi Lehto has on his website many engines to have= a computer write villanelles. Are they not objects of art too? If not, why= ?=0A=0AWhich brings to your following point, that "any algorithm is [not] g= oing to produce a work of art." I find this assertion extremely problematic= , as most linguists (at least, those involved in Combinatory Categorical Gr= ammar, or CCG) have shown that the sentence is an algorithm. I am not annou= ncing anything new here, but we will all agree that language is rule-bound.= What this entails in relation to your statement is obvious: since no algor= ithm can produce a work of art and since language is (partly) an algorithm = (well, I don't need to copy and paste the definition of the word, do I?), t= hen poetry, as a product of language, is no art.=0A=0AFinally, since you as= sert that the destruction of ego destroys the possibility of art (again, wh= ich refers to a very Romantic notion of art and which, by the way, did not = exist before a bunch of crazy Italian painters decided to call them Artists= in the Renaissance), what do you make of collaborative arts, like the ones= made by the Neue Slowenische Kunst, in theater, in comic books or in cinem= a?=0A=0ACheers,=0A=0Afran=C3=A7ois=0A=0A=0A=0A _______________________= _____________________________________________________________=0ABe a better= friend, newshound, and =0Aknow-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. h= ttp://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=3DAhu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 08:07:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: UbuWeb Subject: UBUWEB :: Selected Resources - Jan 2008, by Alex Ross (Corrected URLs) Comments: To: silence@Virginia.edu, lowercase-sound@yahoogroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit UbuWeb http://ubu.com Selected Resources - Jan 2008, by Alex Ross 1. Robert Ashley "She Was a Visitor" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/extended_voices/Extended-Voices_4_Robert-Ashley.mp3 2. Kurt Schwitters "Sonata in Urlauten" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/schwitters_kurt/ursonate/Schwitters-Kurt_Ursonate_01_Einleitung_Und_Erster_Teil.mp3 3. John Cale "Loop" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/aspen/mp3/loop.mp3 4. The Films of Mauricio Kagel http://www.ubu.com/film/kagel.html" 5. Charles Amirkhanian "Dog of Stravinsky" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/amirkhanian_charles/mental_radio/Amirkhanian_Charles-Mental_Radio-03_Dog.mp3 6. Bernd Alois Zimmermann "Musique pour le soupers de Roi Ubu" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/zimmerman_ba/Zimmermann-Bernd-Alois_Roi-Ubu.mp3 7. Pauline Oliveros "Sound Patterns" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/extended_voices/Extended-Voices_1_Pauline-Oliveros.mp3 8. Ezra Pound "Sestina: Altaforte" http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Pound/1939/Pound-Ezra_01_Sestina-Altaforte_Harvard_1939.mp3 9. John Cage "4'33" http://ubu.com/film/cage_433.html 10. Robert Ashley "The Wolfman" http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/source/Ashley-Robert_Wolfman.mp3 Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His work has also appeared in The New Republic, The London Review of Books, Lingua Franca, and The Guardian. From 1992 to 1996 he was a critic at The New York Times. He has received two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for music criticism, fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, and a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center for contributions to the field of contemporary music. He played keyboards in the noise band Miss Teen Schnauzer, which gave only one public performance, in 1991. His first book, "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century," a cultural history of music since 1900, was published in October 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Alex Ross' homepage: http://www.therestisnoise.com UbuWeb http://ubu.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 08:21:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Spoofing Inaugural Poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Jim and Murat-- Jim wrote: Journalists try not to write themselves into the story. That is a kind of destruction of the ego, at least in the piece itself, in the sense that they or their editors edit out/destroy any personal reference. This is not what you're talking about, I realize, but it nonetheless is a sort of "disintegration, destruction of the ego". Or perhaps more typically a veiling of the ego. In William S. Burroughs's trilogy of cutup novels (The Ticket that Exploded, Nova Express, and The Soft Machine), one of the effects of the cutup is indeed a disintegration or destruction of the distinction between the characters, sometimes. You can see how this might work. The reference is unclear, often, because of the cutup (and Burroughs's decision to go with it and shape it) as to whether this or that character is being referred to. So that, in a sense, the cutup merges the characters into one character. It's a rather cosmic thing. Or so it seemed at the time I read it! Brilliant! Dear Jim and Murat (Jim, i am not sure if you saw my earlier letter re Burroughs and others from two days ago----it added "a few books" to the subject "spoofing inaugural poems" I think there is a misunderstanding of what Burroughs is doing with the cutups and also with this idea of the journalist. I was a journalist myself for some years, a self-trained one, and still do "journalism" of the kind in newspapers now and then and. like Burroughs, play with/on a "mock" journalism in the creation of essays, fictions, poems, Burroughs i was drawn to early as share with him the idea of the writer as "private investigator," "journalist", ("Your intrepid reporter") a type of secret agent". The writer is an "agent" whose mission is NOT to become "ego less" in the systematized product of randomness, for this makes one all the more passively part of the very systems of control which one has been given the illusion of "breaking down." The writer essays to find "fugitive" ways of "survival" in a system which has an immense, insatiable "algebra of need" for Control, the flipside of the addict's "alegebra of need" for the "drug of choice." Control needs addicts to its never ceasing variety of "opiums of the people, " It is "cunning, baffling and powerful" let alone ruthless in its means of creating the availability of addictive "substances" and "ideas" and "languages" and in maintaining its "empire," the very least of which is "the status quo." Burroughs' cut-ups, unlike the productions of the machines online that one can use to do cut-ups as though "not by oneself," are methods of making a "minority of one" which via camouflages, masks, "being obvious," essays survival as an intact writer. "The Death of the Author" so beloved of Authors, for this kind of writer has already been experienced near-literally and figuratively; what remains is the desire to live, go on living as a writer--and so the camouflages, disguises, masks, "role playing" and heteronyms, "alter egos." In Burrogghs' cut-ups--the cut-up uses texts to reveal the synchronicities and correspondences which exist among them, which in turn give evidences of the "plot," the "conspiracy" going on and conducted by Language As Control. The cutting up is to reveal the inner anatomy so to speak of the bodies of the Monsters, the Mobsters of the Nova Mob and their spreading virus-word-conspiracy. The "consciousness" "outside oneself," which one "lets in" via "destruction of the ego" through randomness--on the way hand may be "cosmic, the universe,"--"a power greater than ourselves"--of it may be Control--the Nova Mob, Big Brother, "His Master's Voice" as was the old the RCA Victor record label's image of the dog listening to the ginat flower of the victrola's "speaker." Burroughs as he noted in the Introduction to Queer--thought of himself as being of the Middle Ages in his thinking regarding "psychology." (He had after all studied for a year in Vienna after graduating from Harvard.) It is NOT the "ego" which one wants to get away from but the forces outside one which try to destroy one's being, take control of it and use it for their purposes. The writer's activity is a guerrilla one against being turned into a passive, consenting, or unwitting accomplice in the vast complicities with the conspiracies of Control. In the Introduction to the first edition of Junkie, which is reprinted in later printings, Burroughs notes of the little glossary of street/drug terms at the back of the book: "Therefore a final glossary cannot be made of words whose intentions are fugitive." The writer is at once the detective and the outlaw--an agent "posing" inside the imposed "seemingly random" cover of Control. The secret agent/intrepid reporter/private investigator/"Inspector Lee" is ceaselessly at work to dismantle and discover, uncover, recover "evidence" to be used not simply for "cutting up" but--as Burroughs makes clear--arranging, editing, creating the "Files" which make use of the juxtapositions of words, images, memories,dreams, fictions and facts, so as to be making an ongoing "fugitive" language which at once perceives and deceives Control. the writer is not attempting to become "ego-less"--but a series of "identities" which are 'disguises" and "camouflages" such that the writer becomes "El Hombre Invisible" as one of Burroughs' own sobriquets "pictured" him. The writer participates in a series of anonymous, heteronymous, pseudonymous and invented personas" parts," "roles," "charcters." This is not to destroy the "identity" of the writer at the core, but to preserve the writer in order to continue writing for writing is the means of survival in a world in which both the "seemingly random" and the "obvious' are bent on maintaining their control over one. The great Jazz musician Don Cherry used to very often say--"Free Jazz can only be played by superbly disciplined musicians." Burroughs' years of work with the cut ups in texts, images, sound recordings, film--this has affinities with Rimbaud's "long reasoned derangement of the senses" in order to arrive at the Unknown," which for Burroughs is the being always a step ahead of the Control, of Language. For Burroughs this to make possible not only travel in space, but travel in time for the writer. Burroughs was always precise on the point that no work was done when he was using drugs. Drugs are Control which wipes out the writer. Tabula rasa. Having been a long term addict like Burroughs, it was only after one gets away from that Control, that one enters writing--and why writing is very different from becoming "outside" to oneself--it is the means to find a way to exist as oneself--to survive--what one knows of the Forces of Control. It is that necessity of survival the necessity that is the motherfucker of invention that is involved with the fugitive, "outlaw," "outsider" aspect of writing, the need for the "undercover" aspects, and the reason why so much that one finds around does not appear to one as it does to others. It is too see what is hidden in plain site/sight/cite and at the same time see how many things that "seem" to be "liberating" are disguised traps, or inside out reflections of what they purport to be the opposite of, in opposition to. Often the concept of "opposition" itself can be used as a diversion from what is the overall issue of Control and an essay at understanding and recognising as much as possible its manifestations. An aspect of this is the breaking down seemingly of voices in which Jim notes "all characters seem to be one." The key is that they "seem" to be "one." From the point of view of the writer, they are not one, but many, and constitute a swarm. The swarm is camouflaged by this "seeming" to be one--if it is simply "one" then it can be easily crushed. The multiple "identities" of the writer creates such a swarm, a way of continually being "a minority of one" "on the move" whose "intentions are fugitive"--a "minority of one" whose intentions are to appear now as "one," now as "another," and in turn as a swarm which may appear to the eyes of Control as "one." Kurt Schwitters is one of the truly profound "cut-up" artists--and his collage "method" was to use what he found in the street. Again, Picasso's "I do not seek, I find." This is Burroughs' method in the cut-ups--he used the found texts of newspapers, things found in the street, passages found in his favorite writers, in turn collaging these edited cut-ups, which he put through many transumuttations of his own cutting and pasting by hand--and the n arranging--along side the passages from his dream journals, and others from the memories which were stimulated in turn by the collaged cut-ups and dreams and fictions, poetry of other writers. This for Burroughs constitutes the writer's method of time travel--to be able to travel among memory, dream, imagined places and persons, factually recorded ones known and unknown to the writers and so create extensions of fugitive As Burroughs writes in the Intro to Queer--writing is for him a matter of life and death. On the day that he shot his wife, he feels that the forces "outside" were in Control, and the use of drugs was the allowing of Control to reduce him to zombie sitting on the edge of his bed staring at his foot for what was a period in which time is "junk time" only measured by the drops from the syringe, the injected transfusions of Control. The Carny world, the hustlers, the small time dope peddlers, snitches, thieves, punks and assorted "low life" and "criminal" doctors, scientists etc that populate Burroughs' universe are his verison in a sense of the Medieval Carnival, in which the masks fall away and the Emperor really has no clothes, Death walks nonchalantly in broad daylight, the Sins come out to play, and the monstrous buffoons that are the forces of Order are for a day or a few truly Buffoons. That is the meaning of "Naked Lunch"--the title from Kerouac's saying that it was the moment when indeed what was on the forks was seen for what it is--not unlike the scene of The Last Supper in Bunuel's Viridiana, the Feast of the the deformed, the degenerate, the diseased and their having their "picture taken" by a woman facing them who lifts her dress up to bare her "camera eye" as the "recorder" of "posterity" that "degrades"not only the Last Supper, but particularly its representations. In a sense, this method destroys not what is the Last Supper itself but the use of its representations as methods of Control The woman's "camera" image "exposes" the degeneration and diseased ("Word Virus") "state of the image" and "image of the state" as a "rotting edifice". (A leper--literally a "rotting one," plays prominent part in all of this, including the violating of Viridiana, the former Nun now a secular "doer of good." Among the "rotting edifices" of the film is Franco's Spain--this is 1961--where "miraculously Bunuel made this, one of his finest works.) "Look at it this way," so to speak. A reporter does not necessarily become "more objective" and "less present" via self-censorship and editing, but more representative of the point of view of the "editorial board" which in turn is accountable to the "board of directors" and they are accountable to the ultimate holders of the accounts--the advertisers whose payments for Space enable the "reporting" to exist as an extension of their "ideology, " their efforts at Control. (Burroughs' grandfather was Ivy Lee, one of the first great "Image Makers," who created John D. Rockefller's image and whom Hitler was intersted in hiring.) This is why really good reporters are so often running afoul of the papers who employ them, let alone governments, state espionage agencies, authorities of al sorts whom they are "investigating" and "reporting on." The rise of infotainment and the increasing employment of huge corporate-state-intlligence-connected "news media" and "translators" like teh sinister MEMRI which controls the Ameircan media's news and translations from the Middle East and uses disinformation, planted stories, dis-translations regularly) are bent on destroying the actual existence of the reporter who does not want to "lose their ego" or "their own writing" to a bunch of special interest groups, governments, corporations, infotainments and "think tank consortiums." The high death toll of reporters and photo journalists, media persons, in war times and ones engaged in trying to investigate drug cartels, gangsterism, corporate frauds is for this reason. The reporter will not let go of that "minority of one" standpoint which is the necessity of someone actually attempting to understand and "report" what is going on, outside of the Control as much as it is possible, which is very hard when from al sides one is a target. The same might be said of using machines which are produced by companies for the production of "randomness"and "cut-ups." Why "take them on faith," for one's "search" to "get outside oneself?" It might be not so much a "loss of ego" as a "liberation" but the surrendering of "oneself" to the corporate machine and becoming another cog in the wheel of the a mass production of texts "reflecting" the "point of view' of that particular company's conception of "randomness" and "cut-ups." If one has an awareness of the "fugitive intentions" of language--for "one's own survival"--in turn causes one makes this demand, this need for the examination of all language, for the "fugitive intentions" of Control. In a society which so "values" such phrases as "the bottom line," and "the buck stops here" (yeah right--) and prints "In God We Trust" on its money, along with the phrase "E Pluribus Unum" which can be interpreted many ways, not al of them "good," is not the "bottom line" to put "trust" in Trusts? "trust me, man," says the smiling dope dealer, the used car salesperson, the voice of the "Con Inside" inserted there from the time of birth. Trust me says the smiling politician--and the smiling Opponent, the Opposition. "Trust me, believe in me, obey me, love me." The basic idea of much of the thinking of Control is this--to get persons to live, work and think in ways which are against their "own best interest" and as much as possible in the "best interests" of Control. The mystical aspect of the found which Murat notes i wrote of a few days ago and this is often involved in my own work. There is also this Burroughsian aspect of a writing which wants to live, by the means which necessity gives it, and not, as much as this is possible, by "taking signs as wonders." ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 12:16:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801082230u6ee7ffb8p78fc2342c34555f6@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline If the intention were to write an N+7, I might agree. But the intention behind n+7 points more to an observation and critique of process. And here, again, I'll mention Fagin and Coolidge. On the Pumice of Morons seems to be the result of that. On Jan 9, 2008 1:30 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > In what way is the argument on behalf N+7 creating art different from a > monkey writing Hamlet (or a "critique" of it) given a typewrter and enoug= h > paper and time? One has to still locate "the Hamlet" among infnite number= s > of paper (maybe a Boges library made up of pages typed by a compulsive > obsessive monkey). I think that infinite endlessness of a seductively eas= y > method (which may even appear like a revelation) that Marcus is reacting > to. > > Ciao, > > Murat > > > On Jan 8, 2008 12:12 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > > "... it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with the > random > > in art > > that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but it > offers > > perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be quite > useful > > regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random methods." > > > > That=B4s sort of like believing that God will correct any errors in you= r > > scientific > > methodology to ensure that it comes out all right, and then using that > > God- > > corrected methodology to show there is no God. It=B4s trying to have it > both > > ways. > > > > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > > "... and it is a kind of portal into another force or power operating o= n > > the > > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a mysteriou= s > > part > > of the universe into the writing process." > > > > "As though" but not really. You seem to be saying that "the random" is = a > > mental trick you use to deceive yourself into letting your own practice > > expertise seem to you as if it were not a part of you in order to give > > yourself > > permission to write what you might not have written otherwise? I have n= o > > kick > > with using random elements to kick-start the creative process. My > > objection is > > to the N+7 (and any other similar) claim that by a purely mechanical > > random > > process one can create art. > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 steve russell wrote: > > I don't see why being attentive to randomness should be regarded as a > > disregard of craft. One chooses, assembles ..." > > > > But "attentive to randomness" is not the same as "randomness itself > > creates > > art". It is the choosing and assembling to which you refer, done by a > > human to > > appeal to humans, that is a necessary (though not sufficient) > requirement > > for > > art. My objection is to the notion that randomness can, all by itself, > > create art > > in general, and in particular to the notion that a mechanistic > replacement > > of > > nouns in any poem by a random method can make an interesting, > significant, > > or important, or any satire, parody, or spoof of that original poem. Th= e > > methodology will make hash of ANY poem because it makes hash of ALL > > poems, and not because any given particular original poem is in some wa= y > > defective. The method makes equal hash of all poems, good or bad - and > > thus cannot be counted in any way, by any means, to be an effective > parody > > or spoof of a particular poem. > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 steve russell wrote: > > "& no matter how seemingly random, things take on some sort of shape. > > DADA started to hint strongly towards the often violent dislocations > that > > would > > shape modernity. so why not involve our friend the machine?" > > > > If things take on some sort of consistent shape then they cannot really > be > > random. Things that take on randomly changing shapes aren=B4t the same > > things any more because they change from thing to thing as they change > > from > > shape to shape. Once again, you=B4re trying to have it both ways, and i= t > > won=B4t > > do. > > > > I have no objection to asking a machine to pick six words, for example, > > randomly, using which you then write a sestina, because the randomness > is > > heuristic not causative. You still have to write the sestina, making al= l > > the rest > > of the choices. Even when you=B4re done, it may not be a very good > sestina, > > though, since part of the quality of a good sestina is the exercise of > > good > > judgment about the choice of those six words. Still, I agree there is a > > chance > > that a good sestina may be written using six words randomly chosen. Bu= t > > the > > sestina is a piece of art, if it turns out to be one instead of a mere > > exercise, > > because of the choices the artist makes, not because of the randomness > of > > the choice of the words. > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > > "While I agree with you that N+7 has little chance of producing > 'artistic' > > results, I would not dismiss the possibility that it might do so - > > especially with > > small samples of text, perhaps run through several different > dictionaries > > (some of which might yield interesting results for various samples)." > > > > I dismiss the possibility because an algorithm doesn=B4t produce art, > people > > do. > > Art is a human-only endeavor. If a machine ever produces art, we=B4ll h= ave > > to > > call it human, and change our definition of human to include the kind o= f > > machine that can produce art. Such a machine would be human: it would b= e > > able to lie, to refuse to do work assigned to it, to control whether it > > could be > > turned off or not, and so forth - it would be autonomous. Imagine if > your > > computer could tell you it preferred not to reproduce the poem you just > > typed > > in, or that it could lie and cheat, and send your poem off to a magazin= e > > under > > its own name, and so on. Such computers would be useless as machines, a= s > > computers. They would be autonomous human agents, free from the slavery > > that being a machine entailed. > > > > The production of `artistic=B4 results for N+7 after a human, using sma= ll > > samples > > of text run through a variety of dictionaries, exercising human judgmen= t > > about > > which products warranted another run-through, or warranted saving, is > not > > the > > same as the claim that the N+7 method of noun replacement in and of > itself > > creates a piece of art that spoofs or parodies a particular poem. Since > > the > > N+7 and other such algorithms will make the same kind of hash out of AN= Y > > poem, good or bad, it is a false claim that such a hash is a spoof or > > parody of > > a particular poem, irrespective of how bad the N+7 writers or readers > > believe > > the original poem to be. The N+7 method says NOTHING AT ALL about any > > particular poem=B4s qualities. It merely creates a random hash of ANY p= oem > - > > it > > makes ANY poem look bad. > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > > "I don't necessarily agree that randomness has no place in creativity -= - > a > > position you seem to take; rhyme and meter, certainly, have rather > > arbitrary > > roots." > > > > I do not say that randomness has no place in creativity; I say that the > > N+7 > > method, and similar methods, cannot create art; I further say that such > > randomness methods cannot even create spoofs or parodies of particular > > poems because their very methodology makes a hash of any poem, not only > > bad poems. > > > > I would like to know your response to an anagrammatic form I invented > ten > > years ago, examples of which appear on the Beard of Bees web site at > > http://www.beardofbees.com/zimmerman.html. By constructing 4x4 word > > squares, running them through an online anagram generator (which > produced > > thousands of lines of words using the same 16letters), selecting those > > that > > seem ..." > > > > The moment you start selecting using your brain instead of a randomizin= g > > algorithm, you have ceased to claim that the algorithm alone is creatin= g > > the > > poem. I have no problem with using randomness as a heuristic part of th= e > > creative process; what I reject, and what I object to, is the notion > that > > randomness can, of itself and by itself, create a work of art. > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > Aleatory is a paintbrush. like any other paintbrush it's suited to > certain > > jobs > > better than others. ... same thing with Aleatory in poetry. > > > > Once again, this is a different claim than that randomness in and of > > itself can > > create art. A Jackson Pollock painting requires a Jackson Pollock to > paint > > it, > > not a paint-spattering algorithm. > > > > Marcus > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 12:25:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CA Conrad Subject: BUS 63 POETRY READING TOUR OF BROOKLYN NOW ONLINE! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Jen Coleman's part of the "9 poets 9 cities" reading tour took place in Brooklyn! CLICK HERE: http://jencolemanreading.blogspot.com to see the site with video feed! IT'S GREAT! Jen reads poems by: Jen Coleman (Brooklyn, NY, USA) Kendall Grady (Greencastly, IN, USA) Karen Hannah (Seoul, South Korea) Yuri Hospodar (Sydney, Australia) Dorothea Lasky (Philadelphia, PA, USA) Hoa Nguyen (Auston, TX, USA) Travis Nichols (Seattle, WA, USA) a.rawlings (Toronto, Canada) Logan Ryan Smith (San Francisco, CA, USA) HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS AS MUCH AS I HAVE! CAConrad http://PhillySound.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 14:07:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: re\play MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed re\play this replay of abjection is the playing-out of infection beneath the aegis of dejection somewhat tantric rejection resulting from subjection swallowed from projection beyond a form's bijection operated through surjection useless wireless trope against a brainless dope darkling in a mope there's nothing left of hope impossible to cope headless figures grope tangled in a rope crawling down a slope they're given too much scope elephants in a bathtub one says to the other please pass the soap the other says no soap radio kind of introjection http://www.alansondheim.org/nubbed.mov http://www.alansondheim.org/nets.mov the first url is the soundtrack modified from the second the second url is the soundtrack unmodified for the first the first url is image and sound the second url is sound what goes around (netstumbler, poser, mocap, premiere, cooledit, audacity) = ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 11:23:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mathew Timmons Subject: Will Alexander Benefit 5pm Sun 1/13 Skylight Books Los Angeles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Hello -- Please join me and friends of Will Alexander for a benefit reading this coming Sunday, January 13th at 5 pm at Skylight Books on Vermont in Los Feliz. details below. As many of you know, Will is a dazzling thinker and writer. I would be delighted if you would come to this event to support him, and to hear him read from his luminous work. Also, please help to spread the word by emailing this notice or posting it on a website. Thanks! Mathew Timmons SPECIAL JANUARY BENEFIT FOR POET WILL ALEXANDER Sunday, Jan 13 at 5pm L.A. Poet and artist Will Alexander has become seriously ill and has no health insurance. In order to help him defray the cost of treatment, a number of his poet friends will join him to read and honor him. Poets reading include Will Alexander, Wanda Coleman, Clayton Eshleman, Jen Hofer, Mathew Timmons and Harold Abramowitz, and Diane Ward $10 donation (and we will 'pass the hat' for additional contributions. Skylight Books will donate 25% of all book sales made in the store from 4:00 to 8pm to the Benefit.) If you would like to contribute and are unable to attend, checks may be sent to Will's long-term partner and primary caregiver: Sheila Scott-Wilkinson 400 South Lafayette Park Place, #307 Los Angeles, CA 90057 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 12:16:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eireene Nealand Subject: Re: In response to Marcus re: N+7 In-Reply-To: <338974.78805.qm@web35603.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline I think that we need to go back a bit in order to understand the *why* of all of these modernist workings with determinations and chance (people were just starting to realize that they were the same thing). I take up from Francois' last paragraph which, to my mind, is key. Francois: "Finally, since you assert that the destruction of ego destroys the possibility of art (again, which refers to a very Romantic notion of art and which, by the way, did not exist before a bunch of crazy Italian painters decided to call them Artists in the Renaissance), what do you make of collaborative arts, like the ones made by the Neue Slowenische Kunst, in theater, in comic books or in cinema?" As I understand it after both WWI (the surrealist movement) and WWII (its return) people felt a need to rethink human subjectivity itself. One's "natural" innards had proved to be incredibly destructive and it was thought that this architectural/process based writing would break people out of their romantic complacencies. One should not look for Romantic era beauty in examining these pieces of art then, but some sort of newness and jolt. It is quite possible that we are no longer jolted anymore--not by the things that come out of those particular architectures--and given the way that these techniques have been absorbed by advertising. The question that is more interesting to me than whether the old art is the same thing as the new art, is what kind of art now. And, perhaps, jolting is no longer what we need now--speaking for myself I get enough in everyday llife, but what about something like connecting (see Spahr's book Everybody's Autonomy on connective reading). In this era of credit/debt and the speculative human it seems to me that art is useful for appointing, collating and re-synchronizing our personhoods with our labour. The architectural techniques of the Ouilipo might be quite useful if we turn them to that synchronizing purpose. See Duchamp's piece, Dust Breeding but also the more well known "ready-mades" which were made by setting a date and a time for the rendez(vous)es eireene On 1/8/08, Fran=E7ois Luong wrote: > I receive the responses to the list in digest form, hence much copying an= d pasting from the daily dispatch. > > Marcus wrote: "There had been, of course, no rigor or consistency to the = study and writing of mathematics prior to 1960, so thank god for the oulipi= ans, eh?" > > Thanks for reminding that I should not respond to emails at 11:00pm and f= or pointing at a glaring typo. Quite obviously, I never went to French medi= cal school and never had an education in sciences and mathematics. Therefor= e, I have no clue who Bertrand Russell, G=F6del or Wittgenstein are, or tha= t both Leibniz and Newton came up with calculus separately. Nor do I know h= ow to calculate the derivative of a complex trigonometric formula. > > Marcus wrote: "There is no scientific hypothesis to what the Oulipians di= d -- there is a social > hypothesis, but no scientific one. Science is a different endeavor from a= rt > primarily because one cannot make a testable hypothesis and a replicable > experiment that predicts how artists are going to act in any specific eno= ugh > way to be meaningful under any particular set of circumstances. Artists d= o not > orbit the sun or the like -- their acts are volitional, not mechanistic. = Pseudo- > science using scientific-sounding words, which are almost always in > postmodernist practice either misunderstood or simply used wrong, is not = the > same as science." > > You are missing my point, which was to show that the n+7 procedure is not= random, but deterministic. Secondly, you fail to explain how science is a = "different endeavor from art," especially in regards to Oulipo. You also se= em to fail to understand the aims of Oulipo, either by ignorance or bias. T= o paraphrase Popper, science is the process of creating a discourse to expl= ain how things work, a discourse that will be later falsified (much like Ne= wton's physics were proved to be inadequate in a certain frame of reference= by Einstein's theory of relativity). And since we are mentioning Einstein,= he and Max Planck explain that the course of science followed a line f(x) = limited by an asymptote between the real (the Universe as we perceive it) a= nd reality (the Universe as it is). > > Applied to the analytic branch of Oulipo, we have already asserted by the= ir different procedures sought to provide a scientific method to the study = of literature. In turn, the synthetic branch of Oulipo, using those procedu= res, sought to either revive older and abandoned forms or invent new ones. > > Marcus wrote: "Yes, yes, we all know what the N+7 method is. But it's sti= ll a claim that by > replacing nouns with the 7th following them in the dictionary one can cre= ate a > piece of art mechanically, without human choices in the process. Gwyn's c= laim > went even further -- she claimed that the N+7 process was an effective pa= rody > or spoof of a particular poem. My point is that that cannot be true even = if you > accept N+7 as a valid artistic procedure because the N+7 method makes a > hash of ANY poem, not just bad poems. There is nothing in the N+7 method > that distinguishes between good and bad poems and makes good poems > better and bad poems worse. The method treats all poems the same, and > equally makes a hash of good ones and bad ones." > > Yes, yes, I had already established in my preface that most of us knew wh= at the n+7 entailed. What is at issue here is your definition of "art," or = rather your constant flinging of the word without really defining what you = mean by "art." Can art not be mechanistic? In the use of the n+7 procedure,= isn't a choice made, here in the choice of the Angelou text and the dictio= nary? And what about photography? Isn't it an art that use a machine? And w= hen a painter paints figuratively, does he not act as a camera too, in a wa= y? > > Since I am obviously very fond of quoting people, Adorno (I think it was = him, feel free to correct me) wrote that art could take misery from the wor= ld, thus keeping it there, but transformed. That being said, is that not th= at Oulipo (or Dada & surrealist) procedures do too? Take an existing object= (here the Angelou poem) and transform it, with the shadow of its origin st= ill lingering? > > I'm skipping your next passage, Marcus, because Oulipo has conducted many= pedagogical/inquisitive seminars, and therefore there isn't really anythin= g to object to. > > You wrote next: "Coming up with a poem on your own is a different kind of= endeavor from coming up with a procedure on your own, unless you're saying= that the N+7 > claim is that the procedure will always produce a work of art by mechanic= al > application of its mechanistic process. Are you really saying that?" > > What about the sonnet then? Or better yet, the villanelle, the pantoum or= the sestina? Aren't they rule-bound procedures too? Leevi Lehto has on his= website many engines to have a computer write villanelles. Are they not ob= jects of art too? If not, why? > > Which brings to your following point, that "any algorithm is [not] going = to produce a work of art." I find this assertion extremely problematic, as = most linguists (at least, those involved in Combinatory Categorical Grammar= , or CCG) have shown that the sentence is an algorithm. I am not announcing= anything new here, but we will all agree that language is rule-bound. What= this entails in relation to your statement is obvious: since no algorithm = can produce a work of art and since language is (partly) an algorithm (well= , I don't need to copy and paste the definition of the word, do I?), then p= oetry, as a product of language, is no art. > > Finally, since you assert that the destruction of ego destroys the possib= ility of art (again, which refers to a very Romantic notion of art and whic= h, by the way, did not exist before a bunch of crazy Italian painters decid= ed to call them Artists in the Renaissance), what do you make of collaborat= ive arts, like the ones made by the Neue Slowenische Kunst, in theater, in = comic books or in cinema? > > Cheers, > > fran=E7ois > > > > ___________________________________________________________________= _________________ > Be a better friend, newshound, and > know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_y= lt=3DAhu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 13:23:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ram Devineni Subject: Bollywood & Kolkata Book Fair MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dear Friends: I am heading to India to Bollywood and the Kolkata Book Fair. As most of you know, Rattapallax is one of the main sponsors of the US Delegation to the 2008 Kolkata Book Fair (Jan. 30 to Feb. 10) -- the largest book fair in the world with an annual attendance of 2.8 million people. We have a remarkable group of poets, writers, editors, translators and publisher going with us. The delegation is YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, BHARATI MUKHERJEE, CAROLYN FORCHE, BOB HOLMAN, JOY HARJO, CHRISTOPHER MERRILL, NATHALIE HANDAL, ED PAVLIC, GOUTAM DATA, RAM DEVINENI, CATHERINE FLETCHER, DANTE MICHEAUX, and IDRA NOVEY. With the support of CLMP, we gathered and shipped over 10,000 books to be sold and displayed at the book fair. They represent the diversity of independent literary publishing in the USA. Special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts and Wyeth, Inc for funding some of the delegation costs. More information at http://www.uskle.org I am also going to Mumbai (Bombay) with Frantisek Ballerini, a reporter with two of Brazil’s largest newspapers, “O Estado de S.Paulo” and “Jornal da Tarde”, (http://www.estado.com.br) which have about one million readers per day. The newspapers are doing a special focus on the Indian film industry. This will be the first time that a Brazilian newspaper is dedicating an entire week to Indian entertainment. We plan to attend the Pune Film Festival, Kishore Namith Kapoor Acting Studio, Whistling Woods Film School, Mukta Arts Studios, YashRaj and Adlabs studios. We will be interviewing leading Indian actors, producers, directors, music directors, and industry leaders like Amit Khanna, President of Film & Television Producers Guild of India and head of Reliance entertainment, and producer Mahesh Bhatt. The articles will correspond with the 2nd Annual Bollywood and Indian Film Festival at Cinemateca (Sao Paulo) in February 2008. More information at http://www.bollywoodbrasil.com Cheers Ram Devineni Producer & Publisher http://www.rattapallax.com Please send future emails to devineni@rattapallax.com for press ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 14:04:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: >>>> Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. >>> >>> But what if people are algorithms? I've sometimes wondered. >>> >> >> We aren't, and there are a couple of great books on the subject. >> If you haven't got the patience to wade through Heidegger's >> "Being and Time" then the more readable, fun, and interesting >> version of the story can be found in Hubert Dreyfus's "What >> Computers Can't Do." > > There is no proof, and probably never will be, that there are any thought > processes of which humans are capable and computers are not. > > There are things that computers can't do. But there is no proof that humans > can do them either. The idea that computers are capable of thought processes at all is mistaken. Computers are capable of changing the states of switches from on to off based on control voltages. because you can pretend that off means zero and on means 1, and because that's enough numerals to represent any number you want to represent, then you can do all kinds of math with them. and because you can pretend that zero means False and 1 means True, you can also construct truth trees and perform logical operations with them. but it's still just switches turning on and off. To the computer, they don't mean anything. People on the other hand, live in the world. Parts of our bodies might work in ways that are analagous to the switches in computers, but they aren't the same, and no matter how you push the metaphor it will always remain figurative rather than literal similarity. Which is not to say that artificial intelligence is impossible, it's just that you're never going to get there by pretending a mind is an algorithm. > So we have known from the very start of the theory of computation that there > are some things that computers/algorithms cannot accomplish. > > But there is absolutely no proof that humans can do any of these things > either. > > There are many claims to the contrary, but to date, they are all fallacious. I disagree. I can do all sorts of things a computer can't do: I can get angry I can appreciate a sunset I can be afraid of being stung by a wasp I can sing a song I half remember and make up the rest to suit my mood I can guess about what you mean if you are saying something that isn't clear I can translate poetry from French into English I can choose John Edwards as my favorite candidate for president. I can pass a turing test I can fall in love I can appreciate the value of a dollar I can day dream I can hold an opinion I can have a nightmare I can get hungry and thirsty I can be alone in a crowded room I can confront the universe and be frustrated by its refusal to confront me back I can take a stand on my own existence A computer can be made to seem like it is doing any of those things, but it's no more doing them than those programs I used to write in BASIC during computer class in the seventh grade were really calling the kid next to me a Jerkoff. Anything it did, and anything any computer ever does because of an algorithm, will only ever happen because some other kind of being who could do those things that I can also do told it to do that thing. In this way a computer is just a really complicated hammer and unless they can someday do something other than follow rules and heuristics and fake randomness, that's all they'll ever be. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 16:44:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit please explain to this uneducated lAD WHAT N-7 IS OR LINK ME TO IT On Wed, 9 Jan 2008 12:16:34 -0500 Ryan Daley writes: > If the intention were to write an N+7, I might agree. But the > intention > behind n+7 points more to an observation and critique of process. > And here, > again, I'll mention Fagin and Coolidge. On the Pumice of Morons > seems to be > the result of that. > > On Jan 9, 2008 1:30 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat > wrote: > > > In what way is the argument on behalf N+7 creating art different > from a > > monkey writing Hamlet (or a "critique" of it) given a typewrter > and enough > > paper and time? One has to still locate "the Hamlet" among infnite > numbers > > of paper (maybe a Boges library made up of pages typed by a > compulsive > > obsessive monkey). I think that infinite endlessness of a > seductively easy > > method (which may even appear like a revelation) that Marcus is > reacting > > to. > > > > Ciao, > > > > Murat > > > > > > On Jan 8, 2008 12:12 AM, Marcus Bales > wrote: > > > > > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > > > "... it wasn't really until i started to experiment myself with > the > > random > > > in art > > > that i realized it can be erm magical. and not only magical, but > it > > offers > > > perspectives on the material of writing or radio that can be > quite > > useful > > > regardless of one's perspectives on the efficacy of random > methods." > > > > > > That´s sort of like believing that God will correct any errors > in your > > > scientific > > > methodology to ensure that it comes out all right, and then > using that > > > God- > > > corrected methodology to show there is no God. It´s trying to > have it > > both > > > ways. > > > > > > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > > > "... and it is a kind of portal into another force or power > operating on > > > the > > > writing apart from one's own intentions. as though one lets a > mysterious > > > part > > > of the universe into the writing process." > > > > > > "As though" but not really. You seem to be saying that "the > random" is a > > > mental trick you use to deceive yourself into letting your own > practice > > > expertise seem to you as if it were not a part of you in order > to give > > > yourself > > > permission to write what you might not have written otherwise? I > have no > > > kick > > > with using random elements to kick-start the creative process. > My > > > objection is > > > to the N+7 (and any other similar) claim that by a purely > mechanical > > > random > > > process one can create art. > > > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 steve russell wrote: > > > I don't see why being attentive to randomness should be regarded > as a > > > disregard of craft. One chooses, assembles ..." > > > > > > But "attentive to randomness" is not the same as "randomness > itself > > > creates > > > art". It is the choosing and assembling to which you refer, done > by a > > > human to > > > appeal to humans, that is a necessary (though not sufficient) > > requirement > > > for > > > art. My objection is to the notion that randomness can, all by > itself, > > > create art > > > in general, and in particular to the notion that a mechanistic > > replacement > > > of > > > nouns in any poem by a random method can make an interesting, > > significant, > > > or important, or any satire, parody, or spoof of that original > poem. The > > > methodology will make hash of ANY poem because it makes hash of > ALL > > > poems, and not because any given particular original poem is in > some way > > > defective. The method makes equal hash of all poems, good or bad > - and > > > thus cannot be counted in any way, by any means, to be an > effective > > parody > > > or spoof of a particular poem. > > > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 steve russell wrote: > > > "& no matter how seemingly random, things take on some sort of > shape. > > > DADA started to hint strongly towards the often violent > dislocations > > that > > > would > > > shape modernity. so why not involve our friend the machine?" > > > > > > If things take on some sort of consistent shape then they cannot > really > > be > > > random. Things that take on randomly changing shapes aren´t the > same > > > things any more because they change from thing to thing as they > change > > > from > > > shape to shape. Once again, you´re trying to have it both ways, > and it > > > won´t > > > do. > > > > > > I have no objection to asking a machine to pick six words, for > example, > > > randomly, using which you then write a sestina, because the > randomness > > is > > > heuristic not causative. You still have to write the sestina, > making all > > > the rest > > > of the choices. Even when you´re done, it may not be a very > good > > sestina, > > > though, since part of the quality of a good sestina is the > exercise of > > > good > > > judgment about the choice of those six words. Still, I agree > there is a > > > chance > > > that a good sestina may be written using six words randomly > chosen. But > > > the > > > sestina is a piece of art, if it turns out to be one instead of > a mere > > > exercise, > > > because of the choices the artist makes, not because of the > randomness > > of > > > the choice of the words. > > > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > > > "While I agree with you that N+7 has little chance of producing > > 'artistic' > > > results, I would not dismiss the possibility that it might do so > - > > > especially with > > > small samples of text, perhaps run through several different > > dictionaries > > > (some of which might yield interesting results for various > samples)." > > > > > > I dismiss the possibility because an algorithm doesn´t produce > art, > > people > > > do. > > > Art is a human-only endeavor. If a machine ever produces art, > we´ll have > > > to > > > call it human, and change our definition of human to include the > kind of > > > machine that can produce art. Such a machine would be human: it > would be > > > able to lie, to refuse to do work assigned to it, to control > whether it > > > could be > > > turned off or not, and so forth - it would be autonomous. > Imagine if > > your > > > computer could tell you it preferred not to reproduce the poem > you just > > > typed > > > in, or that it could lie and cheat, and send your poem off to a > magazine > > > under > > > its own name, and so on. Such computers would be useless as > machines, as > > > computers. They would be autonomous human agents, free from the > slavery > > > that being a machine entailed. > > > > > > The production of `artistic´ results for N+7 after a human, > using small > > > samples > > > of text run through a variety of dictionaries, exercising human > judgment > > > about > > > which products warranted another run-through, or warranted > saving, is > > not > > > the > > > same as the claim that the N+7 method of noun replacement in and > of > > itself > > > creates a piece of art that spoofs or parodies a particular > poem. Since > > > the > > > N+7 and other such algorithms will make the same kind of hash > out of ANY > > > poem, good or bad, it is a false claim that such a hash is a > spoof or > > > parody of > > > a particular poem, irrespective of how bad the N+7 writers or > readers > > > believe > > > the original poem to be. The N+7 method says NOTHING AT ALL > about any > > > particular poem´s qualities. It merely creates a random hash of > ANY poem > > - > > > it > > > makes ANY poem look bad. > > > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > > > "I don't necessarily agree that randomness has no place in > creativity -- > > a > > > position you seem to take; rhyme and meter, certainly, have > rather > > > arbitrary > > > roots." > > > > > > I do not say that randomness has no place in creativity; I say > that the > > > N+7 > > > method, and similar methods, cannot create art; I further say > that such > > > randomness methods cannot even create spoofs or parodies of > particular > > > poems because their very methodology makes a hash of any poem, > not only > > > bad poems. > > > > > > I would like to know your response to an anagrammatic form I > invented > > ten > > > years ago, examples of which appear on the Beard of Bees web > site at > > > http://www.beardofbees.com/zimmerman.html. By constructing 4x4 > word > > > squares, running them through an online anagram generator > (which > > produced > > > thousands of lines of words using the same 16letters), selecting > those > > > that > > > seem ..." > > > > > > The moment you start selecting using your brain instead of a > randomizing > > > algorithm, you have ceased to claim that the algorithm alone is > creating > > > the > > > poem. I have no problem with using randomness as a heuristic > part of the > > > creative process; what I reject, and what I object to, is the > notion > > that > > > randomness can, of itself and by itself, create a work of art. > > > > > > On 7 Jan 2008 Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > > Aleatory is a paintbrush. like any other paintbrush it's suited > to > > certain > > > jobs > > > better than others. ... same thing with Aleatory in poetry. > > > > > > Once again, this is a different claim than that randomness in > and of > > > itself can > > > create art. A Jackson Pollock painting requires a Jackson > Pollock to > > paint > > > it, > > > not a paint-spattering algorithm. > > > > > > Marcus > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 14:05:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed An algorithm can certainly write a poem. I don't think one will ever read one. On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, Alison Croggon wrote: > It takes a very simple algorithm to make very complex and unpredictable > patterns. Though actually, I wasn't thinking of computers at all, but of the > biological processes that, for example, lead to spots on cows. > > All best > > Alison > > On Jan 8, 2008 9:47 AM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > >> On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Alison Croggon wrote: >> >>>> Algorithms do not write poems -- people do. >>> >>> But what if people are algorithms? I've sometimes wondered. >>> >> >> We aren't, and there are a couple of great books on the subject. If you >> haven't got the patience to wade through Heidegger's "Being and Time" then >> the more readable, fun, and interesting version of the story can be found in >> Hubert Dreyfus's "What Computers Can't Do." >> > > > > -- > Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au > Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com > Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 22:07:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aryanil Mukherjee Subject: Re: Bollywood & Kolkata Book Fair In-Reply-To: <448420.98043.qm@web30210.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bollywood & Kolkata Book Fair !!!! Do you have any idea what you are talking about ? Please don't mix Terminator II with Emily Dickinson....... and get your facts right. It isn't the largest bookfair in the world but the most attended and sure it is an event of great cultural and intellectual dissemination very widely attended by practising poets and writers of all brands and bends and that is exactly why "Bollywood", if uttered in the same breath, tarnishes its great literary rhetoric. Aryanil ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ram Devineni" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 4:23 PM Subject: Bollywood & Kolkata Book Fair > Dear Friends: > > I am heading to India to Bollywood and the Kolkata > Book Fair. As most of you know, Rattapallax is one of > the main sponsors of the US Delegation to the 2008 > Kolkata Book Fair (Jan. 30 to Feb. 10) -- the largest > book fair in the world with an annual attendance of > 2.8 million people. > > We have a remarkable group of poets, writers, editors, > translators and publisher going with us. The > delegation is YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, BHARATI MUKHERJEE, > CAROLYN FORCHE, BOB HOLMAN, JOY HARJO, CHRISTOPHER > MERRILL, NATHALIE HANDAL, ED PAVLIC, GOUTAM DATA, RAM > DEVINENI, CATHERINE FLETCHER, DANTE MICHEAUX, and > IDRA NOVEY. > > With the support of CLMP, we gathered and shipped over > 10,000 books to be sold and displayed at the book > fair. They represent the diversity of independent > literary publishing in the USA. Special thanks to the > National Endowment for the Arts and Wyeth, Inc for > funding some of the delegation costs. More information > at http://www.uskle.org > > > I am also going to Mumbai (Bombay) with Frantisek > Ballerini, a reporter with two of Brazil's largest > newspapers, "O Estado de S.Paulo" and "Jornal da > Tarde", (http://www.estado.com.br) which have about > one million readers per day. The newspapers are doing > a special focus on the Indian film industry. This > will be the first time that a Brazilian newspaper is > dedicating an entire week to Indian entertainment. We > plan to attend the Pune Film Festival, Kishore Namith > Kapoor Acting Studio, Whistling Woods Film School, > Mukta Arts Studios, YashRaj and Adlabs studios. We > will be interviewing leading Indian actors, producers, > directors, music directors, and industry leaders like > Amit Khanna, President of Film & Television Producers > Guild of India and head of Reliance entertainment, and > producer Mahesh Bhatt. The articles will correspond > with the 2nd Annual Bollywood and Indian Film Festival > at Cinemateca (Sao Paulo) in February 2008. More > information at http://www.bollywoodbrasil.com > > Cheers > Ram Devineni > Producer & Publisher > http://www.rattapallax.com > > > Please send future emails to > devineni@rattapallax.com for press > > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.0/1216 - Release Date: 1/9/2008 > 10:16 AM > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 19:53:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eireene Nealand Subject: Help with a Valery quote MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=KOI8-R Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: inline RG9lcyBhbnlvbmUgcmVjb2duaXplIHRoaXMgcXVvdGU/IEkndmUgdHJhbnNsYXRlZCBpdCBmcm9t IGEgUnVzc2lhbgpzb3VyY2UgYmVsb3csIGJ1dCBJJ2QgbGlrZSB0byBmaW5kIHRoZSBzdGFuZGFy ZCB0cmFuc2xhdGlvbiBhcyBpdAp3b3VsZCBhcHBlYXIgaW4gRW5nbGlzaC4gQW5kLCBJJ2QgbG92 ZSB0byBzZWUgaXQgaW4gIEZyZW5jaCwgdG9vLCBmb3IKdGhhdCBtYXR0ZXIsIGlmIGFueW9uZSBo YXMgaXQgaGFuZHkuIFRoYW5rcyBpbiBhZHZhbmNlLgoKZWlyZWVuZQoKIkluIGEgd29yayBvZiBh cnQgYWxsIG1pZ2h0IGhhdmUgYmVlbiBvdGhlcndpc2UuIgotLVBhdWwgVmFsZXJ5Cgr3INDSz8na 18XExc7JySDJ08vV09PU18Eg19PFIM3Px8zPIMLZIMLZ1NggxNLVx8nNLgrwz8zYIPfBzMXSyQo= ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:07:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Robert Pinsky - Charles Simic - Jazz - Poetry - Review - New York Times MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/arts/music/10poet.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin--- " . . . things remarkable, and by chance never before heard of or seen . . . " --Lazarillo de Tormes, autor anonimo ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 23:27:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi Jason, contemporary computers, it's true, are somewhere around the level of the insect, or lower, when it comes to intelligence. there are exceptions, of course. deep blue beat kasparov at chess. and so forth. but what contemporary computers can't do only because the programming is not sufficiently advanced is irrelevant to their theoretical capabilities, ie, what they *could* do, not what they do in this era. one may note that computers don't currently do x, but that is no proof that they are incapable of it at some future point. however, there are instances where it has been shown that computers will *never* do y. not ever. never. as i mentioned, turing devised the turing machine as a way to show that there are some tasks which no machine will ever be able to do. but it has never been convincingly shown that there exist any thought processes of which humans are capable and computers are not. they can make decisions. they can rewrite their own programming. some people--or probably most people--feel that it diminishes humanity to think that the operations of the brain are those of a machine. even if such people are not religious, they feel that in comparison with contemporary machines we are quite obviously vastly different and conclude, from that, that machines are necessarily as primitive in thought as contemporary machines are. however, it's only a measure of how early on we are into the development of machine intelligence that this perception can be so very widespread. my own feeling is that we are indeed ultra sophisticated machines. this does not negate any of our intellectual capabilities. to think that humanity arose with no designer out of natural process is, for me, a tremendously exciting thought--it indicates the richness of natural process over 2.5 billion years of evolution (the universe itself is only 15 billion years old). it also gives generative art a certain appeal to me. not out of aspiration to be god. but out of interest in engaging in generative art that can aspire to interesting things out of simple processes. including random processes, randomness directed in useful directions. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:20:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Art/Medecine/Technology/Shamanism----- Important Works by Emery Blagdon - Art - Review - New York Times MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/arts/design/10chan.html --- n ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 04:46:49 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: blacksox@ATT.NET Subject: Love Junky III -- New York City Release !!! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Orlando's Joe Pasquale AKA the Nude Bandit asked me to share this. Worth a trip to the Bowery Poetry Club! Russ My 2 new books, Love Junky III: Emo Generation Blues and "Liar's Regret" willl be released in New York City on April 7th and performances will be read live with two members of David's Amram's Trio playing jazz, Kevin Twigg and John Dewitt. LORD BUCKLEY 101ST BIRTHDAY CONCERT Bowery Poetry Club NYC 7-9 p.m. April 7th 2008 Amram joins Professor Irwin Corey and others in a tribute to the great comedian and philospher Lord Buckley. Amram performed with Buckley the night before he died in 1960, and wrote a saxophone concerto Ode to Lord Buckley to honor him. Amram will be joined by his quartet with Kevin Twigg,John de Witt and Adam Amram. Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:46:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Requiem MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Requiem requiem for Boojum, about 13 minutes If the left and right hands have independent repeated patterns prime to each other, why then the cycle is right*left by which time, or a fraction of time indicated by attention span (based on short-term memory and defuge), right*left/[short-term memory, defuge], I have moved on (to another register, tonality, movement or moment of sound), listener follow- ing (if the listener is listening yet), so that the ride is imminent (in a distant sense related to 1/1 jazz rhythm or tabla additive combinatorics) or a moment of consciousness (moment in the sense of internal time con- sciousness mitigated by short-term memory or long-term memory of other times and other musics by this selfing or other selvings) which at the end (as if the requiem is in withdrawal or unknowingly bracketed until the unexpected finality which returns as 'perfect sense') seems natural and sadly required, as such is required, drawn forth, by any organism, from small cat to whale, not a rupture or a ripple by a human, or at the least, this human, playing this guitar, a 1949 di Giorgio, in an act of homage hardly if ever unheard. http://www.alansondheim.org/bbj.mp3 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 22:40:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Karmin Subject: Jan 24: Angela Davis @ University of Chicago MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 2008 KENT LECTURE FEATURING ~MS. ANGELA DAVIS~ FREE EVENT - OPEN TO THE PUBLIC Date: Thursday, January 24, 2008 Time: 7:00-9:00pm Location: Rockefeller Chapel at University of Chicago, 5850 S. Woodlawn Avenue American social justice activist, community organizer and professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Community Party. Her story takes America down the path of social injustice and through the civil rights battles that enraged America, which victimized those who voiced opposing opinions. She draws upon her own experiences in the early 1970s as a person who spent eighteen months in jail and on trial, after being placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List." Her story is one of false accusations, incarceration and the ultimate vindication of justice. You are cordially invited to hear MS. ANGELA DAVIS address the question: "How Does Change Happen?" Ms. Davis will address the issue of unfinished work in the struggle for equality in America, and how to deal with the social challenges that remain in American democracy. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:26:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric unger Subject: Hillary-- re: the first amendment to the constitution of the US-- right of citizens to burn US flag MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Amendment I to the Constitution of the United States of America Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. -- I do not mean to dismiss John Edwards, Barack Obama, or any other candidates or their candidacies by not including him in this particular discussion -- a discussion about the first amendment and freedom of speech as it pertains to the right of American citizens to set the American flag aflame -- but I will forego remarking on them or the peripheral participants too much to instead focus on one of the top three Democrat presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton. Any Democrat currently running would be infinitely better for the country than his or her Republican counterpart. I welcome anyone who would argue that this isn't the case -- that John McCain would be a better president than Dennis Kucinich, for instance -- to do so now. The simple reason that the Left-side is more what the country needs now than the Right-side is that the Right-side, the Grand Old Party, has been and is currently complicit in the Bush administration's egregious affronts to the constitution and basic human rights. Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton has been complicit as well, and I'm not just talking about her vote for the Iraq war. I'll cut right to the chase: Hillary Clinton once introduced a bill that would have made flag burning illegal. Thankfully it didn't pass. In an article two years ago by Richard Cohen writing for the Washington Post titled "Star-Spangled Pandering", he noted: ". . . this is not a proposed constitutional amendment, and it is written in . . . a way that does not explicitly outlaw all flag burnings -- just those intended to 'intimidate any person or group of persons '" And who will make that distinction? I presume law enforcement would decide whether or not the flag burning was an act intended intimidate others. That is a scary thought, but it is a scarier thought still that anyone would even have to make that call. Burning the flag is a form of public speech and therefore banning the act is tantamount to a violation of the first ammendment to the constitution. Richard Cohen closes his article by insisting: "The First Amendment is where you simply do not go. It is sacred. It protects our most cherished rights -- religion, speech, press and assembly -- and while I sometimes turn viscerally angry when I see the flag despoiled, my emotions are akin to what I feel when neo-Nazis march. Repugnant or not, popular or not, it is all political speech." I will certainly take Hillary Clinton's sponsoring of a bill that would have infringed on Americans' constitutional rights into consideration when deciding who to support in the forthcoming election. Eric ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:49:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas savage Subject: Re: Robert Pinsky - Charles Simic - Jazz - Poetry - Review - New York Times In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I meant to go to this event but then just forgot about it. Too busy. I especially like Simic's poetry and would be interested to hear how it worked with jazz. According to this review there wasn't too much interaction which was too bad, if true. There are many lesser known poets who read compellingly with jazz musicians all the time. Steve Dalachinsky and Eve Packer are the two who come to mind immediately who make jazz and poetry integral to each other. It's too bad that their performances with musicians don't get reviewed or at least haven't to my knowledge. Steve just published a book of 300 pages or so of his poems written at performances by the wonderful Saxophonist Charles Gayle over a twenty year period. Jazz and poetry ( and contemporary classical music) occupies similar black holes in the collective American artistic consciousnesses, alas. But the inmates do find reason and means to collaborate often. I'm working with a prodigy classical composer named Oliver Hagen at the moment but have read with his father, John Hagen, a jazz musician and would be glad to do so again. Regards, Tom Savage David Chirot wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/arts/music/10poet.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin--- " . . . things remarkable, and by chance never before heard of or seen . . . " --Lazarillo de Tormes, autor anonimo --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:08:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: L Guevarra Subject: NEW BOOK: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Dear Buffalo Poetics List: The University of California Press is pleased to announce the publication of: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers George Oppen (1908-1984) was born in New York and died in San Francisco. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for _Of Being Numerous._ His work is available in _New Collected Poems,_ edited by Michael Davidson (2002); _Selected Poems,_ edited by Robert Creeley (2003); and _Selected Letters of George Oppen,_ edited by Rachel Blau DuPlessis (1990). Stephen Cope received his PhD in 2005 from the University of California, San Diego, where he was a research fellow at the Archive for New Poetry, where Oppen's papers are housed. He has taught at universities in California, Iowa, and Ohio. http://go.ucpress.edu/OppenProse "Here is the essential record of George Oppen's indelible voice, astonishing as it wanders and discovers a new mode 'between the grim gray lines of the Philistines and the ramshackle emplacements of Bohemia' in order to recover an open ground that is, in the fact, ' the function of poetry to serve as a test of truth.' Few documents in our time would better serve to illuminate the hard-won life of being a poet in the American language than this volume, brilliantly edited by Stephen Cope. Simply put, what a laboratory is to hard science, these daybooks are to poetry."-Peter Gizzi, author of _The Outernationale_ This is the first comprehensive critical edition of the unpublished writings of Pulitzer Prize-winning objectivist poet George Oppen (1908-1984). Editor Stephen Cope has made a judicious selection of Oppen's extant writings outside of poetry, including the essay "The Mind's Own Place" as well as "Twenty-Six Fragments," which were found on the wall of Oppen's study after his death. Most notable are Oppen's "Daybooks," composed in the decade following his return to poetry in 1958. _Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers _is an inspiring portrait of this essential writer and a testament to the creative process itself. Full information about the bookis available online: http://go.ucpress.edu/OppenProse -- Lolita Guevarra Electronic Marketing Coordinator University of California Press Tel. 510.643.4738 | Fax 510.643.7127 lolita.guevarra@ucpress.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:39:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gerald Schwartz Subject: Re: Requiem MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thank you, Alan. Yes, it is a finality required. Gerald S. > Requiem > > > requiem for Boojum, about 13 minutes > > If the left and right hands have independent repeated patterns prime to > each other, why then the cycle is right*left by which time, or a fraction > of time indicated by attention span (based on short-term memory and > defuge), right*left/[short-term memory, defuge], I have moved on (to > another register, tonality, movement or moment of sound), listener follow- > ing (if the listener is listening yet), so that the ride is imminent (in a > distant sense related to 1/1 jazz rhythm or tabla additive combinatorics) > or a moment of consciousness (moment in the sense of internal time con- > sciousness mitigated by short-term memory or long-term memory of other > times and other musics by this selfing or other selvings) which at the end > (as if the requiem is in withdrawal or unknowingly bracketed until the > unexpected finality which returns as 'perfect sense') seems natural and > sadly required, as such is required, drawn forth, by any organism, from > small cat to whale, not a rupture or a ripple by a human, or at the least, > this human, playing this guitar, a 1949 di Giorgio, in an act of homage > hardly if ever unheard. http://www.alansondheim.org/bbj.mp3 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:57:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Trigilio Organization: http://www.starve.org Subject: Visiting Poet (one-year position), Columbia College Chicago MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is a new visiting position we'll be offering each year, starting Fall 2008. Review of applications begins March 1. Feel free to email me if questions come up (applications go to the postal address listed in the ad). Thanks! Best, Tony ******************************** VISITING POET, COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO: The Elma Stuckey Liberal Arts and Sciences Emerging Poet-in-Residence. Annual, one-year nonrenewable position: starts August 2008. Poets from underrepresented communities and/or those who bring diverse cultural, ethnic, theoretical, and national perspectives to their writing and teaching are particularly encouraged to apply. Position is named for Elma Stuckey, a poet born in Memphis who lived in Chicago for more than 40 years. Author of THE BIG GATE (1976) and THE COLLECTED POEMS OF ELMA STUCKEY (1987), she has been described as "the A.E. Housman of slavery" -- a poet who recast for contemporary readers "those things that were kept from the ears of the unknowing slavemasters." Successful candidate will teach one course per semester (undergraduate workshop, craft, and/or literature seminars), give a public reading, and possibly supervise a small number of graduate theses. Qualified candidates will have received an M.F.A. in poetry, or Ph.D. in English (with creative dissertation), or other relevant terminal degree in past five years; demonstrate excellence and experience in college-level teaching; and have strong record of publication in national literary magazines. Salary: $30,000 for the year. Send cover letter, CV, 5-page sample of published poetry (photocopies are fine), sample syllabus for undergraduate or graduate-level poetry workshop or literature course, three letters of recommendation (at least one should address teaching), and statement of teaching philosophy to: Tony Trigilio Director, Creative Writing - Poetry Columbia College Chicago 600 South Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL, 60605 Review of applications begins March 1 and will continue until position is filled. The Creative Writing - Poetry Program has a commitment to excellence in teaching and is founded upon strong ties between the study of literature and the practice of creative expression, and features the only undergraduate creative writing - poetry BA program in the country and a single-genre MFA program, a national reading series featuring monthly readings, and two national literary magazines: COLUMBIA POETRY REVIEW and COURT GREEN. Columbia College Chicago is an urban institution of over 12,000 undergraduate and graduate students, emphasizing arts, media, and communications in a liberal arts setting. Columbia College Chicago encourages qualified female, Deaf, GLBT, disabled, international & minority classified individuals to apply for all positions. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:09:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.1.20080107233400.062eaa88@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit E.J. Dionne Jr. takes credit for the quote. After the New Hampshire vote, he adds, "To eat some of my own words, maybe prose wins elections after all." Washington Post, 1/10/'08 Mark Weiss wrote: It's gonna cost her a lot of poet votes. At 03:51 PM 1/7/2008, you wrote: >She must have meant it as a negative. > > >And Mario Cuomo said it years ago. (Did she attribute the quote to him?) > > >And it displays a slapdash ignorance of the >possibilities of poetry. (I hear Shelley turning over in his grave.) > > >Mark > _____ > >From: Chris Stroffolino [mailto:cstroffo@EARTHLINK.NET] >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU >Sent: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:10:05 -0500 >Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire > >Thanks for passing this on Barry. I may have to write about it more. > Did Hilary mean the "you" as a negative thing, something she > disagrees with (that the 'inexperienced' Obama does, for instance), > or did she mean it as a self-characterization? As something "one" does? > > Chris > On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Dr. Barry S. Alpert wrote: > > > Just encountered this germane formulation, but am skeptical whether > > it holds up to rigorous analysis. > > > > > > At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton > > skewered Obama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as > > his vote in favor of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she > > described as "Dick Cheney's energy bill." She never mentioned > > Obama's name but left no doubt about whom she was discussing."You > > campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clinton said. > > > > > > Barry Alpert > > _________________________________________________________________ > > Watch “Cause Effect,” a show about real people making a real > > difference. > > http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=text_watchcause > --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:40:44 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charlie Rossiter Subject: Get Ready--April is Not Only Poetry Month MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit It also includes tv turnoff week, an idea worth considering and passing on to others. for details go to http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/turnoffweek/TV.turnoff.week.html Charlie -- "The local is the only universal, upon that all art builds." John Dewey www.poetrypoetry.com where you hear poems read by poets who wrote them www.myspace.com/charlierossiter hear Charlie as solo performance poet www.myspace.com/avantretro (hear avantretro poems) www.myspace.com/whiskeybucketbluesreview hear Charlie & Henry sing the blues www.myspace.com/jackthe71special hear Jack's original blues, blues rock & roots ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:38:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Every time we have this conversation, Jim, I thoroughly enjoy myself. But before I respond to the more salient points you make, I do want to point one thing out about Deep Blue that often gets overlooked in the conversations about it. What Deep Blue did was very impressive, certainly. It learned its chess winning chess strategy (which while whether that actually beat kasparov or not is a bit controversial it could no doubt beat the pants off of me) on it's own, and that by itself is something that I think warrants its place in the history books. At the same time, the agreement Kasparov made with IBM, and which I think was a mistake on his part, allowed IBM to make adjustments to Deep Blue during the match but between games. That's important because one of those adjustments allowed the machine to avoid a trap it had fallen into twice previously, which if it hadn't done, Kasparov would have had mate. That having been said, it being a bit of a pet peeve of mine to make that point whenever Deep Blue comes up, I do want to say that I don't think machine consciousness is impossible and that I agree that humans are largely mechanical (although to date there's no proof of this to come out of neuroscience and statements to the contrary are usually unpackable as a form of metaphysical bias). What I do believe is that whatever eventually allows us to create thinking machines is not going to be a software algorithm running on some sort of turing machine. The Dreyfus book is really good on this point, and I'm a little leery of paraphrasing him, but the basic argument boils down to this: the concept of a computer as we currently understand it is some sort of logical, rule following machine that operates according to heuristics and algorithms. the analogy AI researchers often make, and have made for decades is between this and the human brain and the human mind. That is, the human brain is the hardware that runs the software algorithms that produce the mind as its output. Dreyfus argues, and I tend to agree with his argument, that while that can simulate what human consciousness is, it's not the same thing as a machine actually being conscious and for that the machine needs to be in the world and of the world and for the world always already the way that humans are. The reason being that the world is not composed of facts the way a computer needs to deal with them, as digital representations, but rather the world is composed of things and that the fundamental act of humanity is to cope with those things, not to make representations of them to ourselves. > my own feeling is that we are indeed ultra sophisticated machines. this does > not negate any of our intellectual capabilities. to think that humanity > arose with no designer out of natural process is, for me, a tremendously > exciting thought--it indicates the richness of natural process over 2.5 > billion years of evolution (the universe itself is only 15 billion years > old). > > it also gives generative art a certain appeal to me. not out of aspiration > to be god. but out of interest in engaging in generative art that can aspire > to interesting things out of simple processes. including random processes, > randomness directed in useful directions. I do like a lot of this stuff. I like Jackson Mac Low's poetry and Iannis Xenakis's music. At the same time, it's not something I enjoy reading or listening to so much as i find it interesting to observe. It engages a different part of my brain than does, for example, reading TS Eliot or listening to The Cure. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:03:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire In-Reply-To: <175877.5483.qm@web52408.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cuomo did say it, but used it in a different context (which is a =20 little less ignorant about the possibilities of poetry than Hillary's =20= recontextualization). I just wrote a really long piece about that; backchannel me if you want to see it. I didn't know about E.J. Dionne though. I'll look for it, but in the =20 meantime, do you have a sense of the context in which (he or she?) =20 used it? The essay or speech? When, etc? Many of the pundits are saying it was Hillary's "crying" (and there's =20= debate over whether it's authentic crying or a feigned attempt to =20 campaign in poetry) that won the election? But others say that the main issue in exit polls was "the economy" =20 and Clinton has spoken more often about the economy than Obama (regardless of genre). Other pundits say that the pundits who say that Hillary won because =20 of her tears are just saying that so they can later discredit her. Do you cry in poetry or cry in prose? In music or in movies? (Did Frank O'Hara for instance govern more in his art criticism did he campaign more in "The Personism Manifesto?" than in "Easter" or govern more in the posthumously published 'prosey' dialogue Fire =20 Island Sun piece...?) When was the last time you governed by crying? (campaign in hurricane and govern in eyes) (you don't have to answer if you don't want to. But it might be a =20 prose-poetry contest sponsored by "I heart the Huckabee for =20 President" foundation. Prizes! Experience! Change! (can u keep....) On Jan 10, 2008, at 12:09 PM, steve russell wrote: > E.J. Dionne Jr. takes credit for the quote. After the New Hampshire =20= > vote, he adds, "To eat some of my own words, maybe prose wins =20 > elections after all." Washington Post, 1/10/'08 > > Mark Weiss wrote: It's gonna cost her a =20 > lot of poet votes. > > At 03:51 PM 1/7/2008, you wrote: >> She must have meant it as a negative. >> >> >> And Mario Cuomo said it years ago. (Did she attribute the quote to =20= >> him?) >> >> >> And it displays a slapdash ignorance of the >> possibilities of poetry. (I hear Shelley turning over in his grave.) >> >> >> Mark >> _____ >> >> From: Chris Stroffolino [mailto:cstroffo@EARTHLINK.NET] >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU >> Sent: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:10:05 -0500 >> Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire >> >> Thanks for passing this on Barry. I may have to write about it more. >> Did Hilary mean the "you" as a negative thing, something she >> disagrees with (that the 'inexperienced' Obama does, for instance), >> or did she mean it as a self-characterization? As something "one" =20 >> does? >> >> Chris >> On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Dr. Barry S. Alpert wrote: >> >>> Just encountered this germane formulation, but am skeptical whether >>> it holds up to rigorous analysis. >>> >>> >>> At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton >>> skewered Obama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as >>> his vote in favor of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she >>> described as "Dick Cheney's energy bill." She never mentioned >>> Obama's name but left no doubt about whom she was discussing."You >>> campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clinton said. >>> >>> >>> Barry Alpert >>> _________________________________________________________________ >>> Watch =93Cause Effect,=94 a show about real people making a real >>> difference. >>> http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=3Dtext_watchcause >> > > > > --------------------------------- > Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. =20= > Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:18:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joan Houlihan Subject: UPCOMING COLRAIN POETRY MANUSCRIPT CONFERENCES MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline The Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference, a unique conference designed for poets with a book-length manuscript, has been a tremendous success, drawing accomplished poets from all over the country and overseas. The conference has been created for poets who are either ready to publish a book-length manuscript or who feel they need a reality check on their current manuscript-in-progress. Since our first conference, in March of 2006, over 15 poets have had their manuscripts accepted for publication. The conference has generated interest on the part of editors as well as a number of interested poetry press publishers eager to participate. On January 18, 2008, the ninth group of poets will meet in Greenfield, Massachusetts to meet with leading poets and educators and to present their manuscripts to editors from poetry presses. This conference will last three days and include senior and founding editors from Graywolf Press and Ausable Press as well as poets Fred Marchant and Joan Houlihan. Complete information and application can be found at: http://www.colrainpoetry.com/January *Note: There are two openings left for the January conference. * Information on our upcoming conferences is available here: http://www.colrainpoetry.com The goal of the Colrain conference is to create a venue and network that will help poets to be published, or at least to be placed on a realistic path toward book publication. Please know we wish to work only with serious poets able to accept productive criticism of their work and/or their manuscripts from poetry professionals. Attendees say: "The Colrain Manuscript Conference managed to pack into a weekend what a lot of grad school teachers never had time to do in their classes or individually: offer finishing touches to a manuscript eager to be picked up by a publisher." Steve Fellner, Brockport, NY "...extremely helpful to hear responses to the other manuscripts. I learned as much or more from the critiques of others' manuscripts as I did from the critique of mine." Mary Crow, Fort Collins, CO, Poet Laureate of Colorado " Attending the Colrain Manuscript Conference was undoubtedly the most profound poetry experience I've ever had. What I learned in forty-eight hours will be with me for years to come." Tracy Kroetsky, Berkley, CA "...My consultation completely changed the way I view the manuscript. There is nothing like what you are providing. Kudos!" Dawn Fewkes, Horseheads, NY "...The Colrain conference was everything I'd hoped it would be and more. I feel well on my way, now, to a publishable manuscript." Pat Lowry Collins, MA and MORE: http://www.colrainpoetry.com/January/omnis-comments.htm -- Joan Houlihan, Founder & Director Concord Poetry Center & Colrain Conferences 40 Stow Street Concord, MA 01720 www.concordpoetry.org www.colrainpoetry.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:09:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire In-Reply-To: <76239506-78E0-4731-8C6C-D032AB5506D1@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed This is profoundly silly. It shouldn't be a surprise that the word "poetry" (and poetic) means more than one thing, as does "prose" (and prosaic). Hillary wasn't talking about literature or literary theory, and she wasn't particularly worried about the poetry constituency. As to the crying (she didn't, by the way--there was maybe a microsecond catch in her voice), Hillary went into New Hampshire with a considerable edge over Obama among registered Democrats. The punditry decided that she'd lose all the indepenfdents, based solely on the arcane Iowa process. Did everyone forget that Hillary's people assumed months ago that she couldn't win in Iowa and only decided to campaign there with some reluctance? Mark At 12:03 AM 1/11/2008, you wrote: >Cuomo did say it, but used it in a different context (which is a >little less ignorant about the possibilities of poetry than Hillary's >recontextualization). I just wrote a really long piece about that; >backchannel me if you want to see it. >I didn't know about E.J. Dionne though. I'll look for it, but in the >meantime, do you have a sense of the context in which (he or she?) >used it? The essay or speech? When, etc? > >Many of the pundits are saying it was Hillary's "crying" (and there's >debate over whether it's authentic crying or a feigned attempt to >campaign in poetry) that won the election? >But others say that the main issue in exit polls was "the economy" >and Clinton has spoken more often about the economy than Obama >(regardless of genre). >Other pundits say that the pundits who say that Hillary won because >of her tears are just saying that so they can later discredit her. > >Do you cry in poetry or cry in prose? In music or in movies? > >(Did Frank O'Hara for instance govern more in his art criticism >did he campaign more in "The Personism Manifesto?" >than in "Easter" >or govern more in the posthumously published 'prosey' dialogue Fire >Island Sun piece...?) > >When was the last time you governed by crying? >(campaign in hurricane and govern in eyes) > >(you don't have to answer if you don't want to. But it might be a >prose-poetry contest sponsored by "I heart the Huckabee for >President" foundation. >Prizes! Experience! Change! (can u keep....) > > > > >On Jan 10, 2008, at 12:09 PM, steve russell wrote: > >>E.J. Dionne Jr. takes credit for the quote. After the New Hampshire >>vote, he adds, "To eat some of my own words, maybe prose wins >>elections after all." Washington Post, 1/10/'08 >> >>Mark Weiss wrote: It's gonna cost her a >>lot of poet votes. >> >>At 03:51 PM 1/7/2008, you wrote: >>>She must have meant it as a negative. >>> >>> >>>And Mario Cuomo said it years ago. (Did she attribute the quote to >>>him?) >>> >>> >>>And it displays a slapdash ignorance of the >>>possibilities of poetry. (I hear Shelley turning over in his grave.) >>> >>> >>>Mark >>>_____ >>> >>>From: Chris Stroffolino [mailto:cstroffo@EARTHLINK.NET] >>>To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU >>>Sent: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:10:05 -0500 >>>Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire >>> >>>Thanks for passing this on Barry. I may have to write about it more. >>>Did Hilary mean the "you" as a negative thing, something she >>>disagrees with (that the 'inexperienced' Obama does, for instance), >>>or did she mean it as a self-characterization? As something "one" >>>does? >>> >>>Chris >>>On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Dr. Barry S. Alpert wrote: >>> >>>>Just encountered this germane formulation, but am skeptical whether >>>>it holds up to rigorous analysis. >>>> >>>> >>>>At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton >>>>skewered Obama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as >>>>his vote in favor of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she >>>>described as "Dick Cheney's energy bill." She never mentioned >>>>Obama's name but left no doubt about whom she was discussing."You >>>>campaign in poetry, you govern in prose," Clinton said. >>>> >>>> >>>>Barry Alpert >>>>_________________________________________________________________ >>>>Watch "Cause Effect," a show about real people making a real >>>>difference. >>>>http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=text_watchcause >> >> >> >>--------------------------------- >>Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. >>Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:15:27 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable "But how can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or = if it improves them. Improves them for what? for death? Why hurry them alon= g? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to e= at too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears)"--Frank O'Hara= .=0ASo maybe Hillary is a sort of poet, but unfortunately, one of "too many= poets."=0AOn the other hand, maybe O'Hara was just too twisted by his hate= ful relation with his mother.=0A=0A----- Original Message ----=0AFrom: Chri= s Stroffolino =0ATo: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU= =0ASent: Friday, 11 January, 2008 5:03:37 AM=0ASubject: Re: "Poetry" versus= "Prose" in New Hampshire=0A=0ACuomo did say it, but used it in a different= context (which is a =0Alittle less ignorant about the possibilities of po= etry than Hillary's =0Arecontextualization). I just wrote a really long pi= ece about that;=0Abackchannel me if you want to see it.=0AI didn't know abo= ut E.J. Dionne though. I'll look for it, but in the =0Ameantime, do you ha= ve a sense of the context in which (he or she?) =0Aused it? The essay or s= peech? When, etc?=0A=0AMany of the pundits are saying it was Hillary's "cry= ing" (and there's =0Adebate over whether it's authentic crying or a feigne= d attempt to =0Acampaign in poetry) that won the election?=0ABut others sa= y that the main issue in exit polls was "the economy" =0Aand Clinton has s= poken more often about the economy than Obama=0A(regardless of genre).=0AOt= her pundits say that the pundits who say that Hillary won because =0Aof he= r tears are just saying that so they can later discredit her.=0A=0ADo you c= ry in poetry or cry in prose? In music or in movies?=0A=0A(Did Frank O'Hara= for instance govern more in his art criticism=0Adid he campaign more in "T= he Personism Manifesto?"=0Athan in "Easter"=0Aor govern more in the posthum= ously published 'prosey' dialogue Fire =0AIsland Sun piece...?)=0A=0AWhen = was the last time you governed by crying?=0A(campaign in hurricane and gove= rn in eyes)=0A=0A(you don't have to answer if you don't want to. But it mig= ht be a =0Aprose-poetry contest sponsored by "I heart the Huckabee for = =0APresident" foundation.=0APrizes! Experience! Change! (can u keep....)= =0A=0A=0A=0A=0AOn Jan 10, 2008, at 12:09 PM, steve russell wrote:=0A=0A> E.= J. Dionne Jr. takes credit for the quote. After the New Hampshire =0A> vot= e, he adds, "To eat some of my own words, maybe prose wins =0A> elections = after all." Washington Post, 1/10/'08=0A>=0A> Mark Weiss wrote: It's gonna cost her a =0A> lot of poet votes.=0A>=0A> At 03= :51 PM 1/7/2008, you wrote:=0A>> She must have meant it as a negative.=0A>>= =0A>>=0A>> And Mario Cuomo said it years ago. (Did she attribute the quote = to =0A>> him?)=0A>>=0A>>=0A>> And it displays a slapdash ignorance of the= =0A>> possibilities of poetry. (I hear Shelley turning over in his grave.)= =0A>>=0A>>=0A>> Mark=0A>> _____=0A>>=0A>> From: Chris Stroffolino [mailto:c= stroffo@EARTHLINK.NET]=0A>> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0A>> Sent: Mon= , 07 Jan 2008 14:10:05 -0500=0A>> Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in N= ew Hampshire=0A>>=0A>> Thanks for passing this on Barry. I may have to writ= e about it more.=0A>> Did Hilary mean the "you" as a negative thing, someth= ing she=0A>> disagrees with (that the 'inexperienced' Obama does, for insta= nce),=0A>> or did she mean it as a self-characterization? As something "one= " =0A>> does?=0A>>=0A>> Chris=0A>> On Jan 7, 2008, at 4:20 AM, Dr. Barry S= . Alpert wrote:=0A>>=0A>>> Just encountered this germane formulation, but a= m skeptical whether=0A>>> it holds up to rigorous analysis.=0A>>>=0A>>>=0A>= >> At a raucous rally in a high school gymnasium in Nashua, Clinton=0A>>> s= kewered Obama for several votes he has cast in the Senate, such as=0A>>> hi= s vote in favor of the Patriot Act and for energy legislation she=0A>>> des= cribed as "Dick Cheney's energy bill." She never mentioned=0A>>> Obama's na= me but left no doubt about whom she was discussing."You=0A>>> campaign in p= oetry, you govern in prose," Clinton said.=0A>>>=0A>>>=0A>>> Barry Alpert= =0A>>> _________________________________________________________________=0A= >>> Watch =E2=80=9CCause Effect,=E2=80=9D a show about real people making a= real=0A>>> difference.=0A>>> http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source= =3Dtext_watchcause=0A>>=0A>=0A>=0A>=0A> ---------------------------------= =0A> Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. = =0A> Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:37:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: success at last, just for a moment MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed success at last, just for a moment it has been a difficult few days in the virtual environments laboratory. we moved most of the motion capture equipment to 109 to use, but couldn't locate the bvh computer (which receives signals from an old 486 used with proprietary hardware). the explanations written by the interns were miss- ing as well. we knew the bvh machine had to be around. we found an old dell and gary put windows 2000 on that, getting the key from another mach- ine. we put bvh software on the old dell, but the signals from the 486, which, it turned out, had to go through a router since we had no crossover connectors, were crashing it. so we were back to square one. i figured if i could locate a photo of the old bvh computer we'd used years ago, we might be able to use it to match with one of the bunches of similar units in 302c. i looked through archive after archive, until i located it; the image was slightly blurred, but the layout of the masking tape label (un- readable in the image) on top of the machine allowed us to narrow poss- , ible candidates to two. we found we couldn't get into either without pass- words. i discovered a scrap of paper in a corner of the room, 302c, with a password on it; it worked. so now we set them both up and one of them, which had been used as a projector connection to a virtual wall, was it. we brought the machine down to 109 and it almost ran; at least the soft- ware didn't crash. i found changing the antenna parameters for the motion capture and moving from ascii to binary and from tcp to udp did the trick. gary set up the 5100 port and addresses and we produced slomo.bvh as he moved the sensors slowly around; i wanted to duplicate the speed of the 5-7 frames per second output of the 486, instead of working high-speed as i usually do. we brought the bvh file to poser on a compaq laptop which for some reason is now permanently misconfigured but usable; the result is http://www.alansondheim.org/slowmo.mov which i quite quite like; if you ignore the hand fluttering, the movement is closer to what we need to work with at the moment. as far as the hand-fluttering is concerned, we're going to internally turn off the hand sensors by modifying the capture program, written in c, but with clear documentation; even a non-programmer like myself can get into it a bit. now to slow things down further so the inconceivable happens at the speed of amoeba-learning; in addition, to transform avatar into deity-emanent, following, introjecting yamantaka or one or another manifestation, moving mind and sheave-body into other realms far beyond 486, 2000, 109, 302c, 5-7, until what ever may appear in the future brought quickly back to earth. http://www.alansondheim.org/slowmo.mov ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:46:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Hillary-- re: the first amendment // --H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prvention Act of 2007 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Eric: I appreciate your concern regrading the First Amendment, though criticizing Hillary Clinton for sponsoring a bill re Flag Burning that didn't pass is a rather narrow frame for examining what the US Senate and Congress have been rubber stamping for the last 7 years, much of it far far worse than a failed consideration of torching Old Glory. And the ugliness and suppression already very active, alive and well in a continual barrage of attacks on the First Amendment is about to get much uglier. Free Speech has been under harassment and attack by private individuals, corporations and interest lobbies for a very long time, and in recent years has been evoking memories of the 1950's Black Listings and McCarthyism. Critics of U.S and especially Israeli policies have been targeted and lecture and book events cancelled, music and theater events cancelled, Presses have been threatened with loss of distribution, persons have lost jobs or nearly lost them, their reputations smeared and research demeaned. The American media mainstream is heavily censored as are a lot of the "alternative" media and events. There is a small library now out of books dedicated to the censor ships of the Bush era, of Middle East reporting, and harassment of "average" citizens, including children, who have written anti-Bush email or drawn pictures in school considered in some way offensive to the Dear Leader. The First Amendment actually is a form of double standard as it is applied in practice. To paraphrase Orwell's Animal Farm, "All Speech is Free, but some is more Free than others." (See for example the two volume "Paper of Record" hefty tomes devoted solely to the NY Times' more than dubious practices.) Congress and almost all the candidates for President are beholden to corporate and special interest lobbies, which means that with regards to Free Speech criticism of these, they have implicitly pledged to minimize any form of open discussion, presentation of ideas, research, or dissidence. All the Democrats running for President except for Kucinich and Gravel signed documents with AIPAC which places the protection of Israel and its interests at the highest level, almost beyond those of the US itself. Kucinich and Gravel have fared badly at finding media coverage, even being ignored during the televised debates. (Due not only to AIPAC, but other reasons as well. After all, if they are "minimized" in the media--this makes them into "candidates too minimal to cover much." A form of self-fulfilling prophecy disguised as a "fair and balanced" "reportage.") Pharmaceuticals, Big Oil, a host of others effect Free Speech every day. Obama has said he would invade Pakistan, Hillary, Edwards, Obama have all kept the nuke option open for Iran. None of them has done anything much in office regarding the War in Iraq, health care, insurance and mortgage frauds on massive-beyond-belief scales going out of control and dragging the economy down with them , , , and so far of over 2500 questions addressed to the candidates during the debates, only 3 have concerned the environment. Far, far ore media time has been spent listening to the candidates discuss just how badly they would torture "terrorist" "detainees" than has been devoted to the catastrophic evidences that the environment is in Blowback mode. There are far worse things coming though. The House last fall passed H.R. 1955 (an almost entirely Democrat-sponsored Bill)--and Senate will be voting on this soon. So far, it appears to be a lock to pass, with perhaps a few revisions or extras attached. Below are links for the text of the Bill and another with more information about it. Whoever does become President will be very dangerous, as the current Presidency has systemically chopped away as many as possible of the "checks and balances' on an Imperial Presidency. The dismantling of the Constitution, the tearing up and reconstruction of the bureaucracy and civil service, the appointment of a huge number of judges who find the Constitution and current laws and Amendments in need of over turning--all these have been putting into place the structure for an ever more open form of fascism than the one already merrily moving along. H.R. 1955 will speed up this process immeasurably. Even with the laws currently in place, it is possible the next election could be suspended for "reasons of national crisis and security" if an attack on Iran and perhaps Pakistan is under way. "Too dangerous to change governments during a time of global crisis, you know." It's hard to imagine the current Congress and Senate doing much about it--or even having the means to do so, having rubber stamped their own powers out of existence. Hitler, after all, came to power under the laws of the time, democratically and legally. The he turned around used the laws to install himself in absolute power and get rid of the laws which had put him there. Having failed with a remake of the Iraq 'WMD" reasons for War with Iran, now the US is "testing the waters" of a potential remake of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that was "lift off time" for the Vietnam escalation. As a "Writing Experiment" "compare and contrast" the following: Amendment I to the Constitution of the United States of America Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.GovTrack: H.R. 1955: Text of Legislation http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955 --- H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (GovTrack.us) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955 --- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:29:52 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christophe Casamassima Subject: Being and Time project Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 See my new obsession... http://www.flickr.com/photos/22710384@N07/ =3D Machine Vision Metrology Machine vision solutions for micro and macro applications. Standard product= s, specials, and OEM products available. Specializing in semi, MEMS, HDD, a= nd medical devices. http://a8-asy.a8ww.net/a8-ads/adftrclick?redirectid=3D92fbd2a2904d1937b10eb= 7685bf0a394 --=20 Powered By Outblaze ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:12:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amy king Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.1.20080111105748.061a5c50@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit One speculative equation regarding "How Clinton Won" -- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2008/01/how_clinton_won.html And Judith Warner's OpEd on the emotional aspect: http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/emotion-without-thought-in-new-hampshire/ Amy http://amyking.org/blog/ Mark Weiss wrote:As to the crying (she didn't, by the way--there was maybe a microsecond catch in her voice), Hillary went into New Hampshire with a considerable edge over Obama among registered Democrats. The punditry decided that she'd lose all the indepenfdents, based solely on the arcane Iowa process. Did everyone forget that Hillary's people assumed months ago that she couldn't win in Iowa and only decided to campaign there with some reluctance? Mark --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:17:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: "Poetry" versus "Prose" in New Hampshire In-Reply-To: <904489.7747.qm@web86006.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina"-- Mao was a poet Pol Pot loved poetry. His favorite poet was that musician of the French language, Paul Verlaine. Perhaps Hillary remembers all too well that her husband, when President, gave a "volume" of Walt Whitman's poetry as a gift to Monica Lewinsky for her aiding him in staining her dress with a "sample" of his DNA. Poetry and prose both have long been the accomplices of Power. And both have been Power's opponents. And Big Bill Clinton--how often did he not let trickle the hint of a tear, get a sob in his voice, give that "humble and uplifted Look?" On Jan 11, 2008 8:15 AM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > "But how can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or > if it improves them. Improves them for what? for death? Why hurry them > along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids > to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears)"--Frank > O'Hara. > So maybe Hillary is a sort of poet, but unfortunately, one of "too many > poets." > On the other hand, maybe O'Hara was just too twisted by his hateful > relation with his mother. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:19:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Fwd: readings Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Begin forwarded message: > > > Monday January 14th 2008 at 7:30 pm > Pierre Joris > Eugene Ostashevsky > Michael Loughran > http://www.readab.com/cal.html > 11th Street Bar > 510 E. 11th Street > (Between Avenues A & B) > Manhattan, NYC. > Free. > > > Sunday January 27th at 6pm > Nicole Peyrafitte > Belle Gironda > at the Zinc Bar ( great caipirinhas!) > 90 West Houston St. in Manhattan (below Zamir Furs) > $5 donation > http://www.lungfull.org/zinc/ > > Other reading at the Zinc this month: > January 13 -- Jeremy Thompson & Joe Elliot > January 20 -- Alan Davies & Jill Magi > January 27 -- Nicole Peyrafitte & Belle Gironda > > > > Ta'wil Productions: > http://www.tawilproductions.com/reviewsjorispeyrafitte.htm > www.nicolepeyrafitte.com > www.myspace.com/nicolepeyrafitte > > ___________________________________________________________ The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan ___________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris 244 Elm Street Albany NY 12202 h: 518 426 0433 c: 518 225 7123 o: 518 442 40 71 Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 email: joris@albany.edu http://pierrejoris.com Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:24:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric unger Subject: Re: Hillary-- re: the first amendment // --H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prvention Act of 2007 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear David, The example of the flag burning bill that Hillary sponsored is important specifically because she is running for president now. It is by no means the only instance of affronts to personal liberties by certain American politicians (therefore more broadly the US gov't) but it is worth focusing on because she went out of her way to draw up the thing and present it for consideration to her fellow senators. We could cherry pick different examples all day, but it is mainly -- but not solely -- the Bush administration who is to blame for the sorry standing our nation finds itself in. In order to prevent another Republican from being president, we must elect someone who is not of that ilk, presumably a Democrat. Hillary is a politician and I am not surprised that she would stoop to such levels, and so it should be weighed that she explicitly doesn't believe in freedom of speech. It points to a greater attitude in this perceived time of national terror that in order to "protect the citizens", certain 'liberties' can be eroded or simply bypassed. There are of course very specific reasons why it would be in politicians' interests to promote such causes. Orwell wrote in 1984, "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." As we unwittingly put another head into power, let's air out all the dirty laundry. Eric On 1/11/08, David Chirot wrote: > Dear Eric: > > I appreciate your concern regrading the First Amendment, though criticizing > Hillary Clinton for sponsoring a bill re Flag Burning that didn't pass is a > rather narrow frame for examining what the US Senate and Congress have been > rubber stamping for the last 7 years, much of it far far worse than a failed > consideration of torching Old Glory. > > And the ugliness and suppression already very active, alive and well in a > continual barrage of attacks on the First Amendment is about to get much > uglier. > > Free Speech has been under harassment and attack by private individuals, > corporations and interest lobbies for a very long time, and in recent years > has been evoking memories of the 1950's Black Listings and McCarthyism. > Critics of U.S and especially Israeli policies have been targeted and > lecture and book events cancelled, music and theater events cancelled, > Presses have been threatened with loss of distribution, persons have lost > jobs or nearly lost them, their reputations smeared and research demeaned. > The American media mainstream is heavily censored as are a lot of the > "alternative" media and events. There is a small library now out of books > dedicated to the censor ships of the Bush era, of Middle East reporting, > and harassment of "average" citizens, including children, who have written > anti-Bush email or drawn pictures in school considered in some way offensive > to the Dear Leader. > > The First Amendment actually is a form of double standard as it is applied > in practice. To paraphrase Orwell's Animal Farm, "All Speech is Free, but > some is more Free than others." (See for example the two volume "Paper of > Record" hefty tomes devoted solely to the NY Times' more than dubious > practices.) > > Congress and almost all the candidates for President are beholden to > corporate and special interest lobbies, which means that with regards to > Free Speech criticism of these, they have implicitly pledged to minimize any > form of open discussion, presentation of ideas, research, or dissidence. > All the Democrats running for President except for Kucinich and Gravel > signed documents with AIPAC which places the protection of Israel and its > interests at the highest level, almost beyond those of the US itself. > Kucinich and Gravel have fared badly at finding media coverage, even being > ignored during the televised debates. (Due not only to AIPAC, but other > reasons as well. After all, if they are "minimized" in the media--this > makes them into "candidates too minimal to cover much." A form of > self-fulfilling prophecy disguised as a "fair and balanced" "reportage.") > > Pharmaceuticals, Big Oil, a host of others effect Free Speech every day. > Obama has said he would invade Pakistan, Hillary, Edwards, Obama have all > kept the nuke option open for Iran. None of them has done anything much in > office regarding the War in Iraq, health care, insurance and mortgage > frauds on massive-beyond-belief scales going out of control and dragging the > economy down with them , , , and so far of over 2500 questions addressed to > the candidates during the debates, only 3 have concerned the environment. > Far, far ore media time has been spent listening to the candidates discuss > just how badly they would torture "terrorist" "detainees" than has been > devoted to the catastrophic evidences that the environment is in Blowback > mode. > > There are far worse things coming though. The House last fall passed H.R. > 1955 (an almost entirely Democrat-sponsored Bill)--and Senate will be voting > on this soon. So far, it appears to be a lock to pass, with perhaps a few > revisions or extras attached. > > Below are links for the text of the Bill and another with more information > about it. > > Whoever does become President will be very dangerous, as the current > Presidency has systemically chopped away as many as possible of the "checks > and balances' on an Imperial Presidency. The dismantling of the > Constitution, the tearing up and reconstruction of the bureaucracy and civil > service, the appointment of a huge number of judges who find the > Constitution and current laws and Amendments in need of over turning--all > these have been putting into place the structure for an ever more open form > of fascism than the one already merrily moving along. H.R. 1955 will speed > up this process immeasurably. > > Even with the laws currently in place, it is possible the next election > could be suspended for "reasons of national crisis and security" if an > attack on Iran and perhaps Pakistan is under way. "Too dangerous to change > governments during a time of global crisis, you know." It's hard to imagine > the current Congress and Senate doing much about it--or even having the > means to do so, having rubber stamped their own powers out of existence. > Hitler, after all, came to power under the laws of the time, democratically > and legally. The he turned around used the laws to install himself in > absolute power and get rid of the laws which had put him there. > > Having failed with a remake of the Iraq 'WMD" reasons for War with Iran, > now the US is "testing the waters" of a potential remake of the Gulf of > Tonkin incident that was "lift off time" for the Vietnam escalation. > > As a "Writing Experiment" "compare and contrast" the following: > > Amendment I to the Constitution of the United States of America > > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or > prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of > speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to > assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.GovTrack: > H.R. 1955: Text of Legislation > > http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955 --- > > > H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of > 2007 (GovTrack.us) > > > http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955 --- > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:24:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: julia bloch Subject: Emergency 1/17/08: Lasky & Rohrer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The EMERGENCY Poetry Series at the Kelly Writers House presents: a reading and discussion with poets MATTHEW ROHRER & DOROTHEA LASKY Thursday, 1/17 at 6PM 3805 Locust Walk, Philadelphia This event is free & open to the public ----------------------------------------------------------- MATTHEW ROHRER is the author of "A Green Light" (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of "Satellite" (Verse Press, 2001), and co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of "Nice Hat. Thanks." (Verse Press, 2002), and the audio CD "Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty." He has appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" and "The Next Big Thing." His first book, "A Hummock in the Malookas" was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches in the undergraduate writing program at NYU. DOROTHEA LASKY was born in St. Louis, MO, in 1978. Her first full-length collection, "AWE," has just come out this fall of from Wave Books. She is the author of three chapbooks: "The Hatmaker's Wife" (Braincase Press, 2006), "Art" (H_NGM_N Press, 2005), and "Alphabets and Portraits" (Anchorite Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Crowd, 6x6, Boston Review, Delmar, Filter, Knock, Drill, Lungfull!, and Carve, among others. Currently, she lives in Philadelphia, where she studies education at the University of Pennsylvania and co-edits the Katalanche Press chapbook series, along with the poet Michael Carr. She is a graduate of the M.F.A. program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and also has been educated at Harvard University and Washington University. Learn more! --> http://emergency-reading.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:16:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William James Austin Subject: Blackbox fall gallery MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello everyone, The Blackbox fall gallery is now online.? Go to WilliamJamesAustin.com and follow the Blackbox link.? Then take a stroll (scroll) through the galleries until you reach the last gallery.? Enjoy! Best, Bill ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:20:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andy Gricevich Subject: announcing CANNOT EXIST no.1, and call for submissions for no.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dear folks, I'm thrilled to announce the paradoxical appearance of CANNOT EXIST a quarterly magazine of poetry edited by Andy Gricevich to appear February 1st, 2008 with 50 pages of staggeringly good writing by Rick Burkhardt Arielle Guy Rob Halpern Roberto Harrison Lisa Jarnot Kent Johnson Laura Sims Rodrigo Toscano $4.00; $15.00 for a four-issue subscription. Saddle-stapled with hand-stamped card covers, with outside cover featuring mind-bending artwork by Benjamin Grosser. Submissions are open for the second issue. Visit http://cannotexist.blogspot.com for guidelines and ordering information. Thanks! Andy --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:45:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: old Shaker song of Hannah Ann Agnew. New Lebanon, NY, 1838 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hoo haw hum necatry O necatry O Hoo haw hum necatry O cum Ne holium ne-holium necatry O necatry O Ne holium ne-holium ne hoo haw hum. - p. 78. The Gift to be Simple: Songs, Dances and Rituals of the American Shakers. Edward Deming Andrews. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:53:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: Hillary-- re: the first amendment // --H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prvention Act of 2007 In-Reply-To: <77e5e8e50801111124q24a7fc38m795d7afeccd0b796@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Eric: I am not sure if you understood what I wrote. The entirety of the piece is how Free Speech has been well on its way out for a long time, there is already censorship on a grand scale, and--in many cases, censorship does not to become law to be practised. And the situation is about to get far worse. For seven years now, the entire government, House and Senate both, have been passing laws which have created all kinds of inroads on Free Speech. Over and over again our elected officials have sold the citizens done the river. Probably persons have become so used to this it has become invisible. I know very well what Hillary--and al the other candidates stand for and it is NOT Freedom of Speech. None of them. For example, signing a doucment from AIPAC means one is going to be against criticism of Israeli policies as much as possible. Getting support from a big corporation means looking out for their interests. That means suppressing Free Speech when it interferes with the functioning of that corporation. Censorship by omission is just as effective as censorship by commission and use of a law. Did you read the H.R. 1955 texts--? Basically the terms in it are vague enough that almost anyone could be, without its taking too much "poetic license," accused of some truly terrible things or even very small things-- and--well--who knows? Years of detention without being charged? A rendition trip to a "holiday overseas," a "tour of the world's secret American prisons?" A chance to test waterboarding for oneself? NONE of the major candidates is for "Free Speech"-- Jewish Voice for Peace has an excellent newsletter called "Muzzlewatch" whose latest report I received today. It concerns the absence of anything being asked or said about Israel-Palestine by any of the major candidates, and gives examples of the very few times this has been addressed, in which the candidates, including Obama and Edwards, ignored the questions. "Sins of omission" are a way of signalling things which are "not to be talked about." In other words, NOT Free Speech. Censorship does not need laws for its existence. There are a myriad ways in which it operates. I used to write for newspapers. Newspapers are controlled by boards, who are controlled by the investors--advertisers, big corporations, interest groups--all of these influence what can and cannot be written and read, what can be written not now, but later (if ever), what may be written about in a piece while also what needs to be omitted, and a host of other methods for "controlling" the "sharing" of "information" with the public. (Think how many times you may have read about stories being held until permission was granted for their release.) All the major news outlets in the USA use MEMRI for their coverage of the Middle East. MEMRI is known to be manufacturer of deliberate mis-translations and dis-translations, planted, deliberately fake stories, as well as a censorship machine. There isn't any law that says American media have to use this organization, yet they do. They choose to knowingly use an organization known for disinformation and censorship. And no one is the wiser--no one cares, until it is far too late. It takes a while before people begin to wonder if their lives are being radically affected by things untrue and manipulated, because one is always being assured that everything one hears and knows takes place "in a Free society." None of the candidates has brought up any of these issues in which Free Speech is involved every minute of every hour. It would be biting the hand that feeds them in terms of "covering their campaigns." And, behind the pages of the newspapers and the screens of the tv, the studios of the radio--biting the hands of the very ones who are funding both the the media and the campaigns. That right there is an immense and isolating censorship. You write that Hillary is a "politician" and "will stoop to anything." Dear friend--are not the Senators Obama and Edwards also politicians, also running for President, who have also most likely already done some pretty low stooping themselves? In fact, the whole government has stooped extremely low for years and years now--so low one refrains from saying the obvious--in too explicit terms----kowtowing and rubber stamping the Bush Administration's demands, the Administration's truly horrifying series of Attorney Generals, Ambassadors, Supreme Court Justices, Secretaries of the various departments of everything from Transportation, Education, Health to the wonders of the STate and Defense Departments and the immense new bureaucracy of Homeland Security. Bush and Cheney are not alone, Hillary isn't alone--they are a great great many and they were al elected to represent you and I. And elected by if not you and I a great many of our compatriots! I am not "cherry picking examples" but writing of a huge censorship already in existence and with the passage of H.R. 1955 the abyss yawns vastly much wider. The Senators and Congress persons have obediently and fearfully--who wants to look "weak" on terrorism, on Homeland Security?--just voted for every obscneity that came along. Everyone of the Bush appointees that persons love to hate, had to be approved of by our elected Representatives. The media for years has gone along for the ride. Censorship has been part and parcel of our everyday lives for so long now that is "second nature." The issue of torture is a corollary to that of Free Speech perils. Censorship is to "silence." Torture is TO FORCE ONE TO SPEAK. The Bills that al the Democrats, the majors ones, have voted FOR are already far WORSE than the flag burning one. I agree with you that flag burning is a Right that should not be taken away. And yes it is terrible Hillary put her mind to this issue with such dedication. Look at all the huge number of sinister Bills that have passed, however. Look how many others have been and continue to be and will be with these new laws, will be taken away on a far greater scale with a far greater and more terrifying bunch of procedures and punishments Notice also one of the main stated intentions of this Bill--the creation of a huge academic center for the study of Homegrown Terrorism and "Violent Radicalism." This further involves the academic world in its creations of new methods, new categories, new statistics, new information on citizens than it already is. The House has already passed it and given the record of the Senate, it will be law before very long. Will a Democrat be al the much "better" i the White House? Of course one hopes so!! But given the record of al of them one doesn't see much real chance of a change. The Democrats introduced H R 1955 and Pelosi made it an immediate statement of hers on becoming Speaker than there would be no options open for Impeachment. On the other hand, all options are open for nuking countries on the slightest of pretexts, or simply on invented ones. The Bush Administration never could have accomplished what it has if it had not been for the continual approval and votes of the House and Senate. Pelosi was among those who knew from the start about the torture and other horrors going on. Other governmental officials on various committees and boards did also. No one objected that the Constitution might be in great danger with the steps that were being taken. They all went along. Any time in which a Government says that it is at War and that Homeland Security is at risk--it is time of grave danger for civil liberties,especially freedom of expression. Persons who are critical of the events and decisions being made immediately find their lives and work in jeopardy--or are on the verge of risking this. Look how incredibly passive the United States has been during the last twenty five years. Aggressive abroad, passive at home. It takes an entire culture to contribute to this. And that is one of the most nightmarish aspects of al of this. By steady degrees so many things that once would have been thought impossible are now laws--and an entire culture has been wlaking steadily into a nightmare which it has already been undergoing such a long acclimatization to that it barely is aware of what is happening to it. What I am trying to say is--don't limit what you are being critical of to Hillary and Bush. It took an entire government, a whole nation to create this situation. And those not involved in creating it for the most part passively accepting it. Let alone the Senators and Congress actively giving approval and untold billions of funding for the nightmare. And by passively I don't mean "violent radicalization." I mean quite often simply speaking out about what is happening in a way which goes beyond the very narrow limits that one is "supposed to stay inside of." Two books I'd recommend are Naomi Wolf's The End of America and Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. Especially the latter, one of the finest books of last year. On Jan 11, 2008 11:24 AM, eric unger wrote: > Dear David, > > The example of the flag burning bill that Hillary sponsored is > important specifically because she is running for president now. It is > by no means the only instance of affronts to personal liberties by > certain American politicians (therefore more broadly the US gov't) but > it is worth focusing on because she went out of her way to draw up the > thing and present it for consideration to her fellow senators. We > could cherry pick different examples all day, but it is mainly -- but > not solely -- the Bush administration who is to blame for the sorry > standing our nation finds itself in. In order to prevent another > Republican from being president, we must elect someone who is not of > that ilk, presumably a Democrat. Hillary is a politician and I am not > surprised that she would stoop to such levels, and so it should be > weighed that she explicitly doesn't believe in freedom of speech. It > points to a greater attitude in this perceived time of national terror > that in order to "protect the citizens", certain 'liberties' can be > eroded or simply bypassed. There are of course very specific reasons > why it would be in politicians' interests to promote such causes. > Orwell wrote in 1984, "The object of persecution is persecution. The > object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." As we > unwittingly put another head into power, let's air out all the dirty > laundry. > > Eric > > On 1/11/08, David Chirot < david.chirot@gmail.com> wrote: > > Dear Eric: > > > > I appreciate your concern regrading the First Amendment, though > criticizing > > Hillary Clinton for sponsoring a bill re Flag Burning that didn't pass > is a > > rather narrow frame for examining what the US Senate and Congress have > been > > rubber stamping for the last 7 years, much of it far far worse than a > failed > > consideration of torching Old Glory. > > > > And the ugliness and suppression already very active, alive and well in > a > > continual barrage of attacks on the First Amendment is about to get much > > uglier. > > > > Free Speech has been under harassment and attack by private > individuals, > > corporations and interest lobbies for a very long time, and in recent > years > > has been evoking memories of the 1950's Black Listings and McCarthyism. > > Critics of U.S and especially Israeli policies have been targeted and > > lecture and book events cancelled, music and theater events cancelled, > > Presses have been threatened with loss of distribution, persons have > lost > > jobs or nearly lost them, their reputations smeared and research > demeaned. > > The American media mainstream is heavily censored as are a lot of the > > "alternative" media and events. There is a small library now out of > books > > dedicated to the censor ships of the Bush era, of Middle East reporting, > > > and harassment of "average" citizens, including children, who have > written > > anti-Bush email or drawn pictures in school considered in some way > offensive > > to the Dear Leader. > > > > The First Amendment actually is a form of double standard as it is > applied > > in practice. To paraphrase Orwell's Animal Farm, "All Speech is Free, > but > > some is more Free than others." (See for example the two volume "Paper > of > > Record" hefty tomes devoted solely to the NY Times' more than dubious > > practices.) > > > > Congress and almost all the candidates for President are beholden to > > corporate and special interest lobbies, which means that with regards to > > Free Speech criticism of these, they have implicitly pledged to minimize > any > > form of open discussion, presentation of ideas, research, or dissidence. > > All the Democrats running for President except for Kucinich and Gravel > > signed documents with AIPAC which places the protection of Israel and > its > > interests at the highest level, almost beyond those of the US itself. > > Kucinich and Gravel have fared badly at finding media coverage, even > being > > ignored during the televised debates. (Due not only to AIPAC, but other > > reasons as well. After all, if they are "minimized" in the media--this > > makes them into "candidates too minimal to cover much." A form of > > self-fulfilling prophecy disguised as a "fair and balanced" > "reportage.") > > > > Pharmaceuticals, Big Oil, a host of others effect Free Speech every day. > > Obama has said he would invade Pakistan, Hillary, Edwards, Obama have > all > > kept the nuke option open for Iran. None of them has done anything much > in > > office regarding the War in Iraq, health care, insurance and mortgage > > frauds on massive-beyond-belief scales going out of control and dragging > the > > economy down with them , , , and so far of over 2500 questions addressed > to > > the candidates during the debates, only 3 have concerned the > environment. > > Far, far ore media time has been spent listening to the candidates > discuss > > just how badly they would torture "terrorist" "detainees" than has been > > > devoted to the catastrophic evidences that the environment is in > Blowback > > mode. > > > > There are far worse things coming though. The House last fall passed > H.R. > > 1955 (an almost entirely Democrat-sponsored Bill)--and Senate will be > voting > > on this soon. So far, it appears to be a lock to pass, with perhaps a > few > > revisions or extras attached. > > > > Below are links for the text of the Bill and another with more > information > > about it. > > > > Whoever does become President will be very dangerous, as the current > > Presidency has systemically chopped away as many as possible of the > "checks > > and balances' on an Imperial Presidency. The dismantling of the > > Constitution, the tearing up and reconstruction of the bureaucracy and > civil > > service, the appointment of a huge number of judges who find the > > Constitution and current laws and Amendments in need of over > turning--all > > these have been putting into place the structure for an ever more open > form > > of fascism than the one already merrily moving along. H.R. 1955 will > speed > > up this process immeasurably. > > > > Even with the laws currently in place, it is possible the next election > > could be suspended for "reasons of national crisis and security" if an > > attack on Iran and perhaps Pakistan is under way. "Too dangerous to > change > > governments during a time of global crisis, you know." It's hard to > imagine > > the current Congress and Senate doing much about it--or even having the > > means to do so, having rubber stamped their own powers out of existence. > > Hitler, after all, came to power under the laws of the time, > democratically > > and legally. The he turned around used the laws to install himself in > > absolute power and get rid of the laws which had put him there. > > > > Having failed with a remake of the Iraq 'WMD" reasons for War with > Iran, > > now the US is "testing the waters" of a potential remake of the Gulf of > > Tonkin incident that was "lift off time" for the Vietnam escalation. > > > > As a "Writing Experiment" "compare and contrast" the following: > > > > Amendment I to the Constitution of the United States of America > > > > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or > > prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of > > speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to > > assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of > grievances.GovTrack: > > H.R. 1955: Text of Legislation > > > > http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955 --- > > > > > > H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act > of > > 2007 (GovTrack.us) > > > > > > http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955 --- > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:51:35 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: september 21, 184- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Song. O-le-er-lum-er-la. (A Shaker song learned by inspiration.) Blanco. Holy Order and Square Order. (Dances) Song. In the unknown tongue. (Learned by inspiration) Le-Bala. Slow march and Quick March. Song. Of the French Consul, sung and played on the spiritual Flute. La-Bala. Square Hollow Company Labor. (A dance.) Song. Osceolo and Pocahontas. La-Bala. Square Check Company Labor. (A dance.) Song. The Reapers, with motions to mortify pride. Song. Come Life, Shaker Life. Blanco. Mother's Love, Company Labor. (A dance) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:41:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: bad sonnet MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed bad sonnet murderedrum redrumurder murderedrumurder redrumurderedrum murderedrumurderedrumurderedrum redrumurderedrumurderedrumurder murderedrum murderedrum murderedrum murderedrum murderedrum pictures from bullets blood and a fistful of cash id 28149266 myspace profile for murderedrum with true murderedrum member add to murderedrumhotmailcom personal message click here murderedrum myspace this is my myspacecom page murderedrum this is my personal site about interact with writer redrumurder who has archived 1 stories reviews from redrumurder bones trusted network whats this? 0 testimonials for redrumurder bone write a testimonial about redrumurder bone posts all forums home redrumurder redrumurder is embraced in thorns causing 10 damage 37 43 redrumurder for 34 damage 238 219 message send a private message to redrumurder date of birth april 26 1992 age 15 redrumurder is not a member of any public groups redrumurder 0147403 1. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:43:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Karmin Subject: jan 26: woodland pattern poetry marathon MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit hi poetics friends.....i'll be reading at woodland pattern's 14th annual poetry marathon on january 26th. this is a huge fundraiser for one of the best non-profit book centers in the country located in lovely milwaukee. please be in touch if you're interested in pledging or signing up as a reader. the day is almost filled with readers but there are a few slots left from 11pm-1am. http://www.woodlandpattern.org/marathon_2008.shtml want to be a sponsor? pledge checks (in any amount) can be made out to woodland pattern and mailed to me at: 2652 w.evergreen #2r, chicago, il 60622. or, you can sign up with woodland pattern to become a member and get their snazzy newsletter delivered to your home every month. http://www.woodlandpattern.org/membership/index.shtml more info posted below! big thanks, jennifer karmin Woodland Pattern Book Center was founded as a non-profit organization in Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Riverwest neighborhood by Anne Kingsbury and Karl Gartung in 1979. The center houses a bookstore with over 25,000 small press titles otherwise unavailable in the area. It also includes an art gallery which hosts exhibitions, artist talks, readings, films, concerts and writing workshops for adults and children. Every year, on the last Saturday of January, over 100 poets, writers, and performers show their support for Woodland Pattern by participating in its Annual Poetry Marathon & Benefit. Each writer presents five minutes of work to a packed house and raises pledge money benefiting Woodland Pattern programming. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:35:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > Every time we have this conversation, Jim, I thoroughly enjoy > myself. But before I respond to the more salient points you make, > I do want to point one thing out about Deep Blue that often gets > overlooked in the conversations about it. What Deep Blue did was > very impressive, certainly. It learned its chess winning chess > strategy (which while whether that actually beat kasparov or not > is a bit controversial it could no doubt beat the pants off of > me) on it's own, and that by itself is something that I think > warrants its place in the history books. At the same time, the > agreement Kasparov made with IBM, and which I think was a mistake > on his part, allowed IBM to make adjustments to Deep Blue during > the match but between games. That's important because one of > those adjustments allowed the machine to avoid a trap it had > fallen into twice previously, which if it hadn't done, Kasparov > would have had mate. > > That having been said, it being a bit of a pet peeve of mine to > make that point whenever Deep Blue comes up, I do want to say > that I don't think machine consciousness is impossible and that I > agree that humans are largely mechanical (although to date > there's no proof of this to come out of neuroscience and > statements to the contrary are usually unpackable as a form of > metaphysical bias). What I do believe is that whatever eventually > allows us to create thinking machines is not going to be a > software algorithm running on some sort of turing machine. The > Dreyfus book is really good on this point, and I'm a little leery > of paraphrasing him, but the basic argument boils down to this: > > the concept of a computer as we currently understand it is some > sort of logical, rule following machine that operates according > to heuristics and algorithms. heuristics are algorithms, Jason. a heuristic is an algorithm that may not do the task the best way (if there is a best way) but hopefully copes with the situation. but it is an algorithm. an algorithm is simply a list of well-defined instructions for executing a task. Could be for baking a cake or consciousness souffle. > the analogy AI researchers often > make, and have made for decades is between this and the human > brain and the human mind. That is, the human brain is the > hardware that runs the software algorithms that produce the mind > as its output. Dreyfus argues, and I tend to agree with his > argument, that while that can simulate what human consciousness > is, it's not the same thing as a machine actually being conscious > and for that the machine needs to be in the world and of the > world and for the world always already the way that humans are. > The reason being that the world is not composed of facts the way > a computer needs to deal with them, as digital representations, > but rather the world is composed of things and that the > fundamental act of humanity is to cope with those things, not to > make representations of them to ourselves. we have sensory input. sight sound smell touch taste proprioception. possibly others we haven't put a finger on. computers can have sensory input and bodies also. no doubt they would be different sensory inputs and different bodies. with different needs, weaknesses, strengths, abilities, and so on. any machine intelligence would be very very different from ours thereby. but they could still be conscious, sentient, moral agents. they could learn. and change their behavior thereby. as we do (sometimes). they could learn to be very discerning, as we do. they could learn to disobey the rules under certain circumstances, as we do. all of this is possible while still being programmed. we are bio machines. nobody programmed us. nobody designed us. we have evolved for 2.5 billion years, like every other living thing on this planet, apparently. we are coded. not in a language. in bio code. for instance, our memories are coded. our dna is coded. not in a language, because we think of language as requiring conscious creators/designers, but in code. algorithms can operate at that level too. algorithms can be staggeringly flexible. if if if if if if if if if if if if if... but regardless of our propensity to talk about algorithms in language--which gives the impression that language is required to code an algorithm--they do not require language, only code. if we see a little black box that has behavior, and when we do x it always does y, then regardless of whether its behavior is written in language, it is using an algorithm. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 05:46:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: R.I. P. Boris Lurie: member of No! Art movement, artist of the Holocaust MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline *A very powerful and amazing artist-- notice his Gallery owner's name--Gertrude Stein! This page was sent to you by: * davidbchirot@hotmail.com * ARTS * | January 12, 2008 * Boris Lurie, Leader of a Confrontational Art Movement, Dies at 83 * By COLIN MOYNIHAN Boris Lurie was a Russian-born artist who survived the Holocaust and then depicted its horrors while leading a confrontational movement called No! Art. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 10:02:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CA Conrad Subject: POETS THEATER 2008 at Small Press Traffic in San Francisco MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline *SMALL PRESS TRAFFIC =97 POETS THEATER 2008* ** Please join us for two nights of plays and performance, featuring new work by writers and artists, along with new interpretations of Poets Theater classics. This is our annual fundraiser, so come out and support SPT =96 th= ere will be wine & refreshments, raffle items, video, books, and all sorts of festivities to go along with this year's batch of plays and performances=85 *FRIDAY JANUARY 18, 7:30pm:* "The Obituary Show" by CAConrad "Up in Arms: a scene at Tense Borders" by Mary Diaz "Olive Oil from the Notebooks, a radio film" by Arnold J. Kemp "a fierce vexation of a dream: a tragical mirth"* *by sara m. larsen "Yoda in His Youth" by Dana Ward "RJ Romeo and Juliet (from The Code Poems)" by Hannah Weiner, dir. Suzann= e Stein *FRIDAY JANUARY 25, 7:30pm:* 1980s POETS THEATER REVIVIFIED: THREE PLAYS REXAMINED, REANIMATED, & RESTAGED "Particle Arms" by Alan Bernheimer (excerpts) "Third Man" by Carla Harryman (excerpts) "Creative Floors" by Kit Robinson And stay tuned for news about our Poets Theater Cabaret and other upcoming events, through our website =97 http://www.sptraffic.org/html/events.htm = =97 and our new blog: http://smallpresstraffic.blogspot.com/ Unless otherwise noted,our events are presented in: Timken Lecture Hall California College of the Arts 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco see you there! David Buuck, Cynthia Sailers, & Stephanie Young PT08 Co-curators Small Press Traffic ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:25:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Don't Forget--FW: DAY OF ACTION: January 11th is the 6th anniversary of the first tr ansfer of detainees to Guant=?WINDOWS-1252?Q?=E1?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: Peaceact@mail.democracyinaction.org To: davidbchirot@hotmail.com Subject: DAY OF ACTION: January 11th is the 6th anniversary of the first transfer of detainees to Guant=E1namo Bay. Dear David, Mark your calendar. This January 11th is the 6th anniversary of the first transfer of detainees to Guant=E1namo Bay. To mark the occasion we are taking part in a worldwide protest denouncing torture and unlawful detentions. The largest protest will be in Washington but nation-wide Peace Action affiliates will mark this day with their own actions. Find out about the local events happening that day near you, here. Orange jumpsuits provided... An AI protester stands outside the US Supreme Court to mark the 5th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay detentions. Join us January 11th on the National Mall. At U.S. embassies and other prominent locations in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Greece and right here in Washington DC, activists will rise up against the failed interrogation regime at Guant=E1namo. Join us on the National Mall in Washington, DC on January 11th. WHEN: Friday, January 11th at 11am WHERE: National Mall at 12 St NW (Smithsonian Metro) WHAT: Protest. Arrive early so you can suit up in an orange jumpsuit and join the visual count of current detainees. Join peace and justice activists all over the world and across our nation to call for the closure of Guant=E1namo Bay, we cannot relent until justice prevails. Counter terror with justice at home and abroad. Sincerely, Kevin M. Martin Executive Director Peace Action Click here to subscribe to the Action Alert Network Click here to unsubscribe Take Action Join us in Washington Find a January 11th Event Near You. Just in time for the New Hampshire Primary... Check out the Peace Action Presidential Voter Guide '08 PDF of Peace Action e-Newsletter Download More from Our Website Peace Blog Shop for Peace Donate www.Peace-Action.org ________________________________ Put your friends on the big screen with Windows Vista(R) + Windows Live=99. Start now! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 09:58:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Tod Edgerton Subject: Ekphrastic Fiction? In-Reply-To: <4786869C.1040704@starve.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Anybody know of any easily excerpted long or short fiction pieces that were written as responses to / "translations" of works of non-literary art? I feel certain that they're out there, but I'm drawing a blank and I need to find something asap for the workshop I'm teaching. Thanks, Tod _____________________ Michael Tod Edgerton MFA '06 Literary Arts Brown University ---- Doctoral Student Department of English 36 Park Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 tod@uga.edu "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the score." - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:04:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tisa Bryant Subject: AWP Events: Cave Canem & Afrilachian Poets Read Jan 30-31! Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v624) Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; delsp=yes; format=flowed TWO BOMB READINGS!! SAVE THE DATES Wed. Jan. 30, 2008 - 10 p.m. 2nd Annual Cave Canem Fellows Reading The Bowery Poetry Club 308 Bowery, New York, New York Fellows Michelle Berry, DeLana Dameron, Jacqueline Johnson, LaTasha =20 Nevada Diggs, Krista Franklin, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Richard =20 Hamilton; Myronn Hardy, Randall Horton, Marcus Jackson, Amanda =20 Johnston, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, January O'Neal, Ernesto Mercer, Dante =20= Micheaux, Indigo Moor, Nicole Sealey, Shia Shabazz, Evie Shockley, and =20= Bianca Spriggs take a poetry marathon to New York City=92s literary hot =20= spot. $10 cover charge. www.cavecanempoets.org ************************************************************************=20= **** Thur. Jan. 31, 2008 - 6 p.m. The Affrilachian Poets @ The Nuyorican Poets Cafe 236 East 3rd Street, between Avenues B and C New York, New York $7 student $10 general Featuring: Kelly Norman Ellis, Ellen Hagan, Parneshia Jones, Amanda =20 Johnston, Hao Wang, Mitchell L. H. Douglas, Bianca Spriggs, Natasha =20 Marin, Marta Miranda and special guest Rane Arroyo. Learn more about the Affrilachian Poets at =20 http://www.affrilachianpoets.com/. Check the flier at: http://affrilachianpoets.com/APs_at_Nuyo _______________________________________________ My concern is never art, but always what art can be used for. Gerhard Richter ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 11:17:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James T Sherry Subject: Erica Hunt & James Sherry: Poetry Reading @ St. Marks Comments: To: segue n MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" ********SAVE THE DATE********** JANUARY 23 Erica Hunt & James Sherry will read at: St Marks Poetry Project 2nd Ave & 10th St. Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 8 PM ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:25:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Crane's Bills Books Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Fiction? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Gilbert Sorrentino's Under the Shadow comes to mind. I feel certain that Julio Cortazar did something of the sort, but I can't think what. J. A. Lee ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Tod Edgerton" To: Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 10:58 AM Subject: Ekphrastic Fiction? > Anybody know of any easily excerpted long or short fiction pieces that > were written as responses to / "translations" of works of non-literary > art? I feel certain that they're out there, but I'm drawing a blank and I > need to find something asap for the workshop I'm teaching. > > Thanks, > > Tod > > > _____________________ > > Michael Tod Edgerton > MFA '06 Literary Arts > Brown University > ---- > Doctoral Student > Department of English > 36 Park Hall > University of Georgia > Athens, GA 30602 > tod@uga.edu > > "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still > escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different > death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the > score." > - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle > > --------------------------------- > Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it > now. > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1214 - Release Date: 1/8/2008 > 1:38 PM > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:44:37 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Fiction? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable The stories in Lynn Crawford's Fortification Resort (Black Square, 2005) we= re written in response to particular artworks, all identified in a "key" at= the back of the book.=0A=0A=0A----- Original Message ----=0AFrom: Michael = Tod Edgerton =0ATo: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFAL= O.EDU=0ASent: Saturday, 12 January, 2008 5:58:18 PM=0ASubject: Ekphrastic F= iction?=0A=0AAnybody know of any easily excerpted long or short fiction pie= ces that were written as responses to / "translations" of works of non-lite= rary art? I feel certain that they're out there, but I'm drawing a blank an= d I need to find something asap for the workshop I'm teaching.=0A=0AThanks,= =0A=0ATod=0A=0A=0A_____________________=0A=0AMichael Tod Edgerton=0AMFA '06= Literary Arts=0ABrown University=0A ----=0ADoctoral Student =0ADepart= ment of English=0A36 Park Hall=0AUniversity of Georgia=0AAthens, GA 30602= =0Atod@uga.edu=0A=0A"The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though tru= th will still escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a= different death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening = out the score."=0A - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle=0A = =0A---------------------------------=0ABe a better friend, newshound, an= d know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:07:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Behm-Steinberg Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Fiction? In-Reply-To: <560290.97092.qm@web54205.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Kurt Vonnegut's novel Bluebeard might be of use to you. Best, Hugh Michael Tod Edgerton wrote: Anybody know of any easily excerpted long or short fiction pieces that were written as responses to / "translations" of works of non-literary art? I feel certain that they're out there, but I'm drawing a blank and I need to find something asap for the workshop I'm teaching. Thanks, Tod _____________________ Michael Tod Edgerton MFA '06 Literary Arts Brown University ---- Doctoral Student Department of English 36 Park Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 tod@uga.edu "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the score." - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:44:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Therese Broderick Subject: Ekphrastic Fiction? In-Reply-To: <560290.97092.qm@web54205.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Perhaps this will help you-- 1) go to my ekphrasis (poetry) blog-- poetryaboutart.wordpress.com 2) in right sidebar, under lower category "Ekphrasis Links," click on "David Wright's class" 3) under his category "Examples of Ekphrasis," first three listings are for fiction Also, Susan Vreeland's historical fiction about major artists might help you. See her website-- www.svreeland.com Sincerely, Therese L. Broderick, MFA freelance poet with specialty in ekphrasis Albany, NY ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:43:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: The Four Horsemen Project in Vancouver Jan 17-19 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit last night i saw The Four Horsemen Project performed in Victoria. this is excellent. it's going to be in vancouver jan 17-19. go see it if you can. info at http://volcano.ca -- more particularly, at http://www.volcano.ca/template.php?content=productions_erupting&image=img_pr oductions&submenu=sub_productions#TheFourHorsemenProject ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:59:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Recent work by Dan Waber MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Some recent work by Dan Waber: At the Light & Dust Anthology of Poetry I've got some new work up of two sorts--there's a bit of prose on the work of bpNichol, and there's a digital reworking of bpNichol's TTA29 (done with Jason Pimble). http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm And Dan has a book coming out: http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2008/id44.htm ja ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:02:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: steve and Yuko's busy months Comments: To: Acousticlv@aol.com, AdeenaKarasick@cs.com, AGosfield@aol.com, alonech@acedsl.com, Altjazz@aol.com, amirib@aol.com, Amramdavid@aol.com, anansi1@earthlink.net, AnselmBerrigan@aol.com, arlenej2@verizon.net, Barrywal23@aol.com, bdlilrbt@icqmail.com, butchershoppoet@hotmail.com, CarolynMcClairPR@aol.com, CaseyCyr@aol.com, CHASEMANHATTAN1@aol.com, Djmomo17@aol.com, Dsegnini1216@aol.com, Gfjacq@aol.com, Hooker99@aol.com, rakien@gmail.com, jeromerothenberg@hotmail.com, Jeromesala@aol.com, JillSR@aol.com, JoeLobell@cs.com, JohnLHagen@aol.com, kather8@katherinearnoldi.com, Kevtwi@aol.com, krkubert@hotmail.com, LakiVaz@aol.com, Lisevachon@aol.com, Nuyopoman@AOL.COM, Pedevski@aol.com, pom2@pompompress.com, Rabinart@aol.com, Rcmorgan12@aol.com, reggiedw@comcast.net, RichKostelanetz@aol.com, RnRBDN@aol.com, Smutmonke@aol.com, sprygypsy@yahoo.com, SHoltje@aol.com, Sumnirv@aol.com, tcumbie@nyc.rr.com, velasquez@nyc.com, VITORICCI@aol.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Saturday January 19th 12-2pm Brunch, Love?? The Bowery Poetry Club Snacks and drinks at high noon, Saturday, celebrating the realese of "Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind" , Short Fiction, Chavisa Woods, Fly by Night Press 2008. Featuring readings and musical performances by, the Fools, Joseph Keckler, Steve Dalachinsky Yuko Otomo, Danny Shot, Bonny Finberg, Sabrina Chap and Chavisa Woods Reading from the book with selected animations by Itziar Barrio _________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________ Sunday Jaunuary 20- 7 – 8:45 p.m. Winter Blossom Festival of Haiku - $8. “Well then, let’s go – to the place where we tumble down looking at snow!” Basho – Join us for this gala celebration of the pleasures of Haiku featuring Steve Dalachinsky, Dorothy Friedman August, Tsaurah Litzky, Mankh, Nancy Mercado, Yuko Otomo, Tony Pupello, Hersch Silverman, Cor Van Den Heuvel, Bill Zavatsky & a reading of the Haiku of Richard Wright! Plus a Haiku Open Slam – Bring your Haiku to read! @ the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, between Houson & Bleecker, NYC 1-212-334-6414 and Yuko reads back to back _________________________________________________________________ Sunday, January 20th @ 7PM – Free Reading: Earthen Gardens, Earthen Madness Please join us for an evening of stories about the earth's environment. Vivian Demuth will read from her novel "Eyes of the Forest," a political ode to nature among a community of fire lookouts. Poet Nancy Mercado will read from "Concerns the Madness," and Yuko Otomo will read from her collection, "Garden: The Selected Haiku." BLUESTOCKINGS 172 Allen Street @ Stanton (1 block south of Houston) www.bluestockings.com phone: 212-777-6028 ____________________________________________________________________ steve reads at Living Theatre 21 Clinton Street 8PM with Ty Cumbie's Musetry and Drew Gardner's Poetry orchestra with guests Ellen Christi, Sharon Mesmer and others ____________________________________________________________ steve reads in february 15 at 8 pm at bowery poetry club for a thomas chapin tribute with lunar bob musso and many guests ______________________________________________________ steve and yuko reads feb 25 at 7ish at bowery poetry club with federico ughi and other musicians and poets ___________________________________________________ steve reads march 8 with amiel alcaly and jake marma at the yippie cafe w/ musicians mor as it developes _________________________________________________________________________ ___________ steve reads march 21 at the recht forum with the incredible bassist joelle leandre 9 PM wow was thast a mouthful ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:56:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: Hillary-- re: the first amendment // --H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prvention Act of 2007 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit It's true that Pelosi & company went along with much of the Bush administrations infringement of our civil liberties. But it's hard for me to believe that they would have initiated the same or similiar policies. The democratic congress is known for being spineless. Isn't it better to regard the current crop of candidtates in terms of who would be most likely to cause the least amount of harm? Other wise, our vote is meaningless since all parties are equally at fault. David Chirot wrote: Dear Eric: I am not sure if you understood what I wrote. The entirety of the piece is how Free Speech has been well on its way out for a long time, there is already censorship on a grand scale, and--in many cases, censorship does not to become law to be practised. And the situation is about to get far worse. For seven years now, the entire government, House and Senate both, have been passing laws which have created all kinds of inroads on Free Speech. Over and over again our elected officials have sold the citizens done the river. Probably persons have become so used to this it has become invisible. I know very well what Hillary--and al the other candidates stand for and it is NOT Freedom of Speech. None of them. For example, signing a doucment from AIPAC means one is going to be against criticism of Israeli policies as much as possible. Getting support from a big corporation means looking out for their interests. That means suppressing Free Speech when it interferes with the functioning of that corporation. Censorship by omission is just as effective as censorship by commission and use of a law. Did you read the H.R. 1955 texts--? Basically the terms in it are vague enough that almost anyone could be, without its taking too much "poetic license," accused of some truly terrible things or even very small things-- and--well--who knows? Years of detention without being charged? A rendition trip to a "holiday overseas," a "tour of the world's secret American prisons?" A chance to test waterboarding for oneself? NONE of the major candidates is for "Free Speech"-- Jewish Voice for Peace has an excellent newsletter called "Muzzlewatch" whose latest report I received today. It concerns the absence of anything being asked or said about Israel-Palestine by any of the major candidates, and gives examples of the very few times this has been addressed, in which the candidates, including Obama and Edwards, ignored the questions. "Sins of omission" are a way of signalling things which are "not to be talked about." In other words, NOT Free Speech. Censorship does not need laws for its existence. There are a myriad ways in which it operates. I used to write for newspapers. Newspapers are controlled by boards, who are controlled by the investors--advertisers, big corporations, interest groups--all of these influence what can and cannot be written and read, what can be written not now, but later (if ever), what may be written about in a piece while also what needs to be omitted, and a host of other methods for "controlling" the "sharing" of "information" with the public. (Think how many times you may have read about stories being held until permission was granted for their release.) All the major news outlets in the USA use MEMRI for their coverage of the Middle East. MEMRI is known to be manufacturer of deliberate mis-translations and dis-translations, planted, deliberately fake stories, as well as a censorship machine. There isn't any law that says American media have to use this organization, yet they do. They choose to knowingly use an organization known for disinformation and censorship. And no one is the wiser--no one cares, until it is far too late. It takes a while before people begin to wonder if their lives are being radically affected by things untrue and manipulated, because one is always being assured that everything one hears and knows takes place "in a Free society." None of the candidates has brought up any of these issues in which Free Speech is involved every minute of every hour. It would be biting the hand that feeds them in terms of "covering their campaigns." And, behind the pages of the newspapers and the screens of the tv, the studios of the radio--biting the hands of the very ones who are funding both the the media and the campaigns. That right there is an immense and isolating censorship. You write that Hillary is a "politician" and "will stoop to anything." Dear friend--are not the Senators Obama and Edwards also politicians, also running for President, who have also most likely already done some pretty low stooping themselves? In fact, the whole government has stooped extremely low for years and years now--so low one refrains from saying the obvious--in too explicit terms----kowtowing and rubber stamping the Bush Administration's demands, the Administration's truly horrifying series of Attorney Generals, Ambassadors, Supreme Court Justices, Secretaries of the various departments of everything from Transportation, Education, Health to the wonders of the STate and Defense Departments and the immense new bureaucracy of Homeland Security. Bush and Cheney are not alone, Hillary isn't alone--they are a great great many and they were al elected to represent you and I. And elected by if not you and I a great many of our compatriots! I am not "cherry picking examples" but writing of a huge censorship already in existence and with the passage of H.R. 1955 the abyss yawns vastly much wider. The Senators and Congress persons have obediently and fearfully--who wants to look "weak" on terrorism, on Homeland Security?--just voted for every obscneity that came along. Everyone of the Bush appointees that persons love to hate, had to be approved of by our elected Representatives. The media for years has gone along for the ride. Censorship has been part and parcel of our everyday lives for so long now that is "second nature." The issue of torture is a corollary to that of Free Speech perils. Censorship is to "silence." Torture is TO FORCE ONE TO SPEAK. The Bills that al the Democrats, the majors ones, have voted FOR are already far WORSE than the flag burning one. I agree with you that flag burning is a Right that should not be taken away. And yes it is terrible Hillary put her mind to this issue with such dedication. Look at all the huge number of sinister Bills that have passed, however. Look how many others have been and continue to be and will be with these new laws, will be taken away on a far greater scale with a far greater and more terrifying bunch of procedures and punishments Notice also one of the main stated intentions of this Bill--the creation of a huge academic center for the study of Homegrown Terrorism and "Violent Radicalism." This further involves the academic world in its creations of new methods, new categories, new statistics, new information on citizens than it already is. The House has already passed it and given the record of the Senate, it will be law before very long. Will a Democrat be al the much "better" i the White House? Of course one hopes so!! But given the record of al of them one doesn't see much real chance of a change. The Democrats introduced H R 1955 and Pelosi made it an immediate statement of hers on becoming Speaker than there would be no options open for Impeachment. On the other hand, all options are open for nuking countries on the slightest of pretexts, or simply on invented ones. The Bush Administration never could have accomplished what it has if it had not been for the continual approval and votes of the House and Senate. Pelosi was among those who knew from the start about the torture and other horrors going on. Other governmental officials on various committees and boards did also. No one objected that the Constitution might be in great danger with the steps that were being taken. They all went along. Any time in which a Government says that it is at War and that Homeland Security is at risk--it is time of grave danger for civil liberties,especially freedom of expression. Persons who are critical of the events and decisions being made immediately find their lives and work in jeopardy--or are on the verge of risking this. Look how incredibly passive the United States has been during the last twenty five years. Aggressive abroad, passive at home. It takes an entire culture to contribute to this. And that is one of the most nightmarish aspects of al of this. By steady degrees so many things that once would have been thought impossible are now laws--and an entire culture has been wlaking steadily into a nightmare which it has already been undergoing such a long acclimatization to that it barely is aware of what is happening to it. What I am trying to say is--don't limit what you are being critical of to Hillary and Bush. It took an entire government, a whole nation to create this situation. And those not involved in creating it for the most part passively accepting it. Let alone the Senators and Congress actively giving approval and untold billions of funding for the nightmare. And by passively I don't mean "violent radicalization." I mean quite often simply speaking out about what is happening in a way which goes beyond the very narrow limits that one is "supposed to stay inside of." Two books I'd recommend are Naomi Wolf's The End of America and Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. Especially the latter, one of the finest books of last year. On Jan 11, 2008 11:24 AM, eric unger wrote: > Dear David, > > The example of the flag burning bill that Hillary sponsored is > important specifically because she is running for president now. It is > by no means the only instance of affronts to personal liberties by > certain American politicians (therefore more broadly the US gov't) but > it is worth focusing on because she went out of her way to draw up the > thing and present it for consideration to her fellow senators. We > could cherry pick different examples all day, but it is mainly -- but > not solely -- the Bush administration who is to blame for the sorry > standing our nation finds itself in. In order to prevent another > Republican from being president, we must elect someone who is not of > that ilk, presumably a Democrat. Hillary is a politician and I am not > surprised that she would stoop to such levels, and so it should be > weighed that she explicitly doesn't believe in freedom of speech. It > points to a greater attitude in this perceived time of national terror > that in order to "protect the citizens", certain 'liberties' can be > eroded or simply bypassed. There are of course very specific reasons > why it would be in politicians' interests to promote such causes. > Orwell wrote in 1984, "The object of persecution is persecution. The > object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." As we > unwittingly put another head into power, let's air out all the dirty > laundry. > > Eric > > On 1/11/08, David Chirot < david.chirot@gmail.com> wrote: > > Dear Eric: > > > > I appreciate your concern regrading the First Amendment, though > criticizing > > Hillary Clinton for sponsoring a bill re Flag Burning that didn't pass > is a > > rather narrow frame for examining what the US Senate and Congress have > been > > rubber stamping for the last 7 years, much of it far far worse than a > failed > > consideration of torching Old Glory. > > > > And the ugliness and suppression already very active, alive and well in > a > > continual barrage of attacks on the First Amendment is about to get much > > uglier. > > > > Free Speech has been under harassment and attack by private > individuals, > > corporations and interest lobbies for a very long time, and in recent > years > > has been evoking memories of the 1950's Black Listings and McCarthyism. > > Critics of U.S and especially Israeli policies have been targeted and > > lecture and book events cancelled, music and theater events cancelled, > > Presses have been threatened with loss of distribution, persons have > lost > > jobs or nearly lost them, their reputations smeared and research > demeaned. > > The American media mainstream is heavily censored as are a lot of the > > "alternative" media and events. There is a small library now out of > books > > dedicated to the censor ships of the Bush era, of Middle East reporting, > > > and harassment of "average" citizens, including children, who have > written > > anti-Bush email or drawn pictures in school considered in some way > offensive > > to the Dear Leader. > > > > The First Amendment actually is a form of double standard as it is > applied > > in practice. To paraphrase Orwell's Animal Farm, "All Speech is Free, > but > > some is more Free than others." (See for example the two volume "Paper > of > > Record" hefty tomes devoted solely to the NY Times' more than dubious > > practices.) > > > > Congress and almost all the candidates for President are beholden to > > corporate and special interest lobbies, which means that with regards to > > Free Speech criticism of these, they have implicitly pledged to minimize > any > > form of open discussion, presentation of ideas, research, or dissidence. > > All the Democrats running for President except for Kucinich and Gravel > > signed documents with AIPAC which places the protection of Israel and > its > > interests at the highest level, almost beyond those of the US itself. > > Kucinich and Gravel have fared badly at finding media coverage, even > being > > ignored during the televised debates. (Due not only to AIPAC, but other > > reasons as well. After all, if they are "minimized" in the media--this > > makes them into "candidates too minimal to cover much." A form of > > self-fulfilling prophecy disguised as a "fair and balanced" > "reportage.") > > > > Pharmaceuticals, Big Oil, a host of others effect Free Speech every day. > > Obama has said he would invade Pakistan, Hillary, Edwards, Obama have > all > > kept the nuke option open for Iran. None of them has done anything much > in > > office regarding the War in Iraq, health care, insurance and mortgage > > frauds on massive-beyond-belief scales going out of control and dragging > the > > economy down with them , , , and so far of over 2500 questions addressed > to > > the candidates during the debates, only 3 have concerned the > environment. > > Far, far ore media time has been spent listening to the candidates > discuss > > just how badly they would torture "terrorist" "detainees" than has been > > > devoted to the catastrophic evidences that the environment is in > Blowback > > mode. > > > > There are far worse things coming though. The House last fall passed > H.R. > > 1955 (an almost entirely Democrat-sponsored Bill)--and Senate will be > voting > > on this soon. So far, it appears to be a lock to pass, with perhaps a > few > > revisions or extras attached. > > > > Below are links for the text of the Bill and another with more > information > > about it. > > > > Whoever does become President will be very dangerous, as the current > > Presidency has systemically chopped away as many as possible of the > "checks > > and balances' on an Imperial Presidency. The dismantling of the > > Constitution, the tearing up and reconstruction of the bureaucracy and > civil > > service, the appointment of a huge number of judges who find the > > Constitution and current laws and Amendments in need of over > turning--all > > these have been putting into place the structure for an ever more open > form > > of fascism than the one already merrily moving along. H.R. 1955 will > speed > > up this process immeasurably. > > > > Even with the laws currently in place, it is possible the next election > > could be suspended for "reasons of national crisis and security" if an > > attack on Iran and perhaps Pakistan is under way. "Too dangerous to > change > > governments during a time of global crisis, you know." It's hard to > imagine > > the current Congress and Senate doing much about it--or even having the > > means to do so, having rubber stamped their own powers out of existence. > > Hitler, after all, came to power under the laws of the time, > democratically > > and legally. The he turned around used the laws to install himself in > > absolute power and get rid of the laws which had put him there. > > > > Having failed with a remake of the Iraq 'WMD" reasons for War with > Iran, > > now the US is "testing the waters" of a potential remake of the Gulf of > > Tonkin incident that was "lift off time" for the Vietnam escalation. > > > > As a "Writing Experiment" "compare and contrast" the following: > > > > Amendment I to the Constitution of the United States of America > > > > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or > > prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of > > speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to > > assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of > grievances.GovTrack: > > H.R. 1955: Text of Legislation > > > > http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1955 --- > > > > > > H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act > of > > 2007 (GovTrack.us) > > > > > > http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1955 --- > > > --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? 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Search. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:49:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: masculinity as the performance of friendship with greatness MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit THINKING OF MICHAEL DAVIDSON’S BOOK ON MASCULINITY WHILE LISTENING TO DAVID SHAPIRO ON PENNSOUND I said to Jasper Johns I was walking with Allen Ginsberg I wrote a book with Jacques Derrida When I was at Columbia It was one of those wonderful days I commute a lot but I write while I’m commuting Joe writes a lot when he commutes too I dedicate this to the painter Jeremy Rahl I hardly knew Kenneth then I had memorized everything in the New York Public Library I met Kenneth and I loved him I met Joe Ceravalo and Frank Lima We won the avant garde book award We met almost all the time that we could It was one of the first times that I had an essay in a dream After that dream essay came this poem by Joe which is of course Not by Joe but by me That was a poem given to me by Joe Kenneth said he did he did win a national award This is a poem for Joe I’ll read another poem for Joe I said when I was off the air This is a poem I wrote thinking about how often we’d meet He said, “I want to åfound a school, David.” I said, “Oh that sounds great, Joe.” And he said, “Yes, you know.” I also met Allen Ginsberg a lot and we would walk I am referring mostly to Charles Ives Allen Ginsberg walked beside me That is influenced by Samuel Beckett’s radio play Oh Joe I was writing a book with Jacques Derrida I heard a dog crying the day I had to give one seminar on prayer Rabbi Heschel, the great protestor, his wife is now my cousin by marriage I wrote this work for Joe Ceravalo, my friend At Bard College where I taught I’ve always wanted to do an opera, it wd be very Kochian I want to read something less lugubrious I do have a lot of elegies I’m getting to this age where people want me to write my memoirs I said to Jasper Johns a year or two ago When I was at Columbia I once threatened self-destruction to Kenneth Koch This is a poem I wrote walking around the George Washington Bridge Frank Lima writes in the subway every morning at six o’clock My welsh terrier walked around this park a lot I dedicate this to the painter Jeremy Rall This was pre-Giuliani Paul Georges once said It’s like one of those moments in Wallace Stevens I want to read something for Rudy Burkhart Of the great friends that I’ve lost, Kenneth Koch, Joe Ceravalo, Meyer Schapiro Jacob and I, Jacob his son, has worked with me at Cooper Union I said to Rudy I said your the best photographer in America He left me, he left my son, really, a hundred photographs He drowned himself like his friend Edmund Denby He said You’re always giving me gifts, and he said Yes no more gifts So I wrote this song for Rudy He loved New York, he also loved nature I said to him you’re the best nature photographer Antininio said I love Monica Vita but I also love a while line on a street Rudy really knew how to make a white line on a street as beautiful as a women, it’s very hard to do The architect John Hejduk makes a great drawing every day He’s another great friend and I’ll read a poem for him later Here’s another poem for Rudy and it’s really a 9-11 poem I wrote a lot I was a violinist I was like a trained monkey and my family was all trained monkeys My grandfather was one of the great singers of the world He’s a composer also He was very important You can still go to Judaica stores and buy them Mozart is a standard Where Glenn Gould is playing My father was not only a violist but a sculptor He studied with a student of Rodin I remember when Kenneth said congratulations on yr dual career I married an architect She introduced me to Meyer Schapiro He defended Jackson Pollock He wd defend Wolf Kahns’ landscapes William de Kooning My great teacher, he really introduced modern art studies at Columbia He brought de Kooning and Barnett Newman and others TO Columbia I once sd to Wm de Kooning is it true that Meyers saved yr woman number one? As Delmore Schwartz once said Here’s a very funny one for Meyer His great love Picasso Meyer lectured on it for a famous five hours An arrow wd not pierce her vagina I could not erase one woman Who is all cunt and spine and democratic bone You’re sucking me off Certain people thought that I shouldn’t publish that But then forgave me A lot of my life is about architecture I worked for a long time with John Hejduk When he met the Romanian president he gave him Emily Dickinson When I was a fellow at Cambridge My poem was placed in the castle in the castle and dedicated by Havel He took a poem of mine and translated it I’m looking forward to the day when the president of Columbia and I and others I met his brother and he sd the whole Palach family thanks you What was moving in Prague when I read that poem Havel said Havel had someone recite my poem by heart John Hejduk liked that part of the poem Trotsky was in love with my grandmother My uncle was not only a great pianist but also wrote sonnets for the New York Times My father was also concerned with everything Like Meyer Schapiro he also cared about everything There were hordes of people of a variety of races in my home Allen Ginsberg didn’t like the left being violent nor did I I felt very close to Robert Lowell Kenneth used to say to me This was published in South Africa when I was 12 Every poem of mine is an act of resistance The old surrealists have grown up and have good jobs A lot of us used to dream whether our names wd be next to Thucydides Poem for my architect John Hejduk, the greatest architect I wrote a long poem for him ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:04:23 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Glass Subject: Hank Lazer's "First Portions"--Another Free Ahadada E-Chap For One and All! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dig in at www.ahadadabooks.com Jess ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:23:39 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Glass Subject: Looking for A Web-Helper: Ahadada Books MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" We're looking for someone conversant with web-building and other e-technologies, file editing, etc. to help us out at Ahadada books for 2008. We can't offer payment for services, but--if we like your writing--we could swap work for eventual publication. Duties include book design, website management, monitoring of our unique Small Press Exchange website, etc. etc. Ahadada Books has been around for 10 years. Our books have garnered great reviews from The Guardian, PN Review, The Chicago Trib., the L.A. Times, the Japan Times, the Daily Yomiuri, and the Mainichi Shimbun. Future plans include several anthology projects and an audio site. We're based in Toronto and a suburb of Tokyo and do 99% of what we do on-line in cyberspace. Please back-channel if you're interested. Send a resume and letter of interest to: Jesse Glass ahadada@gol.com, and CC Daniel Sendecki at daniel@sendecki.com Please feel free to pass this notice on to anyone who might be interested. Check out what we do at: wwww.ahadadabooks.com All best, Jess ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:09:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: New de blog - Joanne Kyger, Hemp Haptics, etc. Comments: To: UK POETRY , Poetryetc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Joanne Kyger: My 91 year old mom’s interpretations of some of Joanne's collected poems, and her take on the Life of a Ghost. Dying Building and The Birth of Letters (small photo metro photo essay) Multiple pieces from the "Hemp Haptic" series. & photos and commentary from Valencia & 24th Street in San Francisco Enjoy, By the way, has anybody read a good article in which Facebook faces off against the Blog. Is it a duel to the death? Or?? Thinking minds want to know! Stephen V ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 06:22:33 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beckett Subject: Mary Rising Higgins MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Linescapes: An Interview with Mary Rising Higgins" by Bruce Holsapple and John Tritica is up at: _http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com) Note: if you click on the jpegs of the big shaped poems, they will enlarge. **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 08:41:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: New Nomadics blog posts Comments: To: Britis-Irish List Comments: cc: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) Check out these new posts on Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com Provisional 08 Reading Schedule Homer was no Greek Allen Fisher's LEANS is out L.A. Benefit Reading for Will Alexander Henri Chopin (1922-2008) be well & check us out on goodreads, Pierre ___________________________________________________________ The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan ___________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris 244 Elm Street Albany NY 12202 h: 518 426 0433 c: 518 225 7123 o: 518 442 40 71 Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 email: joris@albany.edu http://pierrejoris.com Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:02:18 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: heidi arnold Subject: Re: free speech --H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prvention Act of 2007 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline david, chiming in here. i don't know the history of arguments surrounding free speech. in the case you cited, H.R. 1955, at least part of the problem seems to be with statements by independent civilians that would be used to incite violence. it seems to me that this at least in part raises an issue of interpretation, and that interpretation depends, in part, on one's religion, one's background. so you can have a group of people who are pacifist, militant, monotheist, polytheist, what have you, all reading the same text and all seeing echoes of their own faith system. i think this is a good thing. because the text not only echoes the militant reverence for god, it also echoes pacifist wishes for nonviolence. if someone is killed it is hard to argue about what happened, no matter what one's faith system, in so far as there is a corpse and that is the bottom line. same thing with other forms of violence. and i think that desire to assert one's own view may be part of the impetus for inscripting things violently, you get a literal signature and interpretative positioning that is indelible. i can not tell you how heartbreaking that is to me. we don't need violent signatures on things to sort out religious conflict. it's useful, but it's the easy way out, i think it's the cowards way out, to say i can kill so you'd better believe me because my views are not going to persuade people who don't share my assumptions. vote democratic or i'll break your arms, as they say in one of my favorite cities. i can see that, but it's the easy way out. but for the purpose of discussion, in philosophical terms, you can have texts that contain both worlds, that swallow the militance, suicide bombing and service to god, in all of its honor, in a different system of reverence, say pacifism, or sermon on the mount, or zen. you can give the killing a different theatre that doesn't require bloodshed is that ok? is it respectful of other faiths? is it too much cheek? i don't know. is it fair? i don't know. but i think it is possible to build dialogic containers for violent feelings and thoughts, and in so doing to expand the capacity of different peoples to sit down and chat, in spirit of respect, perhaps even friendship. the measure of interpretation is what is in one's own soul. go there. what's there. no one else can say. as pound wrote, something like, there are so many things in the heart, and there is no end of talking. we have all been harmed by this war, i mean the peoples of so many different countries and faiths. i think we have enough shared pain by now to be able to come together and see what might work in terms of sorting some things out, collectively, for the planet. if there were an innate limit to human pain, there would not be as much death. i think we are responsible to limit the pain we go ahead and inflict, and stop. in the balance of freedom, or peace, which is more important, and how is that decided. or what kinds of things are freedom worth, if there are prices other than killing. heidi -- www.heidiarnold.org http://peaceraptor.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:11:27 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: New Nomadics blog posts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I am very happy to read what you say about Allen Fisher. I've only been slo= wly getting acquainted with his work over the past couple of years but he i= s clearly one of the major living poets in the English language.=0A=0A=0A--= --- Original Message ----=0AFrom: Pierre Joris =0ATo: = POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: Sunday, 13 January, 2008 1:41:48 PM=0A= Subject: New Nomadics blog posts=0A=0ACheck out these new posts on Nomadics= blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com=0A=0AProvisional 08 Reading Schedule=0AHo= mer was no Greek=0AAllen Fisher's LEANS is out=0AL.A. Benefit Reading for W= ill Alexander=0AHenri Chopin (1922-2008)=0A=0Abe well & check us out on goo= dreads,=0A=0APierre=0A_____________________________________________________= ______=0A=0AThe poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan=0A_______= ____________________________________________________=0APierre Joris=0A244 E= lm Street=0AAlbany NY 12202=0Ah: 518 426 0433=0Ac: 518 225 7123=0Ao: 518 44= 2 40 71=0AEuro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10=0Aemail: joris@albany.edu=0Aht= tp://pierrejoris.com=0ANomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com=0A________= ____________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 09:41:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Laural L. Adams" Subject: Ekphrastic Defined? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I've looked on the net at several resources and the term ekphrasitc seems to refer to cross-medium responses, as in poems on visual art or visual art on music, etc. But does it/could it also include responses to the work in the same medium (Dan Beachy-Quick's Spell, a book of poems that enters into and engages Moby-Dick (and even features autoekphrasis - the commenting on the commenting, as it were, with poems in the form of correspondence to the editor))? Or is there another word for this? Laural L. Adams ----- Original Message ---- From: Hugh Behm-Steinberg To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 2:07:29 PM Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Fiction? Kurt Vonnegut's novel Bluebeard might be of use to you. Best, Hugh Michael Tod Edgerton wrote: Anybody know of any easily excerpted long or short fiction pieces that were written as responses to / "translations" of works of non-literary art? I feel certain that they're out there, but I'm drawing a blank and I need to find something asap for the workshop I'm teaching. Thanks, Tod _____________________ Michael Tod Edgerton MFA '06 Literary Arts Brown University ---- Doctoral Student Department of English 36 Park Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 tod@uga.edu "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the score." - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 10:14:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Small Press Traffic Subject: SPT's Poets Theater 1/18 & 1/25 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline *SMALL PRESS TRAFFIC =97 POETS THEATER 2008* Please join us for two nights of plays and performance, featuring new work by writers and artists, along with new interpretations of Poets Theater classics. This is our annual fundraiser, so come out and support SPT =96 th= ere will be wine & refreshments, raffle items, video, books, and all sorts of festivities to go along with this year's batch of plays and performances=85 *FRIDAY JANUARY 18, 7:30pm:* "The Obituary Show" by CA Conrad "Up in Arms: a scene at Tense Borders" by Mary Diaz "Olive Oil from the Notebooks, a radio film" by Arnold J. Kemp "a fierce vexation of a dream: a tragical mirth"* *by sara m. larsen "Yoda in His Youth" by Dana Ward "RJ Romeo and Juliet (from The Code Poems)" by Hannah Weiner, dir. Suzann= e Stein *FRIDAY JANUARY 25, 7:30pm:* 1980s POETS THEATER REVIVIFIED: THREE PLAYS REEXAMINED, REANIMATED, & RESTAGED "Particle Arms" by Alan Bernheimer (excerpts) "Third Man" by Carla Harryman (excerpts) "Creative Floors" by Kit Robinson And stay tuned for news about our Poets Theater Cabaret and other upcoming events, through our website =97 *http://www.sptraffic.org/html/events.htm* =97 and our new blog:*http://smallpresstraffic.blogspot.com/* Unless otherwise noted,our events are presented in: Timken Lecture Hall California College of the Arts 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco see you there! David Buuck, Cynthia Sailers, & Stephanie Young PT08 Co-curators Small Press Traffic ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:53:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Richard Jeffrey Newman Subject: Two Iranian Literature-related Announcements MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have two things I'd like to announce to the list: 1. PUBLICATION: "A Bird in the Garden of Angels," by John Moyne with Richard Jeffrey Newman, a new Rumi reader published by Mazda Publishers (www.mazdapublisher.com/BookDetails.aspx?BookID=231), is now available. The books contains selections from all of the genres in which Rumi wrote, some of which have never been translated before. John Moyne, the primary translator--I collaborated with him on the poetry sections--has also published new versions of poems on which he originally worked with Coleman Barks. The book, which is intended as an introduction to Rumi for a general readership, contains as well two essays, one on Rumi's life and one on Sufism. 2. READING AND OPEN MIC: Persian Arts Festival, www.persianartsfestival.org, the organization for which I serve as Literary Arts Director, has reestablished the monthly Shab-e She'r (Night Of Persian Poetry) that used to be held at The Bowery Poetry Club, though we are broadening the scope of the event to include not only classical Iranian poetry (Rumi, Sa'di, Hafez, in Persian and in translation), but also contemporary Iranian, Iranian-American or Iranian-connected literature, both prose and poetry. There is a featured reader and then an open mic. The open mic is for anyone who would like to read in Persian and/or English; all we ask is that the material you read have some connection to Iran, Iranian culture, the Iranian-American experience, etc. PAF's Shab-e She'r will take place on the third Wednesday of every month through May, from 6-8 PM at the Bowery Poetry Club. Admission is $12, which buys you one drink. The next Shab-e She'r is Wednesday, January 16 and out featured reader is Roger Sedarat (http://sedarat.com), whose first book of poems, Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic, just won Ohio University's Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Here is the title poem: Dear Regime, After you've ground him into powder, you can burn this to a fine ash. His family feels it would be better off with nothing. My father returned from Iran wit everything but his bones. He said customs claimed them as government property. We laid him on a Persian carpet in front of the television. When I'd hold his wrist to his face because he wanted to know the time, we could see the holes made by the swords in his elbow. His arms reminded of kebab kubideh. It was hard for him to look outside; he said the cumulus clouds were too much like marrow and he couldn't stand watching the dog sniff the backyard, searching for the rest of him. My sister and I put him to bed thinking that beside our mother he'd turn into himself, but through the door we only heard him crying, telling his wife he could never again make love, and through the keyhole we saw her shivering with him wrapped around her like an old blanket until he died one morning. She folded him into a rectangle, mailing him in a white shoebox back to his country. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:54:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Wilcox Subject: Third Thursday Poetry Night in Albany Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v624) Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed the Poetry Motel Foundation presents Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center 33 Central Ave., Albany, NY Thursday, January 17, 2008 7:00 sign up; 7:30 start Featured Poet: Candice with open mic for poets before & after the feature. $3.00 donation -- suggested, not enforced (we=92ll gladly accept $50).=A0 Your new year host: Dan Wilcox. Candice turns scribbles on by the rhythmic tip-typing of keys, a=20 glowing screen.=A0Along with it, it brings a familiar sound, a=20 unforgettable feeling.=A0She received her Bachelors in Literature, from=20= Southern Vermont College. Whether in print or over the loud speaker,=20 Candice=92s voice is inimitable from that of a notorious poet, she is=20 only growing in the new =96 used clothes she calls poetry. the moon is your car with one headlight i listened to your indicator when i followed you home that night i shouldn't of followed i shouldn't have gone along with signals to the left left then right to where sky became our cars where a dirt road became the stars where streams of =A0taillights became red twilight in a cloud of gold-dust powder where reflectors roadside were trees=A0 and we couldn't help but to speed into the corners straight-a-ways we tore that road up i am not the best driver or am i easy to handle no one ever called me a smooth ride no one could ever keep up or keep pace but man your little clunker that rusty old thing on that rough terrain whoaaa, hang on hang on i know we are both just =96 both decent=A0 both upright and true and both of us knew that road that night and both of us liked it i am not saying i'd take that route not anytime soon but your not a bad driver and when those lights went on i just moved ### ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:51:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kyle Schlesinger Subject: new on the cuneiform blog Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit School's Out (Bernstein and Creeley) The Clockmaker's Memoir (Dan Featherston--Special Offer) The Poem and the Chalkboard (Gregg Biglieri's Sleepy with Democracy) Nathaniel Dorsky (at MoMa) Beat Scene (Creeley's Typography and More) The Portable Boog (is out) Recently Received Robert Creeley at Goddard College Read the Fold (Antennae) Sneak Preview (Berkson and Schneeman) www.cuneiformpress.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:19:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Railroad Club MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Railroad Club Images from open house, Morgantown model railroad club, embodying cuts from one scale to another, from human to true world, from mind to emanent. Who would call this the postmodern? One might locate something else here: not the cut but the suture, not disparity but deep memory; the locales represented, real and imaginary, conjure the West Virginia landscape of the 1950s, in the memory of many of the club members. What better than a photograph than a reconstruction in which everything is punctum, intended? The photographs are of the text, of this text; they're weaker without it, they go elsewhere, I'm pulling them back in. I'm pulling them back in to indicate multiculturalisms and emphases on locale and habitus tend both suture and division (these people, these others) in favor of _listening_ and its phenomenology. But listening is skew-orthogonal, again, to the _style_ of the images, based on any number of photographers and trajectories. Now what do I see when I do not know what I see? Certainly aspects and entities are present within the true world filtered through the history of photography and photographers who have no responsibility for me. Where are the passengers in this life? Where are the passengers in the life of the other? You can already feel the economy of the land, extractive industries, pov- erty, environmental pollution, mountain-topping, strip-mining, deep-min- ing, feed stores, small towns in the hollows, grey dust, what's worn is worn, what's not is brought into play through deep memory's suture which even bends, transfigures the landscape, someday we'll all rise to the surface. I will live forever I will live forever I will live forever As a hungry ghost As a hungry ghost I will live forever I don't remember the exact name of the railroad club or the members. Some- one named Mike, I believe, made the larger mine model. I came in as a tourist finding nameless things. the models were both outstanding, depres- sing to an outsider. The images appeared as images, imaginary, with what- ever context I might bring from the outside; the social depth was absent. I turned to the jump-cut. The jump-cut was of the visual, that disparity of mind and scale. Railroad switching systems were fundamental to the development of the Internet. Evidence of electronic skein was everywhere. Jump-cut sutured into dream- scape, dream-screen, displacement/condensation semiotics. What is of truth or tending towards the indexical in the images applies as well to the vis- ual in general, compounding of memory, suture, cut, surface. Whatever one sees is surface, surface-only; x-rays report on deeper surfaces, translucent or transparent to invisible light. The photographs bother me, as if theory needed image-propping beyond the diagrammatic. But what can the image hold, if not an arrangement that might be constituted as evidence? If a diagram is indexical or symbolic, the photograph resides elsewhere; evidence stands for nothing and hardly represents itself, nor is it pointing towards something across ontological or epistemological lines. On this level the photograph simply reports as Bazin might have it, on what-is, or rather the what-is and thetic con- strues within the dialog of image production. In any case, the postmodern is left behind, or rather, is relegated to analyses of socio-economic phenomena where the theory works wonders; think of postmodern geography, Harvey or Roja for example. What would postmodern geography make of mountain-topping? And then its representation which makes the wrecked landscape somehow graspable, something to walk around, replant with meadow or pasture? I think of tantra, mandala, Jefferey Hopkins' introduction to the Kala- chakra Tantra (Kalachakra Tantra, Rite of Initiation, Dali Lama, 1999). Hopkins walks/writes the body of the reader through the mandala ("Notice the entryway at the eastern door, wider than the doorway, with a three storied portico above the entranceway. Each of the stories of the portico above the entryway has four pillars across the front, thereby creating three room-like alcoves on each story. In each of these eight alcoves are goddesses of offering; the middle alcove in the first story on the eastern side has a black wheel of doctrine with a buck and doe to the right and left." And so forth.) Now think of the Morgantown railroad club images in the same or different shimmer, think not of the imminent/immanent identi- fication of entities within them, but of paths through or around or by virtue of these entities, which themselves are processes (one doesn't live forever, the tracks are constantly changing). Is there a meditation here, emission or spew that is sourceless except for (in spite of) the corners or frame of the image? Can one imagine a habitus, inhabitation? Is there a seeing that moves through memory near and far without the supplication of the signifier? This is what literally remains to be seen, and brings the essay to its clothes. http://www.alansondheim.org/rail01.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail02.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail03.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail04.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail05.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail06.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail07.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail08.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail09.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail11.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail12.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail13.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail14.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail15.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail16.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail17.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail18.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail19.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail21.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail22.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail23.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail24.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail25.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail26.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail27.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/rail28.jpg ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:35:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "David A. Kirschenbaum" Subject: d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press 2008 schedule Comments: To: "UB Poetics discussion group "@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi all, This past August we kicked off the fifth season of our d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press series. Below is the remaining schedule, almost complete, for the season. (Poets and musical acts TBA, excluding January event, listed below.) as ever, David P.S. And on Tues., March 11, at 8:00 p.m. at Cakeshop (152 Ludlow St., NYC) we will be doing another of our classic albums live shows. This time, for the 20th anniversary of the album, we will be performing live The Pixies' Surfer Rosa, as well as Doolittle (which is turning 19). With performances by Todd Carlstrom and the Clamour, The Leader, Chris Maher, Poton (featuring members of Dead Rabbit), and more. ------------ d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press Remaining 2007-08 schedule (all events take place at 6:00 p.m. on last Tuesdays--except July-- at ACA Galleries, 529 W.20th St., 5th Flr., NYC) 2008 Jan. 29 Instance Press (Boulder, Colo.; New York City; Oakland, Calif.) Stacy Szymaszek, co-editor http://www.instancepress.com/ Featuring readings from Kimberly Lyons Kevin Varrone Craig Watson and music from The Moldy Peaches' Toby Goodshank http://www.myspace.com/tobygoodshank Feb. 26 Punch Press/damn the caesars (Buffalo, N.Y.) Richard Owens, editor http://damnthecaesars.org/ March 25 Outside Voices (Brooklyn, N.Y.) Jessica Smith, editor http://poetry2008.blogspot.com/ April 29 Abraham Lincoln (Ashland, Ore.) K. Silem Mohammad and Anne Boyer, editors http://abrahamlincolnmagazine.blogspot.com/ May 27 Effing Press (Austin, Texas), Scott Pierce, editor http://www.effingpress.com/ June 24 Ixnay Press (Philadelphia), Chris and Jenn McCreary, eds. http://www.ixnaypress.com/ Thurs. July 29 TBD -- David A. Kirschenbaum, editor and publisher Boog City 330 W.28th St., Suite 6H NY, NY 10001-4754 For event and publication information: http://welcometoboogcity.com/ T: (212) 842-BOOG (2664) F: (212) 842-2429 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:30:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Fiction? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit williams pictures from bruegel (wrong title i think) my wife's poems and mine about art oops On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:44:06 -0800 Therese Broderick writes: > Perhaps this will help you-- > > 1) go to my ekphrasis (poetry) blog-- > poetryaboutart.wordpress.com > > 2) in right sidebar, under lower category "Ekphrasis > Links," click on "David Wright's class" > > 3) under his category "Examples of Ekphrasis," first > three listings are for fiction > > Also, Susan Vreeland's historical fiction about major > artists might help you. See her website-- > www.svreeland.com > > Sincerely, > Therese L. Broderick, MFA > freelance poet with specialty in ekphrasis > Albany, NY > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:31:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: The Four Horsemen Project in Vancouver Jan 17-19 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit is my good pal paul dutton still in that group? or is this something different? On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:43:19 -0800 Jim Andrews writes: > last night i saw The Four Horsemen Project performed in Victoria. > this is > excellent. it's going to be in vancouver jan 17-19. go see it if you > can. > > info at http://volcano.ca -- more particularly, at > http://www.volcano.ca/template.php?content=productions_erupting&image=img _pr > oductions&submenu=sub_productions#TheFourHorsemenProject > > ja > http://vispo.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 18:55:18 -0500 Reply-To: az421@freenet.carleton.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob McLennan Subject: Re: The Four Horsemen Project in Vancouver Jan 17-19 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT he was in the group; it doesnt exist anymore; bpNichol died in 1988, for example; this is a very recent 4piece dance work based upon the original work of The Four Horsemen (actually, predominantly based on the work of Nichol himself); rob > >is my good pal paul dutton still in that group? >or is this something different? > >On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:43:19 -0800 Jim Andrews writes: >> last night i saw The Four Horsemen Project performed in Victoria. >> this is >> excellent. it's going to be in vancouver jan 17-19. go see it if you >> can. >> >> info at http://volcano.ca -- more particularly, at >> >http://www.volcano.ca/template.php?content=productions_erupting&image=img >_pr >> oductions&submenu=sub_productions#TheFourHorsemenProject >> >> ja >> http://vispo.com >> >> > > -- poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:18:16 -0500 Reply-To: az421@freenet.carleton.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob McLennan Subject: Re: The Four Horsemen Project in Vancouver Jan 17-19 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT the four horsemen were bp Nichol, Steve McCaffery, Paul Dutton, and Rafael Barreto-Rivera; a Toronto-based group. http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/4-Horsemen.html a 1970s sound poetry group that came out of their influence was Owen Sound (appropriately enough, from Owen Sound, Ontario); Steve Ross Smith, Richard Truhlar, Michael Dean & David Penhale http://www.fluttertongue.ca/history.html alberta rob > >I had the great fortune of seeing the Four Horseman perform at the Festival >of Life and Learning at the University of Manitoba in the mid-70s. It was >quite the experience. I'm trying to remember who was in there. I know BP was >one. Was bissett another? Did George Bowering make it in there? >John Cunningham > >-----Original Message----- >From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On >Behalf Of Rob McLennan >Sent: January 13, 2008 5:55 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: The Four Horsemen Project in Vancouver Jan 17-19 > >he was in the group; it doesnt exist anymore; bpNichol died in 1988, for >example; this is a very recent 4piece dance work based upon the original >work of The Four Horsemen (actually, predominantly based on the work of >Nichol himself); > >rob > > > > >>is my good pal paul dutton still in that group? >>or is this something different? >> >>On Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:43:19 -0800 Jim Andrews writes: >>> last night i saw The Four Horsemen Project performed in Victoria. >>> this is >>> excellent. it's going to be in vancouver jan 17-19. go see it if you >>> can. >>> >>> info at http://volcano.ca -- more particularly, at >>> >>http://www.volcano.ca/template.php?content=productions_erupting&image=img >>_pr >>> oductions&submenu=sub_productions#TheFourHorsemenProject >>> >>> ja >>> http://vispo.com >>> >>> >> >> > >-- >poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere >Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press >fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 >writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ > >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG Free Edition. >Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.2/1221 - Release Date: 12/01/2008 >2:04 PM > > >No virus found in this outgoing message. >Checked by AVG Free Edition. >Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.2/1221 - Release Date: 12/01/2008 >2:04 PM > > > -- poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:55:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Therese Broderick Subject: Ekphrastic Defined? In-Reply-To: <13711.9007.qm@web38708.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The term "ekphrasis" can be used strictly or loosely, in a conventional sense or in an outside-the-box sense--just like the term "poetry." Definitions evolve. I've never seen the term "ekphrasis" applied to poetry which is inspired by, triggered by, derivative of, or translating other works of literature. When a poem assumes the conventions of some other form of literature (for example, a poem as correspondence to the editor), I think that a more precise term for that relationship might be "analogue." I've seen "ekphrasis" applied to poems which are inspired by paintings which were inspired by myths, fables, Biblical stories, historical accounts, etc. In these cases, the work of visual art is a bridge between two works of verbal art. I've also seen "ekphrasis" applied to poems inspired by visual art but which also reproduce lines written by other writers. The phrase "with lines by" may appear in the poem's epigraph. I know of one instance in which the term "ekphrasis" was applied to the relationship between two similar mediums: film and painting. An online video presented a sequence of famous painted portraits, each face of which flowed seamlessly into the next face. (In my opinion, though, this is not ekphrasis.) For the purposes of my blog, I use a rather traditional, strict defintion--not so much because I'm a conservative purist on principle, but more because I need to set limits for the practical management of the blog and for my own writing. However, I can be persuaded to change. Therese L. Broderick, MFA Albany, NY poetryaboutart.wordpress.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:12:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Ciccariello Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Fascinating and beautiful Alan. I belonged to that world as a kid, with a subscription to Model Railroader magazine. First learned trompe l'oeil and how to dream worlds that didn't exist, put my head on the tracks and the smoke pellets filled the room till they faded into the white painted clouds. - Peter On Jan 13, 2008 3:19 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > Railroad Club > > > Images from open house, Morgantown model railroad club, embodying cuts > from one scale to another, from human to true world, from mind to emanent. > Who would call this the postmodern? One might locate something else here: > not the cut but the suture, not disparity but deep memory; the locales > represented, real and imaginary, conjure the West Virginia landscape of > the 1950s, in the memory of many of the club members. What better than a > photograph than a reconstruction in which everything is punctum, intended? > > The photographs are of the text, of this text; they're weaker without it, > they go elsewhere, I'm pulling them back in. I'm pulling them back in to > indicate multiculturalisms and emphases on locale and habitus tend both > suture and division (these people, these others) in favor of _listening_ > and its phenomenology. > > But listening is skew-orthogonal, again, to the _style_ of the images, > based on any number of photographers and trajectories. > > Now what do I see when I do not know what I see? Certainly aspects and > entities are present within the true world filtered through the history of > photography and photographers who have no responsibility for me. > > Where are the passengers in this life? Where are the passengers in the > life of the other? > > You can already feel the economy of the land, extractive industries, pov- > erty, environmental pollution, mountain-topping, strip-mining, deep-min- > ing, feed stores, small towns in the hollows, grey dust, what's worn is > worn, what's not is brought into play through deep memory's suture which > even bends, transfigures the landscape, someday we'll all rise to the > surface. > > I will live forever > I will live forever > I will live forever > As a hungry ghost > As a hungry ghost > I will live forever > > I don't remember the exact name of the railroad club or the members. Some- > one named Mike, I believe, made the larger mine model. I came in as a > tourist finding nameless things. the models were both outstanding, depres- > sing to an outsider. The images appeared as images, imaginary, with what- > ever context I might bring from the outside; the social depth was absent. > I turned to the jump-cut. > > The jump-cut was of the visual, that disparity of mind and scale. Railroad > switching systems were fundamental to the development of the Internet. > Evidence of electronic skein was everywhere. Jump-cut sutured into dream- > scape, dream-screen, displacement/condensation semiotics. What is of truth > or tending towards the indexical in the images applies as well to the vis- > ual in general, compounding of memory, suture, cut, surface. Whatever one > sees is surface, surface-only; x-rays report on deeper surfaces, > translucent or transparent to invisible light. > > The photographs bother me, as if theory needed image-propping beyond the > diagrammatic. But what can the image hold, if not an arrangement that > might be constituted as evidence? If a diagram is indexical or symbolic, > the photograph resides elsewhere; evidence stands for nothing and hardly > represents itself, nor is it pointing towards something across ontological > or epistemological lines. On this level the photograph simply reports as > Bazin might have it, on what-is, or rather the what-is and thetic con- > strues within the dialog of image production. In any case, the postmodern > is left behind, or rather, is relegated to analyses of socio-economic > phenomena where the theory works wonders; think of postmodern geography, > Harvey or Roja for example. > > What would postmodern geography make of mountain-topping? And then its > representation which makes the wrecked landscape somehow graspable, > something to walk around, replant with meadow or pasture? > > I think of tantra, mandala, Jefferey Hopkins' introduction to the Kala- > chakra Tantra (Kalachakra Tantra, Rite of Initiation, Dali Lama, 1999). > Hopkins walks/writes the body of the reader through the mandala ("Notice > the entryway at the eastern door, wider than the doorway, with a three > storied portico above the entranceway. Each of the stories of the portico > above the entryway has four pillars across the front, thereby creating > three room-like alcoves on each story. In each of these eight alcoves are > goddesses of offering; the middle alcove in the first story on the eastern > side has a black wheel of doctrine with a buck and doe to the right and > left." And so forth.) Now think of the Morgantown railroad club images in > the same or different shimmer, think not of the imminent/immanent identi- > fication of entities within them, but of paths through or around or by > virtue of these entities, which themselves are processes (one doesn't live > forever, the tracks are constantly changing). Is there a meditation here, > emission or spew that is sourceless except for (in spite of) the corners > or frame of the image? Can one imagine a habitus, inhabitation? Is there a > seeing that moves through memory near and far without the supplication of > the signifier? This is what literally remains to be seen, and brings the > essay to its clothes. > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail01.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail02.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail03.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail04.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail05.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail06.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail07.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail08.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail09.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail11.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail12.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail13.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail14.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail15.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail16.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail17.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail18.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail19.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail21.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail22.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail23.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail24.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail25.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail26.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail27.jpg > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail28.jpg > -- NEW RELEASE UNCOMMON VISION - The Art of Peter Ciccariello http://uncommon-vision.blogspot.com/ 66 pp. 42 color plates. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:35:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: fifteen minute poem for lola ridge MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:55:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Zamsky, Robert" Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Defined? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Texts commenting on and integrating other texts are decidely not = involved in ekphrasis. The examples cited below are interested in = (among other things) questions of intertextuality, revisitation, and = reflexivity. These are not the concerns of ekphrasis, which is all = about cross-over, specifically the cross-over from arts of rest to those = of movement (the critical discourse around the mode is rooted in = Aristotelian distinctions). =20 Ekphrasis has a very clear and well documented history, with the first = major example generally identified as Homer's description of Achilles' = shield in Book 18 of the Iliad (though there are other ekphrastic = moments earlier in the Iliad and throughout early Greek literature); the = second important example is Virgil's depiction of the shield of Aeneis = in the Aeneid. The mode crops up consistently in the English = Renaissance and is important to Romanticism (especially Wordsworth's = "Peele Castle" and Shelley's "On Looking at the Medusa of Leonardo da = Vinci in the Florentine Gallery"). The first serious theoretical = consideration is Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Laokoon, in which he = ruminates many examples of ekphrasis -- the book taking its title from = the marble sculpture group representing the events from Book II of the = Aeneid (Laokoon and his sons being eaten by the serpent). The = relationship between the visual arts is often subsequently referred to = as "the Laokoon problem," maybe most recently by Daniel Albright in = Untwisting the Serpent. Williams' series, Pictures from Breughel, is = important, as are Auden's "The Shield of Achilles" and "Mus=E9e des = Beaux Arts" (which treats a painting also treated by Williams). The = next biggie is Ashbery's "Self-Portrait," and I think the most important = recent example is Cole Swensen's Try (though Mary Jo Bang's The Eye Like = a Strange Balloon is a terrific read and teaches very well). =20 As far as defining the mode, it has been a bit slippery -- with = significant efforts made in the last half-century by Murray Krieger (in = his landmark essay, "Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry: or, = Laokoon Revisited") and more recently by W. J. T. Mitchell in "Ekphrasis = and the Other" (from his book, Picture Theory). James Heffernan's book = A Museum Made of Words: The Poetics of Ekrphasis from Homer to Ashbery = is a terrific addition to the conversation, defining ekphrasis as the = verbal representation of a visual representation (I'm paraphrasing b/c I = don't have the book in front of me). I would take issue with his use of = "representation," but the book is generally very, very good. There is = an excellent article on Swensen's Try by Lynn Keller in Contemporary = Literature, though I don't remember off-hand the date of publication. =20 All of this is simply to say that there is a large and lively = conversation surrounding ekphrasis and that both the term and the mode = it defines are of consistent critical interest -- for reasons suggested = by both Mitchell's essay and by Carol Jacobs in an essay on the Shelley = poem. The discussion always comes back to the same crux -- the = irresolvable (often productively so) tension between temporal and = spatial arts. Temporal arts commenting on one another simply don't = raise these same questions. The definition can certainly be altered = (especially since it has yet to be decided on) -- I think particularly = with respect to poetry that responds to film, for example. But if we = are going to use the term in any meaningful way, we need to be aware of = its specific history. =20 - rz ________________________________ From: UB Poetics discussion group on behalf of Laural L. Adams Sent: Sun 1/13/2008 12:41 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Ekphrastic Defined? I've looked on the net at several resources and the term ekphrasitc = seems to refer to cross-medium responses, as in poems on visual art or = visual art on music, etc. But does it/could it also include responses to = the work in the same medium (Dan Beachy-Quick's Spell, a book of poems = that enters into and engages Moby-Dick (and even features autoekphrasis = - the commenting on the commenting, as it were, with poems in the form = of correspondence to the editor))? Or is there another word for this? Laural L. Adams ----- Original Message ---- From: Hugh Behm-Steinberg To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 2:07:29 PM Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Fiction? Kurt Vonnegut's novel Bluebeard might be of use to you. Best, Hugh Michael Tod Edgerton wrote: Anybody = know of any easily excerpted long or short fiction pieces that were = written as responses to / "translations" of works of non-literary art? I = feel certain that they're out there, but I'm drawing a blank and I need = to find something asap for the workshop I'm teaching. Thanks, Tod _____________________ Michael Tod Edgerton MFA '06 Literary Arts Brown University ---- Doctoral Student Department of English 36 Park Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 tod@uga.edu "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still = escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different = death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the = score." - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle =20 --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try = it now. =20 --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try = it now. = _________________________________________________________________________= ___________ Looking for last minute shopping deals?=20 Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. = http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=3Dshopping ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:39:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: The Four Horsemen Project in Vancouver Jan 17-19 In-Reply-To: <20080113235518.5FE8324745@smeagol.ncf.ca> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > he was in the group; it doesnt exist anymore; bpNichol died in 1988, for > example; this is a very recent 4piece dance work based upon the original > work of The Four Horsemen (actually, predominantly based on the work of > Nichol himself); > > rob yes, all that's right. i would add it's not solely dance. sound poetry. music. and some very good visual and animated poetry. the gear they're using for projection is impressive. i hear the main guy involved in that part of the show has some dough. the whole stage, both the floor and the back wall, is covered with animation, at times, quite a large area. and the performers in the midst of it. quite the writing space. also there's use of archival footage. of the four horsemen. of richard kostelanetz talking about intermedia. of bpNichol by himself talking about poetry. this piece goes well beyond homage to the four horsemen. though the material is faithful to the sound poetry and music and visual poetry of the horsemen and bpNichol. three of the performers are female. this changes the sound poetry in a refreshing way. oompa! also, the synthesis of the sound poetry with dance, theatricality, and sophisticated visuals is well beyond the time and scope of the horsemen. the performance is, justly, being raved about by theatre critics as refreshing in contemporary theatre. i met ellie nichol yesterday. she's moved to victoria. she showed me the library she has of barrie's work. very large. j.w. curry, who apparently keeps an up-to-date bibliography of bpNichol's work, has catalogued over 10,000 items and periodically adds more as previously uncatalogued work comes to light. info on the four horsemen project at http://volcano.ca -- more particularly, at http://www.volcano.ca/template.php?content=productions_erupting&image=img_pr oductions&submenu=sub_productions#TheFourHorsemenProject ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 05:58:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: a week of entries MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline I've never posted re my blog before and may not again-- i am not sure if posts re blogs are "annoying" or "welcome"-- it varies from day to day week to week what all is there--sometimes more sometimes less of my own things and usually more of others' Visual Poetry-- i like to post essays and ideas by others rather than just my own for a much wider & international perspective- i'll be initiated shortly a new visual poetry/mail art call whose works are posted here-- http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com i thought it might be of interest as has things not "covered" on many other sites From a week of entries--large multi-essay, art work, OU journal covers, dbc homages & videos for/of Henri Chopin, "On Music and War and Empathy" by Jazz Musician Gilad Atzmon, El Rey Ray Johnson homage collages--Essay by Sloban Serkovic--much else--Borges, Bunuel, Burroughs videos--Mail Art, Visual Poetry--Protests--News Reports--Book announcements--music--Exhibition News-- * New Blackbox Gallery Up--Announcement from William James Austin * El Rey Ray Johnson 13 January Anniversary of His Final Plunge into the Eternal Network...collages by d-bc * WAR or PEACE Mail Art Call from Dorian Ribas Mariinho, from Brazil.. * EL OJO DE DIOS Part One: Insects and Letters--short story & collages = d-bc * tEYEpe wrEYEter of the shadows--collages -dbc * 2 new visual poetry books by Richard Tipping and Clemente Padin.. * On Music and War And Empathy autobiographical essay by Jazz Musician Gilad..Atzmon. * Checkpoint 303 LIVE in AMSTERDAM and more! music announcements, radio shows * As Always, There Were Many Citizens Who Felt None ...paintings by d-b Chirot * Two Protest Wall Poems--Paintings by d-b Chirot * : The Golden Thread, TYR 3-Book Anouncement from Dominion Press * From Jewish Voice for Peace: Host an anti-occupation Seder.. * War with No End, US Campaign Book Club Selection * FW: DAY OF ACTION: January 11th is the 6th anniversary of Arrival of First Detainees at Guantanamo... * Abismos de pasion/Wuthering Heights--Luis Bunuel * Los Olvidados =B0 Luis Bu=F1uel 01--video * jorge luis borges--video interview * DOCUMENTARY BIOGRAPHY JORGE LUIS BORGES--video * William S Burroughs--Commissioner of Sewers Video * The Quiet War-Ethnic Cleansing of Bedouins * PERFORMANCE DE REYES TARRAGONA PXP/TDS * Borges and the Forseeable Future--Borges as precusor of Web.. * Sabbah's Blog: Silence Day for Fouad Alfarhan *Henri Chopin And Individual and Sound Poet Beyond Boundaries--Essay by Chopin, Bio, Articles, Ou Journal Covers & art * Five Henri Chopin Videos * Remaking Movies, Remaking Maps, Remaking Memories--Triptych of Found Cut-Up Documentary-Poems and images * Essay on Internet and Project Rastko--Sloban Serkovic ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:56:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Bettridge Subject: Metaphor Taking Shape: Poetry, Art, and the Book (The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Arts of the Book Collection invite historians, literary scholars, poets, artists, publishers, and book arts enthusiasts to participate in Metaphor Taking Shape: Poetry, Art, and the Book, a symposium to be held on March 13 & 14, 2008, on the campus of Yale University. To register on line visit: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/metaphor/index.html Speakers are Carolee Campbell, Macy Chadwick, Steve Clay, Simon Cutts, Johanna Drucker, Ann Lauterbach, Anna Moschovakis, C. Mikal Oness, Kyle Schlesinger, Buzz Spector, C. D. Wright, and John Yau. The symposium will highlight strengths of the Yale Arts of the Book Collection and the Modern European and American collections at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in the accompanying exhibitions: Metaphor Taking Shape: Poetry, Art, and the Book at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library The Publishers' Roundtable: Book Artists in Dialogue at the Arts of the Book Collection Conference registration is free, but required for planning purposes. The deadline for registration is Monday, February 25, 2008. For questions, please contact: Nancy Kuhl at nancy.kuhl@yale.edu Jae Rossman at jae.rossman@yale.edu Nancy Kuhl Associate Curator, Yale Collection of American Literature The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Yale University 121 Wall Street, P.O. Box 208240 New Haven, CT 06520-8240 Phone: 203.432.2966 African American Studies at Beinecke Library: http://beineckejwj.wordpress.com/ Poetry at Beinecke Library: http://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/ Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities: http://brblroom26.wordpress.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:20:27 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: angel gonzalez has passed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hR4A4h0g9E74TuoeNJ6JfY7M_oFwD8U5J69O0 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:07:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Kelleher Subject: Literary Buffalo Newsletter 1.14.08-1.20.08 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 LITERARY BUFFALO 01.14.08-01.20.08 ___________________________________________________________________________ BABEL WE ARE NOW OFFERING A 2-EVENT SPRING SUBSCRIPTION FOR =2440. Tickets for individual Babel events are also on sale. Call 832-5400 or visi= t http://www.justbuffalo.org/babel. March 13 Derek Walcott, St. Lucia, Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize =2425 April 24 Kiran Desai, India, Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize =2425 BABEL EXTRA _A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman_ Documentary Film Screening _Saturday, January 19, 8 p.m. =247, =245 stu./sen., =244 mem. _Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware =40 Tupper ___________________________________________________________________________ OPEN READINGS As of January, Just Buffalo's Open Reading series is no longer active. Lee= Farallo has told us that he needs a change. We are grateful for all the ye= ars he has put in and wish him luck as he moves on. At present, there is n= o one to take over for Lee, so we are suspending the third Sunday readings = at Rust Belt Books and the second Wednesday readings at the Carnegie Art Ce= nter indefinitely. If these events become active again, we will let you kn= ow. Meantime, we are still sponsoring two open mic readings a month - one a= t Center for Inquiry on the first Wednesday, and one at Tru-teas on the fir= st Sunday of each month. ___________________________________________________________________________ EVENTS 01.17.08 Just Buffalo/new/reNEW Gary Earl Ross & Lisa Forrest Poetry/Fiction Reading Thursday, Janaury 17, 7 p.m. Impact Gallery, Tri-Main Center, 2495 Main St, Ste. 545 & Just Buffalo Small Press Poetry Series Peter Conners and Brian Mornar Poetry Reading Thursday, January 17, 7 p.m. Rust Belt Books, 202 Allen St. 01.19.08 Babel/Hallwalls A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman Documentary Film Screening Saturday, January 19, 8 p.m. =247, =245 stu./sen., =244 mem. Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware =40 Tupper 01.20.08 Spoken Word Sundays Karima Amin & Jimmie Margaret Gilliam Sunday, January 20, 8 p.m. Allen Street Hardware, 245 Allen St. Slots for open readers available ___________________________________________________________________________ WESTERN NEW YORK BOOK ARTS WORKSHOPS The Western NY Book Arts Collaborative presents its Winter 2008 book arts S= aturday workshop series in the Buffalo NY area. We have spaces available st= ill for all workshops, however space is limited, so please sign up soon if = you are interested. All workshops are intro level and open to members and n= on-members. For more details, registration information & additional events: http://www.wnybookarts.org/events.php ___________________________________________________________________________ JUST BUFFALO MEMBERS ONLY WRITER CRITIQUE GROUP Members of Just Buffalo are welcome to attend a free, bi-monthly writer cri= tique group in CEPA's Flux Gallery on the first floor of the historic Marke= t Arcade Building across the street from Shea's. Group meets 1st and 3rd We= dnesday at 7 p.m. Call Just Buffalo for details. ___________________________________________________________________________ WESTERN NEW YORK ROMANCE WRITERS group meets the third Wednesday of every m= onth at St. Joseph Hospital community room at 11a.m. Address: 2605 Harlem R= oad, Cheektowaga, NY 14225. For details go to www.wnyrw.org. ___________________________________________________________________________ JOIN JUST BUFFALO ONLINE=21=21=21 If you would like to join Just Buffalo, or simply make a massive personal d= onation, you can do so online using your credit card. We have recently add= ed the ability to join online by paying with a credit card through PayPal. = Simply click on the membership level at which you would like to join, log = in (or create a PayPal account using your Visa/Amex/Mastercard/Discover), a= nd voil=E1, you will find yourself in literary heaven. For more info, or t= o join now, go to our website: http://www.justbuffalo.org/membership/index.shtml ___________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE If you would like to unsubscribe from this list, just say so and you will b= e immediately removed. _______________________________ Michael Kelleher Artistic Director Just Buffalo Literary Center Market Arcade 617 Main St., Ste. 202A Buffalo, NY 14203 716.832.5400 716.270.0184 (fax) www.justbuffalo.org mjk=40justbuffalo.org ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:29:33 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Majena Mafe Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jan 2008 to 13 Jan 2008 (#2008-14) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, thought I'd let you know about a new blog I have set up called that-unsound http://that-unsound.blogspot.com/ It's a portal for info, writings and research for the 'sounded' and 'soundings' in language, experimental writing and new media. I'm interested in correlations between sounded oralities and the perverse as a possible point of departure for new work/ideas, particularly in 'women's' experimental/ innovative/ ecriture/ language frames (that 'allow' just that bit extra).but all work fits under the skirt. Please feel free to visit.and put the word out. Thank you Majena Mafe http://that-unsound.blogspot.com/ http://majenamafe.com/ "Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything." Gertrude Stein ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:21:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Anti-Crystal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Anti-Crystal Crystal radio apparatus set up in Morgantown, with main inductor coil of the honeycomb type. A diode and air-capacitor were used; these three elements constituted the original radio, with the exception of the diode. The antenna was coupled with a variometer and second air-capacitor, both old. The antenna was 90 feet long-wire wrapped around two sides of a house in a hollow. Reception on 1300 from a local station was so dominant that I attempted at all costs to avoid it, bringing hum and background into play, with mixed results. The whole was fed into a sound editing program for further modification. I attempted a democratization of the airwaves, allowing the power grid and other interferences their say. The result is at http://www.alansondheim.org/mg1.mov which is a nice sound in a way, sculpted to be of sufficient interest in itself. This sculpting, like other aesthetic decisions, interfered with the original intent, but I do believe such interference constitutes the history of much recent art, if not certain schools of somewhat machinic poetics. For what is present must be presence, if presented, there must be a force behind it driving the efflorescence, there must be intention behind that force or a reading of that intention, there must be a consciousness behind that reading, there must be mind behind that consciousness, there must be confluence beyond that. What is here is confluence, for your listening and your listening pleasure. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:03:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stuart Ross Subject: Re: a week of entries In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I like these synopses of recent stuff on people's blogs. A good way to find new blogs that might interest me. I guess if everyone did it every week, it'd get sort of tedious. But the occasional catch-up list is nice. Stuart On 1/14/08 8:58 AM, "David Chirot" wrote: > I've never posted re my blog before and may not again-- > i am not sure if posts re blogs are "annoying" or "welcome"-- > it varies from day to day week to week what all is there--sometimes > more sometimes less of my own things and usually more of others' > Visual Poetry-- > i like to post essays and ideas by others rather than just my own for > a much wider & international perspective- > i'll be initiated shortly a new visual poetry/mail art call whose > works are posted here-- > > http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:01:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CA Conrad Subject: SHAFER HALL & CACONRAD reading in Philly at THE BUBBLE HOUSE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23RD, 6PM DETAILS HERE: HTTP://CAConradEVENTS.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 05:05:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Tod Edgerton Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Defined? In-Reply-To: <338202.27438.qm@web50611.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Check out Cole Swensen's "To Writewithiyze" expansive and interesting discussion of writing's ekphrastic interaction with the other arts in American Letters & Commentary 13. Tod Therese Broderick wrote: The term "ekphrasis" can be used strictly or loosely, in a conventional sense or in an outside-the-box sense--just like the term "poetry." Definitions evolve. I've never seen the term "ekphrasis" applied to poetry which is inspired by, triggered by, derivative of, or translating other works of literature. When a poem assumes the conventions of some other form of literature (for example, a poem as correspondence to the editor), I think that a more precise term for that relationship might be "analogue." I've seen "ekphrasis" applied to poems which are inspired by paintings which were inspired by myths, fables, Biblical stories, historical accounts, etc. In these cases, the work of visual art is a bridge between two works of verbal art. I've also seen "ekphrasis" applied to poems inspired by visual art but which also reproduce lines written by other writers. The phrase "with lines by" may appear in the poem's epigraph. I know of one instance in which the term "ekphrasis" was applied to the relationship between two similar mediums: film and painting. An online video presented a sequence of famous painted portraits, each face of which flowed seamlessly into the next face. (In my opinion, though, this is not ekphrasis.) For the purposes of my blog, I use a rather traditional, strict defintion--not so much because I'm a conservative purist on principle, but more because I need to set limits for the practical management of the blog and for my own writing. However, I can be persuaded to change. Therese L. Broderick, MFA Albany, NY poetryaboutart.wordpress.com _____________________ Michael Tod Edgerton MFA '06 Literary Arts Brown University ---- Doctoral Student Department of English 36 Park Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 tod@uga.edu "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the score." - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:24:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: <8f3fdbad0801131712q3533681dr391184b9059b4bac@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Alan, In all these images images open to other images in disorienting perspectives, the frame disappearing. None of these images have frames. That is what is to me so wonderful about then. One sees the railroad and the table or the kids surrounding the railroad, etc. One thing you do not mention -and to me is of the essence of these images- is that the place itself is the creation of a group of (or a single) fetichist afficionados, regardless of how much the lungs of the same people may have been scarred by the historical realities these images capture (suture?) in its peripheries -on the mind of the onlooker. I think (maybe!) I understand why you felt as an outsider there, not quite sharing the fetishistic impulse which paradoxically may have created the place. Ciao, Murat On Jan 13, 2008 8:12 PM, Peter Ciccariello wrote: > Fascinating and beautiful Alan. I belonged to that world as a kid, with a > subscription to Model Railroader magazine. First learned trompe l'oeil and > how to dream worlds that didn't exist, put my head on the tracks and the > smoke pellets filled the room till they faded into the white painted > clouds. > > - Peter > > On Jan 13, 2008 3:19 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > > > Railroad Club > > > > > > Images from open house, Morgantown model railroad club, embodying cuts > > from one scale to another, from human to true world, from mind to > emanent. > > Who would call this the postmodern? One might locate something else > here: > > not the cut but the suture, not disparity but deep memory; the locales > > represented, real and imaginary, conjure the West Virginia landscape of > > the 1950s, in the memory of many of the club members. What better than a > > photograph than a reconstruction in which everything is punctum, > intended? > > > > The photographs are of the text, of this text; they're weaker without > it, > > they go elsewhere, I'm pulling them back in. I'm pulling them back in to > > indicate multiculturalisms and emphases on locale and habitus tend both > > suture and division (these people, these others) in favor of _listening_ > > and its phenomenology. > > > > But listening is skew-orthogonal, again, to the _style_ of the images, > > based on any number of photographers and trajectories. > > > > Now what do I see when I do not know what I see? Certainly aspects and > > entities are present within the true world filtered through the history > of > > photography and photographers who have no responsibility for me. > > > > Where are the passengers in this life? Where are the passengers in the > > life of the other? > > > > You can already feel the economy of the land, extractive industries, > pov- > > erty, environmental pollution, mountain-topping, strip-mining, deep-min- > > ing, feed stores, small towns in the hollows, grey dust, what's worn is > > worn, what's not is brought into play through deep memory's suture which > > even bends, transfigures the landscape, someday we'll all rise to the > > surface. > > > > I will live forever > > I will live forever > > I will live forever > > As a hungry ghost > > As a hungry ghost > > I will live forever > > > > I don't remember the exact name of the railroad club or the members. > Some- > > one named Mike, I believe, made the larger mine model. I came in as a > > tourist finding nameless things. the models were both outstanding, > depres- > > sing to an outsider. The images appeared as images, imaginary, with > what- > > ever context I might bring from the outside; the social depth was > absent. > > I turned to the jump-cut. > > > > The jump-cut was of the visual, that disparity of mind and scale. > Railroad > > switching systems were fundamental to the development of the Internet. > > Evidence of electronic skein was everywhere. Jump-cut sutured into > dream- > > scape, dream-screen, displacement/condensation semiotics. What is of > truth > > or tending towards the indexical in the images applies as well to the > vis- > > ual in general, compounding of memory, suture, cut, surface. Whatever > one > > sees is surface, surface-only; x-rays report on deeper surfaces, > > translucent or transparent to invisible light. > > > > The photographs bother me, as if theory needed image-propping beyond the > > diagrammatic. But what can the image hold, if not an arrangement that > > might be constituted as evidence? If a diagram is indexical or symbolic, > > the photograph resides elsewhere; evidence stands for nothing and hardly > > represents itself, nor is it pointing towards something across > ontological > > or epistemological lines. On this level the photograph simply reports as > > Bazin might have it, on what-is, or rather the what-is and thetic con- > > strues within the dialog of image production. In any case, the > postmodern > > is left behind, or rather, is relegated to analyses of socio-economic > > phenomena where the theory works wonders; think of postmodern geography, > > Harvey or Roja for example. > > > > What would postmodern geography make of mountain-topping? And then its > > representation which makes the wrecked landscape somehow graspable, > > something to walk around, replant with meadow or pasture? > > > > I think of tantra, mandala, Jefferey Hopkins' introduction to the Kala- > > chakra Tantra (Kalachakra Tantra, Rite of Initiation, Dali Lama, 1999). > > Hopkins walks/writes the body of the reader through the mandala ("Notice > > the entryway at the eastern door, wider than the doorway, with a three > > storied portico above the entranceway. Each of the stories of the > portico > > above the entryway has four pillars across the front, thereby creating > > three room-like alcoves on each story. In each of these eight alcoves > are > > goddesses of offering; the middle alcove in the first story on the > eastern > > side has a black wheel of doctrine with a buck and doe to the right and > > left." And so forth.) Now think of the Morgantown railroad club images > in > > the same or different shimmer, think not of the imminent/immanent > identi- > > fication of entities within them, but of paths through or around or by > > virtue of these entities, which themselves are processes (one doesn't > live > > forever, the tracks are constantly changing). Is there a meditation > here, > > emission or spew that is sourceless except for (in spite of) the corners > > or frame of the image? Can one imagine a habitus, inhabitation? Is there > a > > seeing that moves through memory near and far without the supplication > of > > the signifier? This is what literally remains to be seen, and brings the > > essay to its clothes. > > > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail01.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail02.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail03.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail04.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail05.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail06.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail07.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail08.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail09.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail11.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail12.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail13.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail14.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail15.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail16.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail17.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail18.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail19.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail21.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail22.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail23.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail24.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail25.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail26.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail27.jpg > > http://www.alansondheim.org/rail28.jpg > > > > > > -- > NEW RELEASE > UNCOMMON VISION - The Art of Peter Ciccariello > http://uncommon-vision.blogspot.com/ > 66 pp. 42 color plates. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:47:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Defined? In-Reply-To: <846D336ED686FF48943D51955C2C5B2305A53343@quicksilver.network.ncf.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is Ekphrasis in the same way. A great portion of my own work also tries to use language in a spatial way, very much interested in this transformation. My essay/poem *The Peripheral Space of Photography* is a good example. Also, my poem "Steps" tries to fus= e multiple verbal fragments using movie aesthetics. Ciao, Murat On Jan 13, 2008 8:55 PM, Zamsky, Robert wrote: > Texts commenting on and integrating other texts are decidely not involved > in ekphrasis. The examples cited below are interested in (among other > things) questions of intertextuality, revisitation, and reflexivity. The= se > are not the concerns of ekphrasis, which is all about cross-over, > specifically the cross-over from arts of rest to those of movement (the > critical discourse around the mode is rooted in Aristotelian distinctions= ). > > Ekphrasis has a very clear and well documented history, with the first > major example generally identified as Homer's description of Achilles' > shield in Book 18 of the Iliad (though there are other ekphrastic moments > earlier in the Iliad and throughout early Greek literature); the second > important example is Virgil's depiction of the shield of Aeneis in the > Aeneid. The mode crops up consistently in the English Renaissance and is > important to Romanticism (especially Wordsworth's "Peele Castle" and > Shelley's "On Looking at the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentin= e > Gallery"). The first serious theoretical consideration is Gotthold Ephra= im > Lessing's Laokoon, in which he ruminates many examples of ekphrasis -- th= e > book taking its title from the marble sculpture group representing the > events from Book II of the Aeneid (Laokoon and his sons being eaten by th= e > serpent). The relationship between the visual arts is often subsequently > referred to as "the Laokoon problem," maybe most recently by Daniel Albri= ght > in Untwisting the Serpent. Williams' series, Pictures from Breughel, is > important, as are Auden's "The Shield of Achilles" and "Mus=E9e des Beaux > Arts" (which treats a painting also treated by Williams). The next biggi= e > is Ashbery's "Self-Portrait," and I think the most important recent examp= le > is Cole Swensen's Try (though Mary Jo Bang's The Eye Like a Strange Ballo= on > is a terrific read and teaches very well). > > As far as defining the mode, it has been a bit slippery -- with > significant efforts made in the last half-century by Murray Krieger (in h= is > landmark essay, "Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry: or, Laokoon > Revisited") and more recently by W. J. T. Mitchell in "Ekphrasis and the > Other" (from his book, Picture Theory). James Heffernan's book A Museum > Made of Words: The Poetics of Ekrphasis from Homer to Ashbery is a terrif= ic > addition to the conversation, defining ekphrasis as the verbal > representation of a visual representation (I'm paraphrasing b/c I don't h= ave > the book in front of me). I would take issue with his use of > "representation," but the book is generally very, very good. There is an > excellent article on Swensen's Try by Lynn Keller in Contemporary > Literature, though I don't remember off-hand the date of publication. > > All of this is simply to say that there is a large and lively conversatio= n > surrounding ekphrasis and that both the term and the mode it defines are = of > consistent critical interest -- for reasons suggested by both Mitchell's > essay and by Carol Jacobs in an essay on the Shelley poem. The discussio= n > always comes back to the same crux -- the irresolvable (often productivel= y > so) tension between temporal and spatial arts. Temporal arts commenting = on > one another simply don't raise these same questions. The definition can > certainly be altered (especially since it has yet to be decided on) -- I > think particularly with respect to poetry that responds to film, for > example. But if we are going to use the term in any meaningful way, we n= eed > to be aware of its specific history. > > - rz > > ________________________________ > > From: UB Poetics discussion group on behalf of Laural L. Adams > Sent: Sun 1/13/2008 12:41 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Ekphrastic Defined? > > > > I've looked on the net at several resources and the term ekphrasitc seems > to refer to cross-medium responses, as in poems on visual art or visual a= rt > on music, etc. But does it/could it also include responses to the work in > the same medium (Dan Beachy-Quick's Spell, a book of poems that enters in= to > and engages Moby-Dick (and even features autoekphrasis - the commenting o= n > the commenting, as it were, with poems in the form of correspondence to t= he > editor))? Or is there another word for this? > > Laural L. Adams > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Hugh Behm-Steinberg > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 2:07:29 PM > Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Fiction? > > Kurt Vonnegut's novel Bluebeard might be of use to you. > > Best, > > Hugh > > Michael Tod Edgerton wrote: Anybody know > of any easily excerpted long or short fiction pieces that were written as > responses to / "translations" of works of non-literary art? I feel certai= n > that they're out there, but I'm drawing a blank and I need to find someth= ing > asap for the workshop I'm teaching. > > Thanks, > > Tod > > > _____________________ > > Michael Tod Edgerton > MFA '06 Literary Arts > Brown University > ---- > Doctoral Student > Department of English > 36 Park Hall > University of Georgia > Athens, GA 30602 > tod@uga.edu > > "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still > escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different > death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the > score." > - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle > > --------------------------------- > Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try i= t > now. > > > > --------------------------------- > Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try i= t > now. > > > > ________________________________________________________________________= ____________ > Looking for last minute shopping deals? > Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. > http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=3Dshopping > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:22:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: a week of entries In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Blogland is a curious land. In one way (for me) it's an incubator from which to throw things up - i.e., in the way of essays- or, as more and more in my case, a way to explore the relationship between pictures and text (which may be a totally fictional relationship!) In terms of response, I think there is a world of blog entries that become popular islands unto themselves. Last summer I wrote a piece on "Becoming an Eraser" for Ann Hamilton's Indigo Blue installation at the San Francisco Musuem of Art.(Where I erased a book for 4 hours in a row!) It's constantly visited by 20 to 40 people a week, and often commented on on other 'art sites.' Ironically I have had no luck placing it with either Art and/or Literary publications where this kind of personal/critical essay does not seem to make a contemporary categorical or editorial fit. (Where it does 'fit' in the context of blog world). A photo/comment series on Philip Guston's visual echos in the local street world also constantly gets hits. (Maybe there are just a lot of folks magnetized by both Hamilton and Guston??). The most popular entry - that is even "linked" to the History channel - is a quip joke I made about George and Laura Bush getting divorced. It was just a small add on to something I was saying about going to the Zukofsky Conference at Columbia U a (now!) few years back. (Last time I ever saw Creeley - sigh!) Normally I would have deleted the joke, but introducing a few thousand people to the name and work of Zukofsky still seems not a bad thing to do. (A little bait and switch, some may say). Now there is Facebook. Many friends/associates invite me to a friend on Facebook. I agree. I even have a Facebook page. I have yet to use any of it, yet. You Tube seems even more tempting. Take a look at "Hands" on Tom Raworth's site today - WCW on speed. "Monsieur Flaubert, les mots sont injustes, jamais juste!" Quote attributed to Madame Bovary in manuscript, Stephen V http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Stuart Ross wrote: I like these synopses of recent stuff on people's blogs. A good way to find new blogs that might interest me. I guess if everyone did it every week, it'd get sort of tedious. But the occasional catch-up list is nice. Stuart On 1/14/08 8:58 AM, "David Chirot" wrote: > I've never posted re my blog before and may not again-- > i am not sure if posts re blogs are "annoying" or "welcome"-- > it varies from day to day week to week what all is there--sometimes > more sometimes less of my own things and usually more of others' > Visual Poetry-- > i like to post essays and ideas by others rather than just my own for > a much wider & international perspective- > i'll be initiated shortly a new visual poetry/mail art call whose > works are posted here-- > > http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:38:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: fifteen minute poem for eileen myles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit thanks for writing ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT LOWELL that goes O, I don't give a shit He was an old white haired man Insensate beyond belief and Filled with much anxiety about his imagined Pain. Not that I'd know. I hate fucking wasps. The guy was a loon. Signed up for the spring semester at MacLeans A really lush retreat among pines and Hippy attendants. Ray Charles also Once rested there. So did James Taylor... The famous, as we know, are nuts. Take Robert Lowell. The old white haired coot. Fucking dead. I found this one in Gary Lenhart's THE STAMP OF CLASS: REFLECTIONS ON POETRY AND SOCIAL CLASS which he fears is an "undertheorized poem" a new book page 118 there's a minute left dslfjdsoz[ivjoizfjqwklrngtjkgnjk vhncxzjkvhoifwaiohjkl wnfljscnvjkzncxovho[w irhjtoidsjfnlkcznvlknczljvnsdo;ghjrwoiagfjdlsk nvcsljvncxz;hv0iarwjgok fsangfjlsncjknjxznjklvnfaos;ghfoavncjlsnv;cjznv;jd ahfsoighnafsjlvncjlsnvajshvo;fhgljafsnvjklcsnjklvnadwo;ghfjnvcjlsnv;osad fhvoifhgofdsnvlacjsnjklnvouarhgoifnasklvnfaso;vhropqughefio[vprug yuterhgofanvajscnvlk;acnsvo;ifajhgopifheogiunfdjkvndjkznviuefhwhich is also undertheorized http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com http://rhodeislandnotebook.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:27:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: a week of entries In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline David, I've often debated, for the same reason, the point you bring up. If you want to check Giver, I'd love to see you around: charitablegiving.blogspot.com If not, est=E1 bien. -Ryan On Jan 14, 2008 7:03 PM, Stuart Ross wrote: > I like these synopses of recent stuff on people's blogs. A good way to > find > new blogs that might interest me. > > I guess if everyone did it every week, it'd get sort of tedious. But the > occasional catch-up list is nice. > > Stuart > > On 1/14/08 8:58 AM, "David Chirot" wrote: > > > I've never posted re my blog before and may not again-- > > i am not sure if posts re blogs are "annoying" or "welcome"-- > > it varies from day to day week to week what all is there--sometimes > > more sometimes less of my own things and usually more of others' > > Visual Poetry-- > > i like to post essays and ideas by others rather than just my own for > > a much wider & international perspective- > > i'll be initiated shortly a new visual poetry/mail art call whose > > works are posted here-- > > > > http://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:24:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801082321o64f4c7e3i5174c0a97173e88b@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: "Randomness has something to do, it seems to me, with the disintegration, destruction of the ego, which is an essential concept both in Sufism and perhaps Buddhism. In Sufism, this loss of ego (which , specifically in poe= try, leads to Eda, a transformation in the concept of the lyric "I") opens up t= he spirit to divine consciousness." Marcus Bales wrote: First, I assert that there is no such thing as `divine consciousness=B4. T= here is no god, of any sort. I think the feeling that is described as, for example, `divine consciousness=B4 or `afflatus=B4= , among others, is merely a psychological state. It has no connection to any sort= of divinity because there is no such thing as any kind of divinity. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: "=B4Divine consciousness=B4 exists because it exists as a concept in Sufism. Do you mean that I made this whole assersion about Sufism up or only that the concept itself is an illusion?" If "=B4divine consciousness=B4 exists ... as a concept in Sufism" then `a = perpetual motion machine=B4 exists as a concept in western materialism - but neither= one exists in the real world. To hold that something exists because someone ha= s invented a name seems as if it is too postmodern even for a postmodernist.= If you assert that there is `divine consciousness=B4 in your poems, does t= hat make it true, irrespective of any contrary opinion? Is all that is require= d for an assertion to be true in your view is that someone asserts it? What do you = do, then, with assertions that your opinion is wrong? Aren=B4t those assertion= s true, too, for you, simply because they=B4re assertions? But if your assertion i= s true by definition, and any contrary assertion is also true by definition, by what= means do you distinguish between them? Or do you? Do you simply choose randomly among all possible choices? Do you privilege your own assertions over othe= rs because they=B4re your own, or Sufi assertions over others because they=B4= re Sufi? The notion that any assertion is true is self-refuting since it mean= s that assertions contrary to any assertion are also true. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: "... is `a psychological state=B4 then not merely a concept but something = more? How is `a psychological state=B4 more real than `divine consciousness=B4? = By your argument there is `a psychological state=B4 but no `divinity=B4? How are t= hey different? Pray explain." If all you=B4re asserting by `divine consciousness=B4 is a `psychological = state=B4, then we=B4re merely arguing about terminology, and we have no disagreement that= I can see. But you seem to be using the notion of `more real=B4 here to distinguish, if I understand it, between `divine consciousness=B4 and `psychological state=B4 by asserting that the former is in fact `more real= =B4 than, or at least `as real=B4 as, the latter. By that I understand you to be claimi= ng that there is such a thing in the real world as `divine consciousness=B4, somet= hing that is perhaps not as identifiable as `igneous rock=B4 but certainly as recognizable when one sees it as `pornography=B4. (On reflection, considering Amy King=B4s propensity to leap to unwarranted= conclusions about name-calling and insult, I hope no one will take that to= be a disparaging comparison: in the US the Supreme Court has famously ruled that, while they cannot define `pornography=B4, they are confident that lo= cal authorities will `know it when they see it=B4. It is in the category of `k= now it when they see it=B4 that I mean to put `divine consciousness=B4 as you use it, = and emphatically NOT in the category of `pornography=B4. (Certainly, though, I intend the comparison to be dismissive of your argum= ent (though, once again, Amy King, not of Murat as a person), since I hold tha= t in important matters such as pornography and divine consciousness we MUST be willing to articulate definitions and stand by them at least provisiona= lly until better definitions come along. If you cannot define `divine consciouness=B4= better than the Supreme Court defines `pornography=B4 then I hold that your argum= ent ought to be dismissed on the same grounds as the Supreme Court=B4s: that i= t is inadequate to the seriousness of the discussion. In the case of the Suprem= e Court, they have on their side the reason that it is the job of the politi= cal process and the lower courts to parse through the definitions, and the SC=B4= s job is to choose among those offered. You, however, having brought the notion of `divine consciousness=B4 to bear on this discussion, have the responsibility of actually defining your term.) My understanding of the claims about `divinity=B4 or `divine consciousness= =B4 is that they are claims about the supernatural, or at least about the external-to-= the- human. As such, they would be different from `psychological states=B4, whi= ch are about the internal-to-the-human, and certainly not about the supernatural. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: "How did you come out with the definition "it is human striving which crea= tes art"? To expand on one of your metaphors, human striving might also be a solution to constipation, but is it art under the circumstances?" Human striving is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for art. One = can have human striving without art, but not art without human striving. No do= ubt someone can and will make (or perhaps has made) a piece of art about constipation - but what makes it art is the artist=B4s striving (even if i= t is the relatively facile use of habits and tools, of his or her sensibilities, a = striving that succeeds without encountering difficulties the existing set of habits, too= ls, and sensibilities cannot deal with), not the striving of the constipated perso= n. I use `striving=B4 here as a species of intention. I hold that we cannot get art= by accident. I don=B4t hold that there are no accidents in art, however. It i= s the human striving, the intention to make art, that creates art, when it does = (and the striving, the intention, is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition= for art), and not the many accidents possible in the process of making art. The accidents don=B4t make art; the artist does. That the artist may take adva= ntage of accidents (there is the famous story of Apelles, Alexander's court pain= ter, who got frustrated by his experiments with painting the froth on a horse's= mouth and in exasperation threw a sponge at his painting, accidentally producing the effect he wanted, for example), doesn=B4t mean that the acci= dent is the art. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: "Does it mean that if a poem is written easily, it is not an artistic poem= ? Or do you mean that the subject of art should be about aspiring to something superior or out of ordinary, provided that abject is not divine; but it ca= n be about a psychological state?" I don=B4t say that art must be about any particular thing; I think art can= be made of anything, but it is made by human beings, not a matter of chance or ran= dom occurrences. I also say that chance or random occurrences can be used by a= human being to make art. Some pieces of art come easy, some come hard, to individual artists. As JM Whistler said when asked how long it took him to= paint one of his nocturnes, "A lifetime." Of course no one imagines that t= he elapsed time to accomplish the painting was from his birth to the moment h= e finished; he was pointing out that the accomplishment of the painting was = the result of a lifetime of human engagement with the world. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: "How come you equate `living entirely in the moment=B4 with being unconsci= ous or being like an animal?" I distinguish the animal=B4s unconscious mind from the human=B4s conscious= mind. I think that animals have only very limited notions of time, space, = and their own existence, and what I know about meditation in the various tradi= tions with which I am even a little familiar suggests to me that the goal of suc= h meditations is to abandon the human consciousness and its immersion a world of short- and long-term consequences in favor of the animal unconsciousness and its lack of understanding of any but short-term consequences, if there is an understanding of any consequences at all. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: "Come to think of it, do animals live in the moment? Does one need languag= e to say that? When we say an animal does not think of or know its death, d= o we not mean it has no language in relation to us? Doesn't being "conscious= of one's death" by necessity imply the consciousness of deathlessness - in other words divinity -- whether such a thing exists or not?" Yes, I think animals live in the moment and have no understanding of the i= dea of their own individual death. It may be that being conscious of one=B4s o= wn death implies a consciousness of deathlessness. I=B4m not sure it does, fr= ankly. I think it=B4s entirely possible for organisms to struggle to survive with= out striving to make art; to have a determination to escape danger, even to recognize t= he differences between, say, the dangers of challenging another bull too big = to be beaten, and the dangers of challenging the lion at all, and still not have= any awareness of `deathlessness=B4. But more significantly, it seems to me that the notion of divinity is not = merely the notion of the consciousness of deathlessness. The notion of divinity implies the supernatural. One may imagine deathlessness without requiring the hypothesis of the supernatural, though I don=B4t imagine that animals = with little or no conception of their own deaths can manage either one. The notion of destruction of ego seems to me to absolutely eliminate the possibility of any art whatever because it is the human ego, the human striving, that creates art. It=B4s a necessary but not sufficient conditio= n. To eliminate one's humanity in favor of becoming unaware, unconscious, in fav= or of living so entirely in the moment that one has become merely an animal,= and not an animal who is also human, must of necessity eliminate any human= capacity for making art. Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 01:37:48 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: call for work: sound poetry <> a s l o n g a s i t t a k e s, a sound poetry magazine published by the Atlanta Poets Group, is seeking submissions for its inaugural issue. We are looking for sound poetry, scores for sound poetry and essays on sound poetry. “What is ‘sound poetry’?” you ask. Good question. It’s one of those know it when you see (hear) it kind of things. It’s probably not music (thanks Dick Higgins). It might be noise. If you think about a spectrum of possible noise made by the human body (or simulations thereof or substitutions therefor), and at one end of the spectrum is a person reading her poem and at the other end is abstract noise, we’re looking for works that incline towards the latter end. We are looking for works in/of/against the tradition(s) of Ball, Schwitters, Dûfrène, Henri Chopin, Jandl, Cobbing, The Four Horsemen . . . hopefully by now you get the idea. We’re looking for stuff that will push/redefine the limits. The magazine will be Web-based. Please send sound submissions to aslongasittakes@comcast.net in one of the following formats: .mp3, .wav, .wma, or .flac. Scores or essays as Word documents or .pdfs. Please query before sending in other formats. If you can’t get us the work via email, just send an email and let us know, and we can find another way. We don’t know how long it will take to get back to you on your submissions, just be cool. We can’t pay you anything for your work. All work that appears in the magazine will be available for download from the magazine’s site under the Creative Commons’ /Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike/ license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). If you are not comfortable with making your work available in that way, let us know and we can probably work something out. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:18:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801142224s52858414q347b1aa83595b5e5@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Hi Murat - Actually, I'm not sure of the backgrounds of the people in the club, but it's in Morgantown, which is a university town, and I think a fair number may be connected to the university one way or another. They're also envisioning, both backwards in time of course, but also elsewhere into a landscape that is somewhat topographically accurate and somewhat imaginary. I didn't see the participants as fetishistic in any way; instead it seemed more of a communality, even community - lots of children and wives (the builders seemed men) talking about all sorts of things. I thought there might have been some of the model railroad obsession with the engines themselves, but people seemed most excited about projects to complete and where the rails went! Because there were different levels to the models, a train might disappear into a tunnel and emerge somewhere unexpected. All of this reminds me of Levy's Hackers, with the description of the MIT model railroad club... - Alan On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > Alan, > > In all these images images open to other images in disorienting > perspectives, the frame disappearing. None of these images have frames. That > is what is to me so wonderful about then. One sees the railroad and the > table or the kids surrounding the railroad, etc. > > One thing you do not mention -and to me is of the essence of these images- > is that the place itself is the creation of a group of (or a single) > fetichist afficionados, regardless of how much the lungs of the same people > may have been scarred by the historical realities these images capture > (suture?) in its peripheries -on the mind of the onlooker. I think (maybe!) > I understand why you felt as an outsider there, not quite sharing the > fetishistic impulse which paradoxically may have created the place. > > Ciao, > > Murat > > > On Jan 13, 2008 8:12 PM, Peter Ciccariello wrote: > >> Fascinating and beautiful Alan. I belonged to that world as a kid, with a >> subscription to Model Railroader magazine. First learned trompe l'oeil and >> how to dream worlds that didn't exist, put my head on the tracks and the >> smoke pellets filled the room till they faded into the white painted >> clouds. >> >> - Peter >> >> On Jan 13, 2008 3:19 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote: >> >>> Railroad Club >>> >>> >>> Images from open house, Morgantown model railroad club, embodying cuts >>> from one scale to another, from human to true world, from mind to >> emanent. >>> Who would call this the postmodern? One might locate something else >> here: >>> not the cut but the suture, not disparity but deep memory; the locales >>> represented, real and imaginary, conjure the West Virginia landscape of >>> the 1950s, in the memory of many of the club members. What better than a >>> photograph than a reconstruction in which everything is punctum, >> intended? >>> >>> The photographs are of the text, of this text; they're weaker without >> it, >>> they go elsewhere, I'm pulling them back in. I'm pulling them back in to >>> indicate multiculturalisms and emphases on locale and habitus tend both >>> suture and division (these people, these others) in favor of _listening_ >>> and its phenomenology. >>> >>> But listening is skew-orthogonal, again, to the _style_ of the images, >>> based on any number of photographers and trajectories. >>> >>> Now what do I see when I do not know what I see? Certainly aspects and >>> entities are present within the true world filtered through the history >> of >>> photography and photographers who have no responsibility for me. >>> >>> Where are the passengers in this life? Where are the passengers in the >>> life of the other? >>> >>> You can already feel the economy of the land, extractive industries, >> pov- >>> erty, environmental pollution, mountain-topping, strip-mining, deep-min- >>> ing, feed stores, small towns in the hollows, grey dust, what's worn is >>> worn, what's not is brought into play through deep memory's suture which >>> even bends, transfigures the landscape, someday we'll all rise to the >>> surface. >>> >>> I will live forever >>> I will live forever >>> I will live forever >>> As a hungry ghost >>> As a hungry ghost >>> I will live forever >>> >>> I don't remember the exact name of the railroad club or the members. >> Some- >>> one named Mike, I believe, made the larger mine model. I came in as a >>> tourist finding nameless things. the models were both outstanding, >> depres- >>> sing to an outsider. The images appeared as images, imaginary, with >> what- >>> ever context I might bring from the outside; the social depth was >> absent. >>> I turned to the jump-cut. >>> >>> The jump-cut was of the visual, that disparity of mind and scale. >> Railroad >>> switching systems were fundamental to the development of the Internet. >>> Evidence of electronic skein was everywhere. Jump-cut sutured into >> dream- >>> scape, dream-screen, displacement/condensation semiotics. What is of >> truth >>> or tending towards the indexical in the images applies as well to the >> vis- >>> ual in general, compounding of memory, suture, cut, surface. Whatever >> one >>> sees is surface, surface-only; x-rays report on deeper surfaces, >>> translucent or transparent to invisible light. >>> >>> The photographs bother me, as if theory needed image-propping beyond the >>> diagrammatic. But what can the image hold, if not an arrangement that >>> might be constituted as evidence? If a diagram is indexical or symbolic, >>> the photograph resides elsewhere; evidence stands for nothing and hardly >>> represents itself, nor is it pointing towards something across >> ontological >>> or epistemological lines. On this level the photograph simply reports as >>> Bazin might have it, on what-is, or rather the what-is and thetic con- >>> strues within the dialog of image production. In any case, the >> postmodern >>> is left behind, or rather, is relegated to analyses of socio-economic >>> phenomena where the theory works wonders; think of postmodern geography, >>> Harvey or Roja for example. >>> >>> What would postmodern geography make of mountain-topping? And then its >>> representation which makes the wrecked landscape somehow graspable, >>> something to walk around, replant with meadow or pasture? >>> >>> I think of tantra, mandala, Jefferey Hopkins' introduction to the Kala- >>> chakra Tantra (Kalachakra Tantra, Rite of Initiation, Dali Lama, 1999). >>> Hopkins walks/writes the body of the reader through the mandala ("Notice >>> the entryway at the eastern door, wider than the doorway, with a three >>> storied portico above the entranceway. Each of the stories of the >> portico >>> above the entryway has four pillars across the front, thereby creating >>> three room-like alcoves on each story. In each of these eight alcoves >> are >>> goddesses of offering; the middle alcove in the first story on the >> eastern >>> side has a black wheel of doctrine with a buck and doe to the right and >>> left." And so forth.) Now think of the Morgantown railroad club images >> in >>> the same or different shimmer, think not of the imminent/immanent >> identi- >>> fication of entities within them, but of paths through or around or by >>> virtue of these entities, which themselves are processes (one doesn't >> live >>> forever, the tracks are constantly changing). Is there a meditation >> here, >>> emission or spew that is sourceless except for (in spite of) the corners >>> or frame of the image? Can one imagine a habitus, inhabitation? Is there >> a >>> seeing that moves through memory near and far without the supplication >> of >>> the signifier? This is what literally remains to be seen, and brings the >>> essay to its clothes. >>> >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail01.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail02.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail03.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail04.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail05.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail06.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail07.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail08.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail09.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail11.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail12.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail13.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail14.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail15.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail16.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail17.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail18.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail19.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail21.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail22.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail23.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail24.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail25.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail26.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail27.jpg >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail28.jpg >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> NEW RELEASE >> UNCOMMON VISION - The Art of Peter Ciccariello >> http://uncommon-vision.blogspot.com/ >> 66 pp. 42 color plates. >> > > ======================================================================= Work on YouTube, blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com . Tel 718-813-3285. Webpage directory http://www.alansondheim.org . Email: sondheim@panix.com. http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/sondheim for theory; also check WVU Zwiki, Google for recent. Write for info on books, cds, performance, dvds, etc. ============================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:48:31 +0100 Reply-To: argotist@fsmail.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Side Subject: Review of 'Carrier of the Seed' Comments: To: British Poetics , Poetryetc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There is a review by John M. Bennett of my ebook 'Carrier of the Seed' at Apocryphaltext: http://apocryphaltextpoetry.com/Vol._2,_No.2_3/carrier_of_the_seed_jeffrey_side.htm ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:05:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas savage Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Defined? In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801142147i22a13c55o56e43b562987097a@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I could be wrong. But, from my limited encounters with this word ekphrastic, it means poetry about visual art. If there are wider meanings to this word, it is new to me. Because I worked in the Metropolitan Museum for four years, I've written many poems that could be called "ekphrastic", although they were written before I was aware of the word. Artists whose work has inspired poems by me include but are not limited to Gericault, Barye, Rothko, Rosenquist, and a great tryptich from the early Renaissance by a Dutch artist whose name escapes me at the moment but which also inspired a poem by Rilke. I do wish "ekphrastic" weren't such an ugly word for what it represents, however. Regards, Tom Savage Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is Ekphrasis in the same way. A great portion of my own work also tries to use language in a spatial way, very much interested in this transformation. My essay/poem *The Peripheral Space of Photography* is a good example. Also, my poem "Steps" tries to fuse multiple verbal fragments using movie aesthetics. Ciao, Murat On Jan 13, 2008 8:55 PM, Zamsky, Robert wrote: > Texts commenting on and integrating other texts are decidely not involved > in ekphrasis. The examples cited below are interested in (among other > things) questions of intertextuality, revisitation, and reflexivity. These > are not the concerns of ekphrasis, which is all about cross-over, > specifically the cross-over from arts of rest to those of movement (the > critical discourse around the mode is rooted in Aristotelian distinctions). > > Ekphrasis has a very clear and well documented history, with the first > major example generally identified as Homer's description of Achilles' > shield in Book 18 of the Iliad (though there are other ekphrastic moments > earlier in the Iliad and throughout early Greek literature); the second > important example is Virgil's depiction of the shield of Aeneis in the > Aeneid. The mode crops up consistently in the English Renaissance and is > important to Romanticism (especially Wordsworth's "Peele Castle" and > Shelley's "On Looking at the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine > Gallery"). The first serious theoretical consideration is Gotthold Ephraim > Lessing's Laokoon, in which he ruminates many examples of ekphrasis -- the > book taking its title from the marble sculpture group representing the > events from Book II of the Aeneid (Laokoon and his sons being eaten by the > serpent). The relationship between the visual arts is often subsequently > referred to as "the Laokoon problem," maybe most recently by Daniel Albright > in Untwisting the Serpent. Williams' series, Pictures from Breughel, is > important, as are Auden's "The Shield of Achilles" and "Musée des Beaux > Arts" (which treats a painting also treated by Williams). The next biggie > is Ashbery's "Self-Portrait," and I think the most important recent example > is Cole Swensen's Try (though Mary Jo Bang's The Eye Like a Strange Balloon > is a terrific read and teaches very well). > > As far as defining the mode, it has been a bit slippery -- with > significant efforts made in the last half-century by Murray Krieger (in his > landmark essay, "Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry: or, Laokoon > Revisited") and more recently by W. J. T. Mitchell in "Ekphrasis and the > Other" (from his book, Picture Theory). James Heffernan's book A Museum > Made of Words: The Poetics of Ekrphasis from Homer to Ashbery is a terrific > addition to the conversation, defining ekphrasis as the verbal > representation of a visual representation (I'm paraphrasing b/c I don't have > the book in front of me). I would take issue with his use of > "representation," but the book is generally very, very good. There is an > excellent article on Swensen's Try by Lynn Keller in Contemporary > Literature, though I don't remember off-hand the date of publication. > > All of this is simply to say that there is a large and lively conversation > surrounding ekphrasis and that both the term and the mode it defines are of > consistent critical interest -- for reasons suggested by both Mitchell's > essay and by Carol Jacobs in an essay on the Shelley poem. The discussion > always comes back to the same crux -- the irresolvable (often productively > so) tension between temporal and spatial arts. Temporal arts commenting on > one another simply don't raise these same questions. The definition can > certainly be altered (especially since it has yet to be decided on) -- I > think particularly with respect to poetry that responds to film, for > example. But if we are going to use the term in any meaningful way, we need > to be aware of its specific history. > > - rz > > ________________________________ > > From: UB Poetics discussion group on behalf of Laural L. Adams > Sent: Sun 1/13/2008 12:41 PM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Ekphrastic Defined? > > > > I've looked on the net at several resources and the term ekphrasitc seems > to refer to cross-medium responses, as in poems on visual art or visual art > on music, etc. But does it/could it also include responses to the work in > the same medium (Dan Beachy-Quick's Spell, a book of poems that enters into > and engages Moby-Dick (and even features autoekphrasis - the commenting on > the commenting, as it were, with poems in the form of correspondence to the > editor))? Or is there another word for this? > > Laural L. Adams > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Hugh Behm-Steinberg > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 2:07:29 PM > Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Fiction? > > Kurt Vonnegut's novel Bluebeard might be of use to you. > > Best, > > Hugh > > Michael Tod Edgerton wrote: Anybody know > of any easily excerpted long or short fiction pieces that were written as > responses to / "translations" of works of non-literary art? I feel certain > that they're out there, but I'm drawing a blank and I need to find something > asap for the workshop I'm teaching. > > Thanks, > > Tod > > > _____________________ > > Michael Tod Edgerton > MFA '06 Literary Arts > Brown University > ---- > Doctoral Student > Department of English > 36 Park Hall > University of Georgia > Athens, GA 30602 > tod@uga.edu > > "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still > escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different > death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the > score." > - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle > > --------------------------------- > Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it > now. > > > > --------------------------------- > Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it > now. > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Looking for last minute shopping deals? > Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. > http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping > --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:40:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: Robert Budde Transparency Machine Event + Reading: Windsor Ontario, 21 Jan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Robert Budde presents a Transparency Machine Event titled "Headwaters: Ecosophy & Ecopoetics," in Katzman Lounge, University of Windsor, Monday 21 January, 2:30-4:00 PM. That night he will be giving a reading at the Phog Lounge, 157 University W., 7:00 PM. All welcome to these two free public events. Budde's selection of texts and images for his Transparency Machine Event are available for download from News & Events at . Robert Budde has published two books of poetry - Catch as Catch (Turnstone Press, 1994) and traffick (Turnstone, 1999); two novels - Misshapen (NeWest, 1997) and The Dying Poem (Coach House, 2003); a collection of poets' interviews - In Muddy Water (J. Gordon Shillingford, 1995); and a book of short fiction - Flicker (Signature Editions, 2005). Most recently he edited and introduced a collection of poetry by the late Al Purdy called The More Easily Kept Illusions (Wilfred Laurier UP, 2006). Forthcoming are a third novel, Finding Ft. George (Nightwood Editons/Harbour) and a fourth collection of poetry, declining america (Book Thug). The Transparency Machine Event Series invites a poet to talk about his or her work in the context of other texts selected by the poet. The series provides a forum (with overhead projector) for discussing the practice and theory of writing and reading poetry - including practices and theories of prefixing poetry ("anti-"; "non-"), adjectivizing poetry ("poetic"), and capitalizing poetry (first letter; letters at random). Poetry prismatically refracts social, political, scientific, aesthetic languages, transforming them into something exciting and strange. How does poetic form do that? This series explores questions about the language of poetry, offering readers and writers a multi-dimensional experience of the shapes and sounds of the contemporary moment by inviting leading and emerging innovative practitioners of the poetry art. Further info, . Budde's events are co-sponsored by The Canada Council and the Department of English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing, University of Windsor. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:41:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Touch of the Left Hand MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Touch of the Left Hand Among two of them one of whom extended herself And one of whom attached himself different 'It is time some of you vain babies, who have a 'body beautiful' complex about your dancing, realize that an expressive body is more beautiful than an unexpressive one. But no, you fight distorting your body - even the least bit. If you won't, you won't, but your dancing will be shallow, and as empty as the baby stare some of you are cultivating.' (Horst) 'I'm not asking you to tie yourself up like a pretzel or grovel on the floor, but there must be some distortion if you are portraying even a slight case of mental malajudstment - a little inferiority or martyr complex.' (Horst) 'You can't drag an analyst's couch out on the stage and tell us about it. You have to express the mental with your body, so you distort the move- ment somewhat to externalize.' (Horst) 'All of them died on my red lips In my hands In my sexlessness Which possesses all sexes I am as pale as moonsilver.' (Anita Berber trans. Gordon) 'In every experience of every objective 'This' by every experiencer the female differentiating function is necessary, but so too is the male seed of unity, which supplies 'Being' from the side of the subject, the unitary consciousness of self from the side of the experiencer.' (Rawson) 'Why are so many boys and girls not erect? Look in almost any school and you see that many of the pupils, whether sitting or standing, are never straight. Heads are forward; shoulders double over a little, sometimes a good deal; chests incline to droop, and grow flat. Fine, full chests, and an easy, graceful carriage, are rare. As the pupils get older, these faults, instead of going away, grow worse. Can this be helped? Is there any way to make a crooked boy or girl straight? Take a slim, angular boy, for instance, whose father is round- shoulded and flat-chested--and perhaps his mother, too: can he become straight, like a soldier?' (Blaikie) 'The same [entity] does not arise from [itself], and how can it arise from another? Neither does it arise from both [itself and another], and what exists without any cause?' (Candrakirti, trans. Huntington) 'The singularity of specular reflections is demonstrated by the fact that if one tries to apply to them the schema of a communicational process mamy puzzling conclusions arise: source and addressee coincide (at least in cases where a human being looks at him or herself in the mirror), receiver and transmitter coincide; expression and content coincide since the content of the reflected image is just the image of a body, not the body itself; as a matter of fact the referent of a mirror image is pure visual matter.' (Eco) Among the two of them who extended And both of whom attached themselves to both http://www.alansondheim.org/dominon.mp4 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:07:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aaron Belz Subject: Special! Buy a Gudding or Swensen chapbook, get one free Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hey all - Observable Books wants to sell fifty chapbooks this week, so if you order a Gabe Gudding or Cole Swensen chapbook ($8), you'll get one of the Observable anthologies (of your choice) FREE. I'm ending the offer Friday at midnight. No shipping charges! Paypal accepted. http://observable.org/books/ Aaron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:23:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas savage Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Defined? In-Reply-To: <377705.58950.qm@web54205.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The great Dutch landscape painter I was referring to in my earlier post in this discussion of "ekphrastic" is named Patinir. It's pronounced "pahtineer". Is anyone else familiar with this painter's works? I've returned many times to his great tryptich in the Metropolitan but, other than that work, I don't really know what else he painted. He's considered one of the first great landscape painters in the West although this tryptich is of episodes in the life of a saint. Saint Jerome, if I remember correctly.Regards, Tom Savage Michael Tod Edgerton wrote: Check out Cole Swensen's "To Writewithiyze" expansive and interesting discussion of writing's ekphrastic interaction with the other arts in American Letters & Commentary 13. Tod Therese Broderick wrote: The term "ekphrasis" can be used strictly or loosely, in a conventional sense or in an outside-the-box sense--just like the term "poetry." Definitions evolve. I've never seen the term "ekphrasis" applied to poetry which is inspired by, triggered by, derivative of, or translating other works of literature. When a poem assumes the conventions of some other form of literature (for example, a poem as correspondence to the editor), I think that a more precise term for that relationship might be "analogue." I've seen "ekphrasis" applied to poems which are inspired by paintings which were inspired by myths, fables, Biblical stories, historical accounts, etc. In these cases, the work of visual art is a bridge between two works of verbal art. I've also seen "ekphrasis" applied to poems inspired by visual art but which also reproduce lines written by other writers. The phrase "with lines by" may appear in the poem's epigraph. I know of one instance in which the term "ekphrasis" was applied to the relationship between two similar mediums: film and painting. An online video presented a sequence of famous painted portraits, each face of which flowed seamlessly into the next face. (In my opinion, though, this is not ekphrasis.) For the purposes of my blog, I use a rather traditional, strict defintion--not so much because I'm a conservative purist on principle, but more because I need to set limits for the practical management of the blog and for my own writing. However, I can be persuaded to change. Therese L. Broderick, MFA Albany, NY poetryaboutart.wordpress.com _____________________ Michael Tod Edgerton MFA '06 Literary Arts Brown University ---- Doctoral Student Department of English 36 Park Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 tod@uga.edu "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the score." - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:36:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <478B9AC8.6551.4C921FD@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Marcus, I have tried to see where our essential disagreement lies. It seems it does in our concepts of divinity. For you divinity must be supernatural, something "outside" the natural. For me, the divine has to do with consciousness, something intimately related to language. You drastically distinguish between real and unreal, basically in terms of its human applicability, its specific technological prowess. The perpetual motion machine is unreal because it can not be produced and put to economic use. For me, one the other hand, the idea underlying the perpetual motion engine= , something which rejuvenates itself through activity, is real, going beyond economic application, and is in some way the very definition of spiritual essence. For me the connection between idea, what is imagined or conceived, and what is real is much more fluid and cuts across narrowly economic or practical considerations. This does not mean -as you seem to think- that on= e can call anything what one wants or, as you cutely analogize, one knows pornography when one sees it. Ideas -whether you (Marcus) believe in them o= r not- when powerful enough, speaking to a specific group of people, in your word, to their "aspirations, weave their intricate verbal and ideological pattern. In that way, they are very real. Post modernism -your slightly silly hobby horse in these discussions- involves a confrontation with the realness of the other. It has absolutely nothing to do, as the garden variety neo conservative seems to think, with the decline of intellectual standards or deterioration of moral values. Ciao, Murat On Jan 14, 2008 5:24 PM, Marcus Bales wrote: > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > "Randomness has something to do, it seems to me, with the disintegration, > destruction of the ego, which is an essential concept both in Sufism and > perhaps Buddhism. In Sufism, this loss of ego (which , specifically in > poetry, > leads to Eda, a transformation in the concept of the lyric "I") opens up > the > spirit to divine consciousness." > > Marcus Bales wrote: > First, I assert that there is no such thing as `divine consciousness=B4. > There is no > god, of any sort. I think the feeling > that is described as, for example, `divine consciousness=B4 or `afflatus= =B4, > among > others, is merely a psychological state. It has no connection to any sor= t > of > divinity because there is no such thing as any kind of divinity. > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > "=B4Divine consciousness=B4 exists because it exists as a concept in > Sufism. Do you mean that I made this whole assersion about Sufism up or > only that the concept itself is an illusion?" > > If "=B4divine consciousness=B4 exists ... as a concept in Sufism" then `a > perpetual > motion machine=B4 exists as a concept in western materialism - but neithe= r > one > exists in the real world. To hold that something exists because someone > has > invented a name seems as if it is too postmodern even for a postmodernist= . > > If you assert that there is `divine consciousness=B4 in your poems, does > that > make it true, irrespective of any contrary opinion? Is all that is > required for an > assertion to be true in your view is that someone asserts it? What do you > do, > then, with assertions that your opinion is wrong? Aren=B4t those assertio= ns > true, > too, for you, simply because they=B4re assertions? But if your assertion = is > true by > definition, and any contrary assertion is also true by definition, by wha= t > means > do you distinguish between them? Or do you? Do you simply choose randomly > among all possible choices? Do you privilege your own assertions over > others > because they=B4re your own, or Sufi assertions over others because they= =B4re > Sufi? The notion that any assertion is true is self-refuting since it > means that > assertions contrary to any assertion are also true. > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > "... is `a psychological state=B4 then not merely a concept but something > more? > How is `a psychological state=B4 more real than `divine consciousness=B4?= By > your > argument there is `a psychological state=B4 but no `divinity=B4? How are = they > different? Pray explain." > > If all you=B4re asserting by `divine consciousness=B4 is a `psychological > state=B4, then > we=B4re merely arguing about terminology, and we have no disagreement tha= t I > can see. But you seem to be using the notion of `more real=B4 here to > distinguish, if I understand it, between `divine consciousness=B4 and > `psychological state=B4 by asserting that the former is in fact `more rea= l=B4 > than, or > at least `as real=B4 as, the latter. By that I understand you to be claim= ing > that > there is such a thing in the real world as `divine consciousness=B4, > something > that is perhaps not as identifiable as `igneous rock=B4 but certainly as > recognizable when one sees it as `pornography=B4. > > (On reflection, considering Amy King=B4s propensity to leap to unwarrante= d > conclusions about name-calling and insult, I hope no one will take that t= o > be a > disparaging comparison: in the US the Supreme Court has famously ruled > that, while they cannot define `pornography=B4, they are confident that > local > authorities will `know it when they see it=B4. It is in the category of > `know it when > they see it=B4 that I mean to put `divine consciousness=B4 as you use it,= and > emphatically NOT in the category of `pornography=B4. > > (Certainly, though, I intend the comparison to be dismissive of your > argument > (though, once again, Amy King, not of Murat as a person), since I hold > that in > important matters such as pornography and divine consciousness we MUST > be willing to articulate definitions and stand by them at least > provisionally until > better definitions come along. If you cannot define `divine consciouness= =B4 > better > than the Supreme Court defines `pornography=B4 then I hold that your > argument > ought to be dismissed on the same grounds as the Supreme Court=B4s: that = it > is > inadequate to the seriousness of the discussion. In the case of the > Supreme > Court, they have on their side the reason that it is the job of the > political > process and the lower courts to parse through the definitions, and the > SC=B4s > job is to choose among those offered. You, however, having brought the > notion of `divine consciousness=B4 to bear on this discussion, have the > responsibility of actually defining your term.) > > My understanding of the claims about `divinity=B4 or `divine consciousnes= s=B4 > is that > they are claims about the supernatural, or at least about the > external-to-the- > human. As such, they would be different from `psychological states=B4, wh= ich > are > about the internal-to-the-human, and certainly not about the supernatural= . > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > "How did you come out with the definition "it is human striving which > creates > art"? To expand on one of your metaphors, human striving might also be a > solution to constipation, but is it art under the circumstances?" > > Human striving is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for art. One > can > have human striving without art, but not art without human striving. No > doubt > someone can and will make (or perhaps has made) a piece of art about > constipation - but what makes it art is the artist=B4s striving (even if = it > is the > relatively facile use of habits and tools, of his or her sensibilities, a > striving that > succeeds without encountering difficulties the existing set of habits, > tools, and > sensibilities cannot deal with), not the striving of the constipated > person. I use > `striving=B4 here as a species of intention. I hold that we cannot get ar= t > by > accident. I don=B4t hold that there are no accidents in art, however. It = is > the > human striving, the intention to make art, that creates art, when it does > (and > the striving, the intention, is a necessary, but not sufficient, conditio= n > for art), > and not the many accidents possible in the process of making art. The > accidents don=B4t make art; the artist does. That the artist may take > advantage > of accidents (there is the famous story of Apelles, Alexander's court > painter, > who got frustrated by his experiments with painting the froth on a horse'= s > mouth and in exasperation threw a sponge at his painting, accidentally > producing the effect he wanted, for example), doesn=B4t mean that the > accident > is the art. > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > "Does it mean that if a poem is written easily, it is not an artistic > poem? Or do > you mean that the subject of art should be about aspiring to something > superior or out of ordinary, provided that abject is not divine; but it > can be > about a psychological state?" > > I don=B4t say that art must be about any particular thing; I think art ca= n > be made > of anything, but it is made by human beings, not a matter of chance or > random > occurrences. I also say that chance or random occurrences can be used by = a > human being to make art. Some pieces of art come easy, some come hard, to > individual artists. As JM Whistler said when asked how long it took him t= o > paint one of his nocturnes, "A lifetime." Of course no one imagines that > the > elapsed time to accomplish the painting was from his birth to the moment > he > finished; he was pointing out that the accomplishment of the painting was > the > result of a lifetime of human engagement with the world. > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > "How come you equate `living entirely in the moment=B4 with being > unconscious > or being like an animal?" > > I distinguish the animal=B4s unconscious mind from the human=B4s consciou= s > mind. I think that animals have only very limited notions of time, space, > and > their own existence, and what I know about meditation in the various > traditions > with which I am even a little familiar suggests to me that the goal of > such > meditations is to abandon the human consciousness and its immersion a > world of short- and long-term consequences in favor of the animal > unconsciousness and its lack of understanding of any but short-term > consequences, if there is an understanding of any consequences at all. > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > "Come to think of it, do animals live in the moment? Does one need > language > to say that? When we say an animal does not think of or know its death, > do > we not mean it has no language in relation to us? Doesn't being "consciou= s > of > one's death" by necessity imply the consciousness of deathlessness - in > other words divinity -- whether such a thing exists or not?" > > Yes, I think animals live in the moment and have no understanding of the > idea > of their own individual death. It may be that being conscious of one=B4s = own > death implies a consciousness of deathlessness. I=B4m not sure it does, > frankly. > I think it=B4s entirely possible for organisms to struggle to survive > without striving > to make art; to have a determination to escape danger, even to recognize > the > differences between, say, the dangers of challenging another bull too big > to be > beaten, and the dangers of challenging the lion at all, and still not hav= e > any > awareness of `deathlessness=B4. > > But more significantly, it seems to me that the notion of divinity is not > merely > the notion of the consciousness of deathlessness. The notion of divinity > implies the supernatural. One may imagine deathlessness without requiring > the hypothesis of the supernatural, though I don=B4t imagine that animals > with > little or no conception of their own deaths can manage either one. > > The notion of destruction of ego seems to me to absolutely eliminate the > possibility of any art whatever because it is the human ego, the human > striving, that creates art. It=B4s a necessary but not sufficient conditi= on. > To > eliminate one's humanity in favor of becoming unaware, unconscious, in > favor > of living so entirely in the moment that one has become merely an animal= , > and not an animal who is also human, must of necessity eliminate any huma= n > capacity for making art. > > Marcus > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:07:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Alan, What you say is very interesting. What kind of place is this, a museum or an arcade? It seems to have elements of both. Also, was the place the creation of a person or a club (for instance, train schedules or locomotive engine aficionados) or historians? I could not tell. Obviously, you are reacting to the political, historical, topographical, etc., associations the images, perhaps the very place has for you. I also wrote in another place how photography elicits thoughts in the viewer thoughts which dissolve the frame, going far beyond the specific "subject matter." In so many of these photos railroads appear in one frame and disappear in another. You do mention "the railroad obsession with the engines." And also perhaps the very specifity of the buildings, the trucks, a specific moment which they seem to capture as an evanescent tableau, do suggest an aura, a fetishistic longing. That's why I assumed the original place was the creation of one person, though I am aware of the kids playing around. The continuous shifts of perspective is one of the most stunning things about the images you sent. One always seeing the "railroad" or the hill or the station, etc., surrounded by something else, for instance, the shelf on which the mock-up stands or kids playing on the corner, etc., etc. To me one of the most memorable is the one in which a courtyard and the trucks there are being looked up from an elevated point. The levation itself suggests a perspection in which the observed objects are supposed to be seen smaller, miniaturized. But these objects, one realizes, are already miniatures. This effect of this double whammy, a visual illusion turning on itself and spelling it out by referring the conventions of a second illusion, is breathtaking. Alan, I am not clear about one thing. The images you yourself posted, are they replicas of images which were there or are they -with their spaces cutting against each other- your own photographs of the place? To add another twist: if they are yours, did you tweak them in any way? Ciao, Murat On Jan 15, 2008 11:18 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > Hi Murat - Actually, I'm not sure of the backgrounds of the people in the > club, but it's in Morgantown, which is a university town, and I think a > fair number may be connected to the university one way or another. They're > also envisioning, both backwards in time of course, but also elsewhere > into a landscape that is somewhat topographically accurate and somewhat > imaginary. > > I didn't see the participants as fetishistic in any way; instead it seemed > more of a communality, even community - lots of children and wives (the > builders seemed men) talking about all sorts of things. I thought there > might have been some of the model railroad obsession with the engines > themselves, but people seemed most excited about projects to complete and > where the rails went! Because there were different levels to the models, a > train might disappear into a tunnel and emerge somewhere unexpected. All > of this reminds me of Levy's Hackers, with the description of the MIT > model railroad club... > > - Alan > > > On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > > Alan, > > > > In all these images images open to other images in disorienting > > perspectives, the frame disappearing. None of these images have frames. > That > > is what is to me so wonderful about then. One sees the railroad and the > > table or the kids surrounding the railroad, etc. > > > > One thing you do not mention -and to me is of the essence of these > images- > > is that the place itself is the creation of a group of (or a single) > > fetichist afficionados, regardless of how much the lungs of the same > people > > may have been scarred by the historical realities these images capture > > (suture?) in its peripheries -on the mind of the onlooker. I think > (maybe!) > > I understand why you felt as an outsider there, not quite sharing the > > fetishistic impulse which paradoxically may have created the place. > > > > Ciao, > > > > Murat > > > > > > On Jan 13, 2008 8:12 PM, Peter Ciccariello > wrote: > > > >> Fascinating and beautiful Alan. I belonged to that world as a kid, with > a > >> subscription to Model Railroader magazine. First learned trompe l'oeil > and > >> how to dream worlds that didn't exist, put my head on the tracks and > the > >> smoke pellets filled the room till they faded into the white painted > >> clouds. > >> > >> - Peter > >> > >> On Jan 13, 2008 3:19 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > >> > >>> Railroad Club > >>> > >>> > >>> Images from open house, Morgantown model railroad club, embodying cuts > >>> from one scale to another, from human to true world, from mind to > >> emanent. > >>> Who would call this the postmodern? One might locate something else > >> here: > >>> not the cut but the suture, not disparity but deep memory; the locales > >>> represented, real and imaginary, conjure the West Virginia landscape > of > >>> the 1950s, in the memory of many of the club members. What better than > a > >>> photograph than a reconstruction in which everything is punctum, > >> intended? > >>> > >>> The photographs are of the text, of this text; they're weaker without > >> it, > >>> they go elsewhere, I'm pulling them back in. I'm pulling them back in > to > >>> indicate multiculturalisms and emphases on locale and habitus tend > both > >>> suture and division (these people, these others) in favor of > _listening_ > >>> and its phenomenology. > >>> > >>> But listening is skew-orthogonal, again, to the _style_ of the images, > >>> based on any number of photographers and trajectories. > >>> > >>> Now what do I see when I do not know what I see? Certainly aspects and > >>> entities are present within the true world filtered through the > history > >> of > >>> photography and photographers who have no responsibility for me. > >>> > >>> Where are the passengers in this life? Where are the passengers in the > >>> life of the other? > >>> > >>> You can already feel the economy of the land, extractive industries, > >> pov- > >>> erty, environmental pollution, mountain-topping, strip-mining, > deep-min- > >>> ing, feed stores, small towns in the hollows, grey dust, what's worn > is > >>> worn, what's not is brought into play through deep memory's suture > which > >>> even bends, transfigures the landscape, someday we'll all rise to the > >>> surface. > >>> > >>> I will live forever > >>> I will live forever > >>> I will live forever > >>> As a hungry ghost > >>> As a hungry ghost > >>> I will live forever > >>> > >>> I don't remember the exact name of the railroad club or the members. > >> Some- > >>> one named Mike, I believe, made the larger mine model. I came in as a > >>> tourist finding nameless things. the models were both outstanding, > >> depres- > >>> sing to an outsider. The images appeared as images, imaginary, with > >> what- > >>> ever context I might bring from the outside; the social depth was > >> absent. > >>> I turned to the jump-cut. > >>> > >>> The jump-cut was of the visual, that disparity of mind and scale. > >> Railroad > >>> switching systems were fundamental to the development of the Internet. > >>> Evidence of electronic skein was everywhere. Jump-cut sutured into > >> dream- > >>> scape, dream-screen, displacement/condensation semiotics. What is of > >> truth > >>> or tending towards the indexical in the images applies as well to the > >> vis- > >>> ual in general, compounding of memory, suture, cut, surface. Whatever > >> one > >>> sees is surface, surface-only; x-rays report on deeper surfaces, > >>> translucent or transparent to invisible light. > >>> > >>> The photographs bother me, as if theory needed image-propping beyond > the > >>> diagrammatic. But what can the image hold, if not an arrangement that > >>> might be constituted as evidence? If a diagram is indexical or > symbolic, > >>> the photograph resides elsewhere; evidence stands for nothing and > hardly > >>> represents itself, nor is it pointing towards something across > >> ontological > >>> or epistemological lines. On this level the photograph simply reports > as > >>> Bazin might have it, on what-is, or rather the what-is and thetic con- > >>> strues within the dialog of image production. In any case, the > >> postmodern > >>> is left behind, or rather, is relegated to analyses of socio-economic > >>> phenomena where the theory works wonders; think of postmodern > geography, > >>> Harvey or Roja for example. > >>> > >>> What would postmodern geography make of mountain-topping? And then its > >>> representation which makes the wrecked landscape somehow graspable, > >>> something to walk around, replant with meadow or pasture? > >>> > >>> I think of tantra, mandala, Jefferey Hopkins' introduction to the > Kala- > >>> chakra Tantra (Kalachakra Tantra, Rite of Initiation, Dali Lama, > 1999). > >>> Hopkins walks/writes the body of the reader through the mandala > ("Notice > >>> the entryway at the eastern door, wider than the doorway, with a three > >>> storied portico above the entranceway. Each of the stories of the > >> portico > >>> above the entryway has four pillars across the front, thereby creating > >>> three room-like alcoves on each story. In each of these eight alcoves > >> are > >>> goddesses of offering; the middle alcove in the first story on the > >> eastern > >>> side has a black wheel of doctrine with a buck and doe to the right > and > >>> left." And so forth.) Now think of the Morgantown railroad club images > >> in > >>> the same or different shimmer, think not of the imminent/immanent > >> identi- > >>> fication of entities within them, but of paths through or around or by > >>> virtue of these entities, which themselves are processes (one doesn't > >> live > >>> forever, the tracks are constantly changing). Is there a meditation > >> here, > >>> emission or spew that is sourceless except for (in spite of) the > corners > >>> or frame of the image? Can one imagine a habitus, inhabitation? Is > there > >> a > >>> seeing that moves through memory near and far without the supplication > >> of > >>> the signifier? This is what literally remains to be seen, and brings > the > >>> essay to its clothes. > >>> > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail01.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail02.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail03.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail04.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail05.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail06.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail07.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail08.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail09.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail11.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail12.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail13.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail14.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail15.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail16.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail17.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail18.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail19.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail21.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail22.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail23.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail24.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail25.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail26.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail27.jpg > >>> http://www.alansondheim.org/rail28.jpg > >>> > >> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> NEW RELEASE > >> UNCOMMON VISION - The Art of Peter Ciccariello > >> http://uncommon-vision.blogspot.com/ > >> 66 pp. 42 color plates. > >> > > > > > > > ======================================================================= > Work on YouTube, blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com . Tel 718-813-3285. > Webpage directory http://www.alansondheim.org . Email: sondheim@panix.com. > http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/sondheim for theory; also check WVU > Zwiki, Google for recent. Write for info on books, cds, performance, dvds, > etc. ============================================================= > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:21:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Cervantes Subject: 10th Anniversary issue of The Salt River Review is online MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline A 10th Anniversary edition of The Salt River Review is now online. Poetry by Martin Ott, Halvard Johnson, Amanda Laughtland, John Morgan, Robert Lietz, Katherine Bogden, Sam Pereira, Peter Bruveris, Lynn Strongin, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Kevin Conder, Sid Miller, Peggy Shumaker, & Barry Spacks. Fiction by B.J. Hollars, Edward Salem, Lisa Veyssiere, Matt Maxwell, Jennifer Berney, Gail Louise Siegel, & Rochelle Cashdan. http://www.poetserv.org ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:10:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Gallagher Subject: andrew felsinger MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >> Dear Poets, > >> > >> Do any of you have a current email for Andrew Felsinger, editor of the > >> former e-magazine VeRT? Its important that I contact him. If you > >> don't feel like broadcasting it you may email me separately at > >> kevin.gallagher@tufts.edu > >> > >> Best > >> > >> KG > >> > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:44:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: eyedrum call for work: 'crop circles, cosmogams, psychogeographies' (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="0-1992391817-1200462266=:938" This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. --0-1992391817-1200462266=:938 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:26:09 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: robert cheatham To: artnews@pd.org Subject: eyedrum call for work: 'crop circles, cosmogams, psychogeographies= ' Call for material for a visual arts show at Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia. The show will run from October 18 through November 29; it will also constitute a featured issue similarly titled in the online journal PERFORATIONS. Deadline: August 1, 2008 Crop Circles, Cosmograms, Psychogeographies If nothing else, perhaps it can be said that modernity is about diagrams, s= chematics, blueprints, Rorschalk cards, flow charts, maps, floorplans and a= ll the other graphic devices designed to simplify and link the real, materi= al world with the abstract world of thought and feeling. The same thing mig= ht be said of the visual arts in general. The infamous crop circles started mysteriously appearing in the fields of E= ngland in the mid-Seventies. Over the past thirty plus years, they have be= come the source of much speculation, wonderment, hoaxing: were they made by= artists? By aliens? By intelligent plasmas? Unknown terrestrial forces? Co= vert military operations? As with everything, your answers depended on you= r proclivities and stations in life. At the very least, they were beautifu= l and 'artistic' and SEEMED to be some form of cosmograms, in the same leag= ue with mandalas, Mayan city constructions, Egyptian mega-constructions, ar= chaic native American pictographs and other nativistic schematics which see= med to link an astronomical world above with the terrestrial world below = =E2=80=A6 and to imbue those diagrams with a purported spiritual power. All these types of 'ground-based' diagrams also have in common implicit psy= chological connections with the land even to the point of creating those co= nnections ex nihilio. The term 'psychogeography' was coined some years ago = to account for the feeling that the 'beach under the pavement' somehow make= s itself felt in ideas, feelings, and 'spirits'. The visual arts show at eyedrum art and music gallery will explore these co= nnections and forms: What are these forms? Do they have effects and affects= or is 'aesthetic' sufficient? Can they be created anew? Does technology fa= cilitate these 'cosmic figures' and give them new voice or does it kill the= m off in paving them over and leave us with a dead schematic ... which neve= rtheless still tries to speak? There is not much space so please contact the curator if you are interested= in participating in the show. Deadline: August 1, 2008 Curator: Robert Cheatham: zeug1@earthlink.net Eyedrum: 290 Martin Luther King Drive SE, Suite 8. 30312 http://www.eyedrum.org PERFORATIONS: http://www.pd.org --------------------------------------- Georges Braque: "You must always have 2 ideas, one to destroy the other.= The painting is finished when the concept is obliterated." --0-1992391817-1200462266=:938-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:10:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801151507w3dcb1af9yf023822aa0e8055c@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Hi Murat - I'm on a terrible connection. I started to reply at length but briefly, before it goes off - the place is in the basement of a popular restaurant here in Morgantown. There are about 26 members of the club, most of whom I gather are active. We found this out when visiting. The model is in several sections, and each seems to have 'modules' made by various members. I was fascinated by the wornout imagery; this definitely reflects aura, but not fetishization. Instead, the club emphasizes, as these usually do I think, community, social/charitable events, etc. The images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, except of course for size reduction. The model railroad club meets, I think, Thursday evenings, but I'm not sure whether or not this is every Thursday. I wish I could tell you more! We may end up going to a meeting to see what it's like. I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is arbitrary and what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the exigencies of taking _this_ image and not another. The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a long time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and time; it's complex, beautiful. I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to Eco's notion of double coding? Thanks for this! - Alan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:14:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: on code poetry MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT i've been thinking a bit about 'code poetry' recently; a piece of mine is going to be in an issue of wordforword.info including some 'code poetry'. i think it's good that the term is still wide open. it can apply to the sort of work mark marino talks about in http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology or to other types. no one group can really colonize and hold the territory to themselves, because "code" operates at too many levels and has too many different relevant meanings in today's world. those who don't know programming have lots of scope since "code" isn't necessarily executable programming language or even plain old programming language. "code" doesn't have to have anything to do with computers at all, for that matter. perhaps there are some things, though, that most if not all code poetries are dealing with. the article by søren pold on christophe bruno's work at http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/textualized is quite articulate about the big picture: "...while books are not becoming insignificant or superfluous anytime soon, we still have a new dominant medium for the organization of knowledge, culture, and society. Digital literature consequently has a role to play as a form of media-art that makes us aware of what is happening to text as a material and concept, to reading and writing, and to the material basis of text in the ongoing process of digitization, networking, and mediation, and how these material and formal changes correspond to social and cultural changes. The concept of text is currently undergoing dramatic changes, and most text is now produced and read at the networked interface. Text in contemporary society has become increasingly kinetic, electrified, spatial, and more or less cybernetically controlled by, for instance, commercialization in our postmodern urban environment and on the web." the term "code poetry" is a good one partly because it is open. it isn't a 'school of poetry' made up of a central group. it's poetry that has some sort of intense engagement with code. and it opens poetry to types of language and, well, codes, that haven't been so prominently associated with poetry before. also, it avoids limiting its focus to computation. it refers as prominently to matters of language and culture as to computation. and that's a healthy inclusive broadness. much as i would like to see a more intense engagement within the art and poetry worlds with issues concerning the role of programming in art (not simply programming as a technician's job), it's important to keep the juice flowing from many areas through poetry, and the term 'code poetry' does that quite nicely. the first time i heard the term discussed was by ted warnell on the webartery list back around 1999 or 2000. another advantage of the term "code" will emerge in the coming years as we come to understand more about the way the brain codes and processes information, i suspect. however it is done, probably it isn't done in what we think of as 'language'. there is no conscious creator of those codings, no designer, no consciousness below consciousness in a 'language' of memory, most likely, but something that is probably better described as 'code'. and the same probably goes for information and information processing such as dna: it isn't so well described as 'language' as 'code'. we are in an intense engagement with 'code', these days, and it deeply affects language. and we wonder what and if there is a definitive difference between code and language or whether they bleed into one another as we ourselves are also part cyber. so the notion of 'code poetry' is aware of the current and future growing interface between code and language and this is also the interface between humanity and machine. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:20:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gerald Schwartz Subject: @ house of hamez MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit the FREE SPEECH ZONE Series continues w/ Gerald Schwartz (and special surprise guest) 8 p.m. Thursday 389 Gregory St. Rochester, NY, United States !!FREE!! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:52:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sharon Mesmer/David Borchart Subject: Mesmer and Nasdor Book Party In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801151436v5f37bd39g9433cac86c460383@mail.gmail.com> MIME-version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Sharon Mesmer and Marc Nasdor invite you to celebrate with them the release of their new books Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books) Sonnetailia (Roof Books) Thursday, January 24 8pm Mehanata Bulgarian Bar 113 Ludlow Street NYC Eugene H=FCtz of Gogol Bordello DJ-ing at 10:30 Free admission until 10:30 $10 after Cash bar F/J/M/Z trains to Delancey/Essex More info: http://www.myspace.com/mehanata http://virginformica.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:11:55 -0800 Reply-To: r_loden@sbcglobal.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: new on wordstrumpet: nixon vets the candidates &c. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable http://wordstrumpet.blogspot.com/ * How Would Nixon Vote? Tricky D. Vets the Candidates =20 * A Poem for Primaries: Milhous as King of the Ghosts * The Moist Lotus Open Along Acheron: Sappho, psychopomp &c. * The Important Looking Men (with a Note from Mair=E9ad Byrne) * Speechless: Woody Allen on the WGA strike; the "right-to-sing" = state * Rose, Oh Pure Contradiction: Knox, Manguso & more * The More Things Change Dept.: Some Remarks on Humor by E.B. White * Susan Sontag: An Argument about Beauty * Concord in the Sixties: Hawthorne, the Alcotts, the Civil War * Poetry and the Theory of Heartbreak * A Fresh Face, Somebody Who Understands: Nixon and Rumsfeld * My Wicked Caddywumpus Ways: Blurb-Composition & other confusions * A Page from the Dangerfield Playbook: the Stephen T. Colbert = Award for the Literary Excellence * Poetry, Grimness, and Gallows Humor: Mlinko, Brecht, Lerner, = Flarf &c. * Adventures in Heresiology: Patrolling the Perimeter of the Avant-garde * Academy of Fine Arts: Linh Dinh by Jonathan Hill * Poem in Spanish (with a Note from Paul Hoover) * M. A. Numminen Sings Wittgenstein http://wordstrumpet.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:30:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801151436v5f37bd39g9433cac86c460383@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > I have tried to see where our essential disagreement lies. It seems > it does in our concepts of divinity. For you divinity must be > supernatural, something "outside" the natural. For me, > the divine has to do with consciousness, something intimately > related to language. < Well, then, we've got merely a quibble about terminology between us, and n= o real misunderstanding at all. You are NOT saying that there is any real th= ing outside human psychology that is "divine" -- you're merely renaming the frisson of art "the divine" or "divinity". Your use of "the divine" or "di= vinity" is, since you use it casually without a disclaimer, a trifle disingenuous, don= 't you think? After all, "the divine" and "divinity" have been used traditionally= in both Christianity and Islam to denote the supernatural. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > You drastically distinguish between > real and unreal, basically in terms of its human > applicability, its specific technological prowess.< No, I distinguish between the natural and the supernatural when people sta= rt talking about "the divine" or "divinity". Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > The perpetual motion machine is unreal because it can not be produced > and put to economic use.< No, the perpetual motion machine is unreal because it is, so far as we kno= w now, impossible to build in the real world. It has nothing to do with its economic uses -- it can't be made whether it has economic uses or not: so = far as we know now the way reality is made up there can be no perpetual motion= machine -- not even the whole of the universe is seen as such a thing. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > For me, one the other hand, the idea underlying > the perpetual motion engine, something which rejuvenates itself through > activity, is real< I don't dispute that we can think of the idea, and that by thinking of the= idea we make the idea "real" in the sense that we can talk about it. But the notio= n that by talking about something one has actually done something is what I call "intellectual's disease". Talking about the plumbing doesn't stop the leak= ; talking about a perpetual motion machine doesn't create one. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > ... the idea underlying the perpetual motion engine ... is in some way t= he > very definition of spiritual essence.< If the _idea underlying_ the perpetual motion engine, and not that engine itself, is what you hold is the definition of spiritual essence, then it s= ounds as if our disagreement is between The Romantic, you, and The Skeptic, me. You very much wish that there were a supernatural, but you know there isn't, s= o you content yourself with posing on the cliff's edge with your cape blowin= g behind you in the approaching storm, fists on hips, one foot thrust forwar= d, hair askew (but not too askew to be sexually attractive) in the wind, and = your face molded with determination not to let any real storm spoil your walk, = and hoping that your return, sopping wet and shivering, to your lover will res= ult in your welcome with hot chocolate and open arms. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > For me the connection between idea, > what is imagined or conceived, and what is real is much more fluid and c= uts > across narrowly economic or practical considerations. This does not mean > -as you seem to think- that one can call anything what one wants ...< Why doesn't it mean that. It seems that the notion that if the connection between idea and real is really as fluid as you claim, then the act of cal= ling one thing by another thing's name ought to make the one thing into the other t= hing. Just how fluid, in other words, do you claim the connection is? If it is n= ot fluid enough to make changes simply by renaming, but fluid enough that we cannot= really name anything without disingenuous mis-uses of terminology to make specious arguments being seen as valid objections, as in the case of "the divine" or "divinity" in your hands, then just how fluid IS that connectio= n, eh? Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > ... Ideas -whether you (Marcus) believe in them or not- when powerful > enough, speaking to a specific group of people, in your word, to their > "aspirations, weave their intricate verbal and ideological pattern. > In that way, they are very real.< Just how powerful is "powerful enough", though? That's the crux. In fact, people can be swayed to genocide by powerful emotional appeals based on lies. Real lies. Real emotions. Real genocide. We don't disagree that idea= s can be powerful enough to change how people view the world culturally -- b= ut you seem to be saying, or implying, anyway, that if we just believed hard enough in a perpetual motion machine we could believe it into existence, a= nd Tinkerbell will live! Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > Post modernism ... involves a confrontation with the realness of the oth= er.< No, it doesn't. Postmodernism involves denying that 'Reason', as used in t= he Platonic and Kantian traditions, means truth as correspondence, knowledge as discovery of essence, and morality as obedience to principle, notions t= he postmodern wants to deconstruct and deny. There can be no "realness of the= other" where there can be no truth, no knowledge, no morality, because wha= t is "real" about the "other", or even "other" about the "other" if we deny = reason? Liberality of mind and critical thought are not, in the postmodern view, m= atters of abstractness, but rather of relativity, of alternative perspectives, an= d all perspectives are held to be equally valid. The postmodern can privilege no= perspective over another. Critical thinking become playing off alternative= s against one another, rather than playing them off against the criteria of rationality or reasonableness. Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > It has absolutely nothing to do ... with the decline of intellectual sta= ndards > or deterioration of moral values.< It is the postmodern practice to deconstruct "intellectual standards" or "= moral values" so that anything anyone calls "intellectual standards" or "moral v= alues" are, by the mere naming of them, so. One can only hope that postmodernists= have the courage of their convictions, and when they contract diseases, th= ey will redefine or deconstruct them as a tummy-ache, confident that the mere= re-naming will mean the problem is solved. Not that there's any chance we may yet get rid of the postmodernists by holding them to their own, um, er= , well, 'standards'. In spite of their purported beliefs that deconstructing= "reality" by talking about it powerfully will 'weave their intricate verbal and ideo= logical pattern', postmodernists with access insist on going to hospitals and doct= ors. They don't even see the irony, much less the hypocrisy. Postmodernists are merely the contemporary version of fundamentalist Christian Scientists, but with advanced degrees and no street smarts. Good= luck with that. Marcus > On Jan 14, 2008 5:24 PM, Marcus Bales > wrote: > > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > "Randomness has something to do, it seems to me, with the > disintegration, > > destruction of the ego, which is an essential concept both in > Sufism and > > perhaps Buddhism. In Sufism, this loss of ego (which , > specifically in > > poetry, > > leads to Eda, a transformation in the concept of the lyric "I") > opens up > > the > > spirit to divine consciousness." > > > > Marcus Bales wrote: > > First, I assert that there is no such thing as `divine > consciousness=B4. > > There is no > > god, of any sort. I think the feeling > > that is described as, for example, `divine consciousness=B4 or > `afflatus=B4, > > among > > others, is merely a psychological state. It has no connection to > any sort > > of > > divinity because there is no such thing as any kind of divinity. > > > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > "=B4Divine consciousness=B4 exists because it exists as a concept in > > Sufism. Do you mean that I made this whole assersion about Sufism > up or > > only that the concept itself is an illusion?" > > > > If "=B4divine consciousness=B4 exists ... as a concept in Sufism" then > `a > > perpetual > > motion machine=B4 exists as a concept in western materialism - but > neither > > one > > exists in the real world. To hold that something exists because > someone > > has > > invented a name seems as if it is too postmodern even for a > postmodernist. > > > > If you assert that there is `divine consciousness=B4 in your poems, > does > > that > > make it true, irrespective of any contrary opinion? Is all that > is > > required for an > > assertion to be true in your view is that someone asserts it? What > do you > > do, > > then, with assertions that your opinion is wrong? Aren=B4t those > assertions > > true, > > too, for you, simply because they=B4re assertions? But if your > assertion is > > true by > > definition, and any contrary assertion is also true by definition, > by what > > means > > do you distinguish between them? Or do you? Do you simply choose > randomly > > among all possible choices? Do you privilege your own assertions > over > > others > > because they=B4re your own, or Sufi assertions over others because > they=B4re > > Sufi? The notion that any assertion is true is self-refuting since > it > > means that > > assertions contrary to any assertion are also true. > > > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > "... is `a psychological state=B4 then not merely a concept but > something > > more? > > How is `a psychological state=B4 more real than `divine > consciousness=B4? By > > your > > argument there is `a psychological state=B4 but no `divinity=B4? How > are they > > different? Pray explain." > > > > If all you=B4re asserting by `divine consciousness=B4 is a > `psychological > > state=B4, then > > we=B4re merely arguing about terminology, and we have no > disagreement that I > > can see. But you seem to be using the notion of `more real=B4 here > to > > distinguish, if I understand it, between `divine consciousness=B4 > and > > `psychological state=B4 by asserting that the former is in fact > `more real=B4 > > than, or > > at least `as real=B4 as, the latter. By that I understand you to be > claiming > > that > > there is such a thing in the real world as `divine > consciousness=B4, > > something > > that is perhaps not as identifiable as `igneous rock=B4 but > certainly as > > recognizable when one sees it as `pornography=B4. > > > > (On reflection, considering Amy King=B4s propensity to leap to > unwarranted > > conclusions about name-calling and insult, I hope no one will take > that to > > be a > > disparaging comparison: in the US the Supreme Court has famously > ruled > > that, while they cannot define `pornography=B4, they are confident > that > > local > > authorities will `know it when they see it=B4. It is in the category > of > > `know it when > > they see it=B4 that I mean to put `divine consciousness=B4 as you use > it, and > > emphatically NOT in the category of `pornography=B4. > > > > (Certainly, though, I intend the comparison to be dismissive of > your > > argument > > (though, once again, Amy King, not of Murat as a person), since I > hold > > that in > > important matters such as pornography and divine consciousness we > MUST > > be willing to articulate definitions and stand by them at least > > provisionally until > > better definitions come along. If you cannot define `divine > consciouness=B4 > > better > > than the Supreme Court defines `pornography=B4 then I hold that > your > > argument > > ought to be dismissed on the same grounds as the Supreme Court=B4s: > that it > > is > > inadequate to the seriousness of the discussion. In the case of > the > > Supreme > > Court, they have on their side the reason that it is the job of > the > > political > > process and the lower courts to parse through the definitions, and > the > > SC=B4s > > job is to choose among those offered. You, however, having brought > the > > notion of `divine consciousness=B4 to bear on this discussion, have > the > > responsibility of actually defining your term.) > > > > My understanding of the claims about `divinity=B4 or `divine > consciousness=B4 > > is that > > they are claims about the supernatural, or at least about the > > external-to-the- > > human. As such, they would be different from `psychological > states=B4, which > > are > > about the internal-to-the-human, and certainly not about the > supernatural. > > > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > "How did you come out with the definition "it is human striving > which > > creates > > art"? To expand on one of your metaphors, human striving might > also be a > > solution to constipation, but is it art under the > circumstances?" > > > > Human striving is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for > art. One > > can > > have human striving without art, but not art without human > striving. No > > doubt > > someone can and will make (or perhaps has made) a piece of art > about > > constipation - but what makes it art is the artist=B4s striving > (even if it > > is the > > relatively facile use of habits and tools, of his or her > sensibilities, a > > striving that > > succeeds without encountering difficulties the existing set of > habits, > > tools, and > > sensibilities cannot deal with), not the striving of the > constipated > > person. I use > > `striving=B4 here as a species of intention. I hold that we cannot > get art > > by > > accident. I don=B4t hold that there are no accidents in art, > however. It is > > the > > human striving, the intention to make art, that creates art, when > it does > > (and > > the striving, the intention, is a necessary, but not sufficient, > condition > > for art), > > and not the many accidents possible in the process of making art. > The > > accidents don=B4t make art; the artist does. That the artist may > take > > advantage > > of accidents (there is the famous story of Apelles, Alexander's > court > > painter, > > who got frustrated by his experiments with painting the froth on a > horse's > > mouth and in exasperation threw a sponge at his painting, > accidentally > > producing the effect he wanted, for example), doesn=B4t mean that > the > > accident > > is the art. > > > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > "Does it mean that if a poem is written easily, it is not an > artistic > > poem? Or do > > you mean that the subject of art should be about aspiring to > something > > superior or out of ordinary, provided that abject is not divine; > but it > > can be > > about a psychological state?" > > > > I don=B4t say that art must be about any particular thing; I think > art can > > be made > > of anything, but it is made by human beings, not a matter of > chance or > > random > > occurrences. I also say that chance or random occurrences can be > used by a > > human being to make art. Some pieces of art come easy, some come > hard, to > > individual artists. As JM Whistler said when asked how long it > took him to > > paint one of his nocturnes, "A lifetime." Of course no one > imagines that > > the > > elapsed time to accomplish the painting was from his birth to the > moment > > he > > finished; he was pointing out that the accomplishment of the > painting was > > the > > result of a lifetime of human engagement with the world. > > > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > "How come you equate `living entirely in the moment=B4 with being > > unconscious > > or being like an animal?" > > > > I distinguish the animal=B4s unconscious mind from the human=B4s > conscious > > mind. I think that animals have only very limited notions of time, > space, > > and > > their own existence, and what I know about meditation in the > various > > traditions > > with which I am even a little familiar suggests to me that the > goal of > > such > > meditations is to abandon the human consciousness and its > immersion a > > world of short- and long-term consequences in favor of the > animal > > unconsciousness and its lack of understanding of any but > short-term > > consequences, if there is an understanding of any consequences at > all. > > > > Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > "Come to think of it, do animals live in the moment? Does one > need > > language > > to say that? When we say an animal does not think of or know its > death, > > do > > we not mean it has no language in relation to us? Doesn't being > "conscious > > of > > one's death" by necessity imply the consciousness of deathlessness > - in > > other words divinity -- whether such a thing exists or not?" > > > > Yes, I think animals live in the moment and have no understanding > of the > > idea > > of their own individual death. It may be that being conscious of > one=B4s own > > death implies a consciousness of deathlessness. I=B4m not sure it > does, > > frankly. > > I think it=B4s entirely possible for organisms to struggle to > survive > > without striving > > to make art; to have a determination to escape danger, even to > recognize > > the > > differences between, say, the dangers of challenging another bull > too big > > to be > > beaten, and the dangers of challenging the lion at all, and still > not have > > any > > awareness of `deathlessness=B4. > > > > But more significantly, it seems to me that the notion of divinity > is not > > merely > > the notion of the consciousness of deathlessness. The notion of > divinity > > implies the supernatural. One may imagine deathlessness without > requiring > > the hypothesis of the supernatural, though I don=B4t imagine that > animals > > with > > little or no conception of their own deaths can manage either > one. > > > > The notion of destruction of ego seems to me to absolutely > eliminate the > > possibility of any art whatever because it is the human ego, the > human > > striving, that creates art. It=B4s a necessary but not sufficient > condition. > > To > > eliminate one's humanity in favor of becoming unaware, > unconscious, in > > favor > > of living so entirely in the moment that one has become merely an > animal, > > and not an animal who is also human, must of necessity eliminate > any human > > capacity for making art. > > > > Marcus > > > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.2/1224 - Release Date: > 1/14/2008 5:39 PM > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:30:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Kramer Subject: david larsen's email In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit hello, anyone have david larsen's email? thanks, wendy kramer --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:47:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline "Savinio said he was certain that the the ruins Schliemann excavated must be those of ancient Troy, because during the First World War the British destroyer Agamemnon had bombarded them. If the British sailors had not been inspired by the unspent fury of Agamemnon, why should they have fired at ruins in the wilderness? Names are more than a definition of things, they are the thing itself." --Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair (Alberto Savinio aka Andrea De Chiric= o was the brother of the painter Giorgio) One of the great anxieties of the Pentagon with allowing a few poems to be translated for inclusion in the published book of Guantanamo Poems was that poetry by its very nature is a form of code. A poetic image even in translation may still have meaning to a reader from another culture indicating a meaning concealed to the reader limited to the culture of the translation only. The use of non-literary translators was made to hopefully further distance the original poetic images from their sources, t= o further "muddy" and "confuse" their "signals." By making the poems as "unpoetical" as possible in English, it was hoped that they will also be as far from their "poetic" origins as possible, in order not to convey any information of a "secret" or "dangerous" nature to those addressed across the linguistic divide in the original language. "Code poetry," "code writing," and "code speech" have been used from "time immemorial" to conceal meanings, for reasons of survival, economics, politics, romance, entertainment, narcotics, any kind of "illicit" activity one may think of. Graffiti written in plain sight on walls, mail boxes, subways, buses, telephone poles, that appear to say one thing to the public say something completely different to those who know how to read their codes. Jim--on the one hand you are saying that computers don't have to do with the codes and code poetries and aren't colonizing, and then you are turning to the example quoted below in which the computers and digital literature are "the dominant" method of "organization" and "commercialization." With the telegraph there were immediately codes developed--Morse Code for the transmission of information to do with transportation, stocks, the news, followed by the stock market ticker. The development of codes tends to be for purposes of efficiency of communication, control of communication and secrecy of communication. In the digital era these are predicated on the electricity being on. More than ever in recent genocides and wars the cut off of electricity grid= s has become of the utmost importance. The digital cutoff has meant that persons have "ceased to exist" within this "inclusive code." The bombings of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Lebanon were all targeting the electric grids. The genocide of Rwanda was preceded by the severing of all electric, cable, phone lines, in Burma, the protests initiated the digital cutoff and in Gaza the electric shut down accompanies ever more drastic measures. Without electricity, no digital codes, no hospitals functioning, no water pumps working, no tv etc. Via these means huge areas of the world are not permitted to enter as it were the 21 st century. The interrelationship of poetry with codes was beautifully demonstrated by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe ran a newspaper column in which he challenged all comers to send to him codes which he claimed he would procee= d to crack. And he did. No one was able to send in one which he he did not succeed in cracking. (Though, being Poe, he may have supplied a few of the codes to be cracked himself! After all, did he not create the code to cracked in his story the "The Goldbug" and conceal "the Purloined Letter" for his detective Dupin to find?) Poetry itself is an already coded language, and language itself is already the carrier of a myriad linguistic codes and cultural codes and is inscribed with a myriad myriad human codes, biological, chemical and neurological codes. Already with these codes one is aware of the abilities of humans to create controls, subterfuges, manipulations, camouflages, forgeries, doublings, all manner of rhetorical devices in the employ of all manner of purposes. The idea that new forms of codes will be some how more open than any previous seems disingenuous. The first persons to really mak= e use of new codes are usually the military, the corporations and the hackers. In Junkie, Burroughs' notes at the end of his Introduction re the little group of definitions he has given at the back of the book: "A final glossary, therefore, cannot be provided for words whose intentions are fugitive." The writer's "Job" for Burroughs is a DIY "fugitive" activity which is "hidden in plain sight." The very language one has used for concealment one now has to learn to use in order to reveal the things one hopes to convey through the impenetrability one has become habituated to use as to a cloak worn in a enshrouding darkness, as "El Hombre Invisible." The interface of humanity and the machine one might say has existed since the very earliest tools, writing implements, fire. Archimedes calculator of the grains of sand in the known universe, creator of war machines for "Homeland Security;" physics applied to giant catapults. The oldest poetry recounts mighty machines used in great battles, arms and armors of Gilgamesh, Arjuna, the secret code of the Trojan Horse, thousands of "undeciphered writings" the world over, "objects we know not the use of.= " 'In all things . . . there is a 'rational' mystery of essences and correspondences, a tight, uninterrupted network of almost imperceptible, almost inexpressible significances linking one point to another, one thing to another, one being to another." --Sciascia, The Moro Affair On Jan 16, 2008 4:14 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: > i've been thinking a bit about 'code poetry' recently; a piece of mine is > going to be in an issue of wordforword.info including some 'code poetry'. > > i think it's good that the term is still wide open. it can apply to the > sort > of work mark marino talks about in > http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology or to > other types. no one group can really colonize and hold the territory to > themselves, because "code" operates at too many levels and has too many > different relevant meanings in today's world. those who don't know > programming have lots of scope since "code" isn't necessarily executable > programming language or even plain old programming language. "code" > doesn't > have to have anything to do with computers at all, for that matter. > > perhaps there are some things, though, that most if not all code poetries > are dealing with. the article by s=F8ren pold on christophe bruno's work = at > http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/textualized is > quite articulate about the big picture: > > "...while books are not becoming insignificant or superfluous anytime > soon, > we still have a new dominant medium for the organization of knowledge, > culture, and society. Digital literature consequently has a role to play > as > a form of media-art that makes us aware of what is happening to text as a > material and concept, to reading and writing, and to the material basis o= f > text in the ongoing process of digitization, networking, and mediation, > and > how these material and formal changes correspond to social and cultural > changes. The concept of text is currently undergoing dramatic changes, an= d > most text is now produced and read at the networked interface. Text in > contemporary society has become increasingly kinetic, electrified, > spatial, > and more or less cybernetically controlled by, for instance, > commercialization in our postmodern urban environment and on the web." > > the term "code poetry" is a good one partly because it is open. it isn't = a > 'school of poetry' made up of a central group. it's poetry that has some > sort of intense engagement with code. > > and it opens poetry to types of language and, well, codes, that haven't > been > so prominently associated with poetry before. > > also, it avoids limiting its focus to computation. it refers as > prominently > to matters of language and culture as to computation. > > and that's a healthy inclusive broadness. > > much as i would like to see a more intense engagement within the art and > poetry worlds with issues concerning the role of programming in art (not > simply programming as a technician's job), it's important to keep the > juice > flowing from many areas through poetry, and the term 'code poetry' does > that > quite nicely. > > the first time i heard the term discussed was by ted warnell on the > webartery list back around 1999 or 2000. > > another advantage of the term "code" will emerge in the coming years as w= e > come to understand more about the way the brain codes and processes > information, i suspect. however it is done, probably it isn't done in wha= t > we think of as 'language'. there is no conscious creator of those codings= , > no designer, no consciousness below consciousness in a 'language' of > memory, > most likely, but something that is probably better described as 'code'. > and > the same probably goes for information and information processing such as > dna: it isn't so well described as 'language' as 'code'. > > we are in an intense engagement with 'code', these days, and it deeply > affects language. and we wonder what and if there is a definitive > difference > between code and language or whether they bleed into one another as we > ourselves are also part cyber. > > so the notion of 'code poetry' is aware of the current and future growing > interface between code and language and this is also the interface betwee= n > humanity and machine. > > ja > http://vispo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:55:17 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Truscott Subject: January 23: Hall and Maranda at Test (Toronto) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Dear friends: A very special edition of the Test Reading Series comin' at ya: PHIL HALL and MICHAEL MARANDA (bios below) Wednesday, 23 January 2008, 8 pm Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art 37 Lisgar Street, Toronto Free (small donations toward the running of the series gratefully accepted) A map and more information on the readers: www.testreading.org. Hope to see you there, Mark ********************************* PHIL HALL was born in 1953 and raised on farms in the Kawarthas region of Ontario. He attended the University of Windsor in the 70s, where he received an MA in English and Creative Writing. His first book, Eighteen Poems , was published in Mexico City in 1973. Since then he has published 13 other books of poems, four chapbooks, and a cassette of labour songs. He is also a publisher of broadsides and chapbooks under his Flat Singles Press imprint. In the early 80s he was a member of the Vancouver Industrial Writers' Union. In the early 90s he was Literary Editor at This Magazine, and also edited a shortlived literary journal called Don't Quit Yr Day-Job. Among his titles are Homes (1979), Old Enemy Juice (1988), The Unsaid (1992), Hearthedral—A Folk-Hermetic (1996), and Trouble Sleeping (2000), which was nominated for the Governor General's Award for poetry. In 2005, Brick Books (celebrating 20 years as Hall's publisher) brought out An Oak Hunch, which was nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2006. Hall has taught writing and literature at the Kootenay School of Writing, York University, Ryerson Polytechnical University, and many colleges. He has been poet-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario, the Sage Hill Writing Experience (Sask.), the Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon, and elsewhere. This fall, 2007, BookThug has published Hall's long poem, White Porcupine, and also a revised second edition of his essay/poem, The Bad Sequence. Over the years, Hall has collected two full decks of random playing cards from the streets, and numerous albums of found photographs. He calls all of this ephemera his "Pedestrian Archives." He is learning to play clawhammer banjo. MICHAEL MARANDA lives in Toronto. He edits professionally, vocationally, and recreationally. His day-job on week-days is assistant curator (for the Art Gallery of York University). His day-job on alternate weekends is proprietor of Parasitic Ventures Press, a small artist-books publisher. His job in evenings and other alternate weekends is as a visual artist. He hasn't written much of late beyond grant applications, and this bio. He has a half a share in a grey cat. www.michaelmaranda.com www.parasiticventurespress.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:29:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Fw: Re: steve and Yuko's busy months - sorry forgot date on this 1st listing Comments: To: Acousticlv@aol.com, AdeenaKarasick@cs.com, AGosfield@aol.com, alonech@acedsl.com, Altjazz@aol.com, amirib@aol.com, Amramdavid@aol.com, anansi1@earthlink.net, AnselmBerrigan@aol.com, arlenej2@verizon.net, Barrywal23@aol.com, bdlilrbt@icqmail.com, butchershoppoet@hotmail.com, CarolynMcClairPR@aol.com, CaseyCyr@aol.com, CHASEMANHATTAN1@aol.com, Djmomo17@aol.com, Dsegnini1216@aol.com, Gfjacq@aol.com, Hooker99@aol.com, rakien@gmail.com, jeromerothenberg@hotmail.com, Jeromesala@aol.com, JillSR@aol.com, JoeLobell@cs.com, JohnLHagen@aol.com, kather8@katherinearnoldi.com, Kevtwi@aol.com, krkubert@hotmail.com, LakiVaz@aol.com, Lisevachon@aol.com, Nuyopoman@AOL.COM, Pedevski@aol.com, pom2@pompompress.com, Rabinart@aol.com, Rcmorgan12@aol.com, reggiedw@comcast.net, RichKostelanetz@aol.com, RnRBDN@aol.com, Smutmonke@aol.com, sprygypsy@yahoo.com, SHoltje@aol.com, Sumnirv@aol.com, tcumbie@nyc.rr.com, velasquez@nyc.com, VITORICCI@aol.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit JAN 22 steve reads at Living Theatre 21 Clinton Street 8PM with Ty Cumbie's Musetry and Drew Gardner's Poetry orchestra with guests Ellen Christi, Sharon Mesmer and others ____________________________________________________________ steve reads in february 15 at 8 pm at bowery poetry club for a thomas chapin tribute with lunar bob musso and many guests ______________________________________________________ steve and yuko reads feb 25 at 7ish at bowery poetry club with federico ughi and other musicians and poets ___________________________________________________ steve reads march 8 with amiel alcaly and jake marma at the yippie cafe w/ musicians mor as it developes _________________________________________________________________________ ___________ steve reads march 21 at the recht forum with the incredible bassist joelle leandre 9 PM wow was thast a mouthful ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:11:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Manson Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <478DEAE1.12182.DD20455@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Marcus Bales Wrote: "You very much wish that there were a supernatural, but you know there isn't, so you content yourself with posing on the cliff's edge with your cape blowing behind you in the approaching storm, fists on hips, one foot thrust forward, hair askew (but not too askew to be sexually attractive) in the wind, and your face molded with determination not to let any real storm spoil your walk, and hoping that your return, sopping wet and shivering, to your lover will result in your welcome with hot chocolate and open arms." While i can't accept the terms of what one writer may "wish" as a direct consequence of a dispute over the terms "natural" and "supernatural"--as I am very much engaged with the linguistic philosophy that's being worked out here, though in a limping antagonistic way--I'm certainly in favor of one's gaining a very practical result of chocolate and some good loving for an entirely irrational act of standing out on a cliff during a rainstorm. So, if I could go on the record for wishing anything, it would be more of these boundary-walking lovers & hot chocolate chefs. I'll leave the finer points of metaphysics and metalinguisitics to the encyclopedia writers and enraged microscope lens grinders. Standing in a rainstorm feels good. Everyone should try it, cape or no cape. Take your PDA with you, if you have to. My personal wish is for this discussion to take up "sensate" and "insensate" as possibly mutually opposed terms. All these angry metaphors are very telling even if they only indicate a capacity to generate them--whereas I find a good deal of historical, social, and political information, too. Play on, you clashing civilizations! douglas manson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:34:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Therese Broderick Subject: Ekphrastic Defined? In-Reply-To: <131424.77020.qm@web31104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit If anyone knows of any online classes, correspondence courses, or conferences on the theory or history of ekphrasis (yes, it's an ugly word), please post. I'm already registered for some practical training in the teaching of "writing from art," so I don't now need more of that kind of workshop. I'm looking instead for coursework of deeper substance (short of a PhD program, that is). I can travel. I'll be at AWP, too. Sincere thanks. Therese Broderick, MFA Albany, NY poetryaboutart.wordpress.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:03:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <478DEAE1.12182.DD20455@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Hey Marcus, I don't want to butt in over much in this fascinating discussion, but your conception of reason here is overly narrow and it's leading you into a trap in your criticism of the post modern. > No, it doesn't. Postmodernism involves denying that 'Reason', as used in the > Platonic and Kantian traditions, means truth as correspondence, knowledge > as discovery of essence, and morality as obedience to principle, notions the > postmodern wants to deconstruct and deny. There can be no "realness of the > other" where there can be no truth, no knowledge, no morality, because what > is "real" about the "other", or even "other" about the "other" if we deny reason? Let's take these in order: "Truth as Correspondence" This is hardly uncontroversial and is denied by deflationary theories of truth (held by ultra non-postmodern thinkers like Frege, Ramsey, Quine, Tarski, and many many others), Coherence Theories of truth (notably held to be the case by a number of positivists, and the thoroughly in the modern camp Leibniz and Spinoza), Pragmatic Theories of truth (Peirce, James, Davidson et al), Semantic theories of truth (Russell, Wittgenstein [sort of], Kripke, Strawson (sort of)). I'm not going to explain all of these theories. Most of them are given pretty good treatments on Wikipedia if you're curious. The point here is that they all deny that "A proposition is true iff. it corresponds to the real," without being in the least bit postmodern. "Knowledge as discovery of essence" sounds a bit like Ayn Rand and/or her incoherent rendering of Aristotelian biological models as a form of psychological theory, bit I don't really know because I can't ever make sense of the woman. But almost everyone else in the history of western thought, including Plato and Kant, thinks differently on this subject in some way shape or form. Essence is not something that is generally discovered, it is what makes a thing that thing and not something else. As such, it's a metaphysical view, not an epistemological view. Epistemology, from Socrates on down, has been a process not of knowing things, but of explaing how we're justified in thinking that we know something. There are a wide range of views on this point, some of them mirroring theories of truth (there are correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories of justification, which, incidentally, don't necessarily require their truth theoretic correlates. one can be a disquotationalist as regards truth and a coherence theorist as regards justification (as I am.)). But there isn't, that I'm aware of, a distinctly postmodern view of justification. It's a question that has been by and large disregarded as shown to be unimportant by heidegger by most postmodern theorists, which is why most of them say so very little about the issue of knowlege. There is of course the default position of epistemological skepticism, which is largely a bogeyman and not a genuine position defended by anyone, but rather seen as a sort of trap that a viable theory of knowledge has to avoid falling into. "Morality as obedience to principle" is certainly one view, but it is far from the dominant one outside postmodern theory. For most of history, a Morality as Display of Virtues model was argued for. There have been a number of interesting developments in modern ethics in the 20th century, beginning with GE Moore and stemming through all sorts of different views of what morality means. There are definitely views that Morality is Obedience to Principle, and my own take is a version of that, but there are other ways of looking at things like Agency, Virtue, Right and Wrong, and The Good that are certainly tenable that don't take principles to be primitive. Even if one accepts that adherence to principles is what it means to be moral, there is still the vexed question of how one rationally grounds those principles and what justifies using one principle and not another. Again, lots of thought and disagreement here on the nonpostmodern theorist side of the fence, while the post-phenomenology crowd largely leave the issue of personal morality alone and focus more on the rightness and wrongness of institutions using a different set of intellectual tools. > > Liberality of mind and critical thought are not, in the postmodern view, matters > of abstractness, but rather of relativity, of alternative perspectives, and all > perspectives are held to be equally valid. The postmodern can privilege no > perspective over another. Critical thinking become playing off alternatives > against one another, rather than playing them off against the criteria of > rationality or reasonableness. This is a strawman and I believe I've called you on it before. I double dog dare you to point me to five postmodern theorists stating that rationality is merely one possible perspective in an infinite field of equally valid alternate perspectives. You can't do it because nobody actually believes this. You're ascribing a weaker position to your opponent than the one that "they" actually hold, attacking it, defeating it (sort of), and claiming victory over them. This is a common bit of sophistry that's codified in all the lists of logical fallacies: your logic is fallacious aka irrational (under one view of rationality at least, and the one that you seem to be espousing) and therefore you aren't measuring up to your own standards. Meaning your argument renders itself moot. Is it possible you're a secret postmodernist merely pretending to be a follower of Alan Sokal? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:09:13 -0500 Reply-To: az421@freenet.carleton.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob McLennan Subject: ottawater #4 now on-line! Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT the fourth issue of ottawater (www.ottawater.com/), an Ottawa poetry pdf annual, edited by rob mclennan, is now online (with previous issues archived). The fourth issue features work by various residents current and former, including: Gary Barwin, Louis Cabri, John Cloutier, Michael Dennis, Adam Dickinson, Rhonda Douglas, Laura Farina, Andrew Faulkner, Laurie Fuhr, Chris Jennings, John Lavery, Nicholas Lea, Anne Le Dressay, Rob Manery, Karen Massey, Seymour Mayne, Marcus McCann, Christian McPherson, Colin Morton, Pearl Pirie, Craig Poile, Peter Richardson, Sandra Ridley, Priscila Uppal, Andy Weaver and Ian Whistle, interviews with Nicholas Lea, Anne Le Dressay and David O'Meara, and reviews of new books by Rob Winger and John Newlove, as well as artwork by various Ottawa artists. The launch party for the fourth issue will be happening Thursday, January 24th, 2008, as part of The Factory Reading Series at the Ottawa Art Gallery (doors 7pm/readings 7:30) in the Arts Court Building, 2 Daly Avenue (at Nicholas), lovingly hosted by Monty Reid. ottawater would like to thank designer Tanya Sprowl, Emily Falvey from the Ottawa Art Gallery, the ottawa international writers festival, and Randy Woods at non-linear creations for their continuing support. -- poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:43:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Defined? In-Reply-To: <842154.61393.qm@web50610.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT One hopes if there are such classes, courses, or conferences, that at least one of them is titled "The Pulchritude of Ekphrasis", just for fun. M On 16 Jan 2008 at 13:34, Therese Broderick wrote: > If anyone knows of any online classes, correspondence > courses, or conferences on the theory or history of > ekphrasis (yes, it's an ugly word), please post. I'm > already registered for some practical training in the > teaching of "writing from art," so I don't now need > more of that kind of workshop. I'm looking instead for > coursework of deeper substance (short of a PhD > program, that is). I can travel. I'll be at AWP, too. > > Sincere thanks. > Therese Broderick, MFA > Albany, NY > poetryaboutart.wordpress.com > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.5/1228 - Release Date: > 1/16/2008 9:01 AM > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:04:13 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anny Ballardini Subject: for those who like thrillers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Bill Loehfelm is one of the club, or of the gang if you prefer. The story is well written, the several beginning pages Amazon offers, which sort of makes you think that it will continue till the end. Why not then? I am pasting the original message: Hey y'all, I have exciting news. My novel Fresh Kills has advanced to the semi-final round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, meaning I finished in the top twenty percent out of over 5,000 entries. The grand prize is a publishing contract with Penguin, one of the world's leading publishers. Out of the semi-finalists 100 writers will be selected for the finals. Here's the critical part: Advancement to the finals will be determined by reader downloads and reviews for the novel excerpt currently available at a link I'll post at the end of this message. If the link doesn't work, you can access the contest page through Amazon's home page. Just scroll down on the left and you'll find the name of the contest. My novel is entered under mystery, suspense and thriller. Click that link and I'm on page 6. The excerpt is available for download and comment until March 2. Throughout the process, representatives from Penguin and from industry publication Publishers Weekly will be watching for entrants that get a lot of attention. This contest is the best opportunity I've had in a while to get my work significant attention. I beg you to take a few minutes to download the excerpt (it's free and it's printable), read it, and write a review. I really need everyone's help on this. I will be forever grateful. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00121WDJM Thanks and wish me luck, Bill -- -- Anny Ballardini http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/ http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:09:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: The Beautiful Throbbed Emanentation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed The Beautiful Throbbed Emanentation The following is a culmination of certain directions associated with mo- tion capture - in particular, operating too near and too far from the receiving antenna, with mixed sensors. In both positions, the configur- ation generates furious behavior as clusters of sensors shoot to ragged infinities and back again. Heads may detach and the cartoon integrity returns as such. The reading, however, is different, as is the jectivity; the reading is external, jectivity internal. The reading searches for coherency: which body belongs with which organ? Jectivity follows organ, head, and limb paths, identification with approaching, consummating, withdrawing, churning. This is Brownian motion, but radically integral. So what is being modeled? For one thing, slow-simple movement, carefully seducing, caressing, antenna and sensor alike. For another, electronic jitters which threaten to break apart the world. In all of these instances there are two or three figures; at times, they duplicate or fall behind or beyond one another; at times they ingest one another; at times flail uselessly apart; at times, entangle. They cohere and the video/project/ion is one of cohering, hysteric communality at the catastrophic limit. Sheave-skins, which are usually reserved for too-close caress or voyeurism in Second Life, split constantly here; wounds heal, reopen, the body channels the body. Mind-only emptiness, no mind running these emanents into the ground. Violence, abjection, arousal, caress, tumescence, thickening, cutting of the sheaves. Sheave-figures which I am sure will soon be independent of our desire or construct. (This is some of the most advanced video/mocap work I've done; I'm always amazed that both beauty and wonder can come out of such poverty. It's the machines which are talking, which are rubbing against one another, which parlay communication into visionary ekstasis. I must learn, I continue to learn, how to listen, how to see, what is proffered, what is not within my powers of conjuration. Magic is magic because it always come from the Other. I have lost expectation.) Abjection is the most difficult. How to dis/comfort and fetishize, hold and release simultaneously. These emanants do this naturally, as Azure Carter, original model, follows suit. http://www.alansondheim.org/throbbed.mp4 Abjection is the most difficult, less so as the camera moves in, cuts through sheaves. For the viewer there is the level of the subterranean bvh code in dialog with the exigencies of Poser models, but there are also levels of organs and affect, and it is the breasts and hands, high-speed maternal display, that provide tremulous scaffolding: http://www.alansondheim.org/wideinternals.mp4 --- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:14:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <60466cc60801161311u23684626s2290667927c4a573@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > I have tried to see where our essential disagreement lies. It seems > it does in our concepts of divinity. For you divinity must be > supernatural, something "outside" the natural. For me, > the divine has to do with consciousness, something intimately > related to language. < Well, then, we've got merely a quibble about terminology between us, and no real misunderstanding at all. You are NOT saying that there is any real thing outside human psychology that is "divine" -- you're merely renaming the frisson of art "the divine" or "divinity". Your use of "the divine" or "divinity" is, since you use it casually without a disclaimer, a trifle disingenuous, don't you think? After all, "the divine" and "divinity" have been used traditionally in both Christianity and Islam to denote the supernatural. In Spinoza, divinity is separated from any connection to providence. That is to say, the idea of divinity the way I use the term is very much part of the matrix of Western thought, though in direct opposition, through a critique to Cartesian dualism with which you, I suspect innocently and completely unconsciously, are entangled with. Given your inability to see much beyond your own nose, added to an irrepressible bad manners to which you seem to be a addicted, this discussion ends here as far as I am concerned. From the edge of the cliff and my romantic cape blowing in the wind, tremulous and panting and parched with deluded longings (is that near enough?), Ciao, Murat On Jan 16, 2008 4:11 PM, Douglas Manson wrote: > Marcus Bales Wrote: > "You very much wish that there were a supernatural, but you know there > isn't, so > you content yourself with posing on the cliff's edge with your cape > blowing > behind you in the approaching storm, fists on hips, one foot thrust > forward, > hair askew (but not too askew to be sexually attractive) in the wind, and > your > face molded with determination not to let any real storm spoil your walk, > and > hoping that your return, sopping wet and shivering, to your lover will > result in > your welcome with hot chocolate and open arms." > > While i can't accept the terms of what one writer may "wish" as a direct > consequence of a dispute over the terms "natural" and "supernatural"--as I > am very much engaged with the linguistic philosophy that's being worked > out > here, though in a limping antagonistic way--I'm certainly in favor of > one's > gaining a very practical result of chocolate and some good loving for an > entirely irrational act of standing out on a cliff during a rainstorm. > So, > if I could go on the record for wishing anything, it would be more of > these > boundary-walking lovers & hot chocolate chefs. I'll leave the finer > points > of metaphysics and metalinguisitics to the encyclopedia writers and > enraged > microscope lens grinders. Standing in a rainstorm feels good. Everyone > should try it, cape or no cape. Take your PDA with you, if you have to. > My > personal wish is for this discussion to take up "sensate" and "insensate" > as > possibly mutually opposed terms. > > All these angry metaphors are very telling even if they only indicate a > capacity to generate them--whereas I find a good deal of historical, > social, > and political information, too. Play on, you clashing civilizations! > > douglas manson > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:47:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline David, Thank you again for making the distinction between codes being a means by the suppressed of avoiding the eyes of power and the code as a means of control clear. Of course, in literature, codes are means of escaping authority. For instance, from what I understand, in Korean literature surrealist devices were used means of communication avoiding the notice of the Japanese occupying authorities. The Turkish poet Ece Ayhan used street slang as a means to reveal (while still hiding) an "invisible" gay and Armenian and Jewish, etc., culture. In his case, as in his book *Orthodoxie= s *, the slang meaning of a word was the very reverse of its official meaning= . For instance, "orthodox" officially means Eastern orthodox Christian, holy; in street slang, it means a hustler. A "drum player" is a gay person. Ayhan's poetry, on the surface, is full of elusive, disjunctive reference o= r images, creating basically a very suggestive puzzle. The poem itself both hides and reveals the puzzle, embodying the ambivalent struggle of consciousness to reveal itself in a repressive environment. Jim, in the idea of code you present, does the code not emphasize the controlling dimension of code against which, as David points, "the cutting of electricity" is both a means of escape (eluding the matrix of the code's panopticon eyes) and painful invisibility? Ciao, Murat On Jan 16, 2008 12:47 PM, David Chirot wrote: > "Savinio said he was certain that the the ruins Schliemann excavated > must be those of ancient Troy, because during the First World War the > British destroyer Agamemnon had bombarded them. If the British sailors > had > not been inspired by the unspent fury of Agamemnon, why should they have > fired at ruins in the wilderness? Names are more than a definition of > things, they are the thing itself." > > --Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair (Alberto Savinio aka Andrea De > Chirico > was the brother of the painter Giorgio) > > One of the great anxieties of the Pentagon with allowing a few poems to b= e > translated for inclusion in the published book of Guantanamo Poems was > that > poetry by its very nature is a form of code. A poetic image even in > translation may still have meaning to a reader from another culture > indicating a meaning concealed to the reader limited to the culture of th= e > translation only. The use of non-literary translators was made to > hopefully further distance the original poetic images from their sources, > to > further "muddy" and "confuse" their "signals." By making the poems as > "unpoetical" as possible in English, it was hoped that they will also be > as > far from their "poetic" origins as possible, in order not to convey any > information of a "secret" or "dangerous" nature to those addressed across > the linguistic divide in the original language. > "Code poetry," "code writing," and "code speech" have been used fro= m > "time immemorial" to conceal meanings, for reasons of survival, economics= , > politics, romance, entertainment, narcotics, any kind of "illicit" > activity > one may think of. Graffiti written in plain sight on walls, mail boxes, > subways, buses, telephone poles, that appear to say one thing to the > public > say something completely different to those who know how to read their > codes. > > Jim--on the one hand you are saying that computers don't have to d= o > with the codes and code poetries and aren't colonizing, and then you are > turning to the example quoted below in which the computers and digital > literature are "the dominant" method of "organization" and > "commercialization." > > With the telegraph there were immediately codes developed--Morse > Code for the transmission of information to do with transportation, > stocks, > the news, followed by the stock market ticker. > > The development of codes tends to be for purposes of efficiency of > communication, control of communication and secrecy of communication. > > In the digital era these are predicated on the electricity being on= . > More than ever in recent genocides and wars the cut off of electricity > grids > has become of the utmost importance. The digital cutoff has meant that > persons have "ceased to exist" within this "inclusive code." The bombing= s > of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Lebanon were all targeting the electric > grids. The genocide of Rwanda was preceded by the severing of all > electric, cable, phone lines, in Burma, the protests initiated the digita= l > cutoff and in Gaza the electric shut down accompanies ever more drastic > measures. Without electricity, no digital codes, no hospitals > functioning, > no water pumps working, no tv etc. Via these means huge areas of the worl= d > are not permitted to enter as it were the 21 st century. > > The interrelationship of poetry with codes was beautifully > demonstrated by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe ran a newspaper column in which he > challenged all comers to send to him codes which he claimed he would > proceed > to crack. And he did. No one was able to send in one which he he did no= t > succeed in cracking. (Though, being Poe, he may have supplied a few of > the > codes to be cracked himself! After all, did he not create the code to > cracked in his story the "The Goldbug" and conceal "the Purloined Letter" > for his detective Dupin to find?) > > Poetry itself is an already coded language, and language itself is > already the carrier of a myriad linguistic codes and cultural codes and i= s > inscribed with a myriad myriad human codes, biological, chemical and > neurological codes. Already with these codes one is aware of the > abilities > of humans to create controls, subterfuges, manipulations, camouflages, > forgeries, doublings, all manner of rhetorical devices in the employ of > all > manner of purposes. The idea that new forms of codes will be some how > more > open than any previous seems disingenuous. The first persons to really > make > use of new codes are usually the military, the corporations and the > hackers. > > In Junkie, Burroughs' notes at the end of his Introduction re the > little group of definitions he has given at the back of the book: "A > final > glossary, therefore, cannot be provided for words whose intentions are > fugitive." > The writer's "Job" for Burroughs is a DIY "fugitive" activity which > is "hidden in plain sight." > > The very language one has used for concealment one now has to learn > to use in order to reveal the things one hopes to convey through the > impenetrability one has become habituated to use as to a cloak worn in a > enshrouding darkness, as "El Hombre Invisible." > > The interface of humanity and the machine one might say has existed > since the very earliest tools, writing implements, fire. Archimedes > calculator of the grains of sand in the known universe, creator of war > machines for "Homeland Security;" physics applied to giant catapults. > The > oldest poetry recounts mighty machines used in great battles, arms and > armors of Gilgamesh, Arjuna, the secret code of the Trojan Horse, > thousands > of "undeciphered writings" the world over, "objects we know not the use > of." > > 'In all things . . . there is a 'rational' mystery of essences and > correspondences, a tight, uninterrupted network of almost imperceptible, > almost inexpressible significances linking one point to another, one thin= g > to another, one being to another." > --Sciascia, The Moro Affair > > > > On Jan 16, 2008 4:14 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: > > > i've been thinking a bit about 'code poetry' recently; a piece of mine > is > > going to be in an issue of wordforword.info including some 'code > poetry'. > > > > i think it's good that the term is still wide open. it can apply to the > > sort > > of work mark marino talks about in > > http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology or t= o > > other types. no one group can really colonize and hold the territory to > > themselves, because "code" operates at too many levels and has too many > > different relevant meanings in today's world. those who don't know > > programming have lots of scope since "code" isn't necessarily executabl= e > > programming language or even plain old programming language. "code" > > doesn't > > have to have anything to do with computers at all, for that matter. > > > > perhaps there are some things, though, that most if not all code > poetries > > are dealing with. the article by s=F8ren pold on christophe bruno's wor= k > at > > http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/textualized i= s > > quite articulate about the big picture: > > > > "...while books are not becoming insignificant or superfluous anytime > > soon, > > we still have a new dominant medium for the organization of knowledge, > > culture, and society. Digital literature consequently has a role to pla= y > > as > > a form of media-art that makes us aware of what is happening to text as > a > > material and concept, to reading and writing, and to the material basis > of > > text in the ongoing process of digitization, networking, and mediation, > > and > > how these material and formal changes correspond to social and cultural > > changes. The concept of text is currently undergoing dramatic changes, > and > > most text is now produced and read at the networked interface. Text in > > contemporary society has become increasingly kinetic, electrified, > > spatial, > > and more or less cybernetically controlled by, for instance, > > commercialization in our postmodern urban environment and on the web." > > > > the term "code poetry" is a good one partly because it is open. it isn'= t > a > > 'school of poetry' made up of a central group. it's poetry that has som= e > > sort of intense engagement with code. > > > > and it opens poetry to types of language and, well, codes, that haven't > > been > > so prominently associated with poetry before. > > > > also, it avoids limiting its focus to computation. it refers as > > prominently > > to matters of language and culture as to computation. > > > > and that's a healthy inclusive broadness. > > > > much as i would like to see a more intense engagement within the art an= d > > poetry worlds with issues concerning the role of programming in art (no= t > > simply programming as a technician's job), it's important to keep the > > juice > > flowing from many areas through poetry, and the term 'code poetry' does > > that > > quite nicely. > > > > the first time i heard the term discussed was by ted warnell on the > > webartery list back around 1999 or 2000. > > > > another advantage of the term "code" will emerge in the coming years as > we > > come to understand more about the way the brain codes and processes > > information, i suspect. however it is done, probably it isn't done in > what > > we think of as 'language'. there is no conscious creator of those > codings, > > no designer, no consciousness below consciousness in a 'language' of > > memory, > > most likely, but something that is probably better described as 'code'. > > and > > the same probably goes for information and information processing such > as > > dna: it isn't so well described as 'language' as 'code'. > > > > we are in an intense engagement with 'code', these days, and it deeply > > affects language. and we wonder what and if there is a definitive > > difference > > between code and language or whether they bleed into one another as we > > ourselves are also part cyber. > > > > so the notion of 'code poetry' is aware of the current and future > growing > > interface between code and language and this is also the interface > between > > humanity and machine. > > > > ja > > http://vispo.com > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:58:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: noah eli gordon Subject: Ariana Reines email? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Could someone please float me an email for Ariana Reines? =20 =20 =20 =20 _________________________________________________________________ Watch =93Cause Effect,=94 a show about real people making a real difference= . http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/MTV/?source=3Dtext_watchcause= ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:08:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT > "Savinio said he was certain that the the ruins Schliemann excavated > must be those of ancient Troy, because during the First World War the > British destroyer Agamemnon had bombarded them. If the British > sailors had > not been inspired by the unspent fury of Agamemnon, why should they have > fired at ruins in the wilderness? Names are more than a definition of > things, they are the thing itself." > > --Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair (Alberto Savinio aka Andrea > De Chirico > was the brother of the painter Giorgio) > > One of the great anxieties of the Pentagon with allowing a few poems to be > translated for inclusion in the published book of Guantanamo > Poems was that > poetry by its very nature is a form of code. A poetic image even in > translation may still have meaning to a reader from another culture > indicating a meaning concealed to the reader limited to the culture of the > translation only. The use of non-literary translators was made to > hopefully further distance the original poetic images from their > sources, to > further "muddy" and "confuse" their "signals." By making the poems as > "unpoetical" as possible in English, it was hoped that they will > also be as > far from their "poetic" origins as possible, in order not to convey any > information of a "secret" or "dangerous" nature to those addressed across > the linguistic divide in the original language. > "Code poetry," "code writing," and "code speech" have been > used from > "time immemorial" to conceal meanings, for reasons of survival, economics, > politics, romance, entertainment, narcotics, any kind of > "illicit" activity > one may think of. Graffiti written in plain sight on walls, mail boxes, > subways, buses, telephone poles, that appear to say one thing to > the public > say something completely different to those who know how to read their > codes. > > Jim--on the one hand you are saying that computers don't > have to do > with the codes and code poetries and aren't colonizing, and then you are > turning to the example quoted below in which the computers and digital > literature are "the dominant" method of "organization" and > "commercialization." well here we are, david, talking about it via email. "code" doesn't necessarily refer to anything to do with computers. the term "code poetry" could be construed as not necessarily having anything to do with computers by someone who hadn't read about "code poetry" just as "modernism" could be construed to be about something contemporary. i have never heard the poems from guantanomo referred to as "code poetry" before. but of course you're right that the notion of code is crucial there. i totally agree. the term "code poetry" is used to refer to different types of poetry and the poetry of particular people--it means different things to different people in the same sort of way that "modernism" is used in all sorts of different ways. http://revcom2.portcom.intercom.org.br/index.php/galaxia/article/viewFile/12 52/1023 is a pdf version of a printed mag called galaxia from brazil. this pdf is from galaxia in 2001. it consists of emails from 2000 from the webartery list. the emails discuss different notions of "code poetry". this is the first pub i know of in which "code poetry" was discussed. it starts out with a post by ted warnell (of http://warnell.com ), part of which i quote: "The term ‘code poetry’ goes back a ways. From what I am able to find on the Web, at AltaVista and the snappy new, totally useful and beautiful (and FAST) Google.com search engines, the term has long time but limited definition as: 1) literal, as in poetry realized in Morse Code. 2) literal, as used to convey covert messages in time of war — (there are several examples of this — interesting use of poetry). 3) some refer to the ‘art of (digital) programming’, and the resulting computer code as ‘poetry’. 4) there are a couple of references, titles of vizpo works, I think, as CODE POEMS, dating to about 1968. Found also a single reference by Margie L., at ELO chat archives, which reference, judging by the context of the conversation, is as we here at webA are most familiar: a genre of poem/poetics. Also, there are numerous references here in the webA archives that go to this idea of a genre of poem/poetics, and in the Glazier Defib. Beyond these, there is little else on the subject of code poetry. When I think of code poetry, I immediately think of some of the lively, often spontaneous exchanges that happen frequently here at webA" ted mentions the notion of "code poetry" "as used to convey covert messages in time of war". but the main thrust of discussion of the term "code poetry", david, i think it's fair to say it concerns digital poetry. notice how ted uses the word "literal" in 1, 2, and sort of 3, above. whereas what he has in mind is not so much a literal notion of "code poetry" as poetry in which code itself is a concern. possibly a subject. not simply a communications strategy out of necessity to hide or conceal or simply to encode, as in morse code. > With the telegraph there were immediately codes developed--Morse > Code for the transmission of information to do with > transportation, stocks, > the news, followed by the stock market ticker. > > The development of codes tends to be for purposes of efficiency of > communication, control of communication and secrecy of communication. > > In the digital era these are predicated on the electricity > being on. > More than ever in recent genocides and wars the cut off of > electricity grids > has become of the utmost importance. The digital cutoff has meant that > persons have "ceased to exist" within this "inclusive code." The bombings > of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Lebanon were all targeting the electric > grids. The genocide of Rwanda was preceded by the severing of all > electric, cable, phone lines, in Burma, the protests initiated the digital > cutoff and in Gaza the electric shut down accompanies ever more drastic > measures. Without electricity, no digital codes, no hospitals > functioning, > no water pumps working, no tv etc. Via these means huge areas of the world > are not permitted to enter as it were the 21 st century. > > The interrelationship of poetry with codes was beautifully > demonstrated by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe ran a newspaper column in which he > challenged all comers to send to him codes which he claimed he > would proceed > to crack. And he did. No one was able to send in one which he he did not > succeed in cracking. (Though, being Poe, he may have supplied a > few of the > codes to be cracked himself! After all, did he not create the code to > cracked in his story the "The Goldbug" and conceal "the Purloined Letter" > for his detective Dupin to find?) > > Poetry itself is an already coded language, and language itself is > already the carrier of a myriad linguistic codes and cultural codes and is > inscribed with a myriad myriad human codes, biological, chemical and > neurological codes. Already with these codes one is aware of the > abilities > of humans to create controls, subterfuges, manipulations, camouflages, > forgeries, doublings, all manner of rhetorical devices in the > employ of all > manner of purposes. The idea that new forms of codes will be > some how more > open than any previous seems disingenuous. The first persons to > really make > use of new codes are usually the military, the corporations and the > hackers. > > In Junkie, Burroughs' notes at the end of his Introduction re the > little group of definitions he has given at the back of the book: > "A final > glossary, therefore, cannot be provided for words whose intentions are > fugitive." > The writer's "Job" for Burroughs is a DIY "fugitive" activity which > is "hidden in plain sight." > > The very language one has used for concealment one now has to learn > to use in order to reveal the things one hopes to convey through the > impenetrability one has become habituated to use as to a cloak worn in a > enshrouding darkness, as "El Hombre Invisible." > > The interface of humanity and the machine one might say has existed > since the very earliest tools, writing implements, fire. Archimedes > calculator of the grains of sand in the known universe, creator of war > machines for "Homeland Security;" physics applied to giant > catapults. The > oldest poetry recounts mighty machines used in great battles, arms and > armors of Gilgamesh, Arjuna, the secret code of the Trojan Horse, > thousands > of "undeciphered writings" the world over, "objects we know not > the use of." > > 'In all things . . . there is a 'rational' mystery of essences and > correspondences, a tight, uninterrupted network of almost imperceptible, > almost inexpressible significances linking one point to another, one thing > to another, one being to another." > --Sciascia, The Moro Affair I think those are all great examples of the continuing relevance of the notion of "code". Look at it this way. Other people did things similar to the cutup. But Burroughs didn't use it as an occassional subterfuge or novelty. He developed a whole poetics and philosophy in which cutup was crucial. His concern with cutup and disjunction was very deep and insightful, not simply occassional. Similarly, the notion of "code poetry", as formulated by some digital poets, is involved with code at a deeper level, artistic level, social level. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:14:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Crockett Subject: Listenlight 14 --- call for work MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear All, As visitorship climbs, the volume of inbound work declines even lesser than the inverse. Yet, I don't start any design work until near certain as to her load-bearing structures --- your work. I am tempted to generate from pure reason to lure much more work than I could hope to facilitate, but things have worked out for the better without having resorted to such tactics. All best, Jesse Crockett http://listenlight.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:25:04 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alexander Jorgensen Subject: Looking for ED SCHENK In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 Am looking to make contact with the talented Ed Schenk. I need contact details. Your time will be appreciated! AJ --=20 Alexander Jorgensen bangdrum@fastmail.fm --=20 http://www.fastmail.fm - Same, same, but different=85 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:04:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Alan, Did you see the movie The Station Master? In that movie also there is a club where all meet and watch films of trains moving in rapt attention, just moving? The main character, who is a dwarf, loves trains, their schedules, takes walks on the rail lines. I wander if on some level the miniaturization in the mock ups in the Morganton figures -and your photos of them- the importance of that miniaturization in all sorts of way and the main character in the movie being a dwarf connect in an important way? What is real? Trains of an earlier generation -which both Morganton images and the trains in The Station Master reflect- contained an element of duration which contemporary/bullet trains do not. Things happened in those trains. Murders were committed, people met, spies intrigued against each other, at their departures lovers got separated, wives left behind during the war waited for their soldier husbands, often of the defeated army, to return. Stations were built as contamporaneous palaces. Can you imagine the same mythical aura -what Walter Benjamin assigns to the "new" technologies of our childhood ("wornout images?") as a dialectic, analytic dream of history- existing around a bullet train? The images of your Morgantown photos have a similar duration. The function of the place is problematic, not exactly a symbol or a fetish; but simply there, basically at least to us, a found object a la David. This ambiguous use creates duration, thickens, substantiates the empty areas.problematizes perspective. When you write, "the images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, except of course for size reduction," what do you mean? I assume you took the photographs? How did the "size reduction" occur? I am not clear. "I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is arbitrary and what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the exigencies of taking _this_ image and not another." Do you mean the "facts," the object in front of the lens dictates the photograph? Do you understand what I mean by the independence of "gesture" -of what is before the lens- creates the photograph, despite all the manipulative impulses of the photographer? This democratic/chaotic impulse inherent in photography as a medium? "The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a long time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and time; it's complex, beautiful." Exactly. That's what I mean by duration anjd the unsettling substatiation the space of the photograph undergoes. "I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to Eco's notion of double coding?" I had not heard of Eco's phrase, but truly a double encoding creating a mental pun occurs: the code of the miniature object encounters the code of the perspective. Therefore, those images taken from above are doubly small which, ironically, make them more "real," gaining for an instant in the mind the dimensions of their non-photographic size. Come to think of it, there is a third encoding, that of photography itself, which seemingly (only seemingly) miniaturizes the subject into a smaller frame, a frame which itself dissolves. Ciao, Murat On Jan 16, 2008 1:10 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > Hi Murat - I'm on a terrible connection. I started to reply at length but > briefly, before it goes off - the place is in the basement of a popular > restaurant here in Morgantown. There are about 26 members of the club, > most of whom I gather are active. We found this out when visiting. The > model is in several sections, and each seems to have 'modules' made by > various members. I was fascinated by the wornout imagery; this definitely > reflects aura, but not fetishization. Instead, the club emphasizes, as > these usually do I think, community, social/charitable events, etc. The > images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, except of course for > size reduction. The model railroad club meets, I think, Thursday evenings, > but I'm not sure whether or not this is every Thursday. I wish I could > tell you more! We may end up going to a meeting to see what it's like. > > I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is arbitrary and > what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the exigencies of > taking _this_ image and not another. > > The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a long > time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and time; > it's complex, beautiful. > > I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to Eco's > notion of double coding? > > Thanks for this! - Alan > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:53:41 -0500 Reply-To: clwnwr@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Heman Subject: Prarie Fire group reading - Back Fence feature - next CLWN WR reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII For those of you who have missed Peter Chelnik's monthly Prarie Fire Series at DTUT on the upper east side this is just to let you know that it's back at a new venue. A group reading by Patricia Carragon, Peter Chelnik, Christine Graff, Bob Heman, Roxanne Hoffman, Eugenia Macer-Story, Sally Milgrim & Leo on Sunday, January 20, 2008 from 8-10 PM will inaugurate the reborn series in its new space at the American Theater of Actors at 314 W. 54th Street between 8th and 9th Aves. A suggested donation of $5 will help support the theater. Take the A, C, D or 1 to Columbus Circle. And for those of you who are interested i'll be featuring at Robert Dunn's Asbestos series at the Back Fence on Sunday, February 10 at 3 PM. This well known Village venue is located at 155 Bleecker St. at the corner of Thompson and can be reached by the A, C, E, B, D, F and V to West 4th St. Admission is $5 plus a $3 minimum at the bar. There'll be an open mic. Plus mark your calendar. The next big CLWN WR reading is scheduled for March 20 at the SAFE-T-GALLERY in DUMBO. Pencilled in so far are feature Liza Wolsky and special guests R. Nemo Hill, Richard Loranger, Jane Ormerod, Joanne Pagano Weber and Francine Witte, with more features and guests still to be named. Hope you all have a surprisingly wonderful New Year. - Bob Bob Heman clwnwr@earthlink.net EarthLink Revolves Around You. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:15:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Jason Quackenbush wrote: > ... your conception of reason here is overly narrow and > it's leading you into a trap in your criticism of the post modern. It is the postmodernist conception of reason (and truth, knowledge, and morality) that is overly narrow, I think -- the postmodern reaction to a narrow view of what postmodernists consider the dominant mode is why postmodernism seems so silly, I think. I am not asserting that the kind of reason (and truth, knowledge, and morality) postmodernism is reacting against is my preferred sort; I'm saying that that is what postmodernism is reacting against in its silly way. Thanks for your review of types of truth, knowledge, and morality, though. Jason Quackenbush wrote: > ... I double dog dare you to point me to five postmodern theorists stating > that rationality is merely one possible perspective in an infinite > field of equally valid alternate perspectives. You can't do it > because nobody actually believes this. You're ascribing a weaker > position to your opponent than the one that "they" actually hold< Well, there's Rorty, of course, and Foucault. And let's see ... Derrida no doubt, and Stanley Fish along with Merleau-Ponty. Is that five? Well, maybe with postmodern counting it's seven or three, since anything is what anyone asserts it is within this strange world view. And of course there can be no straw men in postmodernism because everything is whatever one asserts it is. But of course you're right that none of them would test gravity by leaping out a 20 story window -- they may be academic postmodernists but they're not complete fools. They also go to doctors when they're ill, obey the traffic laws, and pay their taxes. But that is the point, isn't it -- that they stake out an extreme position in intellectual terms, if one wants laughingly to call it that, that they do not care to test in the real world. The postmodern view of the world seems to be largely composed of trying to see every individual thing, person, culture, what have you, as a series of black boxes, all equal, all mysterious in their self-sufficiency, and with nothing to choose among them except the accident of birth, and even that questionable. It's not so much that postmodernists have any theories about truth, justice, beauty, or proportion, or knowledge or morality either, so much as that they accept all theories indiscriminately. It's all relative, and it's all uncertain -- and they know that because they've heard that Einstein and Heisenberg said so. I don't advocate that such folks must hold to this or that theory of truth, knowledge, morality, justice, beauty, or proportion -- but I think it would do them a world of good to have to do their own home and auto repairs so they have to learn at least some practical science, instead of imagining that how to operate the lock to a house or car is all you have to know about the thing itself. Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:24:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: susan maurer Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801161647p6689141bq88e100ea4bb43c2@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable interesting murat and nicely written .s maurer> Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:4= 7:34 -0500> From: muratnn@GMAIL.COM> Subject: Re: on code poetry> To: POETI= CS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU> > David,> > Thank you again for making the distinc= tion between codes being a means by> the suppressed of avoiding the eyes of= power and the code as a means of> control clear. Of course, in literature,= codes are means of escaping> authority. For instance, from what I understa= nd, in Korean literature> surrealist devices were used means of communicati= on avoiding the notice of> the Japanese occupying authorities. The Turkish = poet Ece Ayhan used street> slang as a means to reveal (while still hiding)= an "invisible" gay and> Armenian and Jewish, etc., culture. In his case, a= s in his book *Orthodoxies> *, the slang meaning of a word was the very rev= erse of its official meaning.> For instance, "orthodox" officially means Ea= stern orthodox Christian, holy;> in street slang, it means a hustler. A "dr= um player" is a gay person.> Ayhan's poetry, on the surface, is full of elu= sive, disjunctive reference or> images, creating basically a very suggestiv= e puzzle. The poem itself both> hides and reveals the puzzle, embodying the= ambivalent struggle of> consciousness to reveal itself in a repressive env= ironment.> > Jim, in the idea of code you present, does the code not emphas= ize the> controlling dimension of code against which, as David points, "the= cutting> of electricity" is both a means of escape (eluding the matrix of = the code's> panopticon eyes) and painful invisibility?> > Ciao,> > Murat> >= On Jan 16, 2008 12:47 PM, David Chirot wrote:> > = > "Savinio said he was certain that the the ruins Schliemann excavated> > m= ust be those of ancient Troy, because during the First World War the> > Bri= tish destroyer Agamemnon had bombarded them. If the British sailors> > had>= > not been inspired by the unspent fury of Agamemnon, why should they have= > > fired at ruins in the wilderness? Names are more than a definition of> = > things, they are the thing itself."> >> > --Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro A= ffair (Alberto Savinio aka Andrea De> > Chirico> > was the brother of the p= ainter Giorgio)> >> > One of the great anxieties of the Pentagon with allow= ing a few poems to be> > translated for inclusion in the published book of = Guantanamo Poems was> > that> > poetry by its very nature is a form of code= . A poetic image even in> > translation may still have meaning to a reader = from another culture> > indicating a meaning concealed to the reader limite= d to the culture of the> > translation only. The use of non-literary transl= ators was made to> > hopefully further distance the original poetic images = from their sources,> > to> > further "muddy" and "confuse" their "signals."= By making the poems as> > "unpoetical" as possible in English, it was hope= d that they will also be> > as> > far from their "poetic" origins as possib= le, in order not to convey any> > information of a "secret" or "dangerous" = nature to those addressed across> > the linguistic divide in the original l= anguage.> > "Code poetry," "code writing," and "code speech" have been used= from> > "time immemorial" to conceal meanings, for reasons of survival, ec= onomics,> > politics, romance, entertainment, narcotics, any kind of "illic= it"> > activity> > one may think of. Graffiti written in plain sight on wal= ls, mail boxes,> > subways, buses, telephone poles, that appear to say one = thing to the> > public> > say something completely different to those who k= now how to read their> > codes.> >> > Jim--on the one hand you are saying t= hat computers don't have to do> > with the codes and code poetries and aren= 't colonizing, and then you are> > turning to the example quoted below in w= hich the computers and digital> > literature are "the dominant" method of "= organization" and> > "commercialization."> >> > With the telegraph there we= re immediately codes developed--Morse> > Code for the transmission of infor= mation to do with transportation,> > stocks,> > the news, followed by the s= tock market ticker.> >> > The development of codes tends to be for purposes= of efficiency of> > communication, control of communication and secrecy of= communication.> >> > In the digital era these are predicated on the electr= icity being on.> > More than ever in recent genocides and wars the cut off = of electricity> > grids> > has become of the utmost importance. The digital= cutoff has meant that> > persons have "ceased to exist" within this "inclu= sive code." The bombings> > of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Lebanon were = all targeting the electric> > grids. The genocide of Rwanda was preceded by= the severing of all> > electric, cable, phone lines, in Burma, the protest= s initiated the digital> > cutoff and in Gaza the electric shut down accomp= anies ever more drastic> > measures. Without electricity, no digital codes,= no hospitals> > functioning,> > no water pumps working, no tv etc. Via the= se means huge areas of the world> > are not permitted to enter as it were t= he 21 st century.> >> > The interrelationship of poetry with codes was beau= tifully> > demonstrated by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe ran a newspaper column in w= hich he> > challenged all comers to send to him codes which he claimed he w= ould> > proceed> > to crack. And he did. No one was able to send in one whi= ch he he did not> > succeed in cracking. (Though, being Poe, he may have su= pplied a few of> > the> > codes to be cracked himself! After all, did he no= t create the code to> > cracked in his story the "The Goldbug" and conceal = "the Purloined Letter"> > for his detective Dupin to find?)> >> > Poetry it= self is an already coded language, and language itself is> > already the ca= rrier of a myriad linguistic codes and cultural codes and is> > inscribed w= ith a myriad myriad human codes, biological, chemical and> > neurological c= odes. Already with these codes one is aware of the> > abilities> > of human= s to create controls, subterfuges, manipulations, camouflages,> > forgeries= , doublings, all manner of rhetorical devices in the employ of> > all> > ma= nner of purposes. The idea that new forms of codes will be some how> > more= > > open than any previous seems disingenuous. The first persons to really>= > make> > use of new codes are usually the military, the corporations and = the> > hackers.> >> > In Junkie, Burroughs' notes at the end of his Introdu= ction re the> > little group of definitions he has given at the back of the= book: "A> > final> > glossary, therefore, cannot be provided for words who= se intentions are> > fugitive."> > The writer's "Job" for Burroughs is a DI= Y "fugitive" activity which> > is "hidden in plain sight."> >> > The very l= anguage one has used for concealment one now has to learn> > to use in orde= r to reveal the things one hopes to convey through the> > impenetrability o= ne has become habituated to use as to a cloak worn in a> > enshrouding dark= ness, as "El Hombre Invisible."> >> > The interface of humanity and the mac= hine one might say has existed> > since the very earliest tools, writing im= plements, fire. Archimedes> > calculator of the grains of sand in the known= universe, creator of war> > machines for "Homeland Security;" physics appl= ied to giant catapults.> > The> > oldest poetry recounts mighty machines us= ed in great battles, arms and> > armors of Gilgamesh, Arjuna, the secret co= de of the Trojan Horse,> > thousands> > of "undeciphered writings" the worl= d over, "objects we know not the use> > of."> >> > 'In all things . . . the= re is a 'rational' mystery of essences and> > correspondences, a tight, uni= nterrupted network of almost imperceptible,> > almost inexpressible signifi= cances linking one point to another, one thing> > to another, one being to = another."> > --Sciascia, The Moro Affair> >> >> >> > On Jan 16, 2008 4:14 A= M, Jim Andrews wrote:> >> > > i've been thinking a bit abou= t 'code poetry' recently; a piece of mine> > is> > > going to be in an issu= e of wordforword.info including some 'code> > poetry'.> > >> > > i think it= 's good that the term is still wide open. it can apply to the> > > sort> > = > of work mark marino talks about in> > > http://www.electronicbookreview.c= om/thread/electropoetics/codology or to> > > other types. no one group can = really colonize and hold the territory to> > > themselves, because "code" o= perates at too many levels and has too many> > > different relevant meaning= s in today's world. those who don't know> > > programming have lots of scop= e since "code" isn't necessarily executable> > > programming language or ev= en plain old programming language. "code"> > > doesn't> > > have to have an= ything to do with computers at all, for that matter.> > >> > > perhaps ther= e are some things, though, that most if not all code> > poetries> > > are d= ealing with. the article by s=F8ren pold on christophe bruno's work> > at> = > > http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/textualized i= s> > > quite articulate about the big picture:> > >> > > "...while books ar= e not becoming insignificant or superfluous anytime> > > soon,> > > we stil= l have a new dominant medium for the organization of knowledge,> > > cultur= e, and society. Digital literature consequently has a role to play> > > as>= > > a form of media-art that makes us aware of what is happening to text a= s> > a> > > material and concept, to reading and writing, and to the materi= al basis> > of> > > text in the ongoing process of digitization, networking= , and mediation,> > > and> > > how these material and formal changes corres= pond to social and cultural> > > changes. The concept of text is currently = undergoing dramatic changes,> > and> > > most text is now produced and read= at the networked interface. Text in> > > contemporary society has become i= ncreasingly kinetic, electrified,> > > spatial,> > > and more or less cyber= netically controlled by, for instance,> > > commercialization in our postmo= dern urban environment and on the web."> > >> > > the term "code poetry" is= a good one partly because it is open. it isn't> > a> > > 'school of poetry= ' made up of a central group. it's poetry that has some> > > sort of intens= e engagement with code.> > >> > > and it opens poetry to types of language = and, well, codes, that haven't> > > been> > > so prominently associated wit= h poetry before.> > >> > > also, it avoids limiting its focus to computatio= n. it refers as> > > prominently> > > to matters of language and culture as= to computation.> > >> > > and that's a healthy inclusive broadness.> > >> = > > much as i would like to see a more intense engagement within the art an= d> > > poetry worlds with issues concerning the role of programming in art = (not> > > simply programming as a technician's job), it's important to keep= the> > > juice> > > flowing from many areas through poetry, and the term '= code poetry' does> > > that> > > quite nicely.> > >> > > the first time i h= eard the term discussed was by ted warnell on the> > > webartery list back = around 1999 or 2000.> > >> > > another advantage of the term "code" will em= erge in the coming years as> > we> > > come to understand more about the wa= y the brain codes and processes> > > information, i suspect. however it is = done, probably it isn't done in> > what> > > we think of as 'language'. the= re is no conscious creator of those> > codings,> > > no designer, no consci= ousness below consciousness in a 'language' of> > > memory,> > > most likel= y, but something that is probably better described as 'code'.> > > and> > >= the same probably goes for information and information processing such> > = as> > > dna: it isn't so well described as 'language' as 'code'.> > >> > > = we are in an intense engagement with 'code', these days, and it deeply> > >= affects language. and we wonder what and if there is a definitive> > > dif= ference> > > between code and language or whether they bleed into one anoth= er as we> > > ourselves are also part cyber.> > >> > > so the notion of 'co= de poetry' is aware of the current and future> > growing> > > interface bet= ween code and language and this is also the interface> > between> > > human= ity and machine.> > >> > > ja> > > http://vispo.com> > >> > _________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser!! http://biggestloser.msn.com/= ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:08:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martha King Subject: Reading Feb 10 in NYC - please post MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Martha King and Elinor Nauen present=C2=A0=20 =C2=A0 Andrei Codrescu=C2=A0 and=C2=A0 Sharon Mesmer=20 =C2=A0 Thursday, February 7, 2008 (Chinese New Year!) 6:30 =E2=80=93 8:30 p.m.=C2=A0=20 =C2=A0 at The Telephone Bar & Grill =E2=80=93 149 Second Avenue btw 9th & 10th Stre= ets=20 In the Lounge =C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=20 * Excellent food and drink available * All trains to Union Square, 6 to Astor Place, F to Second Avenue =C2=A0 Andrei Codrescu is the author of New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Wri= ting from the City, a collection in response to the catastrophe that devasta= ted his adopted city in 2005. In 1989 he returned to his native Romania to c= over the collapse of a catastrophic history and wrote The Hole in the Flag:=20= An Exile's Tale of Return and Revolution. History is explored playfully in a= book-length interview called Miracle and Catastrophe: an interview with And= rei Codrescu by Robert Lazu, published in Romania by Hartmann publishers in=20= 2005. Otherwise, he has no interest in catastrophe, which is why he comes to= New York only twice a year.=20 Codrescu's other books are more about miracles, really. They include: Wakefi= eld, a novel; It Was Today: New Poems; Casanova in Bohemia; Alien Candor: Se= lected Poems 1970-1997; The Blood Countess; Messiah; Ay, Cuba: a Socio-Eroti= c Journey and Hail, Babylon: Looking at American Cities. For more info, visi= t www.codrescu.com or www.corpse.org. Sharon Mesmer (aka Annoying Diabetic Bitch) has been active in the New York=20= City literary scene since moving from Chicago and receiving a MacArthur Scho= larship from Brooklyn College on the recommendation of Allen Ginsberg. (We w= on=E2=80=99t tell you when.) Known as a poet and performance artist, she=E2= =80=99s performed internationally, especially as a founding member of the Me= llow Freakin' Woodies band. Among her poetry collections are Half Angel/ Hal= f Lunch and Lonely Tylenol, an art-poetry collaboration with David Humphrey.= =20 Her texts blur poetry/prose distinctions so cleverly that reviewers habitual= ly call her prose poetic, as well as =E2=80=9Cwitty=E2=80=9D =E2=80=9Cdazzli= ng=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9Cdeep.=E2=80=9D Her prose works include a collection= of short fiction, The Empty Quarter and a full length novel In Ordinary Tim= e. Mesmer's works have also appeared in Rattapallax, Lungfull!, The World, G= argoyle and other literary magazines. She is currently English-language edit= or of American Book Jam, a Japanese literary magazine, and teaches at New Sc= hool University. =C2=A0 Admission is FREE but please=20 CONTRIBUTE GENEROUSLY when we pass the hat All proceeds go to the readers =C2=A0 Coming up: March 6, Eileen Myles and Sanjna Singh; April 3, Maggie Dubris an= d Geoffrey O=E2=80=99Brien =C2=A0 For more information: enauen@aol.com=C2=A0=C2=A0 or=C2=A0 gpwitd@aol.com=20 ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.= aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:22:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801161614i139237fai2d179f38dc72d45c@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>From the edge of the cliff and my romantic cape blowing in the wind, > tremulous and panting and parched with deluded longings (is that near > enough?), > There are scenic overlooks in my county, if not cliffs qua cliffs. I'm just sayin' that if some poet did this at me in order to be sopping, romantic, and poetic, I would not only fix hot chocolate, I would also bake cookies. The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind -- Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:26:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: teersteeg Subject: Re: Ekphrastic Defined? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For younger readers the recent Crizmac catalog: www.crizmac.com has a book entitled "Paint Me a Poem" with : "...13 delightful paintings paired with paintings by artists Goya...Rothko..." regards, bruno > > > On 16 Jan 2008 at 13:34, Therese Broderick wrote: > > > If anyone knows of any online classes, correspondence > > courses, or conferences on the theory or history of > > ekphrasis (yes, it's an ugly word), please post. I'm > > already registered for some practical training in the > > teaching of "writing from art," so I don't now need > > more of that kind of workshop. I'm looking instead for > > coursework of deeper substance (short of a PhD > > program, that is). I can travel. I'll be at AWP, too. > > > > Sincere thanks. > > Therese Broderick, MFA > > Albany, NY > > poetryaboutart.wordpress.com > > > > > > -- > > No virus found in this incoming message. > > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.5/1228 - Release Date: > > 1/16/2008 9:01 AM > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:00:38 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Caleb Cluff Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >They also... obey the traffic laws,=20 Apparently not Barthes. Caleb=20 =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D The information contained in this email and any attachment is = confidential and may contain legally privileged or copyright material. It is intended = only for the use of the addressee(s). If you are not the intended recipient of = this email, you are not permitted to disseminate, distribute or copy this = email or any attachments. If you have received this message in error, please = notify the sender immediately and delete this email from your system. The ABC does = not represent or warrant that this transmission is secure or virus free. = Before opening any attachment you should check for viruses. The ABC's = liability is limited to resupplying any email and attachments =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:19:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Halvard Johnson Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801162304u2b233b9cx8583573616ac9e2d@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) And let's not forget "Closely Watched Trains." Hal "Getting shot hurts." --Ronald Reagan Halvard Johnson ================ halvard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html http://entropyandme.blogspot.com http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com http://www.hamiltonstone.org http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html On Jan 17, 2008, at 1:04 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > Alan, > > Did you see the movie The Station Master? In that movie also there > is a club > where all meet and watch films of trains moving in rapt attention, > just > moving? The main character, who is a dwarf, loves trains, their > schedules, > takes walks on the rail lines. I wander if on some level the > miniaturization > in the mock ups in the Morganton figures -and your photos of them- the > importance of that miniaturization in all sorts of way and the main > character in the movie being a dwarf connect in an important way? > What is > real? > > Trains of an earlier generation -which both Morganton images and the > trains > in The Station Master reflect- contained an element of duration which > contemporary/bullet trains do not. Things happened in those trains. > Murders > were committed, people met, spies intrigued against each other, at > their > departures lovers got separated, wives left behind during the war > waited for > their soldier husbands, often of the defeated army, to return. > Stations were > built as contamporaneous palaces. Can you imagine the same mythical > aura > -what Walter Benjamin assigns to the "new" technologies of our > childhood > ("wornout images?") as a dialectic, analytic dream of history- > existing > around a bullet train? The images of your Morgantown photos have a > similar > duration. The function of the place is problematic, not exactly a > symbol or > a fetish; but simply there, basically at least to us, a found object > a la > David. This ambiguous use creates duration, thickens, substantiates > the > empty areas.problematizes perspective. > > When you write, "the images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, > except of course for > size reduction," what do you mean? I assume you took the > photographs? How > did the "size reduction" occur? I am not clear. > > "I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is > arbitrary and > what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the exigencies > of > taking _this_ image and not another." > > Do you mean the "facts," the object in front of the lens dictates the > photograph? Do you understand what I mean by the independence of > "gesture" > -of what is before the lens- creates the photograph, despite all the > manipulative impulses of the photographer? This democratic/chaotic > impulse > inherent in photography as a medium? > > "The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a > long > time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and > time; > it's complex, beautiful." > > Exactly. That's what I mean by duration anjd the unsettling > substatiation > the space of the photograph undergoes. > > "I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to > Eco's > notion of double coding?" > > I had not heard of Eco's phrase, but truly a double encoding > creating a > mental pun occurs: the code of the miniature object encounters the > code of > the perspective. Therefore, those images taken from above are doubly > small > which, ironically, make them more "real," gaining for an instant in > the mind > the dimensions of their non-photographic size. > > Come to think of it, there is a third encoding, that of photography > itself, > which seemingly (only seemingly) miniaturizes the subject into a > smaller > frame, a frame which itself dissolves. > > Ciao, > > Murat > > On Jan 16, 2008 1:10 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > >> Hi Murat - I'm on a terrible connection. I started to reply at >> length but >> briefly, before it goes off - the place is in the basement of a >> popular >> restaurant here in Morgantown. There are about 26 members of the >> club, >> most of whom I gather are active. We found this out when visiting. >> The >> model is in several sections, and each seems to have 'modules' made >> by >> various members. I was fascinated by the wornout imagery; this >> definitely >> reflects aura, but not fetishization. Instead, the club emphasizes, >> as >> these usually do I think, community, social/charitable events, etc. >> The >> images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, except of course >> for >> size reduction. The model railroad club meets, I think, Thursday >> evenings, >> but I'm not sure whether or not this is every Thursday. I wish I >> could >> tell you more! We may end up going to a meeting to see what it's >> like. >> >> I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is >> arbitrary and >> what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the >> exigencies of >> taking _this_ image and not another. >> >> The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a >> long >> time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and >> time; >> it's complex, beautiful. >> >> I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to >> Eco's >> notion of double coding? >> >> Thanks for this! - Alan >> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:38:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aaron Belz Subject: Observable - Gudding, Swensen, Buy ONE get a free anthology Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Poetry friends, I am amazed at how popular these chapbooks are turning out to be--many orders are for both! There are only a few left before the goal of 50 is reached, so go ahead, make my day: http://observable.org/books/ Details are printed in red at the top of the page. Deadline is Friday at midnight. Pax, Aaron ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:43:23 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: Railroad Club MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Jean-Pierre Gorin--a sometime collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard's--made a doc= umentary called Ordinary Pleasures in 1985. Here's the description from all= movie.com: =0A=0A"Perhaps quirky to some but still intriguing, this documen= tary compares the tiny world created by model train buffs as a setting for = their tracks and locomotives to paintings by Manny Farber, and features exc= erpts from his writings. The model train system is complex and large enough= to occupy a part of an airplane hangar in Del Mar, California. Small citie= s and villages, hills and valleys and bridges, an entire rural and urban la= ndscape in miniature provide the setting for a railway system built by a gr= oup of aficionados. But what the model train enthusiasts see as essential t= o a realistic and ideal landscape may or may not coincide with what Farber = sees in an American view of both landscape and culture."=0A=0A(Manny Farber= , just as a reminder, is not only one of the outstanding American film crit= ics--see his book Negative Space--but also a rather good painter, born in 1= 917.)=0A=0A----- Original Message ----=0AFrom: Halvard Johnson =0ATo: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: Thursday, 17 January= , 2008 6:19:05 PM=0ASubject: Re: Railroad Club=0A=0AAnd let's not forget "C= losely Watched Trains."=0A=0AHal=0A=0A"Getting shot hurts."=0A -= -Ronald Reagan=0A=0AHalvard Johnson=0A=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=0Ahalvard@earthlink.net=0Ahttp://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/i= ndex.html=0Ahttp://entropyandme.blogspot.com=0Ahttp://imageswithoutwords.bl= ogspot.com=0Ahttp://www.hamiltonstone.org=0Ahttp://home.earthlink.net/~halv= ard/vidalocabooks.html=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A=0AOn Jan 17, 2008, at 1:04 AM, = Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote:=0A=0A> Alan,=0A>=0A> Did you see the movie The Sta= tion Master? In that movie also there =0A> is a club=0A> where all meet an= d watch films of trains moving in rapt attention, =0A> just=0A> moving? Th= e main character, who is a dwarf, loves trains, their =0A> schedules,=0A> = takes walks on the rail lines. I wander if on some level the =0A> miniatur= ization=0A> in the mock ups in the Morganton figures -and your photos of th= em- the=0A> importance of that miniaturization in all sorts of way and the = main=0A> character in the movie being a dwarf connect in an important way? = =0A> What is=0A> real?=0A>=0A> Trains of an earlier generation -which both= Morganton images and the =0A> trains=0A> in The Station Master reflect- = contained an element of duration which=0A> contemporary/bullet trains do no= t. Things happened in those trains. =0A> Murders=0A> were committed, peopl= e met, spies intrigued against each other, at =0A> their=0A> departures lo= vers got separated, wives left behind during the war =0A> waited for=0A> t= heir soldier husbands, often of the defeated army, to return. =0A> Station= s were=0A> built as contamporaneous palaces. Can you imagine the same mythi= cal =0A> aura=0A> -what Walter Benjamin assigns to the "new" technologies = of our =0A> childhood=0A> ("wornout images?") as a dialectic, analytic dre= am of history- =0A> existing=0A> around a bullet train? The images of your= Morgantown photos have a =0A> similar=0A> duration. The function of the p= lace is problematic, not exactly a =0A> symbol or=0A> a fetish; but simply= there, basically at least to us, a found object =0A> a la=0A> David. Thi= s ambiguous use creates duration, thickens, substantiates =0A> the=0A> emp= ty areas.problematizes perspective.=0A>=0A> When you write, "the images (th= ey're mine) were completely unmodified,=0A> except of course for=0A> size r= eduction," what do you mean? I assume you took the =0A> photographs? How= =0A> did the "size reduction" occur? I am not clear.=0A>=0A> "I think you'r= e right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is =0A> arbitrary and=0A> what= 's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the exigencies =0A> of= =0A> taking _this_ image and not another."=0A>=0A> Do you mean the "facts,"= the object in front of the lens dictates the=0A> photograph? Do you unders= tand what I mean by the independence of =0A> "gesture"=0A> -of what is bef= ore the lens- creates the photograph, despite all the=0A> manipulative impu= lses of the photographer? This democratic/chaotic =0A> impulse=0A> inheren= t in photography as a medium?=0A>=0A> "The perspective-shifting was amazing= , and what held us there for a =0A> long=0A> time. And it's a shift not on= ly in space, but of course scale and =0A> time;=0A> it's complex, beautifu= l."=0A>=0A> Exactly. That's what I mean by duration anjd the unsettling = =0A> substatiation=0A> the space of the photograph undergoes.=0A>=0A> "I wo= nder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to =0A> Eco's= =0A> notion of double coding?"=0A>=0A> I had not heard of Eco's phrase, but= truly a double encoding =0A> creating a=0A> mental pun occurs: the code o= f the miniature object encounters the =0A> code of=0A> the perspective. Th= erefore, those images taken from above are doubly =0A> small=0A> which, i= ronically, make them more "real," gaining for an instant in =0A> the mind= =0A> the dimensions of their non-photographic size.=0A>=0A> Come to think o= f it, there is a third encoding, that of photography =0A> itself,=0A> whic= h seemingly (only seemingly) miniaturizes the subject into a =0A> smaller= =0A> frame, a frame which itself dissolves.=0A>=0A> Ciao,=0A>=0A> Murat=0A>= =0A> On Jan 16, 2008 1:10 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote:=0A>= =0A>> Hi Murat - I'm on a terrible connection. I started to reply at =0A>>= length but=0A>> briefly, before it goes off - the place is in the basement= of a =0A>> popular=0A>> restaurant here in Morgantown. There are about 26= members of the =0A>> club,=0A>> most of whom I gather are active. We foun= d this out when visiting. =0A>> The=0A>> model is in several sections, and= each seems to have 'modules' made =0A>> by=0A>> various members. I was f= ascinated by the wornout imagery; this =0A>> definitely=0A>> reflects aura= , but not fetishization. Instead, the club emphasizes, =0A>> as=0A>> thes= e usually do I think, community, social/charitable events, etc. =0A>> The= =0A>> images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, except of course = =0A>> for=0A>> size reduction. The model railroad club meets, I think, Thur= sday =0A>> evenings,=0A>> but I'm not sure whether or not this is every Th= ursday. I wish I =0A>> could=0A>> tell you more! We may end up going to a = meeting to see what it's =0A>> like.=0A>>=0A>> I think you're right re: th= e frame; the frame in a sense is =0A>> arbitrary and=0A>> what's of intere= st is almost off-handedly captured by the =0A>> exigencies of=0A>> taking = _this_ image and not another.=0A>>=0A>> The perspective-shifting was amazin= g, and what held us there for a =0A>> long=0A>> time. And it's a shift not= only in space, but of course scale and =0A>> time;=0A>> it's complex, bea= utiful.=0A>>=0A>> I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be r= elated to =0A>> Eco's=0A>> notion of double coding?=0A>>=0A>> Thanks for t= his! - Alan=0A>> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:01:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Jim and Murat-- (I added on after this part of a Burroughs note i sent last week as i think it got lost in the shuffle and it relates with some of this) I looked up "code poetry" and there are 443,000 listings so it is literally a "going concern" complete with ads for t-shirts and logos and lesson books, programs, web sites und so weider-- When we were 12 my friend Sergio and i, to make school more interesting, invented a "secret society" called SHAM--"Secret Horrible And Mysterious"--we made up codes and planted all over the school messages and signs in them, some elaborately hidden, some in plain sight--no one ever caught on--we never were sure if this meant we had succeeded or in some way had failed--on the one hand we were indeed secret and mysterious--but if unknown to such a degree--were we at all able to be horrible? I find it still a fascinating, time traveling code that Savinio sees in the "proof" of Schliemann's Troy being revealed by its shelling by a First World War British ship named Agamemnon. (This is the kind of incident that Burroughs worked to find with his cut-ups among his notebooks, his creations of time travel.) That the majority of persons will miss this code and instead read the scene simply as a British warship shelling a bunch of ruins in Turkey has a parallel in the reception of Savinio's own work. As Leonardo Sciascia writes: "But who in Italy has read his works, despite the optimistic reissue of some them in recent years? Savinino himself, speaking of foolish and mediocre readers would say: "But are there among Savinio's readers fools and mediocrities?" Not a question, but an assertion; he was sure there were none." Sciascia uses this example as an aside to demonstrate an event that occurs in his search for a possible solution to an enigma, the disappearance in 1938 of the Italian nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana. (Rememeber this is an Italian story--): A person who gives information to a person who supplies a corraboration for Sciascia that Majorana, who it is supposed knew before anyone else the secret of the A-Bomb, and may have sought refuge in a monastery, supplies also the information that it is rumored that one of the members of the crew of the bomber that dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima had also gone to the same monastery for a while. I wrote a while ago here re the baseball player, spy and radio star Moe Berg and the Hiroshima Bomb, Jack Spicer and Yasusada. Organized a bit, the writing is now called "Before Curveball." "Curveball" himself now features in a piece leading up to and including the Guantanamo Poems, as "Curveball" is the code name for the Iraqi informer whose fake information was used as "solid evidence" which was presented complete with models to the UN by Colin Powell for the War in Iraq. "Curveball" threw a "curveball" all right, with as disastrous effects as the spying of Moe Berg. These bizarre baseball connections thus link two American wars and the poetries connected with them by their own strange routes. These create a code which one finds as one goes along-- I think this finding of codes is different from the programming of them-- In the Guantanamo Poems what i think makes them a very important event is that they are the first book of a new form of what i for now call the New Extreme Experimental American Poetry. The breakdown of the ego, the personality, of the detainee through prolonged periods of sleep deprivation, alternations of extreme heat and extreme cold, beatings, electro-shocks, waterboardings, light deprivations, prolonged light exposures, solitary confinements, prolonged exposures to extremely loud music and white noise--all of these techniques to destroy as much as possible the person and their memories, erase them as much as possible as any kind of human with any kind of culture and at the same time force them to speak, all of this creates a new kind of "poet." and "poetics." This "poet's" work is for the most part censored out of fear it may contain "coded messages," and what is allowed to be presented must be passed through a form of "non-literary" translation which greatly resembles some of the techniques advocated in the "List of Writing Experiments" of Charles Bernstein. We now have an "electrified" and "recoded" and "experimentally translated" as it were "body of work" produced under the watchful eyes of the ultimate American Panopticon, the extra-legal Guantanamo. The Guantanamo Poems weren't very well received of course. "A product of the Pentagon, " "bad poetry in non-literary translations," "I won't read it," all the bad reviews plus Robert Pinsky's noting "no Mandelstams here." What a relief!! God forbid there had been a Mandelstam there! But the beauty of the New Extreme Experimental Poetry is that it ensures the production of the poetry of "The Shock Doctrine" as Naomi Klein calls it. This electro-schock poetry is the opposite of the "Projections" of Jenny Holzer, which go hand in hand with the writings and figure and institutions and receptions of Power. The electro-shock poetry is to prove how incredibly impoverished and pathetic culturally the "terrorist," "Islamo-Fascist" "enemy-combatant" really is. The "Projections" prove how incredibly "free" and "good" and "critical" and "appreciative of good poetry" "we" are. This battle of the electricities --the Electricity of Illumination and "Projections" and the Electricity of Shock and Prisons--is an "update" of the "electric code" war between Westinghouse and Edison in the latter part of the 19th Century. Though he was neither pro nor con the death penalty nor the use of electricity for it, Edison became an (elaborately underhanded) advocate of the use of A/C current over hanging and the guillotine as a method of dispatching those judged deserving. A/C was the product of his rival Westinghouse--Edison supported this in order to further the public image of his D/C current as the "Safe" one. Westinghouse would be the Bringer of Death, the Shock Doctrine, the Prison coded Electric Chair Provider, the Power Behind Old Sparky's Throne, and Edison the benevolent "Projections," and electric light bulb provider. "Let there be light" as opposed to "let there be be the dark hood." So the "battle of the codes" as a "Light" and "Death" matter is inscribed in the history of electricity itself. (actually i remember in the early 1970's my father mentioning something about computers that were writing poetry-- i remember asking him if computer poems followed the linguistics of human languages or a "linguistics" of binaries--or might even somehow involve more complex formulae-- or weren't many formulae in themselves poetry in their condensed "perfection"-- moe berg, the A-Bomb-Heisenberg-Mickey Mantle--Ezra Pound--all play a part in this area of things) Murat I thoroughly enjoy and know this of language you write of. It's in the Burroughs quote I used re a glossary of a language whose intentions are fugitive and in a lot of poetry in cultures the world round. Chaucer and Villon spring to mind, for example. Often, where i live, we have conversations using words which sound like "normal everyday words" to an outsider" but to us have a completely different meaning. I'ts the art of speaking night thoughts in broad daylight. The language of the "world within the world." A friend was visiting one day and listened to us having a conversation for about ten minutes. Later he remarked what a pleasant event it seemed we had been talking about and what a nice time we must have had. Actually we were discussing a body found laid out neatly as a sign beside a dumpster kitty corner to here, shot execution style, to differentiate it from a guy shot the other day in the street not as an execution. I saw that event when going to buy cigarettes, about forty feet away from me. And only from the back. And only in code, so to speak. We had also been discussing the rise in price of cigarettes and bus tickets. All of it impenetrable to my friend, and just as well. Actually one could say that "code is the subject" of itself in such works as Illuminated Manuscripts and examples such as the Alhambra. The calligraphies and images which are within the lettering and borders of illuminated Manuscripts contain further meanings which are forms of codes both "a part of" and "apart from" in a supplementary sense. In the Alhambra, the caligraphies are both written texts and mathematical formulae, there is a doubling carrying of codes. Reading some of the examples in the journal noted, what one finds is not that he ideas are new, but simply that the medium being used is different. Long before Morse code poems for example, there were semaphore poems, made by the international codes using flags from ship to ship or hill to hill--I imagine many smoke signal poems and also mirror flashing poems among messages transmitted at a distance by these, let alone carrier pigeon poems, the first Air Mail Art being borne aloft in this manner also. "A poem can be made of anything" as WC Williams wrote. One could take the junk on this table and arrange it a myriad ways as poems, or take a bunch of identical plates or cups out of a cupboard and arrange them in various patterns as "lines", with spacings suggestive of "pauses" and "accents" and "volumes." Murat and I are interested in the ways in which language camouflages an identity so that it may appear to "assimilate" for reasons of survival, as well as means of resistance. Codes at one level have to do with "value" in terms of the "status" of the "object"--for example bar codes and ISBN numbers. In the computer information world, codes such as these are shifted on to persons in as many ways as there are codes for determining angles of value determination. New forms of camouflaging and resisting will be developed just as quickly as new methods of "identifying" and "profiling" are. As the then Soviets and now Americans are discovering in Afghanistan, their seeming complete superiority in technology and communications over the Afghans was and is routinely undermined by a communications system based on the delivery of messages by runners, the most ancient of methods. For over a decade now my visual poetry, mail art etc has been made with found materials and at one point I had the ironic and hilarious experience of receiving a Mail Art journal with an essay I had written on my Street sources while I was as it were removed from the streets for a period, and learning how to find materials in the most limited situations. Making do for long periods without email or even a phone, tv and ignoring the radio. I think what one learns from this experience is that the world is as yet unread and unwritten in so many ways because in a sense persons have been losing an ability to read and write independently in many ways due to the dependence on the codes via being plugged into machines ultimately controlled by others. The kind of skepticism Murat and I have towards this embrace of codes is that all too often codes are applied to persons, and persons have to in turn decode and recode the codes in order to both survive and resist. Poetry is a gathering together of many strange elements which peculiarly enough are named among the living, as actualites, as Savino demonstrated, and in turn, using his example, is not Troy located in Turkey and Murat from Turkey? And I am writing from Milwaukee, which is where I met Murat? Are we "secret agents" of "another code"--"double agents"--"foreign agents"-- In the immediate world are already the codes spoken which are at once both "obvious words" and "secret," the "proof of Troy," the "New Extreme Experimental American Poetry" in which Curveball and Moe Berg play a part, along with Thomas Edison and Westinghouse, Naomi Klein and Savinio, Sciasia, the Italian Letter, forgeries, Emily Dickinson and car bombings, Roberto Bolano and 9/11 and much much else. here's part of the Burroughs-- Burroughs' cut-ups, unlike the productions of the machines online that one can use to do cut-ups as though "not by oneself," are methods of making a "minority of one" which via camouflages, masks, "being obvious," essays survival as an intact writer. "The Death of the Author" so beloved of Authors, for this kind of writer has already been experienced near-literally and figuratively; what remains is the desire to live, go on living as a writer--and so the camouflages, disguises, masks, "role playing" and heteronyms, "alter egos." In Burrogghs' cut-ups--the cut-up uses texts to reveal the synchronicities and correspondences which exist among them, which in turn give evidences of the "plot," the "conspiracy" going on and conducted by Language As Control. The cutting up is to reveal the inner anatomy so to speak of the bodies of the Monsters, the Mobsters of the Nova Mob and their spreading virus-word-conspiracy. The "consciousness" "outside oneself," which one "lets in" via "destruction of the ego" through randomness--on the one hand may be "cosmic, the universe,"--"a power greater than ourselves"--or it may be Control--the Nova Mob, Big Brother, "His Master's Voice" as was the old the RCA Victor record label's image of the dog listening to the giant flower of the Victrola's "speaker." Burroughs as he noted in the Introduction to Queer--thought of himself as being of the Middle Ages in his thinking regarding "psychology." (He had after all studied for a year in Vienna after graduating from Harvard.) It is NOT the "ego" which one wants to get away from but the forces outside one which try to destroy one's being, take control of it and use it for their purposes. The writer's activity is a guerrilla one against being turned into a passive, consenting, or unwitting accomplice in the vast complicities with the conspiracies of Control. In the Introduction to the first edition of Junkie, which is reprinted in later printings, Burroughs notes of the little glossary of street/drug terms at the back of the book: "Therefore a final glossary cannot be made of words whose intentions are fugitive." The writer is at once the detective and the outlaw--an agent "posing" inside the imposed "seemingly random" cover of Control. The secret agent/intrepid reporter/private investigator/"Inspector Lee" is ceaselessly at work to dismantle and discover, uncover, recover "evidence" to be used not simply for "cutting up" but--as Burroughs makes clear--arranging, editing, creating the "Files" which make use of the juxtapositions of words, images, memories,dreams, fictions and facts, so as to be making an ongoing "fugitive" language which at once perceives and deceives Control. the writer is not attempting to become "ego-less"--but a series of "identities" which are 'disguises" and "camouflages" such that the writer becomes "El Hombre Invisible" as one of Burroughs' own sobriquets "pictured" him. The writer participates in a series of anonymous, heteronymous, pseudonymous and invented personas" parts," "roles," "charcters." This is not to destroy the "identity" of the writer at the core, but to preserve the writer in order to continue writing for writing is the means of survival in a world in which both the "seemingly random" and the "obvious' are bent on maintaining their control over one. The great Jazz musician Don Cherry used to very often say--"Free Jazz can only be played by superbly disciplined musicians." Burroughs' years of work with the cut ups in texts, images, sound recordings, film--this has affinities with Rimbaud's "long reasoned derangement of the senses" in order to arrive at the Unknown," which for Burroughs is the being always a step ahead of the Control, of Language. For Burroughs this to make possible not only travel in space, but travel in time for the writer. Burroughs was always precise on the point that no work was done when he was using drugs. Drugs are Control which wipes out the writer. Tabula rasa. Having been a long term addict like Burroughs, it was only after one gets away from that Control, that one enters writing--and why writing is very different from becoming "outside" to oneself--it is the means to find a way to exist as oneself--to survive--what one knows of the Forces of Control. It is that necessity of survival the necessity that is the motherfucker of invention that is involved with the fugitive, "outlaw," "outsider" aspect of writing, the need for the "undercover" aspects, and the reason why so much that one finds around does not appear to one as it does to others. It is too see what is hidden in plain site/sight/cite and at the same time see how many things that "seem" to be "liberating" are disguised traps, or inside out reflections of what they purport to be the opposite of, in opposition to. Often the concept of "opposition" itself can be used as a diversion from what is the overall issue of Control and an essay at understanding and recognising as much as possible its manifestations. An aspect of this is the breaking down seemingly of voices in which Jim notes "all characters seem to be one." The key is that they "seem" to be "one." From the point of view of the writer, they are not one, but many, and constitute a swarm. The swarm is camouflaged by this "seeming" to be one--if it is simply "one" then it can be easily crushed. The multiple "identities" of the writer creates such a swarm, a way of continually being "a minority of one" "on the move" whose "intentions are fugitive"--a "minority of one" whose intentions are to appear now as "one," now as "another," and in turn as a swarm which may appear to the eyes of Control as "one." Kurt Schwitters is one of the truly profound "cut-up" artists--and his collage "method" was to use what he found in the street. Again, Picasso's "I do not seek, I find." This is Burroughs' method in the cut-ups--he used the found texts of newspapers, things found in the street, passages found in his favorite writers, in turn collaging these edited cut-ups, which he put through many transumuttations of his own cutting and pasting by hand--and the n arranging--along side the passages from his dream journals, and others from the memories which were stimulated in turn by the collaged cut-ups and dreams and fictions, poetry of other writers. This for Burroughsconstitutes the writer's method of time travel--to be able to travel among memory, dream, imagined places and persons, factually recorded ones known and unknown to the writers and so create extensions of fugitive As Burroughs writes in the Intro to Queer--writing is for him a matter of life and death. On the day that he shot his wife, he feels that the forces "outside" were in Control, and the use of drugs was the allowing of Control to reduce him to zombie sitting on the edge of his bed staring at his foot for what was a period in which time is "junk time" only measured by the drops from the syringe, the injected transfusions of Control. The Carny world, the hustlers, the small time dope peddlers, snitches, thieves, punks and assorted "low life" and "criminal" doctors, scientists etc that populate Burroughs' universe are his verison in a sense of the Medieval Carnival, in which the masks fall away and the Emperor really has no clothes, Death walks nonchalantly in broad daylight, the Sins come out to play, and the monstrous buffoons that are the forces of Order are for a day or a few truly Buffoons. That is the meaning of "Naked Lunch"--the title from Kerouac's saying that it was the moment when indeed what was on the forks was seen for what it is--not unlike the scene of The Last Supper in Bunuel's Viridiana, the Feast of the the deformed, the degenerate, the diseased and their having their "picture taken" by a woman facing them who lifts her dress up to bare her "camera eye" as the "recorder" of "posterity" that "degrades"not only the Last Supper, but particularly its representations. In a sense, this method destroys not what is the Last Supper itself but the use of its representations as methods of Control The woman's "camera" image "exposes" the degeneration and diseased ("Word Virus") "state of the image" and "image of the state" as a "rotting edifice". (A leper--literally a "rotting one," plays prominent part in all of this, including the violating of Viridiana, the former Nun now a secular "doer of good." Among the "rotting edifices" of the film is Franco's Spain--this is 1961--where "miraculously Bunuel made this, one of his finest works.) "Look at it this way," so to speak. A reporter does not necessarily become "more objective" and "less present" via self-censorship and editing, but more representative of the point of view of the "editorial board" which in turn is accountable to the "board of directors" and they are accountable to the ultimate holders of the accounts--the advertisers whose payments for Space enable the "reporting" to exist as an extension of their "ideology, " their efforts at Control. (Burroughs' grandfather was Ivy Lee, one of the first great "Image Makers," who created John D. Rockefller's image and whom Hitler was intersted in hiring.) This is why really good reporters are so often running afoul of the papers who employ them, let alone governments, state espionage agencies, authorities of al sorts whom they are "investigating" and "reporting on." The rise of infotainment and the increasing employment of huge corporate-state-intlligence-connected "news media" and "translators" like teh sinister MEMRI which controls the Ameircan media's news and translations from the Middle East and uses disinformation, planted stories, dis-translations regularly) are bent on destroying the actual existence of the reporter who does not want to "lose their ego" or "their own writing" to a bunch of special interest groups, governments, corporations, infotainments and "think tank consortiums." The high death toll of reporters and photo journalists, media persons, in war times and ones engaged in trying to investigate drug cartels, gangsterism, corporate frauds is for this reason. The reporter will not let go of that "minority of one" standpoint which is the necessity of someone actually attempting to understand and "report" what is going on, outside of the Control as much as it is possible, which is very hard when from al sides one is a target. The same might be said of using machines which are produced by companies for the production of "randomness"and "cut-ups." Why "take them on faith," for one's "search" to "get outside oneself?" It might be not so much a "loss of ego" as a "liberation" but the surrendering of "oneself" to the corporate machine and becoming another cog in the wheel of the a mass production of texts "reflecting" the "point of view' of that particular company's conception of "randomness" and "cut-ups." If one has an awareness of the "fugitive intentions" of language--for "one's own survival"--in turn causes one makes this demand, this need for the examination of all language, for the "fugitive intentions" of Control. In a society which so "values" such phrases as "the bottom line," and "the buck stops here" (yeah right--) and prints "In God We Trust" on its money, along with the phrase "E Pluribus Unum" which can be interpreted many ways, not al of them "good," is not the "bottom line" to put "trust" in Trusts? "trust me, man," says the smiling dope dealer, the used car salesperson, the voice of the "Con Inside" inserted there from the time of birth. Trust me says the smiling politician--and the smiling Opponent, the Opposition. "Trust me, believe in me, obey me, love me." The basic idea of much of the thinking of Control is this--to get persons to live, work and think in ways which are against their "own best interest" and as much as possible in the "best interests" of Control. The mystical aspect of the found which Murat notes i wrote of a few days ago and this is often involved in my own work. There is also this Burroughsian aspect of a writing which wants to live, by the means which necessity gives it, and not, as much as this is possible, by "taking signs as wonders." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:12:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetry Project Subject: Events at The Poetry Project January In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Here are the upcoming readings at The Poetry Project. Also, scroll down for info on our Spring workshops. Friday, January 18, 10 PM Fall Workshop Reading Students from Patricia Spears Jones', Todd Colby's and Rachel Levitsky's fall poetry workshops will share their work. Wednesday, January 23, 8 PM Erica Hunt & James Sherry Erica Hunt works at the forefront of experimental poetry and poetics, critical race theory, and feminist aesthetics. She has written three books of poetry: Arcade, with artist Alison Saar, Piece Logic, and Local History. Hunt has also worked as a housing organizer, radio producer, poetry teacher= , and program officer for a social justice campaign. She is currently president of The Twenty-First Century Foundation. James Sherry is the autho= r of ten books of poetry and criticism. He is the editor of Roof Books and runs the Segue Foundation in NYC. For the past 10 years he has been involve= d with theoretical environmentalism and has been writing extensively on the subject of poetry and the environment. Introductory Poetry Workshop=8B Frank Lima Tuesdays At 7pm: 10 Sessions Begin February 13 This workshop will engage you with poems of the New York School, in additio= n to some South American poets such as Neruda and Vallejo. You=B9ll receive weekly writing assignments that aim to expand your range and encourage you to take chances, from writing sestinas to more contemporary approaches. Vigorous attention will be placed on editing your poems. Guest poets will visit the workshop from time to time to discuss their work. Frank Lima was born in New York and studied with both Kenneth Koch and Fran= k O=B9Hara. He is the author of Inventory, among other titles, and has written two opera librettos. Poetry And The Visual Arts =AD Vincent Katz Thursdays At 7pm: 5 Sessions Begin February 14 Poetry has had a long and fruitful symbiosis with the visual arts; this workshop will examine some of the relationships and ways that a deeper understanding of the visual arts can enhance one's writing and understandin= g of poetry. We will look at collaborations between visual artists and poets, the effect of the visual on modern and contemporary poets, and Pound's division of logopoeia/melopoeia/phanopoeia and phanopoeia's possible meanings. Poets who have worked as art critics and poets who have been aliv= e to visual art's stimulations whose work we will discuss include Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman, Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard, Eileen Myles, John Yau, and Carter Ratcliff. Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, art critic, editor, and curator. He is the author of nine books of poetry, including Understanding Objects. Know Your Place: Experiments In The Eco-Sphere =AD Lisa Jarnot Fridays At 7pm: 10 Sessions Begin February 15th What is or what can be a writer's relation to space and place? In what ways are ecology and environment intrinsic to creative awareness beyond the stereotypes of mytho-poetic tree worship? How does one transform the particular flora, fauna, and detritus of the domestic into vibrant art? These are the questions we'll ask as we plot a course deep into our own "environments". Weekly readings will be complemented with exercises, experiments, and on-site writing. We'll move through Zukofsky's New York, Olson's Gloucester, Allen Ginsberg's apartment, Hannah Weiner's sink, Berrigan's Cranston Near the City Line, Juliana Spahr's Dole Street, and C.S. Giscombe's Giscome Road. Lisa Jarnot's fourth book of poems, Night Scenes, is forthcoming from Flood Editions in early 2008. She has taught at Naropa, Bard College, Wesleyan University, and Brooklyn College. The Poet In The Library: Research And Imaginative Writing =AD Jill Magi Saturdays At Noon: 10 Sessions Begin February 16th Is there a role for research in imaginative or creative writing projects? Sure! In this workshop we=B9ll combine prior knowledge with curiosity, creating opportunities to =B3stumble upon=B2 interesting language and images. We=B9ll develop research questions to accompany our intuitive and imaginative writings; search for materials in books, historical documents, articles, newspapers; take field trips to public archives, libraries, and historical sites; experiment with using found text; explore ways to structure a long poem, including the possibility of creating a hybrid text, and a text that includes visuals. All along, we=B9ll take a look at works by Susan Howe, Gale Jackson, Claudia Rankine, Juliana Spahr, and others, and the visual/text work of Mary Kelly, Lorna Simpson, The Atlas Group, and others. Jill Magi is the author of Threads and Torchwood. She runs Sona Books. The workshop fee is $350, which includes a one year Sustaining Poetry Project membership and tuition for any and all spring and fall classes. Reservations are required due to limited class space, and payment must be received in advance. Caps on class sizes, if in effect, will be determined by workshop leaders. Please send payment and reservations to: The Poetry Project, St. Mark's Church Attn: Workshops 131 East 10th St. NYC, NY 10003 For more information, or to pay by credit card, please call (212) 674-0910, or email: info@poetryproject.com. All workshops will be held in the Parish Hall at St. Mark's Church on the corner of 10th St. and 2nd Ave. Become a Poetry Project Member! http://poetryproject.com/membership.php Fall Calendar: http://www.poetryproject.com/calendar.php The Poetry Project is located at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery 131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue New York City 10003 Trains: 6, F, N, R, and L. info@poetryproject.com www.poetryproject.com Admission is $8, $7 for students/seniors and $5 for members (though now those who take out a membership at $85 or higher will get in FREE to all regular readings). We are wheelchair accessible with assistance and advance notice. For more info call 212-674-0910. If you=B9d like to be unsubscribed from this mailing list, please drop a line at info@poetryproject.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:33:17 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beckett Subject: Just out from Otoliths MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable =20 Just out from Otoliths: =20 Flush Contour Spencer Selby=20 84 pages, full color=20 ISBN: 978-0-9804541-1-6=20 Otoliths 2008=20 $24.95 + p&h=20 URL: _http://www.lulu.com/content/1492039 _=20 (http://www.lulu.com/content/1492039) =20 Flush Contour is Spencer Selby's fourth collection of visual work, =20 containing 72 vibrant color prints of abstract intermedia art. =20 "Indeed, in Selby's case I sense a stubborn refusal to resolve the image=20 that also inflects=E2=80=94or infects=E2=80=94some of his written work, whi= ch seems to elide=20 the meaning it nevertheless intends, to construct a syntax that implies a=20 certain result then eludes that result for something that is less authorita= tive,=20 more evocative. The words that appear and disappear in these works, both ty= pe-=20 and hand- written, likewise have a protean quality, they seem to be being=20 made before our eyes from the chaos out of which language does actually com= e;=20 word strings that are generative in the same way that those strings of=20 recombinant amino acids in the warm pre-Cambrian seas were, we are told, ge= nerative:=20 of life itself." from the introduction by Martin Edmond, author of Luca =20 Antara.=20 Place of Uncertainty=20 Tom Hibbard=20 92 pages=20 Cover design by M=C3=A1rton Kopp=C3=A1ny =20 ISBN: 978-0-9804541-2-3 =20 Otoliths 2008 =20 $12.95 + p&h =20 URL: _http://www.lulu.com/content/1696322_=20 (http://www.lulu.com/content/1696322) =20 A new collection of poetry from Tom Hibbard who has recently enjoyed gettin= g=20 much of his literary work published on and off-line. Poems, reviews, essays= =20 and translations can be found at Jacket, Big Bridge, Word For /Word, Moria,= =20 Milk, Fish Drum, Cricket, e=C2=B7ratio, Otoliths and elsewhere. An essay on=20= =20 "Linear/Nonlinear" was published in the 2007 issue of Big Bridge. Also in 20= 07 =20 Bronze Skull published a prose poem titled Critique of North American Space= .=20 Hibbard lives in Wisconsin, U.S.A., where he devotes his spare time to grow= ing=20 pumpkins. =20 Poemergency Room=20 Paul Siegell=20 116 pages=20 Cover design by Reed Altemus=20 ISBN: 978-0-9804541-0-9=20 Otoliths 2008=20 $13.45 + p&h=20 URL: _http://www.lulu.com/content/ 1711938_=20 (http://www.lulu.com/content/1711938) =20 "Something HUGE flexes joy here! This is the suicide by cop where banging=20 cymbals rip the portal open! Poetry is the daily political at every mouthfu= l of=20 Siegell as dots connect dimension to dementia! Tell the funeral director I'= d=20 like my coffin lined with these pages, preventing a death of the sleeping!=20 Careful, nutjobs, this is a brother of the Vibratory Order! THANK YOU, Paul= =20 Siegell, for making some real live fucking magic for us!" =E2=80=94CAConrad= , author of=20 Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006)=20 "Paul Siegell's are smart, rich poems. Spectacular, defiant iconographs of=20 cells mid-mitosis, a b-boy mid-break dance move, and more. Nine-to-five=20 frustration and transcendence, train rides, road trips, teen tours, rock co= ncerts,=20 and sudden tragedies. Paul Siegell's poems are full of unexpected=20 significances, each one balanced like a tightrope acrobat always on the edg= e of ruin.=20 Fluent, aware, visual, wholehearted, Paul Siegell clearly sides with pleasu= re=20 in the making of poems. Prepare to be challenged, entertained and astounded= ." =E2=80=94 Jeff Oaks =20 "Paul Siegell's the most original poet =E2=80=93 in sound and sight =E2=80= =93 to break into=20 print so far this millennium. Siegell owns a megaphone in the contest to be= =20 voice of a generation." -- Charles McNair , author of Land O' Goshen and=20 Book Editor at Paste Magazine=20 "I'm always thrilled by Paul's work, especially when I can understand it!"=20= =20 =E2=80=94Elaine Siegell, Paul's mom=20 In addition, parts one & two of the print edition of Otoliths seven are now= =20 available at The Otoliths Storefront:=20 _http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young_ (http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young)=20 Part one =E2=80=94 the b&w & shades of gray part =E2=80=94 contains work fr= om Paul =20 Siegell, Sheila E. Murphy, Julian Jason Haladyn, Bill Drennan, Jeff Harrison= , Jim=20 Leftwich, Matt Hetherington, Mark Prejsnar, Michael Steven, Geof Huth, Anny=20= =20 Ballardini, dan raphael, derek beaulieu, Raymond Farr, Jordan Stempleman, Ve= rnon =20 Frazer, Mark Cunningham, Randall Brock, Tom Hibbard, Andrew Topel, Andrew =20 Taylor, Anne Heide, Catherine Daly, Karri Kokko, Martin Edmond, John M. Benn= ett,=20 Lars Palm & David-Baptiste Chirot. 144 pages. =20 Part two is in full color & contains work from Andrew Topel & John M.=20 Bennett, Robert Gauldie, Marko Niemi, Nigel Long, Matina L. Stamatakis, Nic= o=20 Vassilakis, John M. Bennett, Jeff Crouch, Eileen R. Tabios, M=C3=A1rton Kop= p=C3=A1ny,=20 Katrinka Moore, John M. Bennett & Friends, Alexander Jorgensen, Daniel f Br= adley,=20 harry k stammer & David-Baptiste Chirot. 112 pages. =20 Mark Young =20 =20 =20 (http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young) =20 **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. =20 http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=3Daolcmp00300000002489 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:43:29 -0500 Reply-To: dbuuck@mindspring.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Buuck Subject: Small Press Traffic Poets Theater News - & new SPT Blog! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 1. Please come to the opening night of Poets Theater 08 this Friday the 18th in SF. Details at our new BLOG: http://smallpresstraffic.blogspot.com/ 2. As many of you in the Bay Area have no doubt heard, our sister institution 21Grand, home to the important New Yipes reading series as well as wonderful music, art, film & performance programming, has recently been dealing with some "code compliance issues" as defined (& "enforced") by the City of Oakland. As a result, 21Grand has had to jump through numerous bureaucratic hoops in order to retain its licenses for the kinds of programming that tends to challenge the kinds of code categories that city authorities wish to impose. Sadly, although 21G is on the way to getting things squared away with the city, SPT has had to postpone our scheduled Feb.3 Poets Theater Cabaret until this summer. Keep an eye on our blog and/or website for updated information... David Buuck Board President Small Press Traffic sptraffic.org http://smallpresstraffic.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:51:40 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: blacksox@ATT.NET Subject: Alfred Corn on Ekphrasis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Notes on Ekphrasis by Alfred Corn Ekphrasis (also spelled "ecphrasis") is a direct transcription from the Greek ek, "out of," and phrasis, "speech" or "expression." It's often been translated simply as "description," and seems originally to have been used as a rhetorical term designating a passage in prose or poetry that describes something. More narrowly, it could designate a passage providing a short speech attributed to a mute work of visual art. In recent decades, the use of the term has been limited, first, to visual description and then even more specifically to the description of a real or imagined work of visual art. The use of visual description in poetry is a huge subject, and a good treatment of the topic is found in Carol T. Christ's study The Finer Optic. Descriptions, in poems, of works of music, cinema, or choreography might also qualify as instances of ekphrasis. But these notes will be concerned only with descriptions of works of visual art in a poem, not with description in general, or with description of other kinds of art. Horace, in his Epistles, writes a verse letter to his friend Pisos, the opening lines of which develop the metaphor of painting as a means of criticizing arbitrary combinations of incompatible components in a poem. (This is the third letter of Book II of the Epistles.) Beginning at line 361, in a passage that includes the phrase ut pictura poesis ("like a picture, poetry," or "poetry is like a painting") Horace makes a comparison between the two arts. These lines are often cited as the foundational text establishing a connection between visual and verbal art. But note that Horace describes no particular painting; he refers abstractly to various aspects of the art of painting purely as a metaphor to get at the good or bad qualities a poem may exhibit. The earliest and best known example of ekphrasis is the long description of the shield made by Hephaistos and given to Achilles by his mother Thetis. (The passage is found in Book 18 of the Iliad.) Low-relief sculpture embossed in metal on the surface of the shield is described in elaborate detail. Hephaistos's subjects include constellations, pastures, dancing, and great cities. In fact, visual notation is so extensive that critics have commented that no actual shield in the real world would be able to contain the disparate elements mentioned. So then Homer has imagined a work of art that could not, materially, exist. The immaterial nature of verbal art allows him to do this. The effect on the reader of his description is multi-faceted. On one hand, it tends to move the narrative farther away from ordinary plausibility. On the other, it provides a dreamlike expansion of the subject at hand and allows the poet to make oblique comments on the Iliad's main narrative. Similar to Homer's description of Achilles's shield, though briefer, is the description in Book I of Virgil's Aeneid, beginning at line 450, of the carvings on the wall of the temple Aeneas visits when he first comes to Carthage. Depicted are scenes from the Trojan War, which alert the exiled hero to the fact that the story of the Trojan War and his part in it are already legendary. Another notable instance of ekphrasis occurs in Canto X of Dante's Purgatorio, where the pilgrim poet describes low relief sculptures in white marble carved on the side of the mountain of Purgatory, next to its upward track. These carvings depict Biblical and classical examples of the virtue of humility: the Annunciation, David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, and the Roman Emperor Trajan addressing the mother of a soldier who has been killed. Purgatorio in Dante consists of an upwardly spiraling climb around a mountain, and it may well be Trajan's column in Rome that provided him with the visual form for it. That monument is covered with low relief sculptures of scenes from the Dacian War, and, scene by scene, like frames in a comic strip, they rise upward in helical fashion from bottom to top. In Canto X, Dante not only describes the encounter between Trajan and the bereaved mother, he gives us their dialogue and then refers to it as esto visibleparlare, "this visible speaking." In other words, something magical has occurred: a work of visual art has somehow managed to convey an exchange of speech. Another classic instance of ekphrasis occurs in Book III of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which is concerned with the virtue of chastity. Britomart comes to the house of sorcerer Busyrane, where she sees tapestries depicting Jove's amorous exploits, a contrary example of the virtue being dealt with. After Milton, when epic-length poems become rarer in English-language poetry, the use of ekphrasis is limited to shorter poems, for example, Marvell's "The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers"; or Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" and "To Haydon with a Sonnet Written on Seeing the Elgin Marbles"; Shelley's "On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery"; and Browning's "My Last Duchess." But some long poems as well include them, for example, Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. In the two English-language cases where a poet was also a painter, ekphrastic poems were actually conceived as accompaniments to an actual painting (or vice versa). Blake's "The Tyger," "The Clod and the Pebble," and "Holy Thursday," for example, were first printed underneath or alongside Blake's graphic rendering of the poem's subject. What have been called Blake's "composite works" also influenced Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who provided verse equivalents to several of his paintings, the texts often inscribed below the picture or within it. Usually, but not always, the execution of the painting came first, as in "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin." With "The Blessed Damozel," the poem preceded the painting. In the twentieth century many poets produced ekphrastic poems, and the vast majority of these concern actual, not imaginary works of art. Consider, for example, Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" ; Marianne Moore's "No Swan so Fine" and "Nine Peaches"; Wallace Stevens's "Angel Between Two Paysans"; William Carlos Williams's Pictures from Breughel ; John Berryman's "Hunters in the Snow"; Randall Jarrell's "Knight, Death and the Devil"; W. H. Auden's "The Shield of Achilles," and Elizabeth Bishop's "Large Bad Picture" and "Poem." In recent times there have been a large number of examples, in fact, several anthologies of ekphrastic poems have been assembled, sometimes commissioned by museums whose collections are featured. Some ekphrastic poems describe photographs, and these may be art photographs or else ordinary snapshots, the latter often depicting members of the poet's family. A disadvantage of using family snapshots is that the original image may not embody sufficient artistry to provide the stuff of interesting commentary; nor is that image available to the reader for comparison with the text. Enormous skill is needed in order to convey visual information of this kind, along with the passions and emotional nuances that pictures from childhood arouse in the author. So there is a risk that only a small part of the authors' feelings will actually be accessible to the reader through the intermediary of words alone. Still, some poets have had success writing this kind of poem, for example, Adrienne Rich in "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" and Greg Williamson's "Double Exposures." Actually, a poem about an obscure painting is also at a disadvantage. Where the original image is well known, we can compare it to the poet's version of what it contains; and the poet's departures from the original, or inaccurate interpretations of it, are sometimes revealing. Without the original image, though, we are forced to trust the poet's description as being accurate, and we are unable to know where it is not. Meanwhile, the compositional task is much more difficult in such cases since the text of the poem has to convey all the relevant visual information, while still qualifying as poetry. On the other hand, if the subject is, say, Leonardo's Mona Lisa, or any other very famous work of art, there's no need to give a detailed description; the audience already knows what's in the painting. A disadvantage, though, of using very great works of visual art as a subject for ekphrasis is that the comparison between the original and the poem about it may prove too unfavorable. Readers may wonder why they should bother reading a moderately effective poem when they could instead look at the great painting it was based on. If the poem doesn't contain something more than was already available to the audience, it will strike the reader as superfluous, the secondary product of someone too dependent on the earlier, greater work. The reader may also wonder why the description wasn't done in prose rather than in lines of poetry. All art historians and critics agree that complete and accurate verbal descriptions of visual art are very hard to achieve, even in prose. When the expectations associated with good poetry are part of the goal as well, we see that writing a good ekphrastic poem is a formidable task indeed. The aim of drafting a text entirely adequate to its source, giving a verbal equivalent to every detail in the subject work, is probably too lofty. A more realistic goal is to give a partial account of the work. Once the ambition of producing a complete and accurate description is put aside, a poem can provide new aspects for a work of visual art. It can provide a special angle of approach not usually brought to bear on the original. For example, in a banqueting scene, the poem might, instead of describing the revelers, focus on the dogs, cats, and pet birds given free rein in the scene. More generally, a poem can add the overall resources of verbality, with descriptions developed through surprising metaphors, apt commentary cast in lines with unusual diction and crisp rhythm—perhaps even calling on the techniques of traditional prosody. And then, the poet may devise conversations between figures in the painting or group sculpture and give these the quality of poetry. Finally, the poem may actually treat more than one painting at a time, in a kind of verbal collage or double-exposure. Perhaps the most effective contemporary poems dealing with visual art are those where the authors include themselves in the poem, recounting the background circumstances that led to a viewing of the painting or sculpture in question; or what memories or associations or emotions it stirs in them; or how they might wish the work to be different from what it is. The center of attention in this kind of poem isn't solely the pre-existing work but instead is dual, sharing the autobiographical focus found in the majority of contemporary lyric poems written in English. Poems like these unite ekphrasis with the autobiographical tradition, which is equally ancient and probably more important than ekphrasis alone. After all, the autobiographical tradition can cite figures such as Ovid, Dante, Ben Jonson, Donne, George Herbert, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Akhmatova, Williams, Crane, Lowell, Roethke, Bishop, Berryman, Larkin, Walcott, Merrill, Adrienne Rich, and Seamus Heaney. Of course you can argue that an ekphrastic poem providing no information at all about the author may still convey autobiographical content indirectly, in the form of "voice," tone, level of diction, and the kind and frequency of judgments made in the course of presentation. In "Archaic Torso of Apollo," Rilke gives us no precise autobiographical facts about himself; nevertheless, we get a strong sense of the author's character and prospects from his presentation of the subject, in particular, when he imagines the torso saying to hi m, "Yo u must change your life." Meanwhile, more directly autobiographical ekphrastic poems, like Lowell's "For the Union Dead," Bishop's "Poem," John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," Charles Wright's "Homage to Claude Lorraine," or the present author's "Seeing All the Vermeers," locate the act of viewing visual art in a particular place and time, giving it a personal and perhaps even an historical context. The result is then not merely a verbal "photocopy" of the original painting, sculpture, or photograph, but instead a grounded instance of seeing, shaped by forces outside the artwork. In such poems, description of the original work remains partial, but authors add to it aspects drawn from their own experience—the facts, reflections, and feelings that arise at the confluence of a work of visual art and the life of the poet. Shop & Support Poets.org Another Language of Flowers Paintings by Dorothea Tanning accompanied by poetry from twelve highly esteemed poets. $15.00 | More Info View All Store Items Copyright © 2008 by Alfred Corn. Appears courtesy of the author. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:50:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matt Henriksen Subject: Thurs Jan 31 ::: Steal This Reading ::: Brooklyn, NY MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Steal This Reading: a Brooklyn Book Burning W/ = =0A=0ASteal This Reading:=0A=0A=0Aa Brooklyn Book Burning =0A=0A=0AW/=0A=0A= =0A =0A=0A=0AC.D.=0AWright, Eleni Sikelianos, Graham Foust, Joyelle McSween= ey, Joshua Marie=0AWilkinson, Julie Doxsee, Max Winter, Adam Clay, Zachary = Schomburg, Morgan Lucas=0ASchuldt, Lily Brown, Rauan Klassnik, Cindy Savett= , Jon Thompson, Melanie=0AHubbard=0A=0A=0A=0A=0Ahosted by Black Ocean, Cann= ibal Books, Free Verse Editions, Kitchen Press, Octopus,=0ATarpaulin Sky Pr= ess & Typo.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AThursday, January 31st=0A=0A=0A=0ADoors 7 PM,= $6 =3DAdmission=0A+ Two Drinks=0A=0A=0AEast Coast Aliens=0A=0A=0A216 Frank= lin Street=0A=0A=0A(see directions at the end=0Aof message)=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A= Info at typomag.com/burningchair=0A=0AVenue Website=0A=0A=0A=0AEast Coast A= liens:=0Aeastcoastaliens.com=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AHost Websites=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A= =0A=0ABlack Ocean:=0Ablackocean.org=0A=0ACannibal Books: flesheatingpoems.b= logspot.com=0A=0AFree Verse Editions: parlorpress.com/freeverse=0A=0AKitche= n Press: kitchen-press-book-store.blogspot.com=0A=0AOctopus: octopusmagazin= e.com=0A=0ATarpaulin Sky Press: tarpaulinsky.com/Press/index.html=0A=0ATypo= : typomag.com=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AAuthor Bios=0A=0A=0A= =0A=0A=0ALily Brown is from the east coast but currently lives on the=0Awe= st coast. She is the author of the chapbook, The Renaissance Sheet,=0Apubl= ished by Octopus Books in 2007. Her second chapbook, Old with You, is=0Afo= rthcoming from Kitchen Press. Poems have=0Aappeared or are forthcoming in = Typo, Octopus, Fence, Tarpaulin Sky, Cannibal,=0AHandsome and 26.=0A=0A=0A = =0A=0A=0AJulie Doxsee was born in London, Ontario.=0AHer poems have appeare= d in over thirty-five national and international=0Ajournals, including Aufg= abe, Fourteen Hills, and Tarpaulin Sky.=0AForthcoming publications include = two books: Objects for a Fog Death=0A(Black Ocean, 2008/2009) and Underslee= p (Octopus Books 2008), and two=0Achapbooks: You Will Build a City Out of R= ags (Whole Coconut 2007) and New=0ABody a Seafloor Body (Seeing Eye Books 2= 008). The Knife-Grasses=0A(Octopus Books), and Fog Quartets (horse less pre= ss) are now=0Aavailable. She is full-time faculty at Ko=E7 University in I= stanbul, Turkey.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AGraham Foust lives in Oakland,=0ACalifor= nia with his wife Amy and his son Merle. He teaches writing=0Aand literatu= re at Saint Mary's College of California,=0Aand his most recent book is Nec= essary Stranger (Flood Editions, 2007).=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0ARauan Klassnik wa= s born in Johannesburg,=0ASouth Africa. In his early teens he moved to Dall= as, Texas with his=0Afamily. Much of his time is now spent in Mexico.=0AHis= poems have appeared in Caesura, Hunger Mountain, Pilot Poetry, No Tell=0AM= otel, The Kennesaw Review, Front Porch, The Mississippi=0AReview, The North= American Review,=0AMiPoesias, Handsome, and many other journals. His chapb= ook,=0A"Stitches" was published by Firewheel Editions in 2002 and his first= =0Afull-length collection, Holy Land, will be released by Black Ocean in=0A= the spring of 2008.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AMelanie Hubbard lives in Ruskin, FL,= =0Awith her family. Recently the recipient=0Aof an NEH fellowship, she has= spent the past year completing a scholarly book=0Aon Emily Dickinson's poe= ms in relation to developments in philosophy and=0Alinguistic theory, the i= nvention of photography and the discovery of=0Aelectricity, and changes in = rhetoric, editorial theory, and popular manuscript=0Aactivity. She also wri= tes personal essays, commentaries, book reviews, and=0Afeatures for the St.= Petersburg Times.=0APoems can be found in Typo, Swink, Fence, Cab/Net, hor= se=0Aless review, and Cannibal.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AJoyelle McSweeney is the = author of Nylund, The Sarcographer (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007). She is also= =0Athe author of three titles from Fence Books: Flet, The Red Bird, and The= =0ACommandrine and Other Poems. She is a co-founder and co-editor of Action= =0ABooks and Action, Yes, a press and=0Aweb quarterly for international wri= ting and hybrid forms. She writes regular=0Areviews for Rain Taxi, The Cons= tant Critic,=0Aand other venues and teaches in the MFA Program at Notre Dam= e.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0ACindy=0ASavett=0Ateaches poetry workshops at psychiatr= ic institutions in the Philadelphia area=0Ato both acute short-term and res= idential patients. Her first book, Child=0Ain the Road, has recently been = released. In addition, she is=0Apublished in numerous print and on-line jo= urnals, including Margie, Heliotrope,=0ALIT, The Marlboro Review, 26 Magazi= ne, Cutbank, and=0AFree Verse. She is also at work on a memoir on the deat= h of her=0Adaughter. Cindy has served on several school Boards and other n= on-profit=0Aagencies, and spent fifteen years in the retail business, trave= ling extensively=0Aoverseas. Born and raised in the Philadelphia area, she= currently lives=0Ain Merion, Pennsylvania with her husband and children.= =0A =0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AEleni Sikelianos=0Ais the author of six books, inclu= ding The California Poem and The Book of Jon.=0ADu Soleil, de l=92histoire,= de la vision, a selected poems translated into=0AFrench appeared this fall= . Forthcoming are Body Clock and her=0Atranslation of Jacques Roubaud=92s = Exchanges de la lumi=E8re.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AZachary=0ASchomburg=0Awas born= in Omaha, Nebraska, spent his childhood=0Ain Iowa, and received his BA fro= m College of the Ozarks. Currently, he's pursuing a=0Adoctorate in creative= writing from the University of=0ANebraska. Schomburg edits Octopus Magazin= e and Octopus Books, and=0Aco-curates the Clean Part Reading Series in Linc= oln, NE.=0AHis poems have appeared in the Canary, CutBank,=0ADiagram, Ducky= , Fence, Forklift, Ohio, Good Foot,=0Athe Hat, La Petite Zine, Lamination C= olony, LIT, Mid-American Review,=0AMipoesias, No Tell Motel, Northwest Revi= ew, Parakeet, Pettycoat Relaxer, Spork,=0ASwink, Tarpaulin Sky, Unpleasant = Event Schedule, and Washington Square Review. His debut collection, The=0AM= an Suit, was published Black Ocean in 2007.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AMorgan Lucas = Schuldt is the author of Verge (Free Verse=0AEditions, 2007) and Otherhow (= Kitchen Press, 2007), a chapbook. He=0Alives in Tucson where he edits the = literary=0Ajournal CUE and the chapbook series CUE Editions.=0A=0A=0A =0A= =0A=0AJon=0AThompson=0Ateaches at North Carolina State University where he = edits Free Verse: A=0AJournal of Contemporary Poetry & Poetics and the new = poetry series,=0AFree Verse Editions. His first collection was The Book of = the Floating World,=0Awhich was reissued in a new expanded edition in 2007.= His current poetry=0Amanuscript is titled Strange Country.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A= =0AJoshua Marie Wilkinson is the co-author, with Noah Eli Gordon, of Figure= s for a Darkroom Voice (Tarpaulin=0ASky Press, 2007). He is also the autho= r=0Aof Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned=0ARooms (Pinball, 2005), Lug You= r=0ACareless Body out of the Careful Dusk (U of Iowa, 2006), and The Book o= f Whispering in the Projection=0ABooth (forthcoming from Tupelo Press). =0A= He holds a PhD from University of Denver and lives in Chicago where he=0Ate= aches at Loyola University. His first=0Afilm, Made a Machine by Describing= the=0ALandscape, is due out in 2008.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AMax Winter is the a= uthor of The Pictures (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007). He is also the winner o= f the Fifth Annual Boston Review Poetry=0AContest, and has published poems = in Free=0AVerse, New American Writing, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Colo= rado Review,=0AThe Canary, Denver Quarterly, and Typo.=0AHe has published r= eviews in The New=0AYork Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chro= nicle, Newsday, and BOMB, and is a Poetry Editor of Fence.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A= =0AC.D. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of=0AArkansas. Sh= e is the author of a dozen books. Her most recent titles are One=0ABig Self= : An Investigation (Copper Canyon, 2007), Like Something Flying=0ABackwards= , New and Selected (Bloodaxe Editions, 2007), Cooling Time: An=0AAmerican P= oetry Vigil (Copper Canyon, 2005). Rising, Falling, Hovering=0Awill be out = in 2008, also from Copper Canyon Press. She is a recipient of=0Afellowships= from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts,=0Aand = awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Lannan Foundation.= =0ASteal Away: Selected and New Poems was a finalist for the 2003 Griffin P= oetry=0APrize. In 2004 she was named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2005 she was gi= ven the=0ARobert Creeley Award and elected to membership in the American Ac= ademy of Arts=0Aand Sciences. Wright is the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of= English at Brown=0AUniversity. She lives outside of Providence with her hu= sband, poet Forrest=0AGander.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0ADirections to Eas= t=0ACoast Aliens=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0Aby taxi=0A(recommended)=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A= =0Afrom Midtown Manhattan=0A=0A=0ATake the upper level of=0Athe Queensborou= gh Bridge into Queens & turn left on 21st=0AStreet. Cross the Pulaski Brid= ge, which=0Aturns into McGuiness Boulevard on the Brooklyn side. Take the = third right after the bridge at Huron St. After two blocks turn right on F= ranklin=0ASt. East Coast Aliens is on the right=0Aside. The ride from Mid= town (w/ gratuity)=0Ashould cost between $20-25.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0Afrom Low= er Manhattan=0A=0A=0ATake the Williamsburg=0ABridge to the BQE (Brooklyn-Qu= eens Expressway) north to McGuiness Boulevard=0A(Exit 33). Turn left onto = McGuiness=0ABoulevard. After approximately eight=0Ablocks turn left on Gre= enpoint Avenue. =0AAfter three blocks turn right on Franklin Street. East = Coast Aliens is four blocks up on the=0Aright side. The ride from Lower=0A= Manhattan (w/ gratuity) should range between $20-25.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0Aby t= rain (for the=0Aadventuresome & frugal)=0A=0A=0Afrom Midtown Manhattan=0A= =0A=0ATake the Queens-bound 7=0Atrain from Times Square, Bryant Park or Gra= nd Central to Vernon/Jackson (the=0Afirst stop after Grand Central). Exit= =0Aat Jackson Ave. & walk one block east to the B61 bus stop at 11th=0ASt a= nd Jackson Ave. Take the B61 two stops to Manhattan Ave. between Freeman=0A= and Green. Walk right on Green St. one=0Ablock to Franklin St. & turn left= . East Coast Aliens is on your left.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0Afrom Lower Manhattan= =0A(simpler than from Midtown)=0A=0A=0ATake the Brooklyn-bound L=0Atrain to= Lorimer. Transfer at the station to the Metropolitan stop of the G=0Atrain= . Take the Queens-bound G train two stops to Greenpoint Ave. Exit at India= St. & walk one block north=0Ato Huron St. Turn left on Huron, walk=0Aone = block to Franklin St. & turn=0Aright. East Coast Aliens is on your=0Arigh= t.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0Afrom Brooklyn and=0AQueens (or ride your bike!)=0A=0A= =0ATake the G train to=0AGreenpoint Ave. Exit at India St. &=0Ahead north = one block to Huron St. Turn=0Aleft on Huron, walk one block to Franklin St= . & turn right. East Coast Aliens is on your right.=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A = _______________________________________________________________________= _____________=0ABe a better friend, newshound, and =0Aknow-it-all with Yaho= o! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=3DAhu06i62sR8HDtDypa= o8Wcj9tAcJ =0A ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:51:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matt Henriksen Subject: Sat Feb 2 ::: Cannibal Release Party ::: East Village, NYC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-7 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear fool-hearted lovers & aesthetic geniuses, come burn so= =0A=0ADear fool-hearted lovers=0A& aesthetic geniuses,=0A=0A=0Acome burn so= me flesh w/ us=0Aat=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0Athe Cannibal Birthday=0AParty=0A=0A= =0A(three years old)=0A=0A=0Afeaturing=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0Apoets from Canniba= l:=0AIssue Three=0A=0A=0APhil Cordelli, Jeff Encke=0A& Andrew Hughes, =0A= =0A=0A =0A=0A=0A& Cannibal Books=0Aauthors=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AMelanie Hubbar= d (Gilbi=0AWinco Swags)=0A=0A=0ABen Mazer (The=0AFoundations of Poetry Math= ematics)=0A=0A=0A& =0A=0A=0ABronwen Tate (My Proust=0AVocabulary, forthcomi= ng 2008)=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0ASaturday, February 2nd=0A6 PM=0A=0A=0AJimmy=A2s = No. 43 Stage=0A=0A=0A43 East 7th=0AStreet, NYC=0A=0A=0Abtwn. 2nd &=0A3rd Av= es.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0ACannibal & Cannibal Books will be on hand at the=0Are= ading, as well as at our AWP table, at discounted prices.=0A=0A=0A=0A=0APhi= l Cordelli lives in New York City where=0Ahe has been strictly obeying the = alternate-side parking restrictions. He is=0Aalso an editor at Ugly Ducklin= g Presse. His poetry can be found in a bunch of=0Aplaces, but mostly his ap= artment.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AJeff Encke, author of Most Wanted: A Gamble in V= erse,=0Ahas published poems in Barrow Street, Black Warrior Review, Colorad= o Review, Fence, Octopus, Tarpaulin Sky, Typo,=0Aand elsewhere. He received= a Templeton Lectureship in 2001 through Columbia University=A2s Program in= Narrative Medicine,=0Awhere he taught literature and creative writing whil= e completing his doctorate=0Ain English. He now lives in Seattle.=0A=0A=0A = =0A=0A=0AMelanie Hubbard lives in Ruskin, FL,=0Awith her family. Recently = the recipient=0Aof an NEH fellowship, she has spent the past year completin= g a scholarly book=0Aon Emily Dickinson's poems in relation to developments= in philosophy and=0Alinguistic theory, the invention of photography and th= e discovery of=0Aelectricity, and changes in rhetoric, editorial theory, an= d popular manuscript=0Aactivity. She also writes personal essays, commentar= ies, book reviews, and=0Afeatures for the St. Petersburg=0ATimes. Poems can= be found in Typo, Swink, Fence, Cab/Net,=0Ahorse less review, and Cannibal= .=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0AAndrew Hughes divides his time between NYC=0Aand Vermon= t. His work has appeared or is=0Aforthcoming in Forklift, Ohio; Cannibal;= =0ASpell; Octopus; Can We Have Our Ball Back; and others.=0A=0A=0A =0A=0A= =0ABen Mazer is the author of The Foundations of Poetry=0AMathematics (Cann= ibal Books) Johanna Poems (Cy Gist Press) and White=0ACities (Barbara Matte= au Editions). He is the editor of Landis Everson=A2s Everything=0APreserved= : Poems 1955-2005 (Graywolf) and The Complete Poems of John=0ACrowe Ransom = (forthcoming from Handsel/Norton). He is a contributing editor to Fulcrum.= =0A=0A=0A =0A=0A=0ABronwen Tate is the author of Souvenirs (Dusie=0AChapboo= k Kollektiv, 2007). She received an MFA from Brown University and is curren= tly=0Apursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature at Stanford University, wher= e she also edits Mantis:=0AA Journal of Poetry, Criticism, and Translation.= Recent poems have=0Aappeared or are forthcoming in LIT, CapGun, Foursquare= , The Cultural=0ASociety, and Octopus. =0A=0A=0A=0A=0A=0A ____________= ________________________________________________________________________=0A= Be a better friend, newshound, and =0Aknow-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try = it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=3DAhu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ =0A ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:19:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: graphic used interface MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed graphic used interface http://www.alansondheim.org/gui.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/gui.mp3 constrained and smeared temporally and spatially swallowing time, swallowing space body used and wounded, sutured sound smeared fore and aft both say everywhere everywhere both say everywhere where are you i'm hurting both say everywhere where are you i'm saved ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:01:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801161647p6689141bq88e100ea4bb43c2@mail.gmail.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi Murat, I like your observation about power and control concerning code. Concerning code poetry, perhaps both are involved. In its engagement with the digital literary and other relatively new and/or unusual forms of the literary, like other avant garde art, in part it may sometimes seek escape from the usual literary authorities and modes of production and distribution. But it's also an attempt to gain understanding of and control of or within the contemporary language scapes where code and language are conflated, transmitted, received, interpreted, and misunderstood billions of times per second. Also, engagement with code *and* language seems like a particularly apt way into both engagement with questions of who and what we are. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:34:35 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gareth Farmer Subject: Call For Papers: Long Poems ::: Major Forms, Sussex University MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Dear Friends Below is a call for papers for an exciting conference taking place at=20 Sussex University in May. With best wishes, Gareth Farmer CALL FOR PAPERS The University of Sussex=92s School of Humanities, in conjunction with the=20 Centre for Modernist Studies, invites submissions for papers to be given at = the following conference, scheduled for Friday the 16th and Saturday the=20 17th of May 2008: Long Poems ::: Major Forms The =91long poem=92 has been traditionally conceived of as the principal = means=20 by which poets confront political and aesthetic problems through sustained=20 investigations. Beyond this general outline, or indeed perhaps because of=20 it, there is little consensus as to either what the long poem is, or what it might be uniquely capable of. In =91The Poetic Principle,=92 = Edgar Allen Poe went so far as to assert that =93a long poem does not = exist=94=20 since =93the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic=20 under the sun, is a nullity.=94 Years later, and seeking to resolve the technical and affective dilemmas that Poe identified, Charles Olson=20 prescribed a =91projective verse=92 that he purported might carry =93much = larger=20 material than it has carried in our language since the Elizabethans.=94 He=20 thought Pound=92s Cantos exemplified the beginnings of such poetry, displaying a methodology capable of solving =93problems of larger content = and=20 of larger forms.=94 This conference seeks to address the contemporary relevance of the long=20 poem: how has it evolved, what standing does it currently hold, and who are = now its readers? As both a poetic and a critical concept, the =91long = poem=92=20 presents poets with the difficulty of articulating what Pound called =93a=20 compound of freedom and order=94 that =93hangs between chaos on the one = side and mechanics on the other.=94 We hope this conference will provide a forum = for the consideration of ways in which comprehensive, often formally=20 complex and expansive poems may respond, or fail to respond, to certain=20 =93obligations toward the difficult whole,=94 and to explore what these=20 obligations might now entail for both poets and their readers. We therefore = welcome proposals for presentations addressing aesthetic, formal, generic,=20 compositional and literary-historical questions the =91long poem=92 brings = into=20 particular focus. * Papers should be no more than 20 minutes in length, and calibrated towards=20 generating wider discussion. Please send a 250-word abstract, along with a=20 brief biographical note by 1st March 2008 to=20 thelongpoemconference@sussex.ac.uk. We will send out notifications shortly=20 thereafter. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:55:14 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: obituary: "Iraqi poet who joined the Beat generation" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable My ignorance of contemporary world poetry always hits me hardest when I lea= rn about a poet from an obituary; here is the Guardian's obit for Sargon Bo= ulus, an Iraqi poet who lived in San Francisco and translated contemporary = Arab poetry into English:=0A=0Ahttp://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0= ,,2242681,00.html=0A=0Aand here is a link to some poems of his:=0A=0Ahttp:/= /www.masthead.net.au/issue9/boulus.html ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:32:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Davey Volner Subject: Loren Goodman and Friends, Friday, January 25th MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline *POETRY READING, BOAT EXPO AND GUN SHOW* *Loren* *GOODMAN* *Jon* *COTNER* *Andy* *FITCH* *Davey* *VOLNER* "*Come, sample our gracious lifestyle. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain*." Friday, January 25th, 7PM-8PM Cohan and Leslie Gallery 138 Tenth Ave. (between 18th and 19th Streets in Chelsea) Free admission. Vodka sponsorship by Pravda. Loren Goodman was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 2003. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Grolier Annual, and Exquisite Corpse. Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch's transcription work has recently appeared on UbuWeb. Forthcoming publications include Paper Monument and Ugly Duckling Presse's Dossier Series. Davey Volner is a poet and critic living in Manhattan, and a regular contributor to the Architectural Record. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:24:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Recent NOMADICS blog posts Comments: To: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics" Comments: cc: Britis-Irish List Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) It's been a busy week! Check out the following posts at: = http://pjoris.blogspot.com Mallarm=E9 in Arabic Technicians of the sacred finally in French William Kennedy at 80 Cloning a City New Photos of Ed Dorn Latest signandsight Offerings An have a great weekend! Pierre ___________________________________________________________ The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan ___________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris 244 Elm Street Albany NY 12202 h: 518 426 0433 c: 518 225 7123 o: 518 442 40 71 Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 email: joris@albany.edu http://pierrejoris.com Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:45:51 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roy Exley Subject: Roy Exley - Re: Just out from Otoliths In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Dear Tom, I don't know off-hand what ambient water temperature is required as a mediu= m for the optimal recombination of amino acid cells, but it should be borne i= n mind that our concept of warm in terms of water temperature may well have been cool in the context of the Pre-Cambrian seas, indeed it is an established fact that the cooler regions of our present-day oceans that are richest in microbial nutrients and therefore support the greatest diversity and profusion of marine life. Bearing in mind the conscious (and, of course sub-conscious) basis for the propagation of 'word strings' I feel that it i= s a rather dubious comparison you have made here, and I am glad that you qualified your comparison with the all important phrase, 'we are told'. I understand your need to elaborate upon your protean reference but just as Selby is so adroit at knowing where to draw a particular work to a conclusion I think it might have been wiser should you have stopped short a= t protean. I hope that the contemporary debate on the ekphrastic will run and run, it already has several decades behind it so there's no reason why not. Maybe an ekphrastic exegesis of Alexis Rockman's early paintings of prehistoric tropical seas would offer an appropriate addendum here. Alexis Rockman devotees please textually step forward here. Roy Exley. On 18/1/08 2:33 am, "Tom Beckett" wrote: > =20 > Just out from Otoliths: > =20 > Flush Contour > Spencer Selby=20 > 84 pages, full color > ISBN: 978-0-9804541-1-6 > Otoliths 2008=20 > $24.95 + p&h=20 > URL: _http://www.lulu.com/content/1492039 _ > (http://www.lulu.com/content/1492039) > Flush Contour is Spencer Selby's fourth collection of visual work, > containing 72 vibrant color prints of abstract intermedia art. >=20 > "Indeed, in Selby's case I sense a stubborn refusal to resolve the image > that also inflects=8Bor infects=8Bsome of his written work, which seems to e= lide > the meaning it nevertheless intends, to construct a syntax that implies = a > certain result then eludes that result for something that is less > authoritative,=20 > more evocative. The words that appear and disappear in these works, both > type-=20 > and hand- written, likewise have a protean quality, they seem to be bein= g > made before our eyes from the chaos out of which language does actually = come; > word strings that are generative in the same way that those strings of > recombinant amino acids in the warm pre-Cambrian seas were, we are told, > generative:=20 > of life itself." from the introduction by Martin Edmond, author of Luca > Antara.=20 > Place of Uncertainty > Tom Hibbard=20 > 92 pages=20 > Cover design by M=E1rton Kopp=E1ny > ISBN: 978-0-9804541-2-3 > Otoliths 2008 =20 > $12.95 + p&h =20 > URL: _http://www.lulu.com/content/1696322_ > (http://www.lulu.com/content/1696322) > A new collection of poetry from Tom Hibbard who has recently enjoyed get= ting > much of his literary work published on and off-line. Poems, reviews, ess= ays > and translations can be found at Jacket, Big Bridge, Word For /Word, Mor= ia, > Milk, Fish Drum, Cricket, e=B7ratio, Otoliths and elsewhere. An essay on > "Linear/Nonlinear" was published in the 2007 issue of Big Bridge. Also in= 2007 > Bronze Skull published a prose poem titled Critique of North American Sp= ace. > Hibbard lives in Wisconsin, U.S.A., where he devotes his spare time to > growing=20 > pumpkins. =20 > Poemergency Room=20 > Paul Siegell=20 > 116 pages=20 > Cover design by Reed Altemus > ISBN: 978-0-9804541-0-9 > Otoliths 2008=20 > $13.45 + p&h=20 > URL: _http://www.lulu.com/content/ 1711938_ > (http://www.lulu.com/content/1711938) > "Something HUGE flexes joy here! This is the suicide by cop where bangin= g > cymbals rip the portal open! Poetry is the daily political at every mout= hful > of=20 > Siegell as dots connect dimension to dementia! Tell the funeral director= I'd > like my coffin lined with these pages, preventing a death of the sleepin= g! > Careful, nutjobs, this is a brother of the Vibratory Order! THANK YOU, P= aul > Siegell, for making some real live fucking magic for us!" =8BCAConrad, aut= hor > of=20 > Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006) > "Paul Siegell's are smart, rich poems. Spectacular, defiant iconographs = of > cells mid-mitosis, a b-boy mid-break dance move, and more. Nine-to-five > frustration and transcendence, train rides, road trips, teen tours, rock > concerts,=20 > and sudden tragedies. Paul Siegell's poems are full of unexpected > significances, each one balanced like a tightrope acrobat always on the = edge > of ruin.=20 > Fluent, aware, visual, wholehearted, Paul Siegell clearly sides with ple= asure > in the making of poems. Prepare to be challenged, entertained and astoun= ded." > =8B > Jeff Oaks =20 > "Paul Siegell's the most original poet =AD in sound and sight =AD to break i= nto > print so far this millennium. Siegell owns a megaphone in the contest to= be > voice of a generation." -- Charles McNair , author of Land O' Goshen an= d > Book Editor at Paste Magazine > "I'm always thrilled by Paul's work, especially when I can understand it= !" > =8BElaine Siegell, Paul's mom > In addition, parts one & two of the print edition of Otoliths seven are = now > available at The Otoliths Storefront: > _http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young_ (http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young) > Part one =8B the b&w & shades of gray part =8B contains work from Paul > Siegell, Sheila E. Murphy, Julian Jason Haladyn, Bill Drennan, Jeff Harri= son, > Jim=20 > Leftwich, Matt Hetherington, Mark Prejsnar, Michael Steven, Geof Huth, An= ny > Ballardini, dan raphael, derek beaulieu, Raymond Farr, Jordan Stempleman, > Vernon =20 > Frazer, Mark Cunningham, Randall Brock, Tom Hibbard, Andrew Topel, Andrew > Taylor, Anne Heide, Catherine Daly, Karri Kokko, Martin Edmond, John M. > Bennett,=20 > Lars Palm & David-Baptiste Chirot. 144 pages. > Part two is in full color & contains work from Andrew Topel & John M. > Bennett, Robert Gauldie, Marko Niemi, Nigel Long, Matina L. Stamatakis, = Nico > Vassilakis, John M. Bennett, Jeff Crouch, Eileen R. Tabios, M=E1rton Kopp=E1= ny, > Katrinka Moore, John M. Bennett & Friends, Alexander Jorgensen, Daniel f > Bradley,=20 > harry k stammer & David-Baptiste Chirot. 112 pages. >=20 > Mark Young >=20 > =20 > =20 > =20 > (http://stores.lulu.com/l_m_young) >=20 >=20 >=20 > **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. > http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=3Daolcmp00300000002489 >=20 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:46:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas savage Subject: Re: Alfred Corn on Ekphrasis In-Reply-To: <011820080251.25161.4790143B0009A8360000624922193100029B0A02D29B9B0EBF98019C050C0E040D@att.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit If I remember correctly, the original publication of Ashbery's Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror included a reproduction of the painting upon which it was based, at least in the book form of the poem. I'm not sure whether it was the whole painting or just part of it. Anyway, the poem has been reprinted in anthologies without the painting and without losing much, if anything, thereby. Thank you, however, for your careful, scholarly consideration of the word "ekphrasis". Regards, Tom Savage blacksox@ATT.NET wrote: Notes on Ekphrasis by Alfred Corn Ekphrasis (also spelled "ecphrasis") is a direct transcription from the Greek ek, "out of," and phrasis, "speech" or "expression." It's often been translated simply as "description," and seems originally to have been used as a rhetorical term designating a passage in prose or poetry that describes something. More narrowly, it could designate a passage providing a short speech attributed to a mute work of visual art. In recent decades, the use of the term has been limited, first, to visual description and then even more specifically to the description of a real or imagined work of visual art. The use of visual description in poetry is a huge subject, and a good treatment of the topic is found in Carol T. Christ's study The Finer Optic. Descriptions, in poems, of works of music, cinema, or choreography might also qualify as instances of ekphrasis. But these notes will be concerned only with descriptions of works of visual art in a poem, not with description in general, or with description of other kinds of art. Horace, in his Epistles, writes a verse letter to his friend Pisos, the opening lines of which develop the metaphor of painting as a means of criticizing arbitrary combinations of incompatible components in a poem. (This is the third letter of Book II of the Epistles.) Beginning at line 361, in a passage that includes the phrase ut pictura poesis ("like a picture, poetry," or "poetry is like a painting") Horace makes a comparison between the two arts. These lines are often cited as the foundational text establishing a connection between visual and verbal art. But note that Horace describes no particular painting; he refers abstractly to various aspects of the art of painting purely as a metaphor to get at the good or bad qualities a poem may exhibit. The earliest and best known example of ekphrasis is the long description of the shield made by Hephaistos and given to Achilles by his mother Thetis. (The passage is found in Book 18 of the Iliad.) Low-relief sculpture embossed in metal on the surface of the shield is described in elaborate detail. Hephaistos's subjects include constellations, pastures, dancing, and great cities. In fact, visual notation is so extensive that critics have commented that no actual shield in the real world would be able to contain the disparate elements mentioned. So then Homer has imagined a work of art that could not, materially, exist. The immaterial nature of verbal art allows him to do this. The effect on the reader of his description is multi-faceted. On one hand, it tends to move the narrative farther away from ordinary plausibility. On the other, it provides a dreamlike expansion of the subject at hand and allows the poet to make oblique comments on the Iliad's main narrative. Similar to Homer's description of Achilles's shield, though briefer, is the description in Book I of Virgil's Aeneid, beginning at line 450, of the carvings on the wall of the temple Aeneas visits when he first comes to Carthage. Depicted are scenes from the Trojan War, which alert the exiled hero to the fact that the story of the Trojan War and his part in it are already legendary. Another notable instance of ekphrasis occurs in Canto X of Dante's Purgatorio, where the pilgrim poet describes low relief sculptures in white marble carved on the side of the mountain of Purgatory, next to its upward track. These carvings depict Biblical and classical examples of the virtue of humility: the Annunciation, David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, and the Roman Emperor Trajan addressing the mother of a soldier who has been killed. Purgatorio in Dante consists of an upwardly spiraling climb around a mountain, and it may well be Trajan's column in Rome that provided him with the visual form for it. That monument is covered with low relief sculptures of scenes from the Dacian War, and, scene by scene, like frames in a comic strip, they rise upward in helical fashion from bottom to top. In Canto X, Dante not only describes the encounter between Trajan and the bereaved mother, he gives us their dialogue and then refers to it as esto visibleparlare, "this visible speaking." In other words, something magical has occurred: a work of visual art has somehow managed to convey an exchange of speech. Another classic instance of ekphrasis occurs in Book III of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which is concerned with the virtue of chastity. Britomart comes to the house of sorcerer Busyrane, where she sees tapestries depicting Jove's amorous exploits, a contrary example of the virtue being dealt with. After Milton, when epic-length poems become rarer in English-language poetry, the use of ekphrasis is limited to shorter poems, for example, Marvell's "The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers"; or Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" and "To Haydon with a Sonnet Written on Seeing the Elgin Marbles"; Shelley's "On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery"; and Browning's "My Last Duchess." But some long poems as well include them, for example, Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. In the two English-language cases where a poet was also a painter, ekphrastic poems were actually conceived as accompaniments to an actual painting (or vice versa). Blake's "The Tyger," "The Clod and the Pebble," and "Holy Thursday," for example, were first printed underneath or alongside Blake's graphic rendering of the poem's subject. What have been called Blake's "composite works" also influenced Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who provided verse equivalents to several of his paintings, the texts often inscribed below the picture or within it. Usually, but not always, the execution of the painting came first, as in "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin." With "The Blessed Damozel," the poem preceded the painting. In the twentieth century many poets produced ekphrastic poems, and the vast majority of these concern actual, not imaginary works of art. Consider, for example, Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" ; Marianne Moore's "No Swan so Fine" and "Nine Peaches"; Wallace Stevens's "Angel Between Two Paysans"; William Carlos Williams's Pictures from Breughel ; John Berryman's "Hunters in the Snow"; Randall Jarrell's "Knight, Death and the Devil"; W. H. Auden's "The Shield of Achilles," and Elizabeth Bishop's "Large Bad Picture" and "Poem." In recent times there have been a large number of examples, in fact, several anthologies of ekphrastic poems have been assembled, sometimes commissioned by museums whose collections are featured. Some ekphrastic poems describe photographs, and these may be art photographs or else ordinary snapshots, the latter often depicting members of the poet's family. A disadvantage of using family snapshots is that the original image may not embody sufficient artistry to provide the stuff of interesting commentary; nor is that image available to the reader for comparison with the text. Enormous skill is needed in order to convey visual information of this kind, along with the passions and emotional nuances that pictures from childhood arouse in the author. So there is a risk that only a small part of the authors' feelings will actually be accessible to the reader through the intermediary of words alone. Still, some poets have had success writing this kind of poem, for example, Adrienne Rich in "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" and Greg Williamson's "Double Exposures." Actually, a poem about an obscure painting is also at a disadvantage. Where the original image is well known, we can compare it to the poet's version of what it contains; and the poet's departures from the original, or inaccurate interpretations of it, are sometimes revealing. Without the original image, though, we are forced to trust the poet's description as being accurate, and we are unable to know where it is not. Meanwhile, the compositional task is much more difficult in such cases since the text of the poem has to convey all the relevant visual information, while still qualifying as poetry. On the other hand, if the subject is, say, Leonardo's Mona Lisa, or any other very famous work of art, there's no need to give a detailed description; the audience already knows what's in the painting. A disadvantage, though, of using very great works of visual art as a subject for ekphrasis is that the comparison between the original and the poem about it may prove too unfavorable. Readers may wonder why they should bother reading a moderately effective poem when they could instead look at the great painting it was based on. If the poem doesn't contain something more than was already available to the audience, it will strike the reader as superfluous, the secondary product of someone too dependent on the earlier, greater work. The reader may also wonder why the description wasn't done in prose rather than in lines of poetry. All art historians and critics agree that complete and accurate verbal descriptions of visual art are very hard to achieve, even in prose. When the expectations associated with good poetry are part of the goal as well, we see that writing a good ekphrastic poem is a formidable task indeed. The aim of drafting a text entirely adequate to its source, giving a verbal equivalent to every detail in the subject work, is probably too lofty. A more realistic goal is to give a partial account of the work. Once the ambition of producing a complete and accurate description is put aside, a poem can provide new aspects for a work of visual art. It can provide a special angle of approach not usually brought to bear on the original. For example, in a banqueting scene, the poem might, instead of describing the revelers, focus on the dogs, cats, and pet birds given free rein in the scene. More generally, a poem can add the overall resources of verbality, with descriptions developed through surprising metaphors, apt commentary cast in lines with unusual diction and crisp rhythm—perhaps even calling on the techniques of traditional prosody. And then, the poet may devise conversations between figures in the painting or group sculpture and give these the quality of poetry. Finally, the poem may actually treat more than one painting at a time, in a kind of verbal collage or double-exposure. Perhaps the most effective contemporary poems dealing with visual art are those where the authors include themselves in the poem, recounting the background circumstances that led to a viewing of the painting or sculpture in question; or what memories or associations or emotions it stirs in them; or how they might wish the work to be different from what it is. The center of attention in this kind of poem isn't solely the pre-existing work but instead is dual, sharing the autobiographical focus found in the majority of contemporary lyric poems written in English. Poems like these unite ekphrasis with the autobiographical tradition, which is equally ancient and probably more important than ekphrasis alone. After all, the autobiographical tradition can cite figures such as Ovid, Dante, Ben Jonson, Donne, George Herbert, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Akhmatova, Williams, Crane, Lowell, Roethke, Bishop, Berryman, Larkin, Walcott, Merrill, Adrienne Rich, and Seamus Heaney. Of course you can argue that an ekphrastic poem providing no information at all about the author may still convey autobiographical content indirectly, in the form of "voice," tone, level of diction, and the kind and frequency of judgments made in the course of presentation. In "Archaic Torso of Apollo," Rilke gives us no precise autobiographical facts about himself; nevertheless, we get a strong sense of the author's character and prospects from his presentation of the subject, in particular, when he imagines the torso saying to hi m, "Yo u must change your life." Meanwhile, more directly autobiographical ekphrastic poems, like Lowell's "For the Union Dead," Bishop's "Poem," John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," Charles Wright's "Homage to Claude Lorraine," or the present author's "Seeing All the Vermeers," locate the act of viewing visual art in a particular place and time, giving it a personal and perhaps even an historical context. The result is then not merely a verbal "photocopy" of the original painting, sculpture, or photograph, but instead a grounded instance of seeing, shaped by forces outside the artwork. In such poems, description of the original work remains partial, but authors add to it aspects drawn from their own experience—the facts, reflections, and feelings that arise at the confluence of a work of visual art and the life of the poet. Shop & Support Poets.org Another Language of Flowers Paintings by Dorothea Tanning accompanied by poetry from twelve highly esteemed poets. $15.00 | More Info View All Store Items Copyright © 2008 by Alfred Corn. Appears courtesy of the author. --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:33:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Dear Jim-- actually Murat thanked me twice for making this observation, distinction, about power and control you mention, as just about all my letters are about this issue of power and control-In the last letter re electricity,electricity itself is a "splitting" of two aspects of control and power within its own history: on the one hand the "good" D/C current of Edison is associated with the "safe" uses of Holzer's "Projections" and the "Death," hooded Electric Chair uses are "plugged into" A/C. You note that "an engagement with code 'and' language seems like a particularly apt way into both an engagement with questions of who and what we are" A fundamental of the engagement with code is when the bill for the cable arrives, as well as the electricity bill, without which there is no cable. Even when using a public access or job-provided hook-up you have invested in it somewhere along the line. The forms of access or the non-access of codes already begin to define who and what we are. And, within access, the types of programs available, the types of machines, the types of and ranges of codes one is allowed to use--these further determine who and what we are within this digital code determination of who and what we are. A person with access to a lot of highly developed state of the art equipment and programs and machines may appear in code as a much more complex and "refined" and "avant-garde" being than a person restricted to an hour at an old and slow computer in a public library in a run down central city neighborhood. The latter person may do great street art, but is always running the risk of jail for doing so. As an artist, they may be afr better than than the code being--but--"no access." Another aspect of code is the ways in which it plays on persons being impressed by it, believing in it, taking it as "real" and "true." For example, at one point in the arguments over the use of the materials provided by "Curveball," one agent finally screams--"we have evidence that backs him up!." Her opponent demands--"yeah, from where?" "From the web," triumphantly replies the first agent. "Where do you think HE got them!" shrieks her opponent. Interestingly, Jenny Holzer got her images of Rumsfeld's memos for the "Projections" show from the web. Does this mean she's also just peddling public domain images as "top secret" "avant-garde" Curveballs for the benefit of an appreciatively wowed audience? One of the things to think about with the digital is that the electricity is supplied by powerful corporations and the grids are subject to the approval of political powers. The "avant-garde" in its military sense is to be in advance--and in this case, in order to create the new web libraries, texts, code collections, there has been a great deal of attendant destruction of actual libraries, archives, archeologies, artifacts. architectures. (As the Electronic Poetry Center and Ubu Web grow, the Iraq Libraries, Museums and sites almost completely vanish; the USA and Britain never signed the 1955 International treaty having to do with respecting the treatment of these in occupied countries.) The digital and code are not so much the avant-garde at all as already the dominant--(the 443, 000 listings for "code poetry" for example) --already the controlling interests so to speak of free market globalization and disaster capitalism. Digitalization and codes still participate in the 19th century myth of "Progress" which Rimbaud was bitterly attacking. It creates new forms of colonization and destructions of cultures, replacing them with new codes designed by engineers and code artists from around the world in the employ of corporations, academic institutions, the military, etc. Code poetry will exist and be widely disseminated as long as it remains within acceptable areas, which seems most likely that it will, since the purveyors are embracers of code itself, code as "progress" itself, towards the "mystery of being" and "conquest of the world." In Melanie Klein's The Shock Doctrine, the CIA sponsored 1950's shock therapy treatments are linked with Milton Friedman's Economic Shock Theories, first realized in the CIA engineered coup in Chile on 9/11 1973. The idea is that these Shock economics will bring with time Democracy--but in every case, they have been so unpopular that they have had to be enforced--not only brute force, but by the electric shocks of torture. The "electric current" so to speak runs through the world and now "back" to the USA, via Katrina and today one of the biggest transfers of wealth in the history of the USA. The number of people who can afford electricity or access to the web shrinks, the number of people controlling the electric power shrinks, and the amount of military and economic power involved in the control of the electric grows, becomes more concentrated in a few, and ever more fewer number of persons. At the same time, of course, the idea that the web, the digital, the electronic, the code is where it is happening is ever more encouraged, as this becomes the place more restricted to the more easily observed and obedient trained persons of the society. By far one of the boomingest businesses in the world is that of of security and surveillance, led by the Israelis, who use Gaza literally as a showroom. Others are trying hard to catch up. The construction of Walls in Iraq, Green Zones, the world's largest US embassy in Baghdad, the Border Fence with Mexico, gated communities the world over, the enclaves for corporate headquarters and embassies, for Sheik and Kings, General,s Movie Stars, Pop Idols, Billionaires--privatized security forces of all kinds-- equipped with the latest in electronically controlled weaponry and surveillance equipment, this is an immese business growing at an immense pace, and reuqiring plenty of good code workers. Due to wars and the polices of the Shock Doctrine and globalization, ever more people daily are not on the digital and electric grids. A child dies every five minutes in Iraq. In Milwaukee now over a third of the children live in poverty and go to school without breakfast. The loss of homes is sky rocketing, loss of electrictyand heat, the code access vanishing. Already in many areas of the world private armies and walls, electronic grids, are constructed in order to keep out the immense masses of what Mike Davis calls the "Planet of Slums." Gaza the world's largest prison, is but a crude model for the lockups of the coming codes, complete with "avant-garde" installations of Light Projections doubling as Surveillance Lights sweeping the slums and alleys and giant code poems by "poet laureates" dominating the landscapes on huge billboards and code poetry figue largely at the new academic conventions. . In the annals of the New Extreme Experimental American Poetry it will be realized that one of the first truly great poems of an electrical merging of the D'/C current of Whitman's "I sing the body electric" and the "A'/C" current of the hooded figure in the eletcric chair is that of the hooded figure in Abu Ghraib, wired and standing on a crate, arms outstretched, as though crucified, hooded--awaiting the moment of shock which will force him to speak the new poetry-- those raw sounds to be translated by radical experimental innovative poetry means into american digital codes and become the further dehumanization of the masked "enemy combatant" "non-poet" for the triumphant glorification and triumph of the "Projections" of "our codes"-- yes, codes do indeed have the capabality of being an engagement with questions of who and what we are-- of what we may or may not be allowed to be--be restricted to be--can pay to be-- On Jan 17, 2008 10:01 PM, Jim Andrews wrote: > Hi Murat, > > I like your observation about power and control concerning code. > > Concerning code poetry, perhaps both are involved. > > In its engagement with the digital literary and other relatively new > and/or > unusual forms of the literary, like other avant garde art, in part it may > sometimes seek escape from the usual literary authorities and modes of > production and distribution. > > But it's also an attempt to gain understanding of and control of or within > > the contemporary language scapes where code and language are conflated, > transmitted, received, interpreted, and misunderstood billions of times > per > second. > > Also, engagement with code *and* language seems like a particularly apt > way > into both engagement with questions of who and what we are. > > ja > http://vispo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:34:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wanda Phipps Subject: I'm Reading this Saturday in a Yara Poetry Festival--come on down! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Hey, I'm reading poems in collaboration with the film of Joel Schlemowitz at this fun event this Saturday night. Would love to see you there. Here's the full schedule and other details: Yara Arts Group and the Ukrainian Institute of America present: IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT Ukrainian poetry: translations, interpretations and revisions Friday and Saturday, January 18-19, 2008 Ukrainian Institute of America 2 East 79th Street (at Fifth Avenue), New York Yara's weekend festival will include poetry performances by Yara actors, a concert by Mariana Sadovska, and readings by contemporary writers. It will feature an exhibit of contemporary visual art inspired by Ukrainian poems translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. The audience will also enjoy music dance and food inspired by poems. Since 1990 Yara has created fourteen major events at the Ukrainian Institute, including four weekend festivals of art, dance, music and poetry. Friday January 18 8:00 PM -- Opening of the exhibit: Visual interpretations of Ukrainian poetry by: Anya Farion, Annette Friedman, Roman Hrab, Peter Hrycyk, Peter Ihant, Olena Karasyuk, Kit Koroliuk, Markian Lozowchuk, Olga Maryschuk, Svitlana Matviyenko, Margaret Morton, Kateryna Nemyra, Andrea Odezynska, Marko Shuhan, Ilyona Sochynsky, Mariya Tarassishina, Marybeth Ward and Sofika Zielyk. The artists have chosen to work with poems by contemporary Ukrainian poets, such as Serhiy Zhadan, Oksana Zabuzhko, Mykola Vorobyov, Ludmila Taran, Yurko Pozayak, Neda Nezhdana, Attila Mohylny, Mykola Miroshnychenko, Vasyl Holoborodko and Oksana Batiuk, as well as poets from the 1920s such as Pavlo Tychyna and Volodymyr Svidzinsky, as well as ritual songs. Also on Friday: Christine Turczyn reading Christine Turczyn Odarka Polanskyj Stockert plays harp, Redentor Jimenez plays guitar as Shigeko Suga dances Attila Mohylny's "Flying South through the Night." William Electric Black reads William Electric Black Bob Holman performs "The Captives Lament," an epic song (duma) with Julian Kytasty on bandura Vincent Katz reads Vincent Katz Oksana Lutsyshyna reads Oksana Lursyshyna as Halya Remez plays violin Candece Tarpley reads Candece Tarpley Marusia Sonevytska plays accordion as Katya Vasilaky dances Victor Neborak's "Subjective Point of View" Reception with artists follows. Saturday January 19 1:00 - 5:00 PM Art exhibit continues, plus singing workshops with Maraiana Sadovska. Saturday January 19 8:00 PM -- Gala performances Wanda Phipps reads Wanda Phipps as Joel Schlemowitz portrays her work in film NY Bandura Ensemble (Julian Kytasty, Mike Andrec, Natalia Honcharenko, Krystia Nora and Roman Hurko) perform Attila Mohylny's "Flying South through the Night," Ihor Rymaruk's "Glassolaia" and fragments from Tychyna entitled "Semiramis" Kristina Lucenko reads Kristina Lucenko Vasyl Makhno reads Vasyl Makhno Askold Melnyczuk reads Askold Melnyczuk Yara actors perform Ukrainian poetry as translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps: fragments from "Honey" by Serhiy Zhadan, 2005 with Allison Hiroto Susan Hyon, Olga Shuhan and Vira Slywotzky "Po hori hori" traditional winter song,arranged by Mariana Sadovska with Allison Hiroto and Vira Slywotzky "Noncommercial Film" by Serhiy Zhadan, 2002 with Tom Lee and Susan Hyon "Alcohol" by Serhiy Zhadan, 2002 with Susan Hyon and Taras Berezovsky "An Indication of Poetry" by Oksana Zabuzhko, 1990 with Allison Hiroto, Susan Hyon and Olga Shuhan Mariana Sadovska performs Ukrainian ritual songs as Marina Celander reads Pavlo Tychyna's "War," "Dawn," "Rhythm" and "Wheat Rot," 1920 Food will be by Olesia Lew, who will create culinary interpretations of poems especially for our event. tickets at the door Friday $15, Saturday $25 or $30 for both evenings. Call or email Yara to pre-register for the singing workshops with Mariana Sadovska. For more information, call Yara (212) 475-6474 or e-mail yara@prodigy.net -- Wanda Phipps Check out my websites MIND HONEY: http://www.mindhoney.com as well as http://www.myspace.com/wandaphippsband and my latest book of poetry Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems available at: http://www.softskull.com/detailedbook.php?isbn=1-932360-31-X and http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/193236031X/ref=rm_item ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:16:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Trigilio Organization: http://www.starve.org Subject: Court Green #5 (Dossier: Plath) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Announcing the release of COURT GREEN #5, featuring Mary Jo Bang, Jan Beatty, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Jordan Davis, Diane di Prima, Amy Gerstler, Noah Eli Gordon, Terrance Hayes, Patricia Spears Jones, Noelle Kocot, Ron Koertge, Wayne Koestenbaum, Rachel Loden, Laura Mullen, Amy Newman, Alice Notley, Stephanie Stickland, Jean Valentine, Baron Wormser, and many others. Our special dossier section in this issue features a collection of creative responses to the work, life, and legacy of Sylvia Plath. Single copies: $10. Subscriptions: $25 (3 issues). Make check payable to Columbia College Chicago and mail to: COURT GREEN Department of English Columbia College Chicago 600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605 COURT GREEN is a poetry journal published annually in association with the English Department at Columbia College Chicago, and is edited by Lisa Fishman, Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, and David Trinidad. Submissions of poetry are welcomed each year from March 1 through June 30 (no more than 5 pages of poems). Email submissions not accepted. Submissions without self-addressed, stamped envelope will not be returned. http://english.colum.edu/courtreen (web site will be updated soon) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:36:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline David, "Was that the face that launched a thousand ships And toppled the topless towers of Ilium?" Christopher Marlowe (poet and government agent/spy, and the only true rival of William Shakespeare, maybe Shakespeare himself) In the poem "The Nigger in the Photograph" Ece Ayhan refers to *The Jew of Malta*. In the same book where "The Nigger" appears, *A Blind Cat Black *(Sun and Moon), there is a poem "The Secret Jew." Ships and trains (the latter the subject of a parallel thread going on between Alan Sondheim and me in which Alan's photographs of a train museum in Morganstown has the qualities of cuts-ups): in Eric Ambler's spy noir *The Coffin for Dr. Demetrius, *a meeting between two agents occurs in the train going to Istanbul. Istanbul, "neutral" during Second World War, was the very den of spies, longing and lost causes, another * Casablanca*. In the movie version of *The Coffin*, Orson Wells (the parallel to Claude Rains) plays the benevolent/threatening Turkish police chief inspector Hakim Bey. Hakim Bey is the pseudonym/heteronym to Peter Lamborn Wilson whose anarchist manifestos fight the codes of mediated language and whose ground breaking essays on Sufism gave me first the hint of the possibilities of using Sufism as a reservoir of language (of counter-codes) for political thought and poetry. In my essay "Eleven Septembers Later," written around Benjamin Hollander's poem *Vigilance* (Beyond Baroque) and Orson Wells's *A Touch of Evil*, I propose the concept of a new poetic form, "Film Lumiere," a prophetic genre in which every story is told twice (e,g. Agamemnon's ship and the British ship), superimposed on each other, creating a collision in a confrontation with the other. Of course, the collision and collapse of the twin towers (the ur-event occurring twice, maybe an ironic, contra binary code) is the generative event where time/space travel occurs instantaneously,in one single act. Was that the event/act/political gesture that launched a thousand bombs and the utter insanity of the American psyche? (Wasn't *The Iliad* also a confrontation between two cultures, East and West?) For Marcus (another parallel, correspondent thread occurring in this list), the physical event is the only thing which is "real"; everything else is terrorism (post-modern). For me the physical event and its psychic, political, mythical, historical resonances exist in a fluid continuum; thoughts, which Marcus dismisses as arbitrary, etc., have "real," actual consequences. They act as causes, as in another context I think David you said, "words have real consequences." Ilium is not only a mental state but also a place (though in ruins, fragments, recently added to by a gigantic wooden horse for tourist attraction, mention the mongrel accumulation of codes). Marcus's is a binary (Western, technological) code of control, everything not fitting it being non-existent or illegitimate (or romantic, terroristic or merely frustrated or having a period). Mine is a contra code of a-symmetrical dialectic. The essay, "Eleven Septembers Later," ends with a discussion of *The Talmud*as an early example of "film lumiere" embodied in words (there are examples of it in other media, particularly in films which strive towards the state of photography). Basically, film lumniere is the superimposition (as conflict or expansion) of different dynamic media, film, T.V., computer or language itself, on the contemplative, stasis essence of photographic image. In *The Talmud*, a basic enigmatic text (code) is surrounded by codes (commentaries) elaborating on, expanding or subverting (musically riffing from) this basic text. Text and commentary together, they create a matrix of prophetic Jewish life, film lumniere, in your words, "an illumination": "Actually one could say that "code is the subject" of itself in such works as Illuminated Manuscripts and examples such as the Alhambra. The calligraphies and images which are *within* [italics my own] the lettering and borders of illuminated Manuscripts contain further meanings which are forms of codes both "a part of" and "apart from" in a supplementary sense. In the Alhambra, the caligraphies are both written texts and mathematical formulae, there is a doubling carrying of codes." The essay, "The Peripheral Space of Photography" is another example of "film lumiere" where the conglomeration of responses to photographic images not only "illuminate" those images, but are themselves "illuminations": "light" (mysticism?) as the tongue of a subversive code. David, I am honored that you see me as an ally in a cause of artistic, philosophic and maybe political liberation. Indeed we are: " Love of Words A part of, apart from my lover. As words separate, I draw close as words draw near, I fall apart." *(The Structure of Escape)* "Granada is an ugly city containing the Alhambra, the Alhambra Hotel with its stupendous baked alaska.... " *(The Structure of Escape) * "A trillion plus one is smaller than a trillion plus two a nod towards the sky light window in the roof the illusionary preparatory crack of escape the real escape occurs twice, being born and dying dying the other shoe of freedom drops...." *(The Structure of Escape) *David, puns are I think a crucial, telegraphic code of time/space travel -pigeon communications. One among many examples: why, for example, the eerie, mysterious, reversed correspondence between "a part" and "apart"? Is it a mere coincidence or does a hidden-in-plain-sight correspondence between the two exist? Marcus will say it's all coincidence, fancy/arbitrary dancing. But doesn't "apart" as a single word contain the longing for reunion separation (spiritual separation) involve (a version of space travel)? This way language is not something "there" but becomes something shaped, altered by our being. It has essence essence, part of that being; it has light. "Coincidence" (and its underbelly "paranoia/code) is the underlying theme of many of the interesting threads in The Poetics and in the Imitapoetics Lists during the last few months. Is coincidence merely itself (something code-ally there, and pure, devoid of human thought), which I think is the impulse behind both the process generated art and Marcus's positivist "skepticism" and his seeming attack on post Modernism in the name of a "human" art? Or does coincidence have a "plot"? Of course, seeing plots, codes is the true, ambiguous essence of paranoia. Even paranoids have enemies and stopped clocks twice a day tell the time, in a more precise, supreme way because they do not move, like an Einsteinian time keeper of absolute time. Was Cassandra a paranoic or a reader of the codes of disaster (here to Agamemnon again)? That's why film lumiere -an art of seeing and detecting codes- must finally be -necessity being the mother fucking mother of invention- prophetic. I think this thread started -or hooked up with- the seemingly unrelated thread of inaugural poems. I wonder if, paranoically/prophetically, we are searching for ("[creating] a code which one finds as one goes along") a new poetic/artistic code for the coming new presidency. Ciao, Murat * * Given the rich density of your On Jan 17, 2008 7:01 PM, David Chirot < david.chirot@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear Jim and Murat-- > > (I added on after this part of a Burroughs note i sent last week as i > think > it got lost in the shuffle and it relates with some of this) > > > I looked up "code poetry" and there are 443,000 listings so it is > literally > a "going concern" complete with ads for t-shirts and logos and lesson > books, > programs, web sites und so weider-- > > When we were 12 my friend Sergio and i, to make school more interesting, > invented a "secret society" called SHAM--"Secret Horrible And > Mysterious"--we made up codes and planted all over the school messages and > signs in them, some elaborately hidden, some in plain sight--no one ever > caught on--we never were sure if this meant we had succeeded or in some > way > had failed--on the one hand we were indeed secret and mysterious--but if > unknown to such a degree--were we at all able to be horrible? > > I find it still a fascinating, time traveling code that Savinio sees > > in the "proof" of Schliemann's Troy being revealed by its shelling by a > First World War British ship named Agamemnon. (This is the kind of > incident > that Burroughs worked to find with his cut-ups among his notebooks, his > creations of time travel.) That the majority of persons will miss this > code > and instead read the scene simply as a British warship shelling a bunch of > ruins in Turkey has a parallel in the reception of Savinio's own work. As > > Leonardo Sciascia writes: "But who in Italy has read his works, despite > the > optimistic reissue of some them in recent years? Savinino himself, > speaking > of foolish and mediocre readers would say: "But are there among Savinio's > > readers fools and mediocrities?" Not a question, but an assertion; he was > sure there were none." > > Sciascia uses this example as an aside to demonstrate an event that > occurs in his search for a possible solution to an enigma, the > disappearance > in 1938 of the Italian nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana. (Rememeber this > is an Italian story--): A person who gives information to a person who > supplies a corraboration for Sciascia that Majorana, who it is supposed > knew > before anyone else the secret of the A-Bomb, and may have sought refuge in > a > monastery, supplies also the information that it is rumored that one of > the > members of the crew of the bomber that dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima had > > also gone to the same monastery for a while. > > I wrote a while ago here re the baseball player, spy and radio star > Moe Berg and the Hiroshima Bomb, Jack Spicer and Yasusada. Organized a > bit, the writing is now called "Before Curveball." "Curveball" himself > now > features in a piece leading up to and including the Guantanamo Poems, as > "Curveball" is the code name for the Iraqi informer whose fake > information > was used as "solid evidence" which was presented complete with models to > the > UN by Colin Powell for the War in Iraq. "Curveball" threw a "curveball" > all > right, with as disastrous effects as the spying of Moe Berg. These > bizarre > baseball connections thus link two American wars and the poetries > connected > with them by their own strange routes. > > These create a code which one finds as one goes along-- > I think this finding of codes is different from the programming of > them-- > > > In the Guantanamo Poems what i think makes them a very > important event is that they are the first book of a new form of what i > for > now call the New Extreme Experimental American Poetry. The breakdown of > the > ego, the personality, of the detainee through prolonged periods of sleep > deprivation, alternations of extreme heat and extreme cold, beatings, > electro-shocks, waterboardings, light deprivations, prolonged light > exposures, solitary confinements, prolonged exposures to extremely loud > music and white noise--all of these techniques to destroy as much as > possible the person and their memories, erase them as much as possible as > any kind of human with any kind of culture and at the same time force them > > to speak, all of this creates a new kind of "poet." and "poetics." This > "poet's" work is for the most part censored out of fear it may contain > "coded messages," and what is allowed to be presented must be passed > through > a form of "non-literary" translation which greatly resembles some of the > techniques advocated in the "List of Writing Experiments" of Charles > Bernstein. We now have an "electrified" and "recoded" and > "experimentally > translated" as it were "body of work" produced under the watchful eyes of > the ultimate American Panopticon, the extra-legal Guantanamo. > The Guantanamo Poems weren't very well received of course. "A > product of the Pentagon, " "bad poetry in non-literary translations," "I > won't read it," all the bad reviews plus Robert Pinsky's noting "no > Mandelstams here." What a relief!! God forbid there had been a Mandelstam > > there! But the beauty of the New Extreme Experimental Poetry is that it > ensures the production of the poetry of "The Shock Doctrine" as Naomi > Klein > calls it. This electro-schock poetry is the opposite of the "Projections" > of > Jenny Holzer, which go hand in hand with the writings and figure and > institutions and receptions of Power. The electro-shock poetry is to > prove > how incredibly impoverished and pathetic culturally the "terrorist," > "Islamo-Fascist" "enemy-combatant" really is. The "Projections" prove how > incredibly "free" and "good" and "critical" and "appreciative of good > poetry" "we" are. > This battle of the electricities --the Electricity of Illumination > and > "Projections" and the Electricity of Shock and Prisons--is an "update" of > the "electric code" war between Westinghouse and Edison in the latter part > > of the 19th Century. Though he was neither pro nor con the death penalty > nor the use of electricity for it, Edison became an (elaborately > underhanded) advocate of the use of A/C current over hanging and the > guillotine as a method of dispatching those judged deserving. A/C was the > product of his rival Westinghouse--Edison supported this in order to > further > the public image of his D/C current as the "Safe" one. Westinghouse would > > be the Bringer of Death, the Shock Doctrine, the Prison coded Electric > Chair Provider, the Power Behind Old Sparky's Throne, and Edison the > benevolent "Projections," and electric light bulb provider. "Let there be > > light" as opposed to "let there be be the dark hood." So the "battle of > the > codes" as a "Light" and "Death" matter is inscribed in the history of > electricity itself. > > > (actually i remember in the early 1970's my father mentioning something > about computers that were writing poetry-- > i remember asking him if computer poems followed the linguistics of human > languages or a "linguistics" of binaries--or might even somehow involve > more > complex formulae-- > or weren't many formulae in themselves poetry in their condensed > "perfection"-- > moe berg, the A-Bomb-Heisenberg-Mickey Mantle--Ezra Pound--all play a part > in this area of things) > > > Murat I thoroughly enjoy and know this of language you write of. It's in > the Burroughs quote I used re a glossary of a language whose intentions > are > fugitive and in a lot of poetry in cultures the world round. Chaucer and > Villon spring to mind, for example. Often, where i live, we have > conversations using words which sound like "normal everyday words" to an > outsider" but to us have a completely different meaning. I'ts the art of > speaking night thoughts in broad daylight. The language of the "world > within > the world." A friend was visiting one day and listened to us having a > conversation for about ten minutes. Later he remarked what a pleasant > event > it seemed we had been talking about and what a nice time we must have had. > Actually we were discussing a body found laid out neatly as a sign beside > a > dumpster kitty corner to here, shot execution style, to differentiate it > from a guy shot the other day in the street not as an execution. I saw > that > event when going to buy cigarettes, about forty feet away from me. And > only > from the back. And only in code, so to speak. We had also been > discussing > the rise in price of cigarettes and bus tickets. All of it impenetrable > to > my friend, and just as well. > > Actually one could say that "code is the subject" of itself in such > works as Illuminated Manuscripts and examples such as the Alhambra. The > calligraphies and images which are within the lettering and borders of > illuminated Manuscripts contain further meanings which are forms of codes > both "a part of" and "apart from" in a supplementary sense. In the > Alhambra, the caligraphies are both written texts and mathematical > formulae, > there is a doubling carrying of codes. Reading some of the examples in > the > journal noted, what one finds is not that he ideas are new, but simply > that > the medium being used is different. Long before Morse code poems for > example, there were semaphore poems, made by the international codes using > flags from ship to ship or hill to hill--I imagine many smoke signal poems > > and also mirror flashing poems among messages transmitted at a distance by > these, let alone carrier pigeon poems, the first Air Mail Art being borne > aloft in this manner also. > > "A poem can be made of anything" as WC Williams wrote. One could > take > the junk on this table and arrange it a myriad ways as poems, or take a > bunch of identical plates or cups out of a cupboard and arrange them in > various patterns as "lines", with spacings suggestive of "pauses" and > "accents" and "volumes." > > Murat and I are interested in the ways in which language camouflages > an identity so that it may appear to "assimilate" for reasons of > survival, > as well as means of resistance. Codes at one level have to do with > "value" > in terms of the "status" of the "object"--for example bar codes and ISBN > numbers. In the computer information world, codes such as these are > shifted > on to persons in as many ways as there are codes for determining angles of > value determination. New forms of camouflaging and resisting will be > developed just as quickly as new methods of "identifying" and "profiling" > are. > As the then Soviets and now Americans are discovering in Afghanistan, > their seeming complete superiority in technology and communications over > the > Afghans was and is routinely undermined by a communications system based > on > the delivery of messages by runners, the most ancient of methods. > > For over a decade now my visual poetry, mail art etc has been made > with found materials and at one point I had the ironic and hilarious > experience of receiving a Mail Art journal with an essay I had written on > my > Street sources while I was as it were removed from the streets for a > period, and learning how to find materials in the most limited situations. > > Making do for long periods without email or even a phone, tv and ignoring > the radio. > > I think what one learns from this experience is that the world is as yet > unread and unwritten in so many ways because in a sense persons have been > losing an ability to read and write independently in many ways due to the > dependence on the codes via being plugged into machines ultimately > controlled by others. > > The kind of skepticism Murat and I have towards this embrace of codes > is > that all too often codes are applied to persons, and persons have to in > turn > decode and recode the codes in order to both survive and resist. Poetry > is > a gathering together of many strange elements which peculiarly enough are > > named among the living, as actualites, as Savino demonstrated, and in > turn, > using his example, is not Troy located in Turkey and Murat from Turkey? > And > I am writing from Milwaukee, which is where I met Murat? > > Are we "secret agents" of "another code"--"double agents"--"foreign > agents"-- > > In the immediate world are already the codes spoken which are at > once both "obvious words" and "secret," the "proof of Troy," the "New > Extreme Experimental American Poetry" in which Curveball and Moe Berg play > a > part, along with Thomas Edison and Westinghouse, Naomi Klein and Savinio, > Sciasia, the Italian Letter, forgeries, Emily Dickinson and car bombings, > Roberto Bolano and 9/11 and much much else. > > > here's part of the Burroughs-- > > Burroughs' cut-ups, unlike the productions of the machines online > that one can use to do cut-ups as though "not by oneself," are methods of > making a "minority of one" which via camouflages, masks, "being obvious," > essays survival as an intact writer. "The Death of the Author" so beloved > of > Authors, for this kind of writer has already been experienced > near-literally > and figuratively; what remains is the desire to live, go on living as a > writer--and so the camouflages, disguises, masks, "role playing" and > heteronyms, "alter egos." > > In Burrogghs' cut-ups--the cut-up uses texts to reveal the > synchronicities > and correspondences which exist among them, which in turn give evidences > of > the "plot," the "conspiracy" going on and conducted by Language As > Control. > The cutting up is to reveal the inner anatomy so to speak of the bodies of > > the Monsters, the Mobsters of the Nova Mob and their spreading > virus-word-conspiracy. > > The "consciousness" "outside oneself," which one "lets in" via > "destruction > of the ego" through randomness--on the one hand may be "cosmic, the > universe,"--"a power greater than ourselves"--or it may be Control--the > Nova > Mob, Big Brother, "His Master's Voice" as was the old the RCA Victor > record > label's image of the dog listening to the giant flower of the Victrola's > "speaker." > > Burroughs as he noted in the Introduction to Queer--thought of himself as > being of the Middle Ages in his thinking regarding "psychology." (He had > after all studied for a year in Vienna after graduating from Harvard.) It > > is NOT the "ego" which one wants to get away from but the forces outside > one > which try to destroy one's being, take control of it and use it for their > purposes. The writer's activity is a guerrilla one against being turned > into a passive, consenting, or unwitting accomplice in the vast > complicities > with the conspiracies of Control. > > In the Introduction to the first edition of Junkie, which is reprinted in > later printings, Burroughs notes of the little glossary of street/drug > terms > at the back of the book: "Therefore a final glossary cannot be made of > words whose intentions are fugitive." > > The writer is at once the detective and the outlaw--an agent "posing" > inside > the imposed "seemingly random" cover of Control. The secret > agent/intrepid > reporter/private investigator/"Inspector Lee" is ceaselessly at work to > dismantle and discover, uncover, recover "evidence" to be used not simply > > for "cutting up" but--as Burroughs makes clear--arranging, editing, > creating > the "Files" which make use of the juxtapositions of words, images, > memories,dreams, fictions and facts, so as to be making an ongoing > "fugitive" language which at once perceives and deceives Control. > > the writer is not attempting to become "ego-less"--but a series of > "identities" which are 'disguises" and "camouflages" such that the writer > becomes "El Hombre Invisible" as one of Burroughs' own sobriquets > "pictured" > him. The writer participates in a series of anonymous, heteronymous, > pseudonymous and invented personas" parts," "roles," "charcters." This > is > not to destroy the "identity" of the writer at the core, but to preserve > the > writer in order to continue writing for writing is the means of survival > in > a world in which both the "seemingly random" and the "obvious' are bent on > > maintaining their control over one. > > The great Jazz musician Don Cherry used to very often say--"Free Jazz can > only be played by superbly disciplined musicians." Burroughs' years of > work > with the cut ups in texts, images, sound recordings, film--this has > affinities with Rimbaud's "long reasoned derangement of the senses" in > order > to arrive at the Unknown," which for Burroughs is the being always a step > ahead of the Control, of Language. For Burroughs this to make possible > not > only travel in space, but travel in time for the writer. > > Burroughs was always precise on the point that no work was done when he > was > using drugs. Drugs are Control which wipes out the writer. Tabula rasa. > Having been a long term addict like Burroughs, it was only after one gets > away from that Control, that one enters writing--and why writing is very > different from becoming "outside" to oneself--it is the means to find a > way > to exist as oneself--to survive--what one knows of the Forces of Control. > It is that necessity of survival the necessity that is the motherfucker > of > invention that is involved with the fugitive, "outlaw," "outsider" aspect > of > writing, the need for the "undercover" aspects, and the reason why so much > that one finds around does not appear to one as it does to others. It is > too > see what is hidden in plain site/sight/cite and at the same time see how > many things that "seem" to be "liberating" are disguised traps, or inside > out reflections of what they purport to be the opposite of, in opposition > to. Often the concept of "opposition" itself can be used as a diversion > from what is the overall issue of Control and an essay at understanding > and > recognising as much as possible its manifestations. > > An aspect of this is the breaking down seemingly of voices in which Jim > notes "all characters seem to be one." The key is that they "seem" to > be > "one." From the point of view of the writer, they are not one, but many, > and constitute a swarm. The swarm is camouflaged by this "seeming" to be > one--if it is simply "one" then it can be easily crushed. The multiple > "identities" of the writer creates such a swarm, a way of continually > being > "a minority of one" "on the move" whose "intentions are fugitive"--a > "minority of one" whose intentions are to appear now as "one," now as > "another," and in turn as a swarm which may appear to the eyes of Control > as > "one." > > Kurt Schwitters is one of the truly profound "cut-up" artists--and his > collage "method" was to use what he found in the street. Again, Picasso's > > "I do not seek, I find." This is Burroughs' method in the cut-ups--he > used > the found texts of newspapers, things found in the street, passages found > in > his favorite writers, in turn collaging these edited cut-ups, which he put > > through many transumuttations of his own cutting and pasting by hand--and > the n arranging--along side the passages from his dream journals, and > others > from the memories which were stimulated in turn by the collaged cut-ups > and > dreams and fictions, poetry of other writers. This for > Burroughsconstitutes the writer's method of time travel--to be able to > travel among > memory, dream, imagined places and persons, factually recorded ones known > and unknown to the writers and so create extensions of fugitive > > As Burroughs writes in the Intro to Queer--writing is for him a matter of > life and death. On the day that he shot his wife, he feels that the > forces > "outside" were in Control, and the use of drugs was the allowing of > Control > to reduce him to zombie sitting on the edge of his bed staring at his foot > for what was a period in which time is "junk time" only measured by the > drops from the syringe, the injected transfusions of Control. > > The Carny world, the hustlers, the small time dope peddlers, snitches, > thieves, punks and assorted "low life" and "criminal" doctors, scientists > etc that populate Burroughs' universe are his verison in a sense of the > Medieval Carnival, in which the masks fall away and the Emperor really has > no clothes, Death walks nonchalantly in broad daylight, the Sins come out > to > play, and the monstrous buffoons that are the forces of Order are for a > day > or a few truly Buffoons. That is the meaning of "Naked Lunch"--the title > from Kerouac's saying that it was the moment when indeed what was on the > forks was seen for what it is--not unlike the scene of The Last Supper in > Bunuel's Viridiana, the Feast of the the deformed, the degenerate, the > diseased and their having their "picture taken" by a woman facing them who > > lifts her dress up to bare her "camera eye" as the "recorder" of > "posterity" that "degrades"not only the Last Supper, but particularly its > representations. In a sense, this method destroys not what is the Last > Supper itself but the use of its representations as methods of Control > The > woman's "camera" image "exposes" the degeneration and diseased ("Word > Virus") "state of the image" and "image of the state" as a "rotting > edifice". (A leper--literally a "rotting one," plays prominent part in > all > of this, including the violating of Viridiana, the former Nun now a > secular > "doer of good." Among the "rotting edifices" of the film is Franco's > Spain--this is 1961--where "miraculously Bunuel made this, one of his > finest > works.) > > "Look at it this way," so to speak. A reporter does not necessarily > become > "more objective" and "less present" via self-censorship and editing, but > more representative of the point of view of the "editorial board" which in > turn is accountable to the "board of directors" and they are accountable > to > the ultimate holders of the accounts--the advertisers whose payments for > Space enable the "reporting" to exist as an extension of their "ideology, > " > their efforts at Control. (Burroughs' grandfather was Ivy Lee, one of the > first great "Image Makers," who created John D. Rockefller's image and > whom > Hitler was intersted in hiring.) > > This is why really good reporters are so often running afoul of the > papers > who employ them, let alone governments, state espionage agencies, > authorities of al sorts whom they are "investigating" and "reporting on." > The rise of infotainment and the increasing employment of huge > corporate-state-intlligence-connected "news media" and "translators" like > teh sinister MEMRI which controls the Ameircan media's news and > translations from the Middle East and uses disinformation, planted > stories, > dis-translations regularly) are bent on destroying the actual existence of > the reporter who does not want to "lose their ego" or "their own writing" > to > a bunch of special interest groups, governments, corporations, > infotainments > and "think tank consortiums." > > The high death toll of reporters and photo journalists, media persons, in > war times and ones engaged in trying to investigate drug cartels, > gangsterism, corporate frauds is for this reason. The reporter will not > let > go of that "minority of one" standpoint which is the necessity of someone > actually attempting to understand and "report" what is going on, outside > of > the Control as much as it is possible, which is very hard when from al > sides > one is a target. > > The same might be said of using machines which are produced by companies > for > the production of "randomness"and "cut-ups." Why "take them on faith," > for > one's "search" to "get outside oneself?" It might be not so much a "loss > of > ego" as a "liberation" but the surrendering of "oneself" to the corporate > machine and becoming another cog in the wheel of the a mass production of > texts "reflecting" the "point of view' of that particular company's > conception of "randomness" and "cut-ups." > > If one has an awareness of the "fugitive intentions" of language--for > "one's own survival"--in turn causes one makes this demand, this need for > the examination of all language, for the "fugitive intentions" of Control. > In a society which so "values" such phrases as "the bottom line," and > "the > buck stops here" (yeah right--) and prints "In God We Trust" on its money, > along with the phrase "E Pluribus Unum" which can be interpreted many > ways, > not al of them "good," is not the "bottom line" to put "trust" in Trusts? > "trust me, man," says the smiling dope dealer, the used car salesperson, > the > voice of the "Con Inside" inserted there from the time of birth. Trust me > says the smiling politician--and the smiling Opponent, the Opposition. > "Trust me, believe in me, obey me, love me." > > The basic idea of much of the thinking of Control is this--to get persons > to > live, work and think in ways which are against their "own best interest" > and as much as possible in the "best interests" of Control. > > The mystical aspect of the found which Murat notes i wrote of a few days > ago > and this is often involved in my own work. There is also this > Burroughsian > aspect of a writing which wants to live, by the means which necessity > gives > it, and not, as much as this is possible, by "taking signs as wonders." > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:57:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Hi Jim, I understand what you are seeing. But In *most* code poetry I have come across (I must admit I know a small part of it) I see very little skepticism towards the digital media. Most of the time,it seems to me, the act involves an enthusiastic and non-critical embrace of a technological opening to create new "art." This sounds delusional, and honestly very depressing to me. Alan Sondheim's is, despite his own possible protestations, the only work I see imbued with this spirit of skepticism, though in his work this skepticism involves paradoxically a radical and obsessive absorption in the medium itself. His images and atavar films -as well as some of his word poems- seem to derive from a bottomless space of the mind. Are there other works of that caliber? For instance, Peter's letter-landscapes (is that a fair term?) are very impressive when one sees them first. But, to me at least, after a certain point, they become repetitious, the churning out of a discovered -though in the memory of that first seeing impressive- method? Am I missing something? Doesn't the lack of friction in the method (I am assuming it is a method, though I may be wrong) creates "too many" of the same thing? Mustn't art, to some extent, always involve a reinvention of the wheel? The original impulse, which started the process (a process at the threshold of method) must also contain the seeds of its ending. That ending frees the code of that process from entering (or becoming) a system, letting it escape. Ciao, Murat On Jan 18, 2008 1:01 AM, Jim Andrews wrote: > Hi Murat, > > I like your observation about power and control concerning code. > > Concerning code poetry, perhaps both are involved. > > In its engagement with the digital literary and other relatively new > and/or > unusual forms of the literary, like other avant garde art, in part it may > sometimes seek escape from the usual literary authorities and modes of > production and distribution. > > But it's also an attempt to gain understanding of and control of or within > the contemporary language scapes where code and language are conflated, > transmitted, received, interpreted, and misunderstood billions of times > per > second. > > Also, engagement with code *and* language seems like a particularly apt > way > into both engagement with questions of who and what we are. > > ja > http://vispo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:36:19 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alison Croggon Subject: Re: Spoofing Inaugural Poems, Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801161614i139237fai2d179f38dc72d45c@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I wish I had a romantic cape. I'm actually deeply interested in post-modern defences of reason (Gillian Rose, Lyn Hejinian). They are about discriminating between Reason and Authority. I would think in contemporary America that would be a most profitable line of thought. All best A On Jan 17, 2008 11:14 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > > From the edge of the cliff and my romantic cape blowing in the wind, > tremulous and panting and parched with deluded longings (is that near > enough?), > > Ciao, > > Murat > > > > > -- Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:12:57 -0500 Reply-To: Jeff Davis Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeff Davis Subject: Radio Ed Dorn MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just wanted to let Buffpo fellows know that I've just this week posted some previously unpublished photos of Ed Dorn reading in Buffalo in 1974; here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27143&l=35b06&id=552184387 I also featured the reading at which I took the photos last Sunday on Wordplay, the show about poets and poetry that Sebastian Matthews and I produce at Asheville's WPVM. The show's available for streaming or download through this Sunday from the Archive page at wpvm.org; eventually we'll find a permanent home for it. It was a treat to listen to Dorn reading Recollections of Gran Apacheria again as I was putting the show together; it's still riveting. You'll find frequent mentions of Ed at my blog (http://www.naturespoetry.blogspot.com/), including the production notes for the Wordplay show, which gives a few new details about the 1974 reading and the recording. Enjoy, Jeff On the web at http://naturespoetry.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:37:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: outline of emanent research (current work at wvu) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed outline of emanent research (note while the notions of 'code,' 'coding,' 'decoding,' codework, underlie almost everything below, they're not explicit - nor are the actions of reading and writing. the actions can be considered emergent phenomena, and the notions as primitives in the sense of members of a set, etc. again, the analog and digital phenomenologies are implicit as well, as are the (related) concepts of abjection and purification. the analyses of these comes out through praxis, attention to detail, thinking through mandalic structuring until the scaffolding leads, not to silence, but to tending. this should be clearer as the work progresses. i should note that the following is both a constitution of my usual/cur- rent directions and most likely too ambitious. the trajectories circulate around formal systems and their psychoanalytic/psychological receptivi- ties, around emanents and 'true worlds,' around edge phenomena which turn towards the uncanny and abject, around languages, bodies, sexualities, communalities, and inhabitations. i have increasingly worked through buddhist philosophies, the analogic and digital at the limits, notions of 'dis/eased' philosophies, deathing and uneasy worlds. now that i have a clear time to think through these things, the outline below is useful as a guide; for that matter, it's a guide to the past few years of the 'inter- net text' as well.) I. motion capture: this conjures up external behavioral characteristics translated into internal processes (penetration, scale, displacement, torsion, according to various geometries). think of mocap behaviors operating within a constrained field with strange attractors / catas- trophic jumps. continue to develop mocap with new multi-valent sensors and software rewrites: 1. turning nodes on and off 2. combining nodes 3. mathesis such that node1 = f(node{n not = 1}), or such that node1 = recursively f(node1) 4. multivalent sensors such that sensor(x) = sensor[{n}] what are the emergent images here? what is the possibility of constructing bvh files with additional nodes determined mathematically from the hardware set? or mathematically from extraneous data? what is the possibility of other organic models (i.e. than human or animal forms)? IA. data remappings entry of bvh files into blender: 1. modeled onto abstracted forms 2. modeled onto parent/child forms 3. modeled onto metaball forms blender file outputs: 1. entry into cave environment: static or dynamic 2. video output 3. what is the possibility of gaming output here? (moving around emanent environment) 3. second life output: static or dynamic/interactive IB. interiors 1. standardized interiors: sheave-skin, sheave-organism 2. constructed 'model' interiors: solid, transparent, penetrable, impenetrable 3. abject fluxed interiors: how should these be constructed? IC. interior narratologies 1. abject/purified narratologies and emanent interactions 2. abjected/purified contents of dis/ease, dis/order, ecstasy, ekstasis, catatonia, defuge, death/immobility, sexuality, speech/murmured/ whispered/cried/screamed, body formed/deformed 3. tantric/middleway theoretics ID. choreographic mocap (see above) 1. additional issues of jump/leap, exhaustion, tether 2. video/photographic output as well as bvh II. scan phenomenology of scanning, causality across scanned lines IIA. small scanner 1. head/speech phenomena dissected 2. schizophrenias and beam-splitters 3. reflections from coils, air condensers 4. static tantric buddha image: sutured, stitched-displaced, node combinations and splits 5. wounds, scars, lips, genitals, ears output into .obj files into blender/cave output into video/still image files within blender: solve the issue of disappearance/transparency IIIB. large scanner 1. interior scans: rooms with bodies, reflections, dance-studio, scan-choreographies 2. exterior scans at bretz coke ovens, persona rapid transit (in motion), soccer fields 3. mobilized body scans in inert environments: reading 2d -> 3d, nature of the inference. 3. environmental scans with mobilized and peripheral bodies 5. narratologies of such bodies: violence, chase, jump/fall, etc. 6. choreographic narratologies III. access grid (open source internet 2 group messaging/environment) 1. distant interaction with emanents 2. readings of the corporate / corporate bodies: photographs/video 3. theory and discussion, levinas, leder, lingis, etc. at the distance of telecommunications IV. cave and second life 1. performance and documentation 2. working/running within emanent interiors 3. and so forth V. goals of the above: 1. what does it mean to be in-carnated within the real/virtual/ true world? 2. what are the edge-phenomena/plastic and static limits of the body? 3. of the geopolitical body? of the political-economic body? performance: abu-gharayb modeling in sl performance: abu-gharayb modeling in choreography 4. what are the signifiers of bodily arousal/violence/meditation? how are these constituted within the real/virtual? 5. readings: what does it mean to read the real body? the virtual body? 6. what are the ontologies and epistemologies involved here? ontological status of the so-called virtual - schrodinger's cat paradox and collapse of the wave function as model for simultaneous analogic/digital readings - seeing through microscopy (tunnel, scanning, optical, etc.): are ontology and epistemology equivalent at the limit? (are analogic and digital equivalent at a parallel limit?) VI. medical model 1. internals and externals, static/dynamic. remnants of the visible human project, gendering of the visual/internal 2. comfort, dis/comfort, ease, dis/ease, hysteria and abjection/fluid- ity (laycock's 1840 essay on hysteria, kristeva, chasseguet-smirgel) 3. dis/ease, hysteria, and so forth of emanents distorted emanent behavior and body image (gaz) distorted surface textures and behavior-collisions (sondheim) distorted worlding, 'bringing one out of the true world' (etc.) 4. medical model and technology 5. psychoanalytics and technology, psychoanalytics of emanents VII. radio 1. vlf - very low frequency - body interferences with antenna reception, phenomenology of body coupling with antenna 2. scanner - social, continuous socio-political landscape description. 3. sw - anomalous signals 4. long-wave - anomalous signals 5. crystal - the receptivity of inert materials, primordial radio and primordial radio culture 6. phenomenology of the antenna/field: materiality of the world as electromagnetic channeling VIII. emanents within fieldings, choreographies, edge/boundary phenomena VIIIA. praxis of edge/boundary phenomena 1. analogic and worn emanent boundaries 2. edge / boundary phenomena - physics and psychophysics of the game- world edge in second life 3. phenomena of the sheave-skin and sheave-skin internals 4. phenomena of medical models in relation to edge/boundaries VIIIB. praxis of edge/boundary phenomena with hardware/software 1. edge phenomena in literature, codework, mathesis of the text (cramer's and reith's programs) 2. edge phenomena within the motion capture software, poser, blender, calculations for example of sin(tan x) as tan x nears the asymptote 3. generalization of edge phenomena into the dialectic between tacit knowledge (polyani) and error (winograd/flores) VIIIC. live choreographies: 1. foofwa and soccer (edge phenomena, dancesport, etc.) 2. foofwa with crystal radio, vlf radio, etc. in large field 3. sexuality of ballet (nude ballet, classical or genre figures), gendering of roles, ballet as emanation 4. anita berber narratologies ('annihilation: to the limit!') 5. foofwa dancework at coke ovens 6. 'body-contouring' of dance/geography the geography of dance, dance of geography, dance geography 7. 'body-contouring' of dance/technology: dance at the limits of the machine IX. world-constructions 1. what constitutes worlds? constructing? world of the text, inhabitation/dwelling/building (heidegger, dufrenne) 2. what constitutes the true world? worlding? 'true world' in which lines/angles are 'trued' (affine geometry), 'true world' in the sense of 'trued' phenomenologies within which virtual, real, and ikonic are blurred and interpenetrating, somewhat equivalent, and within which traditional epistemologies of symbol/ sign/signifier/signified/index/ikon etc. break down (kalachakra tantra, jeffrey hopkins) 3. 'reading' underlying (substructural, configuration files, guides) organization of mocap/scan through surface phenomena (and the relationship of this reading to waddington's epigenetic landscapes) 4. who is world? communality, consensuality? the problem of other minds and the problem of consensual other minds (group hallucinations, vijnanavada, dwarf sitings, ufos, etc.) X. outputs: 1. video and film (in practice, usual issues of apparatus/spectator) 2. digital and silver photography (digital/analogic and analogic/digi- tal divides - potential well on one hand, grain on the other) 3. series of short papers/descriptions 4. series of performances (individual and collaborative) morgantown and elsewhere across real geographies anywhere across virtual geographies 5. formal presentations at wvu (spring and perhaps fall) 6. formal presentations elsewhere === ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:18:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sarah Sarai Subject: found poems in found journal Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 2 poems of mine are posted in the Fall Gallery of "Blackbox/a record of the crash" {go to} http://www.williamjamesaustin.com/from_a_strange_planet.html Blackbox is a stellar example of stealth literature. Editor/webmaster/stealth publisher William James Austin posts a call for submissions on a few listservs. Later posts a notice of publication on the same listservs. And folds into the night. Blackbox becomes a found journal of found poems, 'a record of the crash' that just might survive. FYI: My first name is Sarah (not Sara). For the record of the crash. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:10:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Geoffrey Gatza Subject: Not So Fast Robespierre By Geoffrey Gatza is out and available NOW!!!! Comments: To: Poetryetc poetry and poetics , ImitaPo Memebers , "BRITISH-POETS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK" In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Not So Fast Robespierre By Geoffrey Gatza is out and available NOW!!!! =20 http://www.lulu.com/content/1767006 Hardcover book $24.99 Printed: 90 pages, 6" x 9", jacket-hardcover binding, cream interior paper (50# weight), black and white interior ink, white exterior paper (100# weight), full-color exterior ink Description: In Not so Fast Robespierre, Buffalo's Johnny Appleseed of publishing lays out a public and private map of Buffalo's (and his personal) community. Wit= h his selected Western New York School and personal support system in place, he moves onto "The Book of Life", which, as always, proceeds disaster as Gatza battles through=8Brightly or wrongly=8Bthe "Cataclysm 535". Kevin Thurston, Performance Artist & Poet; author of I=B9am By placing equal stress on the pleasures and duties of friendship and the threat of natural catastrophe, Not So Fast, Robespierre rescues intimacy from self-involvement and affection from affectation, reinvigorating the confessional poem. Frank O'Hara once created convivial letters out of a collaged New York City life; today, in his labyrinth of lyric, email exchanges, notes, memoir, conspiracy and history, Geoffrey Gatza has achieved the poetry of the search engine and I.M. Evan Willner, author of homemade traps for new world Brians, nominated for = a Pushcart Prize How can Geoffrey Gatza fit so much love between two cardboard covers? Not So Fast Robespierre snakes us through a world of poets, neighbors, teachers and muses, all with a raw devotion we would do well to wear on our own coat sleeves. This series of remembrances does not discriminate in spreading ou= t for us equal measures of admiration and lessons learned because, in the end= , "Everyone gets a gold star and cake in the friendly garden." =20 Amy King, author of I=B9m the Man Who Loves You, twice nominated for the Lambda Award and Pushcart Nominee. Buy IT NOW!!!!=20 http://www.lulu.com/content/1767006 http://www.lulu.com/content/1767006 http://www.lulu.com/content/1767006 http://www.lulu.com/content/1767006 http://www.lulu.com/content/1767006 If you are interested in Reviewing this book, please email me at editor@blazevox.org and I=B9ll send you a copy! This is a hard cover book and I received no review copies and my cost is $17 per book. It=B9s totally worth it but this is not BlazeVOX [books] and my ability to give out free stuff i= s limited to my unemployment :-) =20 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:57:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: andrea strudensky Subject: Oppen CFP MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit George Oppen: A Centennial Conversation The Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo invites submissions for its upcoming conference: “George Oppen: A Centennial Conversation” Featuring invited guests: Rachel Blau DuPlessis John Wilkinson Stephen Copee April 24-25, 2008 State University of New York at Buffalo Buffalo, NY On the occasion of George Oppen’s 100th birthday, the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo will be hosting a two-day event, involving scholarly panels, round table talks, keynote addresses by invited guests, and evening poetry readings. We are currently welcoming submissions of scholarly papers / presentations on any aspect of George Oppen’s life and work. We are especially interested in work being produced by younger poets and scholars who are currently engaged with Oppen’s contributions. In keeping with the spirit of this event—our invited guests are all active as both poets and scholars—we gladly welcome writing about Oppen that crosses the boundary between prose scholarship and poetic criticism. The deadline for submission of abstracts is February 15, 2008. Abstracts should be no more tan 250 words; presenters will have 20 minutes each for their presentations with time for discussion afterward. Please send abstracts to oppenevent@gmail.com. Notices of acceptance will be sent by March 1, 2008. "The point is to produce ourselves rather than things that enslave us." --------------------------------- Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:17:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801181357j74a776ees87afc13391264b5a@mail.gmail.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi Murat, If you are interested, here are a couple of pages of links: http://vispo.com/misc/links.htm This is an annotated page of links to other sites that (usually) concentrate on net art, whether it's literary or other arts or some combination. http://vispo.com/misc/BrazilianDigitalPoetry.htm This is a page of links to Brazilian digital poetry maintained by Jorge Luiz Antonio. http://vispo.com/guests An annotated page of links to work on vispo.com either by others (than me) or collabs between me and others. > I understand what you are seeing. But In *most* code poetry I have come > across (I must admit I know a small part of it) I see very little > skepticism > towards the digital media. Most of the time,it seems to me, the > act involves > an enthusiastic and non-critical embrace of a technological opening to > create new "art." This sounds delusional, and honestly very depressing to > me. Alan Sondheim's is, despite his own possible protestations, the only > work I see imbued with this spirit of skepticism, though in his work this > skepticism involves paradoxically a radical and obsessive > absorption in the > medium itself. His images and atavar films -as well as some of his word > poems- seem to derive from a bottomless space of the mind. > > Are there other works of that caliber? For instance, Peter's > letter-landscapes (is that a fair term?) are very impressive when one sees > them first. But, to me at least, after a certain point, they become > repetitious, the churning out of a discovered -though in the > memory of that > first seeing impressive- method? Am I missing something? Doesn't > the lack of > friction in the method (I am assuming it is a method, though I > may be wrong) > creates "too many" of the same thing? Mustn't art, to some extent, always > involve a reinvention of the wheel? The original impulse, which > started the > process (a process at the threshold of method) must also contain the seeds > of its ending. That ending frees the code of that process from > entering (or > becoming) a system, letting it escape. Well, Murat, different people have very different ideas about what's interesting in art, not just in the abstract, but when it comes to evaluating particular works or artists. Or types of art. Or... or or and backspace tilda tilda and or or shift esc ctrl alt. Like it or not, there is a growing body of work out there on the net--and in performance, and in galleries, etc--where the literary is either central or at least involved strongly. In hybrid work that involves various arts and media. And technologies. As to the attitudes of the artists and the works to the technologies that they use, of course it varies also. I'm on several lists where digital artists, whether they're programmers or video-oriented, or more typically visual-art-oriented (or whatever) post. And generally the attitudes toward technology are quite varied, no more or less varied than you'd find in any other fairly heterogeneous group. What with the proliferation of blogs and video on the net, there's a whole new wave of people being involved in art and the net who are mainly concerned with, say, video or print, and the net is simply a distribution environment or a discussion/communications channel for work that isn't so much oriented towards the net as other media. And that's fine. The more the merrier. And, in poetry, there's also a kind of heterogeneous ecology. Print poets, net poets, performance poets, visual poets, programmer-poets, etc, and all cross-products of these. It's almost as if it isn't so much whether there is unanimity about a work or artist or type of work so much as opposing strong feelings on various topics concerning the work that is the more telling phenomenon about the work or artist or whatever. 'Code poetry' raises some hackles, puts some peoples' noses out of joint, and thrills others. It's an attempt to do something other than use the computer to produce the known types of poetry, sometimes. I like that spirit of exploration and discovery. It's often an attempt to take poetry in unusual directions. And to get this machine doing something other than spreadsheets, email, and 9-5 work. Among other things. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:48:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit your posts amaze me, David. i always enjoy them very much. you seem to put so much time and thought into them. and they're so well-written. if i don't respond quickly or, sometimes, at all, apologies. sometimes you raise very good issues that demand more time to respond to than i can manage. and sometimes, even if i had the time, i just don't know how to respond. i see you have developed further your provocative notion of the New Extreme Experimental American Poetry. compelling. amusing. serious, though, not simply satiric. burroughs would nod. yes, burroughs nods. but i don't think Charles Bernstein deserves the satire he gets in it. Bernstein seems to me an interesting writer who has also given much back to writers and poetry, with the intellectual capital his fame has brought him. rather than simply being in it for his own art, which is often how it goes. you also extend the notion of 'code poetry' into domains where it belongs. eloquently. code poetry t-shirts? i musta missed that. but classes. yes, it's true. many of them. not only on 'code poetry' but more broadly in 'digital poetry', 'new media poetry', 'hypermedia', 'cyberpoetry', 'cybertext', 'digital literature', 'digital literacy', 'digital media', 'digital poetics', 'electronic literature', 'hypertext literature', 'intermedia', 'multimedia literature', 'textual media', and so on...these are the names of some of the courses i've run across in which digital poetry is taught. and this reflects not only the work itself being done but also, of course, the current media landscape. > I think what one learns from this experience is that the world is as yet > unread and unwritten in so many ways because in a sense persons have been > losing an ability to read and write independently in many ways due to the > dependence on the codes via being plugged into machines ultimately > controlled by others. > > The kind of skepticism Murat and I have towards this embrace > of codes is > that all too often codes are applied to persons, and persons have > to in turn > decode and recode the codes in order to both survive and resist. > Poetry is > a gathering together of many strange elements which peculiarly enough are > named among the living, as actualites, as Savino demonstrated, > and in turn, > using his example, is not Troy located in Turkey and Murat from > Turkey? And > I am writing from Milwaukee, which is where I met Murat? > > Are we "secret agents" of "another code"--"double agents"--"foreign > agents"-- i think there should be a David Chirot book of Poetics posts. Enjoyed your elucidation of Burroughs, also, thought it was right on. my own feeling about people losing an ability to read and write independently is that it's a mixture of things. as you say, critical thinking is not something energetically supported by much big money. and education, in the current mediascape, is difficult. but this is surely part of the challenge of poetry in the digital. to provide thoughtful, critical, moving, human, innovative work in media where the norm is less progressive. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:19:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > actually Murat thanked me twice for making this observation, distinction, > about power and control you mention, as just about all my letters are > about this issue of power and control-In the last letter re > electricity,electricity itself is a "splitting" of two aspects of control > and power within its own history: on the one hand the "good" D/C current > of Edison is associated with the "safe" uses of Holzer's "Projections" and > the "Death," hooded Electric Chair uses are "plugged into" A/C. Sorry, David. You're right. > You note that "an engagement with code 'and' language seems like a > particularly apt way into both an engagement with questions of > who and what > we are" > > A fundamental of the engagement with code is when the bill for the cable > arrives, as well as the electricity bill, without which there is no cable. > Even when using a public access or job-provided hook-up you have > invested in > it somewhere along the line. The forms of access or the > non-access of codes > already begin to define who and what we are. And, within access, > the types > of programs available, the types of machines, the types of and ranges of > codes one is allowed to use--these further determine who and what we are > within this digital code determination of who and what we are. Very true. > A person with access to a lot of highly developed state of the art > equipment and programs and machines may appear in code as a much more > complex and "refined" and "avant-garde" being than a person > restricted to an > hour at an old and slow computer in a public library in a run > down central > city neighborhood. The latter person may do great street art, > but is always > running the risk of jail for doing so. As an artist, they may be > afr better > than than the code being--but--"no access." Yes, that's true also. I met a scholar this summer, Claudia Kozak from Buenos Aires, who has written a book on grafitti in Buenos Aires. She only included illegal material. If it wasn't illegal, it didn't get in the book. Though of course there was undoubtedly a lot that was illegal that also wasn't in the book. She has turned her attention now to writing about digital writing. Which made me think about the similarities. For the most part, people who do code poetry do not appear to be particularly well-off. Like most artists and poets. They want to be poets, not financiers. They're not on the street, usually, but they are way not fancy, for the most part. They do what they need to do to keep it together to do their art and live an artistically active life exploring the work of others, also--and the rest of the world, as they may. What I do is not illegal, for the most part. But it does share some similarities with the grafitti artists. I do it because it's what I love doing. No one pays me to do it. I'm broke. My work is not winning any awards. No jobs. No press. No local interest. No interest from business or big media. It is for an electronic interzone. I always wanted to be a poet. And I always liked things like math and music and visual art. Lately programming. Now I try to combine them all with programming for the net. The grafitti is here today gone tomorrow. So too will be my stuff, probably. I don't know. I don't do it to be immortal. I do it for people now for them to think about people of tomorrow. Poetry of tomorrow. And today, and previously. I try to make interesting things happen on a computer screen. I don't spend huge sums on it. The cable. The hosting for my site. The computer. Usually my software is hot. Though I do buy some of it, like Director, which isn't cheap. But well worth it. I am lucky to have had beautiful parents who let me go to university and study many things. Including computer science. So I don't need much help with anything to do with computers. I know how to learn on my own what I don't know. Though I'm slow at it and getting slower. Technical stuff still comes hard, but I can do it. > Another aspect of code is the ways in which it plays on persons > being impressed by it, believing in it, taking it as "real" and "true." > For example, at one point in the arguments over the use of the > materials provided by "Curveball," one agent finally screams--"we have > evidence that backs him up!." Her opponent demands--"yeah, from where?" > "From the web," triumphantly replies the first agent. "Where do you think > HE got them!" shrieks her opponent. > Interestingly, Jenny Holzer got her images of Rumsfeld's > memos for > the "Projections" show from the web. > Does this mean she's also just peddling public domain images as > "top secret" "avant-garde" Curveballs for the benefit of an appreciatively > wowed audience? I would like to see the Holzer piece. It sounds like you saw it? > One of the things to think about with the digital is that the electricity > is supplied by powerful corporations and the grids are subject to the > approval of political powers. The "avant-garde" in its military > sense is to > be in advance--and in this case, in order to create the new web libraries, > texts, code collections, there has been a great deal of attendant > destruction of actual libraries, archives, archeologies, artifacts. > architectures. (As the Electronic Poetry Center and Ubu Web grow, the Iraq > Libraries, Museums and sites almost completely vanish; the USA and Britain > never signed the 1955 International treaty having to do with > respecting the > treatment of these in occupied countries.) The digital and code > are not so > much the avant-garde at all as already the dominant--(the 443, > 000 listings > for "code poetry" for example) Well, if you google code poetry you get stuff for code poetry, stuff for code, and stuff for poetry. if you google +"code poetry" then you get 116,000 and although all those supposedly have "code poetry" somewhere in the page, you get a lot of extraneous matter. if you google flarf, you get 34,000. > --already the controlling interests so to > speak of free market globalization and disaster capitalism. > Digitalization > and codes still participate in the 19th century myth of "Progress" which > Rimbaud was bitterly attacking. It creates new forms of colonization and > destructions of cultures, replacing them with new codes designed by > engineers and code artists from around the world in the employ of > corporations, academic institutions, the military, etc. Yes there are lots of default values. Designed by corps and so on, as you say. I think part of the idea of being serious about digital media is trying to question the assumptions, not accept the default values, as it were, as you say, and try to make of this media something less claw-like. > Code poetry will > exist and be widely disseminated as long as it remains within acceptable > areas, which seems most likely that it will, since the purveyors are > embracers of code itself, code as "progress" itself, towards the > "mystery of > being" and "conquest of the world." Well, David, you get many types. The Internet is pretty widespread these days. Traditional publishing just wasn't working for me. Never did. I can respect the little magazines and the print publishers, but publishing in the mags and publishing books of poetry was just not what i wanted to do, though i wanted to be a poet. So when the Web came around, it was like Gawd's little toenail had dropped in my lap. Poet. Programmer. Audio guy. Tries hard at visual art. You can try to put it all together and publish it for the world to see, if they can find it and give a rat's behind about it. Progress? Conquest of the world? Well. I think it's more about trying to grow artistically and personally as an artist and, if it helps people acquire a sense of progressive possibility for doing stuff with the Internet and with computers, that is hopefully beneficial. Computers aren't going away. Unless we destroy the environment and civilization collapses and we run with the dogs once again. Which of course is a possibility. And nuclear war. Or a worsening of the rich/poor gap. Now is bad enough. And it's even worse in many countries. > In Melanie Klein's The Shock Doctrine, the CIA sponsored 1950's > shock therapy treatments are linked with Milton Friedman's Economic Shock > Theories, first realized in the CIA engineered coup in Chile on 9/11 1973. > The idea is that these Shock economics will bring with time Democracy--but > in every case, they have been so unpopular that they have had to be > enforced--not only brute force, but by the electric shocks of > torture. The > "electric current" so to speak runs through the world and now > "back" to the > USA, via Katrina and today one of the biggest transfers of wealth in the > history of the USA. The number of people who can afford electricity or > access to the web shrinks, the number of people controlling the electric > power shrinks, and the amount of military and economic power > involved in the > control of the electric grows, becomes more concentrated in a > few, and ever > more fewer number of persons. > At the same time, of course, the idea that the web, the > digital, the > electronic, the code is where it is happening is ever more encouraged, as > this becomes the place more restricted to the more easily observed and > obedient trained persons of the society. It's true the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. But in places like China, the net is quite restricted. Open communications and information gathering is important to any possib of anything worth calling freedom. And the Internet has an important place in that. > By far one of the boomingest businesses in the world is that of of > security and surveillance, led by the Israelis, who use Gaza > literally as a > showroom. Others are trying hard to catch up. The construction > of Walls in > Iraq, Green Zones, the world's largest US embassy in Baghdad, the Border > Fence with Mexico, gated communities the world over, the enclaves for > corporate headquarters and embassies, for Sheik and Kings, General,s Movie > Stars, Pop Idols, Billionaires--privatized security forces of all kinds-- > equipped with the latest in electronically controlled weaponry and > surveillance equipment, this is an immese business growing at an immense > pace, and reuqiring plenty of good code workers. Yes, lots of good code workers, as you say. But it's not all for the corps, David. You're on the net too. And writing well to make some contribution to a different type of net. And you're not the only one. I visited Brazil last year and saw some of the poverty in Sao Paulo and Rio. Brazil is amazing. But the gatedness of it, the divide between not only rich and poor but even middle class and poor. My friend's apartment building had an electric fence and a guard. And he's certainly not rich. > Due to wars and the polices of the Shock Doctrine and > globalization, ever more people daily are not on the digital and electric > grids. A child dies every five minutes in Iraq. In Milwaukee now over a > third of the children live in poverty and go to school without breakfast. > The loss of homes is sky rocketing, loss of electrictyand heat, the code > access vanishing. Already in many areas of the world private armies and > walls, electronic grids, are constructed in order to keep out the immense > masses of what Mike Davis calls the "Planet of Slums." Gaza the world's > largest prison, is but a crude model for the lockups of the coming codes, > complete with "avant-garde" installations of Light Projections doubling as > Surveillance Lights sweeping the slums and alleys and giant code poems by > "poet laureates" dominating the landscapes on huge billboards and code > poetry figue largely at the new academic conventions. . > > In the annals of the New Extreme Experimental American Poetry > it will be > realized that one of the first truly great poems of an electrical > merging of > the D'/C current of Whitman's "I sing the body electric" and the "A'/C" > current of the hooded figure in the eletcric chair is that of the hooded > figure in Abu Ghraib, wired and standing on a crate, arms outstretched, as > though crucified, hooded--awaiting the moment of shock which will > force him > to speak the new poetry-- > those raw sounds to be translated by radical experimental > innovative poetry > means into american digital codes > and become the further dehumanization of the masked "enemy combatant" > "non-poet" > for the triumphant glorification and triumph of the "Projections" of "our > codes"-- > > yes, codes do indeed have the capabality of being an engagement with > questions of who and what we are-- > of what we may or may not be allowed to be--be restricted to > be--can pay to > be-- You spend a lot of time composing these thoughtful, moving pieces, David. I am very grateful for that. I wish my response was as good. Hopefully digital poetry is not a repeat of Italian Futurism. Perhaps we have progressed beyond it. Or perhaps time is skewed. The past and the present and the future intermingled in an odd way. So that Italian Futurists are still alive. Darwinism heretical, here and there. Right is might here and there. Corporate feudal medievalism growing. Yet you try to do what you can in a more progressive direction. I try to sing the songs that are in me to sing, such as they are, strange code pieces. It isn't enough but it's what I do. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:59:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Karmin Subject: JOB: Point Park University MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit (this is a forward so please don't respond to me. good luck!) Full-time, tenure track undergraduate faculty position in English/Creative Writing at the assistant or associate professor level. The successful candidate will teach undergraduate courses including capstone course of creative writing (poetry) and introductory composition, advise students, develop curricula, scholarship, participate in university governance and college life and department activities, and ongoing professional development. Qualified candidates will possess a Ph.D. in English; experience as an effective, dynamic teacher of creative writing (poetry) and literature; expertise in 19th and 20th century British literature or contemporary American literature preferred; and an established record of poetry publication. Prior teaching experience is desired. Application Procedure: Please submit a letter of application, CV, copy of graduate transcripts, and names and contact information for three references to Dean, School of Arts & Sciences, Point Park University, 201 Wood Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. Electronic submission of materials is preferred Please reference position in the subject line. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Email Address: artsandsciences(at)pointpark.edu (replace (at) with @) Salary for each position is competitive and commensurate with credentials and experience. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:38:28 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jen Tynes Subject: New Horse Less Chapbooks from Sommer Browning and Sarah Bartlett & Chris Tonelli MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Two new chapbooks from horse less press! Vale Tudo by Sommer Browning http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html http://www.horselesspress.com/valetudo.html A Mule-Shaped Cloud by Sarah Bartlett and Chris Tonelli http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html http://www.horselesspress.com/mule.html And the reading period for our collab/response anthology has almost come to an end! Send your work! Info below: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS HORSE LESS PRESS will publish a print anthology in 2008. THE THEME is response. WE ARE INTERESTED in the following 1) writings that respond to, collaborate with, collage from, extend, elaborate, etc. a piece of writing that HAS APPEARED in horse less review, 2) COLLABORATIONS WITH WRITERS who've been published by horse less press or review, 3) BEGINNINGS, FRAGMENTS, PROPOSALS, HALF-MADE WORKS which desire some attention. We may also be interested in collaborative or response-based writings that do not fall into these categories. Please query early if you have an idea. SUBMISSIONS GO to horselessresponse at gmail dot com. Our deadline is January 31, 2008. Send work IN THE BODY of email or as a single word, rtf, or pdf file. IN A COVER letter please tell us a little about yourself and a little about the work you are submitting. PLEASE CLARIFY whether your submission falls into category 1, 2, 3. If #1, MAKE SURE you identify the source work. IF YOU NEED MORE information, visit our website or send questions to the above email address. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:00:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Zukofsky / Scroggins bio review Comments: cc: UK POETRY , Poetryetc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/books/review/Chiasson-t.html?ref=review Though it seems curiously truncated at the end, there is a favorable, enthusiastic review of Mark Scroggin's biography of Louis Zukofksy in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. Would also suggest taking a look John Latta's recent blog posts on the Scroggins bio. http://isola-di-rifiuti.blogspot.com/ Latta goes after it (enthusiastically) a bit more like a humming bird in a flower farm - but, as usual, I find Latta much better on the works that he loves, rather than when he is all tangled up with love-hate resentments of Lang-Po - or so it seems to me - in his readings of the Grand Piano series. But credit due, it is good to see somebody with such visceral responses to the act of reading - Stephen Vincent http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:41:13 -0800 Reply-To: layne@whiteowlweb.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Layne Russell Subject: Bell MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable "Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of = what it leaves out."=20 - Marvin Bell Marvin's 32 Statements about Writing Poetry on the Copper Canyon Press = site: http://www.coppercanyonpress.org/400_opportunities/430_gettingpub/bell.cf= m# Layne ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:55:27 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anny Ballardini Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: <495779.93325.qm@web86013.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I love those trains and the little houses and the incredible work behind, great pictures also. On Jan 18, 2008 12:43 AM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > Jean-Pierre Gorin--a sometime collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard's--made a > documentary called Ordinary Pleasures in 1985. Here's the description from > allmovie.com: > > "Perhaps quirky to some but still intriguing, this documentary compares > the tiny world created by model train buffs as a setting for their tracks > and locomotives to paintings by Manny Farber, and features excerpts from his > writings. The model train system is complex and large enough to occupy a > part of an airplane hangar in Del Mar, California. Small cities and > villages, hills and valleys and bridges, an entire rural and urban landscape > in miniature provide the setting for a railway system built by a group of > aficionados. But what the model train enthusiasts see as essential to a > realistic and ideal landscape may or may not coincide with what Farber sees > in an American view of both landscape and culture." > > (Manny Farber, just as a reminder, is not only one of the outstanding > American film critics--see his book Negative Space--but also a rather good > painter, born in 1917.) > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Halvard Johnson > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Sent: Thursday, 17 January, 2008 6:19:05 PM > Subject: Re: Railroad Club > > And let's not forget "Closely Watched Trains." > > Hal > > "Getting shot hurts." > --Ronald Reagan > > Halvard Johnson > ================ > halvard@earthlink.net > http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html > http://entropyandme.blogspot.com > http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com > http://www.hamiltonstone.org > http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html > > > > > > > > On Jan 17, 2008, at 1:04 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > > > Alan, > > > > Did you see the movie The Station Master? In that movie also there > > is a club > > where all meet and watch films of trains moving in rapt attention, > > just > > moving? The main character, who is a dwarf, loves trains, their > > schedules, > > takes walks on the rail lines. I wander if on some level the > > miniaturization > > in the mock ups in the Morganton figures -and your photos of them- the > > importance of that miniaturization in all sorts of way and the main > > character in the movie being a dwarf connect in an important way? > > What is > > real? > > > > Trains of an earlier generation -which both Morganton images and the > > trains > > in The Station Master reflect- contained an element of duration which > > contemporary/bullet trains do not. Things happened in those trains. > > Murders > > were committed, people met, spies intrigued against each other, at > > their > > departures lovers got separated, wives left behind during the war > > waited for > > their soldier husbands, often of the defeated army, to return. > > Stations were > > built as contamporaneous palaces. Can you imagine the same mythical > > aura > > -what Walter Benjamin assigns to the "new" technologies of our > > childhood > > ("wornout images?") as a dialectic, analytic dream of history- > > existing > > around a bullet train? The images of your Morgantown photos have a > > similar > > duration. The function of the place is problematic, not exactly a > > symbol or > > a fetish; but simply there, basically at least to us, a found object > > a la > > David. This ambiguous use creates duration, thickens, substantiates > > the > > empty areas.problematizes perspective. > > > > When you write, "the images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, > > except of course for > > size reduction," what do you mean? I assume you took the > > photographs? How > > did the "size reduction" occur? I am not clear. > > > > "I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is > > arbitrary and > > what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the exigencies > > of > > taking _this_ image and not another." > > > > Do you mean the "facts," the object in front of the lens dictates the > > photograph? Do you understand what I mean by the independence of > > "gesture" > > -of what is before the lens- creates the photograph, despite all the > > manipulative impulses of the photographer? This democratic/chaotic > > impulse > > inherent in photography as a medium? > > > > "The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a > > long > > time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and > > time; > > it's complex, beautiful." > > > > Exactly. That's what I mean by duration anjd the unsettling > > substatiation > > the space of the photograph undergoes. > > > > "I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to > > Eco's > > notion of double coding?" > > > > I had not heard of Eco's phrase, but truly a double encoding > > creating a > > mental pun occurs: the code of the miniature object encounters the > > code of > > the perspective. Therefore, those images taken from above are doubly > > small > > which, ironically, make them more "real," gaining for an instant in > > the mind > > the dimensions of their non-photographic size. > > > > Come to think of it, there is a third encoding, that of photography > > itself, > > which seemingly (only seemingly) miniaturizes the subject into a > > smaller > > frame, a frame which itself dissolves. > > > > Ciao, > > > > Murat > > > > On Jan 16, 2008 1:10 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > > > >> Hi Murat - I'm on a terrible connection. I started to reply at > >> length but > >> briefly, before it goes off - the place is in the basement of a > >> popular > >> restaurant here in Morgantown. There are about 26 members of the > >> club, > >> most of whom I gather are active. We found this out when visiting. > >> The > >> model is in several sections, and each seems to have 'modules' made > >> by > >> various members. I was fascinated by the wornout imagery; this > >> definitely > >> reflects aura, but not fetishization. Instead, the club emphasizes, > >> as > >> these usually do I think, community, social/charitable events, etc. > >> The > >> images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, except of course > >> for > >> size reduction. The model railroad club meets, I think, Thursday > >> evenings, > >> but I'm not sure whether or not this is every Thursday. I wish I > >> could > >> tell you more! We may end up going to a meeting to see what it's > >> like. > >> > >> I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is > >> arbitrary and > >> what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the > >> exigencies of > >> taking _this_ image and not another. > >> > >> The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a > >> long > >> time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and > >> time; > >> it's complex, beautiful. > >> > >> I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to > >> Eco's > >> notion of double coding? > >> > >> Thanks for this! - Alan > >> > -- Anny Ballardini http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/ http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:51:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: lovely luser MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed lovely luser http://www.alansondheim.org/banes.mov : total leaking drwx--s--x sondheim drwx--s--x users total users users drwx--s--x : users users ^ users : drwxr-xr-x Sep drwxr-xr-x drwxr-xr-x : Aug drwxr-xr-x ^ : drwxr-xr-x root : drwxr-xr-x : ^^ root drwx--S--- : : ^itchX : drwx--S--- -rw------- ^^ -rw------- -rw------- drwx--S--- ^addressbook -rw------- -rw------- ^addressbook^lu -rw------- ^addressbook -rwxrwxrwx : -rwxrwxrwx -rwxrwxrwx ^addressbook ^auto -rwxrwxrwx ^addressbook^lu -rw----r-- -rwxrwxrwx Jan -rw----r-- -rwxrwxrwx -rw----r-- May Jan ^bashrc -rw----r-- -rw----r-- ^delgroups -rw----r-- ^bashrc Jun May Jun Jun ^bashrc drwx------ Jun Jun ^elm Jun drwx------ -rw-r--r-- ^editor -rw-r--r-- -rw-r--r-- drwx------ ^emacs -rw-r--r-- ^elm ^emacs^d -rw-r--r-- Jul Feb -rw-r--r-- ^emacs^d Feb Jul ^exrc Feb ^emacs^d lrwxrwxrwx Feb ^exrc Nov Feb Nov Nov ^exrc -> Nov lrwxrwxrwx /usr/local/etc/dot^cess Nov ^forward ^forward-converted ^forward ^forward-converted ^forward-converted -> ^hlevel ^forward-converted /usr/local/etc/dot^cess -rw-rw-r-- ^forward-converted ^hlevel ^ircrc ^forward-converted -rw-rw-r-- ^ircrc ^hlevel : ^ircrc -rw-rw-r-- ^ispell_abject ^ircrc : -rwx--x--x ^ircrc -rwx--x--x -rwx--x--x : ^learnrc -rwx--x--x ^ispell_abject : -rwx--x--x ^juluold ^lesshst ^juluold : ^lesshst ^learnrc : ^lesshst : ^lynxrc ^lesshst : ^machinescarred ^lesshst ^lynxrc ^machinescarred : ^bruiseddir ^machinescarred ^lynxrc /net/bruised/spool/panix//b/sondheim@panix^com ^machinescarred ^bruiseddir ^bruiseder ^machinescarred ^bruiseder Oct ^bruiseddir ^bruisedme Oct /net/bruised/spool/panix//b/sondheim@panix^com drwx--x--x ^bruiseder Oct ^bruisedspool Oct drwx--x--x ^bruisedspool ^bruisedme -rwx------ ^bruisedspool drwx--x--x : ^bruisedspool -rwx------ ^scarred ^bruisedspool : ^scarred -rwx------ ^scarred^old ^scarred : ^motd-social_time ^scarred ^scarred^old ^motd_time ^scarred ^motd_time ^msgsrc ^scarred^old ^muttrc ^msgsrc ^motd-social_time Apr ^msgsrc ^msgsrc ^ncftp ^msgsrc Apr ^ncftp ^muttrc Dec ^ncftp Apr ^newhurtingrc ^ncftp Dec ^newhurtingrc ^ncftp ^newhurtingrc ^newhurtingrc Dec ^hurtingrc ^newhurtingrc ^newhurtingrc ^hurtingrc^bak ^newhurtingrc ^newhurtingrc ^hurtingrc^eep ^newhurtingrc ^hurtingrc^eep ^hurtingrc^old ^hurtingrc ^hurtingreader ^hurtingrc^old ^hurtingrc^bak Mar ^hurtingrc^old ^hurtingrc^old ^nn ^hurtingrc^old Mar ^nn ^hurtingreader ^oldhurtingrc ^nn Mar ^phoenix^away ^nn ^oldhurtingrc : ^nn ^phoenix^away : ^oldhurtingrc ^dirty-crash : ^one ^dirty-debug : : : : ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug ^dirty-crash ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug : ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug : ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug ^dirty-debug ^dirtyrc : ^dirty-debug ^dirtyrc~ ^dirty-debug ^dirtyrc ^dirtyrc~ ^dirty-debug ^plan ^dirtyrc~ : ^printmenu ^dirtyrc~ ^dirtyrc~ ^procbruised ^dirtyrc~ ^printmenu ^procbruisedrc ^plan ^procbruisedrc ^procbruisedrc ^printmenu ^profile ^procbruisedrc ^procbruisedrc ^profile^save ^procbruisedrc ^profile ^project : ^project ^project ^profile ^pshenv ^project ^profile^save ^pshrc ^project ^pshenv ^pshrc ^project ^pshrc^old ^pshrc ^pscreen -rw-rw-rw- ^pshrc ^pshrc ^rhosts ^pshrc 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http://www.alansondheim.org/banes.mov ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:43:34 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Subject: Re: Bell Comments: To: layne@whiteowlweb.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Equally "Poetry is poetry because of what it includes; prose is prose = because of what it leaves out." --Wystan Curnow. =20 ________________________________ From: UB Poetics discussion group on behalf of Layne Russell Sent: Sun 20/01/2008 10:41 a.m. To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Bell "Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of = what it leaves out." - Marvin Bell Marvin's 32 Statements about Writing Poetry on the Copper Canyon Press = site: http://www.coppercanyonpress.org/400_opportunities/430_gettingpub/bell.cf= m# Layne ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:55:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: Railroad Club In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801162304u2b233b9cx8583573616ac9e2d@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Very very sorry about the delay; we're still working on moving in down here (West Virginia) and I've had a lot of writing to do. On Thu, 17 Jan 2008, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > Did you see the movie The Station Master? In that movie also there is a > club where all meet and watch films of trains moving in rapt attention, > just moving? The main character, who is a dwarf, loves trains, their > schedules, takes walks on the rail lines. I wander if on some level the > miniaturization in the mock ups in the Morganton figures -and your > photos of them- the importance of that miniaturization in all sorts of > way and the main character in the movie being a dwarf connect in an > important way? What is real? I haven't seen it, but there _is_ something about miniaturization that's important here. I'm currently writing on avatars in Second Life, and the fact is they're small, and one generally sets the camera above and behind one's avatar - this plays into a psychoanalytics of framing (something that Bachelard might write about) and 'corners,' I think. It's not so much control as maternal projection that's involved - the miniaturization creates a matrix that's safe; there are hiding-places but no enemies, and the trains have the promise of continuous running. To the extent that the sets are placed in the past, there's both a safer period (safer because encapsulated) presencing itself, and often a tie to one's own childhood; many of us had toy trains as children. > Trains of an earlier generation -which both Morganton images and the > trains in The Station Master reflect- contained an element of duration > which contemporary/bullet trains do not. Things happened in those > trains. Murders were committed, people met, spies intrigued against each > other, at their departures lovers got separated, wives left behind > during the war waited for their soldier husbands, often of the defeated > army, to return. Stations were built as contamporaneous palaces. Can you > imagine the same mythical aura -what Walter Benjamin assigns to the > "new" technologies of our childhood ("wornout images?") as a dialectic, > analytic dream of history- existing around a bullet train? The images of > your Morgantown photos have a similar duration. The function of the > place is problematic, not exactly a symbol or a fetish; but simply > there, basically at least to us, a found object a la David. This > ambiguous use creates duration, thickens, substantiates the empty > areas.problematizes perspective. > Duration, yes, but not palaces. The stations were often, once outside NY and other larger cities, fairly simple in structure; I have a lot of images from West Virginia past for example. Oddly, steam engines weren't built for duration; they were more like living creatures. Once fired up, they were never turned off, not even in the roundhouse - not unless something needed replacing (boiler, tubes, etc.). If they needed to be turned off, it took a day to cool and another to refire, and both cooling and refiring strained the metal tremendously. But in our mythic past, of course, they did last forever... As far as shinkansen go - to me, even having ridden one, they _are_ mythic - just look at the landscape wheeling around, their unearthly quality, the airplane-smoothed outer skin, the silence... > When you write, "the images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, > except of course for size reduction," what do you mean? I assume you > took the photographs? How did the "size reduction" occur? I am not > clear. Oh just that the originals were 6 megabytes and too large for the Web. > > "I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is arbitrary and > what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the exigencies of > taking _this_ image and not another." > > Do you mean the "facts," the object in front of the lens dictates the > photograph? Do you understand what I mean by the independence of "gesture" > -of what is before the lens- creates the photograph, despite all the > manipulative impulses of the photographer? This democratic/chaotic impulse > inherent in photography as a medium? > I'm not sure, but it sounds something like Bataille's surplus economy. I think photography doesn't _have_ an inhering, inherency, except for an act of translation from 3- to somewhat still or silent 2- dimensions; other- wise one gets involved in thinking about ontologies or epistemologies that are quickly outmoded - the way silver photographers sometimes feel caught behind the digital locomotive... > "The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a long > time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and time; > it's complex, beautiful." > > Exactly. That's what I mean by duration anjd the unsettling substatiation > the space of the photograph undergoes. > > "I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to Eco's > notion of double coding?" > > I had not heard of Eco's phrase, but truly a double encoding creating a > mental pun occurs: the code of the miniature object encounters the code of > the perspective. Therefore, those images taken from above are doubly small > which, ironically, make them more "real," gaining for an instant in the mind > the dimensions of their non-photographic size. You might want to look at Eco's almost impenetrable A Theory of Semiotics, which is still, I think, the best work I've read on sign systems. And yes, I agree with you re: above. > > Come to think of it, there is a third encoding, that of photography itself, > which seemingly (only seemingly) miniaturizes the subject into a smaller > frame, a frame which itself dissolves. > Of course one could argue the opposite, that the frame is all that remains. Thanks for this! - Alan > Ciao, > > Murat > > On Jan 16, 2008 1:10 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > >> Hi Murat - I'm on a terrible connection. I started to reply at length but >> briefly, before it goes off - the place is in the basement of a popular >> restaurant here in Morgantown. There are about 26 members of the club, >> most of whom I gather are active. We found this out when visiting. The >> model is in several sections, and each seems to have 'modules' made by >> various members. I was fascinated by the wornout imagery; this definitely >> reflects aura, but not fetishization. Instead, the club emphasizes, as >> these usually do I think, community, social/charitable events, etc. The >> images (they're mine) were completely unmodified, except of course for >> size reduction. The model railroad club meets, I think, Thursday evenings, >> but I'm not sure whether or not this is every Thursday. I wish I could >> tell you more! We may end up going to a meeting to see what it's like. >> >> I think you're right re: the frame; the frame in a sense is arbitrary and >> what's of interest is almost off-handedly captured by the exigencies of >> taking _this_ image and not another. >> >> The perspective-shifting was amazing, and what held us there for a long >> time. And it's a shift not only in space, but of course scale and time; >> it's complex, beautiful. >> >> I wonder if the doubling of illusions might not also be related to Eco's >> notion of double coding? >> >> Thanks for this! - Alan >> > > ======================================================================= Work on YouTube, blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com . Tel 718-813-3285. Webpage directory http://www.alansondheim.org . Email: sondheim@panix.com. http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/sondheim for theory; also check WVU Zwiki, Google for recent. Write for info on books, cds, performance, dvds, etc. ============================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:54:55 -0500 Reply-To: patrick@proximate.org Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Herron Subject: technological poetry, code poetry, poetry Comments: To: Murat Nemet-Nejat In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Murat, my simple response to you is to simply ask you to produce any poem devoid of technology. Even if we get to an oral tradition, we're still a species deeply immersed in tool use. And that sort of thing isn't even limited to the human species. And memory seems to be powerfully virtual and we know memory seems not only to be a property of many species it seems to be a property wholly inseparable from the body. This body remembers to the point where differentiating between the virtual and the real becomes absurd. That is to say, there's a triviality about technology in poetry as with perhaps anything involving human language. While it's true that a lot of new media crit does not involve overt rejections of the stances of others, it's also true that (a) there's not really a lot of it, and (b) it's not exactly established as part of common critical discourse. Now while quite a bit of new media criticism focusing on poetics seems to focus on form and, worse, affirmation of one's theory at the expense of actually testing one's theory, it's a new area begging for intelligent voices to actually construct what is "new media criticism" and that might even involve the removal of the "new" and maybe even "media" as well. Criticism has plenty of room for people to re-observe the triviality of technology (or to do anything really). reobserve it, dance it, sing it, throw it, etc. Maybe I'm biased because of the classes I've been lucky enough to be able to teach. Maybe I'm biased because I was engaged in this sort of artistic production before I ever heard of the term "code poetry." Or because I have been writing code for over 25 years. Maybe I'm biased because I like mez's work and found myself engaged in a personal dialogue with Alan's work at the earliest stages of my artistic production. But this practice is embodiment enough, evidence enough, of its rightful place in art. And any further efforts to separate the technological from the artistic only insist that we as artists show how these things really aren't different (while of course doing other things with our art as well). And while I've also been skeptical, parodic, etc., of such code work, or rather, Lester has been parodic, skeptical, etc., it's also been parody that I hope has been infused with a sense of both fatality and love. Code poetry is a reflection of continued change of the human species. We inscribe ourselves with everything that we are or encounter. Neuroscience teaches us that what we fire is what we wire and what we wire is nothing less than what we embody, what we sprout, what we grow, we vine-like creatures, even if we are to reduce materialism to a near-zero role. We experience the Bosporus and that experience writes itself into us by virtue of smelling it, seeing it, hearing it, or even experiencing a poem about it. That the code is to be preferred over the Bosporus is subject to some extent to how much we are wired into code. I have been inscribed deeply by both code and the beauty of turquoise waters serving as some apparent global nexus and so I see poetic potential in both things as I do perhaps in everywhere. In fact I think that the less likely something is to be perceived as poetic, the better that thing is to be engaged with in a poetic way. But ultimately what we are plainly talking about underneath all of this is whether one's experience of the world has been through code or *is code.* Everything else I wrote up to that last sentence has been to help make sense of that last sentence. Your friend Patrick ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:11:58 -0500 Reply-To: az421@freenet.carleton.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob McLennan Subject: an interview with me Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT interviewed (at a distance) at the ottawa airport by an american poet for the online publication MiPOesis; & a great photograph of me in rust leather by the roller coasters at the west edmonton mall; http://www.mipoesias.com/INTERVIEWS2008/mclennan_graham.html alberta rob -- poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:28:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Aaron Belz Subject: Free chapbooks! Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit SPECIAL - NOW THROUGH JAN 31, 2008 Recommend Observable Books to the kindly folks at your local independent bookstore; if they place an order, you will receive two Observable Books of your choice, free! http://observable.org/books/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:25:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James T Sherry Subject: The Relationship Launch Party Comments: To: dthomas@fair.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="=_related 005A30D8852573D6_=" This is a multipart message in MIME format. --=_related 005A30D8852573D6_= Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=_alternative 005A30D8852573D6_=" --=_alternative 005A30D8852573D6_= Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Launch Party=20 =20 Kate Valk, Kiki Smith, Martha Wilson, Linda Yablonsky, Linda Chapman,=20 Deborah Thomas, Howie Seligman, Eve Biddle, Mary Smith, Ulla Dydo=20 invite you to come be our Valentines and celebrate the launch of=20 The Relationship=20 a performance group directed by Fiona Templeton with Janet Clancy, Anna Kohler, Robert Kya-Hill, Tanya Selvaratnam, Valda Setterfield, Stephanie Silver and more=20 Party on February 8th, 2008 7-10 pm at The Performing Garage, 33 Wooster Street, New York City Please reserve in advance from Brown=20 Paper=20 Tickets (low-price, fair-trade) 1-800-838-3006 www.BrownPaperTickets.com/event/26692=20 =20 (also, if available, at the door) $50 per date For $150 donation you will be More Than a Friend Donation of $500 makes you a Significant Other=20 Evening includes -Hors d'oeuvres drinks -Introduction to The Relationship and rare glimpses of 30 years of Fiona=20 Templeton's work -Screening of short films directed by Fiona Templeton, including one shot=20 by John Jesurun in the Caucasus and Western Coast of Georgia, the birthplace of=20 the mythical Medea, giving a view into the history of Fiona's "The Medead." -Collaborative performance by Dan Kaufman (of Barbez) and vocalist Shelley = Hirsch. -Other seldom-seen appearances! -Raffle of exclusive artifacts, manuscripts, signed books, drawings,=20 country weekend, good times -Dancing with DJ -AND MORE=20 The Relationship has a great program of work over the next few years and=20 on - come help make it happen.=20 The Relationship Performance and Arts Group, Inc. is a 501(c)(3)=20 organization. Amount of ticket over $5 is tax-deductible.=20 queries to home@therelationship.org www.therelationship.org =20 Forward email Update Profile/Email Address=20 =20 =20 | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe=20 =20 =20 =A3 | Privacy Policy=20 . Email Marketing=20 by=20 =20 The Relationship | Fiona Templeton, Artistic Director | 100 Saint Mark's=20 Place #7 | New York | NY | 10009 --=_alternative 005A30D8852573D6_= Content-Type: text/html; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
 

Launch Party    
   

Kate Valk, Kiki Smith, Martha Wilson, Linda Yablonsky, Linda Chapman, Debor= ah Thomas, Howie Seligman, Eve Biddle, Mary Smith, Ulla Dydo


invite you to come be our Valentines and celebrate the launch of
=

The Relationship


a performance group directed by Fiona Templeton
with Janet Clancy, Anna Kohler, Robert Kya-Hill, Tanya Selvaratnam,
Valda Setterfield, Stephanie Silver and more


Party on February 8th, 2008
7-10 pm
at The Performing Garage,
33 Wooster Street, New York City
Please reserve in= advance from Brown Paper

Tickets (low-price, fair-trade)

1-800-838-3006

www.BrownPaperTickets.com/event/26692
<= b><http://www.BrownPaperTickets.com/event/26692>

(also, if available, at the door)
$50 per date
For $150 donation you will be More Than a Friend
Donation of $500 makes you a Significant Other


Evening includes
-Hors d'oeuvres  drinks
-Introduction to The Relationship and rare glimpses of 30 years of Fiona Templeton's work
-Screening of short films directed by Fiona Templeton, including one shot by John
Jesurun in the Caucasus and Western Coast of Georgia, the birthplace of the mythical
Medea, giving a view into the history of Fiona's "The Medead."
-Collaborative performance by Dan Kaufman (of Barbez) and vocalist Shelley Hirsch.
-Other seldom-seen appearances!
-Raffle of exclusive artifacts, manuscripts, signed books, drawings, country weekend, good times
-Dancing with DJ
-AND MORE


The Relationship has a great program of work over the next few years and on
- come help make it happen.


The Relationship Performance and Arts Group, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organizati= on.
Amount of ticket over $5 is tax-deductible.


queries to home@therelationship.org
www.therelationship.org
       

Forward email
Update Profile/Email A= ddress
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The Relationship | Fiona Templeton, Arti= stic Director | 100 Saint Mark's Place #7 | New York | NY | 10009
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Friday January 25th. 6.30pm at the: Cue Foundation 511 West 25th Street Ground Floor New York NY 10001 Reservations are required for all events. Please call 212 206-3583 or email us at ryan.white@cueartfoundation.org to reserve a seat. cris cheek is a poet, book maker, sound artist, mixed-media practitioner and interdisciplinary performer, whose texts have been commissioned and shown locally and trans-locally, often in multiple versions using diverse media for their production and circulation. His most recent work is a full body of collaboration(s) with Kirsten Lavers as TNWK (www.tnwk.net). His most recent publication is "the church, the school, the beer" from Critical Documents (2007). CUE Art Foundation is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit arts organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive creative forum for contemporary art by supporting under-recognized artists via a multi- faceted mission spanning the realms of gallery exhibitions, public programming, professional development programs and arts-in-education. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:28:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: DISCRETENESS: A SURVEY MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" DISCRETENESS: A SURVEY A Supplement to Sound & Event: Special Issue on Poetry Hark! Poets, Readers: We are looking for brief discursive engagements with any of the poets' audio files available at online archives such as PennSound, ubuweb.com, kswnet.org, slought.org, or with any other poets' recordings. We are open to serious and also to playful treatments of sound and event -- the temporal dimension -- in poetry, for a Supplement to our international Sound & Event issue of ESC: English Studies in Canada. ings! Length: 250 to 1,250 words Audio clip to accompany text is encouraged! Timeline: before 29 Feb. Please send texts as RTF file attachments to all three editors: Louis Cabri (lcabri@uwindsor.ca), Aaron Levy (alevy@slought.org), Peter Quartermain (quarterm@interchange.ubc.ca). * * * * Sound. What is it? In writing, reading, listening. Do you sound out what you write and read? and what you listen to? What does that mean, to sound out? A gesture? What sort? Where is that sound on the page? How is that sound on the page? Is sound a figure of speech? an -emic trend? a social material in words? divisible into words? Does sound exist prior to, or through, or even despite words' formation, or exist only in letters, syllables, morphemes, syntactic categories? Is sound part of the ambience of writing (Pound's wordless rhythmical humming)? What ambience? What is sound as an aesthetic dimension of writing that links to past rhythmical and rhyming traditions? What is the musicality of poetry's "real thing"? What is poetic sound as a subjective state? or as a descriptive, empirical dimension of language as language in poetry? Is sound the oratorical aspect of the reading performance, and the open window? Which reading performance? When? The motor and acoustics of the body? Which body? Where? When? Is there influence of specific songs? Is the sound not gendered? How? Speech and speech alone? Noise alone? Noise inside speech alone? The mimological, the Cratylian of language, onomatopoeic and phonosemantic mimicry by sound itself embodying meaning? Sound as system in poetry? What is or has been an important sound for you as a poet in any of your work? Does the internet medium in itself impressionistically suggest today a particular quality of sound or of soundlessness? A mix of the above? Some other mix? An other? Audio demonstrations welcome; a cd will accompany this special issue. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 21:18:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Walter K. Lew" Subject: Poets of the Unreeled: Two Shows, Feb. 1 and 2 in New York Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed POETS OF THE UNREELED!--A CinePoetry & Performance Extravaganza MULTIMEDIA POETS, artists, and musicians Linh Dinh, Wang Ping, Paolo Javier (with Ernest Concepcion & Vinay Chowdhry), Jeremy James Thompson, Kate Ann Heidelbach, dennis M. somera, Mike Estabrook, and Dillon Westbrook give live reinterpretations of classic films, screen new videos, pay homage to jazz drummers, and redraw on-stage some present scenes. FIRST SHOW: Friday, Feb. 1st, 7-9 pm. At the Galapagos Art Space. $6. 70 North 6th St., between Kent and Wythe, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 3.5 blocks from the Bedford Ave. stop of the L train. For further info, see . SECOND SHOW: Saturday, Feb. 2nd, Midnight-2 am. At the Bowery Poetry Club. $8. 308 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. More info at . A shadoWord production curated by Walter K. Lew. * * * For some recent work by the participating poets and performers, see: Linh Dinh Short poetry videos: Paolo Javier Edits the online journal at Wang Ping Ernest Concepcion Mike Estabrook "The Road to Nam" (short video): Jeremy James Thompson Dillon Westbrook Kate Ann Heidelbach, dennis M. somera Walter K. Lew Dept. of English University of Miami P.O. Box 248145 Coral Gables, FL 33124 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:07:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: (article on Gaz for upcoming publication) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed I met my Baby, out behind the Gaz-Works You don't often think of your body unless you're thinking of your body. It's there and even when you think of it, you're incarnated, presenced. You're presenced all the time. Sign off Second Life and you're gone. That's the ground state, disappearance. In SL your bodies intended, there's nothing given but the slate. Whatever is added parallels cinema and the mise en scene - nothing is left to chance unless chance is determined, built-in. But it's the projections that fundamentally characterize it - introjections from SL body to organism, projections from organism to SL body. Think of this as jectivity, an uncanny relationship which escapes determination, which flirts with abjection. The SL body is a body that is witnessed, except for the somewhat clumsy 'mouselook' which places you within it; the mouselook eerily bends the landscape while the framework monitor remains static. There's always background going on in or within/without SL; jectivity operates through a normalization that behaves as dream-screen - for jectivity to occur, the SL/organism interface must appear coherent, cohering - an inhabitation or dwelling beyond building. Gaz breaks through this in a way that would be illicit in the world of organism, of course; pulled or distended limbs in the latter would be a form of torture or death. One might still speak of self-image and perhaps drugs which alter it, even the appearance of the physical scaffolding of the organic body, but Gaz does this with what one postulates, again as a kind of background radiation, as a normal state which is a state of absence. All of this is too neat and I'd argue further a few things - first, that body and mind are always already both 'real' and 'virtual,' the computer monitor appearing within this almost as afterthought - and second, that culture, which is interlaced with intentionality, occurs all the way down and across - not only from amoeba to, say, bird (with destructive humans halfway across this continuum), but also from carbon- to silicon- based lifeform which would include both amoeba and computer, if not the internal combustion engine. I speak of spew and emissions - of signifiers which ride across and above the surfaces of what's really going on - the true world - and it's these signifiers that are subtextual operatives within Second Life and art- or culture- working in Second Life, which is coding, coded, recoding, writing, rewriting, and wryting itself constantly - wryting being the implicit inhering relationship of inscriptive to the body, bodily inscription and inscriptive body coalescing and coalesced from the very beginning. Think of edges of worlds and bodies; Second Life adds two new constants: height (evidenced in flying) and gameworld boundaries, for example at the bottom of the ocean where everything is transformed, and moving forward out of the gamespace results in asymptotic returns to the interior. Camera movement can distance you from the avatar; one can move within, beneath, above, within her. There are at least two positions of inherent interest. In the first, the camera leaves the avatar altogether, in order to peer beneath the gamespace or elsewhere across forbidden zones, and in the second, the camera appears within the avatar body - a view that brings the sheaves/prims to the foreground, not goreground, as the avatar dissolves into empty space. Gaz' reach extends, appears to extend, of course it doesn't and can't, outside the gamespace altogether (a point in an expand- ing universe is still within an expanding universe) - this is an inversion of a caveworld, transformed into private plateau. Again the physics are odd, exposing the Second Life universe as non-isotropic whatsoever - as a construct within which worlding occurs and within/without which the true world operates as it does, ontologically and epistemologically, everywhere we are, can think of, within and without jectivity. Now there are issues of entrapment, reminiscent of current RIAA stuff; Gaz insists that one's body in Second Life is not one's own, and that jectiv- ity in the same is only artifact, in fact mitigated by Linden Labs, at best. S/he's a gadfly or parasitic (in Serres' sense of cultural producer) about the game (as one is a man or woman 'about the town'). So one's behavior in the vicinity of a Gazwork, gasworks (think of Bhopal) is not one's own, either; the distortions and entrapments, the weighings-down, are not of one's making, but of one's wandering into a work such that the wandering becomes the catalyst or primordial state of the work. Not always, but almost always, avatars are smaller than one's physical body, or appear so. And one's viewpoint is not always, but almost always, above and behind the avatar, slightly raised - as if one's watching a soccer game, which for a spectator can be senseless from a ground-based camera. I think this kind of miniaturization tends towards a maternal reading of the world, a reading within which the image on the screen forms a safe matrix; after all, the computer goes on and off, games and software are replaced or updated, and both the world and you go on. So here's this safe world, and jectivity or what one might call the 'jectivity-braid' - the braid of psychoanalytic renderings, readings and writings, introjec- tions and projections, dreamings and hallucinatings, all before or within and without the screen - this braid is taken for granted; it's the safe- house of the world, transforming the world and the true world into a habitus. As a result of peering and miniaturization among other things. And the ability to chat and keep or erase chat. And the ability to fly or teletransport, playing into Freud's condensation/displacement in the dreamwork. Second Life is a _pun_ in this regard - one place quickly sub- stituted for another, and such substitutions revolutionary or disrupting as one landscape disappears, another appears - perhaps throwing everything off but just for a (very safe) moment. It's the safety in punning that makes them revolutionary, and the same safety occurs in relation and through the braid. So again, when Gaz takes a meta-position in relation to this relation, when Gaz appears apparently half-in and half-out of the gamespace, the disruptive becomes difficult to absorb, becomes something that doesn't happen in the real (except perhaps with sado-masochism and the use of safewords which break out of one theater into another). It's a contradiction which can't be absorbed. And to return to one's "own" avatar body after Gaz' distortion, one logs out of Second Life - in other words out of the fundamental world, what is _being_ the fundamental world - into another world with its real dangers, etc. - the world of the inert or 'idiotic' real (Rosset). So that the space-time slice within which your body is distorted must be abandoned. So that one returns and in this return, like the prodigal daughter or sun, the body is made w/hole again, just like in the MOOs and MUDs and various adventure games which are the history of all these spaces and WOW and whatnot. (I want to mention briefly my own work here, which is concerned with inconceivable positionings of one's own avatar, position- ings within which behaviors pile on behaviors, creating 'behavior colli- sions' that create, for the viewer (distinct from the performer), a disturbing and/or dis/eased representation of the body, an abject body that indicates something else other the normative is occurring, something that can't be absorbed. With Gaz, this occurs first-person - the change is to _me_ and my image/imaginary; with my work, it's third-person and in a sense stains or transforms the mise en scene into something abject and unexpected.) To conclude on a mundane note - There are two things that distinguish Gaz' works as well as Second Life, and are critical for contemporary theory, to the extent that contemporary theory is critical. First, the latter: When- ever people talk about an experience in Second Life, they talk as if they're _in the world_: "I just wandered around and didn't see much." "I talked to some people and a bird flew overhead and grabbed me." "I was teleported to the Odyssey Gallery and saw an amazing work there, well, not actually _saw,_ but experienced." "I kept looking for someone but all I found were empty spaces." And so forth. So the _experience_ of SL melds with experience otherwise (or the same), and this doesn't happen with other online experiences, except of course games and other social spaces. We adapt quickly to the screen, we're braided to the screen, and this permits the creation of artworks and environments that simply have no parallel elsewhere: "I entered this house and it flew away." "I turned myself from a forty-year-old man into a sexy twenty-year-old." "I couldn't get lose from the bird until I logged out and in again." "I was buried in paintings." "Records played by themselves." "I flew." We say these things as if they're everyday, as if they were always possible. "Question-marks were falling everywhere." Sometimes the servers are hacked or slowed up, but even this can be absorbed until everything grinds to a halt, and then one just logs out, waits, logs in again. This logging-out/logging-in has become an integral part of SL, in fact, just as online/offline otherwise is integral to being in a post-industrial world. (I do want to point out that this isn't, naturally, the only world - the world outside the matrix or braid is characterized by intense poverty, local wars, starvations, and so forth, and SL is powerless in relation to these; one might argue in fact that SL is too much of a safe haven, that it detracts from real praxis and real difference in the true world. And there's truth to this.) The second, related, thing in conclusion, is Gaz' works themselves; as I pointed out above, the behaviors they trigger couldn't occur outside gamespace without bodily destruction - and some of the behaviors couldn't occur at all. So these behaviors, these works, are absolutely unique in this respect; they depend on both a reading of the SL environment as 'natural,' and a scripting within and of that environment to produce the 'unnatural' which is still read as natural. These works, on this level, question the authority of the real, of the idiotic real; they're a kind of critique that couldn't exist anywhere else. The viewer/participant isn't prepared for them. (UPS trucks falling on one!) So one engages both crit- ically and psychologically/psychoanalytically - the works create both contemplation and affect, in ways we're not used to. And that, at least for me, is one of the highest goals of art - to create that sense of dis/comfort that gives us a place to question everything, and to return from that questioning hopefully wiser. On a personal note, I can't say I've found anything as intriguing as Gaz' works, anywhere, and for a long time, and I'm still fathoming out the implications, still feeling the limbs extended almost to the breaking-point. Gaz is a pioneer in the body and space of the Other - and perhaps nothing more need have been said than that. === References in no particular order (check online for details): Drew Leder, The Absent Body Alfred, Schutz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance Dalai Lama, introduction by Jeffrey Hopkins, Kalachakra Tantra, Rite of Initiation Janet Gyatso, Apparitions of the Self, The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary Candrakirti, Madhyamakavatara (The Entry into the Middle Way) Hevajra Tanta Visuddhi Magga (The Path of Purification) Paul Fishwick (editor), Aesthetic Computing (by various) second life, the official guide (2007) === ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:13:39 -0500 Reply-To: tyrone williams Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: tyrone williams Subject: from Lisa Jarnot Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear Poetics List Folks: =20 I will be teaching a poetry workshop in NYC/Queens this spring and I have r= oom in it for three or four more students. I'd appreciate it if you could f= orward this description to interested parties. Thanks, Lisa Jarnot A Winter Workshop in Sunnyside, Queens. From the Archives. 10 weeks. $300. = Saturdays 12-3, beginning February 9th. A workshop making use of a variety = of archival material (Sound recordings such as lectures by Robert Duncan, V= ancouver Conference seminars, Readings by the Lang crowd at the Ear Inn, ra= re Spicer tapes, Creeley recordings, Ted Berrigan and Clark Coolidge chatti= ng while high, Helen Adam singing ballads, Films by Kenneth Anger and Stan = Brakhage, NET Educational TV poetry series from the 60s with O'Hara and so = on, copies of rare publications and books, cross-genre forms: recordings of= Lenny Bruce alongside recordings of Allen Ginsberg, etc., the audio-tape o= f RDuncan's Faust Foutu Play, 1954 SF, etc., Cornell films). The show-and-t= ell aspect of the workshop would be accompanied by writing/project exercise= s related to what we're doing: e.g.=E2=80=94 write a comedy sketch poem, co= nsider the line breaks and punctuation in your poems as notation for the pe= rformance of the work, write a Scottish border ballad, collaborate on a poe= t's theater play, etc. There would also be time to focus in on works-in-pro= gress by each of the students. To register for this class, contact Lisa Jar= not at ljarnot@gmail.com Tyrone Williams ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 03:35:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: on code poetry In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Hi Murat, here is part of the 'larger story' of poetry and computers. to me, anyway. mcluhan and others have observed that the tools we use (language itself is a technology if we consider technologies to be tools made by people) become part of us more deeply than we realize, sometimes. it's been said of language that language draws a magic circle round the realm of thinkable thought. whether this is true or not, that it is by no means probability=0 tells us something about the profound influence of language on thought. mcluhan and others have written about technologies as extensions of the body. or the memory. or our cognitive capacities. the microscope and telescope as extensions of the ability of the eye. the book as an extension of memory. the tools we use change what we see of the world. change how we see the world. change what we make of it. it takes some time to make these extensions of ourselves part of our humanity. as opposed to them being metal claws with no feeling. no subtlety. no full human articulation. we are using computers. we will use computers. in many more ways than we are now. computers are universal machines; they can simulate any conceivable machine whatsoever. they or their descendant devices will be with us until there is no more civilization. and they will continue to be used in an ever expanding number of ways. we have to get a feel for them. we have to make these extensions of ourselves part of our humanity in the same way we make language part of our humanity. because they are going to--already are--playing the same sort of role as language, are involved in our sense of language, also. and who we are. what we are. there is no more human an art than poetry, with its intense engagement with language. i remember an old teacher of mine speaking about a student of his, saying that the student had not yet learned to feel with the language. that is an important part of poetry. i try to create language machines in which you can feel for yourself what it means for software to be literary and fully human in the way that poems can be fully human. we need to be able to tell the difference between a metal claw and the human hand. how can we feel through these things if we don't know such differences? and if we can't tell the difference, how are we to be fully human in our use of these things? ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:22:49 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: on code poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Your speaking of "swarms" immediately put me in mind of Henri Michaux--his = work is very much relevant to all this.=0AIncidentally, Wikipedia says Ivy = lee was Burrough's uncle, rather than grandfather.=0A=0A----- Original Mess= age ----=0AFrom: David Chirot =0ATo: POETICS@LISTSE= RV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: Friday, 18 January, 2008 12:01:14 AM=0ASubject: Re: = on code poetry=0A=0ADear Jim and Murat--=0A=0A(I added on after this part o= f a Burroughs note i sent last week as i think=0Ait got lost in the shuffle= and it relates with some of this)=0A=0A=0AI looked up "code poetry" and th= ere are 443,000 listings so it is literally=0Aa "going concern" complete = with ads for t-shirts and logos and lesson books,=0Aprograms, web sites und= so weider--=0A=0AWhen we were 12 my friend Sergio and i, to make school mo= re interesting,=0Ainvented a "secret society" called SHAM--"Secret Horrible= And=0AMysterious"--we made up codes and planted all over the school messag= es and=0Asigns in them, some elaborately hidden, some in plain sight--no on= e ever=0Acaught on--we never were sure if this meant we had succeeded or in= some way=0Ahad failed--on the one hand we were indeed secret and mysteriou= s--but if=0Aunknown to such a degree--were we at all able to be horrible?= =0A=0A I find it still a fascinating, time traveling code that Savini= o sees=0Ain the "proof" of Schliemann's Troy being revealed by its shelling= by a=0AFirst World War British ship named Agamemnon. (This is the kind of= incident=0Athat Burroughs worked to find with his cut-ups among his notebo= oks, his=0Acreations of time travel.) That the majority of persons will mi= ss this code=0Aand instead read the scene simply as a British warship shell= ing a bunch of=0Aruins in Turkey has a parallel in the reception of Savinio= 's own work. As=0ALeonardo Sciascia writes: "But who in Italy has read h= is works, despite the=0Aoptimistic reissue of some them in recent years? S= avinino himself, speaking=0Aof foolish and mediocre readers would say: "Bu= t are there among Savinio's=0Areaders fools and mediocrities?" Not a quest= ion, but an assertion; he was=0Asure there were none."=0A=0A Sciascia us= es this example as an aside to demonstrate an event that=0Aoccurs in his se= arch for a possible solution to an enigma, the disappearance=0Ain 1938 of t= he Italian nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana. (Rememeber this=0Ais an Ital= ian story--): A person who gives information to a person who=0Asupplies a c= orraboration for Sciascia that Majorana, who it is supposed knew=0Abefore a= nyone else the secret of the A-Bomb, and may have sought refuge in a=0Amona= stery, supplies also the information that it is rumored that one of the=0Am= embers of the crew of the bomber that dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima had= =0Aalso gone to the same monastery for a while.=0A=0A I wrote a whil= e ago here re the baseball player, spy and radio star=0AMoe Berg and the H= iroshima Bomb, Jack Spicer and Yasusada. Organized a=0Abit, the writing is= now called "Before Curveball." "Curveball" himself now=0Afeatures in a pi= ece leading up to and including the Guantanamo Poems, as=0A"Curveball" is = the code name for the Iraqi informer whose fake information=0Awas used as = "solid evidence" which was presented complete with models to the=0AUN by Co= lin Powell for the War in Iraq. "Curveball" threw a "curveball" all=0Arigh= t, with as disastrous effects as the spying of Moe Berg. These bizarre=0Ab= aseball connections thus link two American wars and the poetries connected= =0Awith them by their own strange routes.=0A=0A These create a code = which one finds as one goes along--=0A I think this finding of codes= is different from the programming of=0Athem--=0A=0A=0A In t= he Guantanamo Poems what i think makes them a very=0Aimportant event is tha= t they are the first book of a new form of what i for=0Anow call the New Ex= treme Experimental American Poetry. The breakdown of the=0Aego, the person= ality, of the detainee through prolonged periods of sleep=0Adeprivation, al= ternations of extreme heat and extreme cold, beatings,=0Aelectro-shocks, wa= terboardings, light deprivations, prolonged light=0Aexposures, solitary con= finements, prolonged exposures to extremely loud=0Amusic and white noise--a= ll of these techniques to destroy as much as=0Apossible the person and thei= r memories, erase them as much as possible as=0Aany kind of human with any = kind of culture and at the same time force them=0Ato speak, all of this cre= ates a new kind of "poet." and "poetics." This=0A"poet's" work is for the= most part censored out of fear it may contain=0A"coded messages," and what= is allowed to be presented must be passed through=0Aa form of "non-literar= y" translation which greatly resembles some of the=0Atechniques advocated i= n the "List of Writing Experiments" of Charles=0ABernstein. We now have an= "electrified" and "recoded" and "experimentally=0Atranslated" as it were "= body of work" produced under the watchful eyes of=0Athe ultimate American P= anopticon, the extra-legal Guantanamo.=0A The Guantanamo Poems weren= 't very well received of course. "A=0Aproduct of the Pentagon, " "bad poet= ry in non-literary translations," "I=0Awon't read it," all the bad reviews = plus Robert Pinsky's noting "no=0AMandelstams here." What a relief!! God f= orbid there had been a Mandelstam=0Athere! But the beauty of the New Extre= me Experimental Poetry is that it=0Aensures the production of the poetry of= "The Shock Doctrine" as Naomi Klein=0Acalls it. This electro-schock poetry= is the opposite of the "Projections" of=0AJenny Holzer, which go hand in h= and with the writings and figure and=0Ainstitutions and receptions of Power= . The electro-shock poetry is to prove=0Ahow incredibly impoverished and p= athetic culturally the "terrorist,"=0A"Islamo-Fascist" "enemy-combatant" re= ally is. The "Projections" prove how=0Aincredibly "free" and "good" and "cr= itical" and "appreciative of good=0Apoetry" "we" are.=0A This battle o= f the electricities --the Electricity of Illumination and=0A"Projections" a= nd the Electricity of Shock and Prisons--is an "update" of=0Athe "electric = code" war between Westinghouse and Edison in the latter part=0Aof the 19th = Century. Though he was neither pro nor con the death penalty=0Anor the us= e of electricity for it, Edison became an (elaborately=0Aunderhanded) advoc= ate of the use of A/C current over hanging and the=0Aguillotine as a method= of dispatching those judged deserving. A/C was the=0Aproduct of his rival= Westinghouse--Edison supported this in order to further=0Athe public image= of his D/C current as the "Safe" one. Westinghouse would=0Abe the Bringer= of Death, the Shock Doctrine, the Prison coded Electric=0AChair Provider,= the Power Behind Old Sparky's Throne, and Edison the=0Abenevolent "Proje= ctions," and electric light bulb provider. "Let there be=0Alight" as oppos= ed to "let there be be the dark hood." So the "battle of the=0Acodes" as a= "Light" and "Death" matter is inscribed in the history of=0Aelectricity it= self.=0A=0A=0A(actually i remember in the early 1970's my father mentioning= something=0Aabout computers that were writing poetry--=0Ai remember asking= him if computer poems followed the linguistics of human=0Alanguages or a "= linguistics" of binaries--or might even somehow involve more=0Acomplex form= ulae--=0Aor weren't many formulae in themselves poetry in their condensed= =0A"perfection"--=0Amoe berg, the A-Bomb-Heisenberg-Mickey Mantle--Ezra Pou= nd--all play a part=0Ain this area of things)=0A=0A=0AMurat I thoroughly en= joy and know this of language you write of. It's in=0Athe Burroughs quote = I used re a glossary of a language whose intentions are=0Afugitive and in a= lot of poetry in cultures the world round. Chaucer and=0AVillon spring to= mind, for example. Often, where i live, we have=0Aconversations using wor= ds which sound like "normal everyday words" to an=0Aoutsider" but to us hav= e a completely different meaning. I'ts the art of=0Aspeaking night thought= s in broad daylight. The language of the "world within=0Athe world." A fri= end was visiting one day and listened to us having a=0Aconversation for abo= ut ten minutes. Later he remarked what a pleasant event=0Ait seemed we had= been talking about and what a nice time we must have had.=0AActually we we= re discussing a body found laid out neatly as a sign beside a=0Adumpster ki= tty corner to here, shot execution style, to differentiate it=0Afrom a guy = shot the other day in the street not as an execution. I saw that=0Aevent w= hen going to buy cigarettes, about forty feet away from me. And only=0Afro= m the back. And only in code, so to speak. We had also been discussing=0A= the rise in price of cigarettes and bus tickets. All of it impenetrable to= =0Amy friend, and just as well.=0A=0A Actually one could say that "c= ode is the subject" of itself in such=0Aworks as Illuminated Manuscripts an= d examples such as the Alhambra. The=0Acalligraphies and images which are= within the lettering and borders of=0Ailluminated Manuscripts contain furt= her meanings which are forms of codes=0Aboth "a part of" and "apart from" i= n a supplementary sense. In the=0AAlhambra, the caligraphies are both writ= ten texts and mathematical formulae,=0Athere is a doubling carrying of code= s. Reading some of the examples in the=0Ajournal noted, what one finds is = not that he ideas are new, but simply that=0Athe medium being used is diffe= rent. Long before Morse code poems for=0Aexample, there were semaphore poe= ms, made by the international codes using=0Aflags from ship to ship or hill= to hill--I imagine many smoke signal poems=0Aand also mirror flashing poem= s among messages transmitted at a distance by=0Athese, let alone carrier pi= geon poems, the first Air Mail Art being borne=0Aaloft in this manner also.= =0A=0A "A poem can be made of anything" as WC Williams wrote. One cou= ld take=0Athe junk on this table and arrange it a myriad ways as poems, or = take a=0Abunch of identical plates or cups out of a cupboard and arrange th= em in=0Avarious patterns as "lines", with spacings suggestive of "pauses" a= nd=0A"accents" and "volumes."=0A=0A Murat and I are interested in the = ways in which language camouflages=0Aan identity so that it may appear to = "assimilate" for reasons of survival,=0Aas well as means of resistance. Co= des at one level have to do with "value"=0Ain terms of the "status" of the = "object"--for example bar codes and ISBN=0Anumbers. In the computer inform= ation world, codes such as these are shifted=0Aon to persons in as many way= s as there are codes for determining angles of=0Avalue determination. New = forms of camouflaging and resisting will be=0Adeveloped just as quickly as = new methods of "identifying" and "profiling"=0Aare.=0A As the then Sovie= ts and now Americans are discovering in Afghanistan,=0Atheir seeming comple= te superiority in technology and communications over the=0AAfghans was and = is routinely undermined by a communications system based on=0Athe delivery= of messages by runners, the most ancient of methods.=0A=0A For over a= decade now my visual poetry, mail art etc has been made=0Awith found mater= ials and at one point I had the ironic and hilarious=0Aexperience of receiv= ing a Mail Art journal with an essay I had written on my=0AStreet sources w= hile I was as it were removed from the streets for a=0Aperiod, and learnin= g how to find materials in the most limited situations.=0AMaking do for lon= g periods without email or even a phone, tv and ignoring=0Athe radio.=0A=0A= I think what one learns from this experience is that the world is as yet= =0Aunread and unwritten in so many ways because in a sense persons have bee= n=0Alosing an ability to read and write independently in many ways due to t= he=0Adependence on the codes via being plugged into machines ultimately=0Ac= ontrolled by others.=0A=0A The kind of skepticism Murat and I have towar= ds this embrace of codes is=0Athat all too often codes are applied to perso= ns, and persons have to in turn=0Adecode and recode the codes in order to b= oth survive and resist. Poetry is=0Aa gathering together of many strange = elements which peculiarly enough are=0Anamed among the living, as actuali= tes, as Savino demonstrated, and in turn,=0Ausing his example, is not Troy = located in Turkey and Murat from Turkey? And=0AI am writing from Milwauke= e, which is where I met Murat?=0A=0AAre we "secret agents" of "another code= "--"double agents"--"foreign=0Aagents"--=0A=0A In the immediate wo= rld are already the codes spoken which are at=0Aonce both "obvious words" a= nd "secret," the "proof of Troy," the "New=0AExtreme Experimental American = Poetry" in which Curveball and Moe Berg play a=0Apart, along with Thomas Ed= ison and Westinghouse, Naomi Klein and Savinio,=0ASciasia, the Italian Lett= er, forgeries, Emily Dickinson and car bombings,=0ARoberto Bolano and 9/11 = and much much else.=0A=0A=0Ahere's part of the Burroughs--=0A=0A Burro= ughs' cut-ups, unlike the productions of the machines online=0Athat one can= use to do cut-ups as though "not by oneself," are methods of=0Amaking a "m= inority of one" which via camouflages, masks, "being obvious,"=0Aessays sur= vival as an intact writer. "The Death of the Author" so beloved of=0AAuthor= s, for this kind of writer has already been experienced near-literally=0Aan= d figuratively; what remains is the desire to live, go on living as a=0Awri= ter--and so the camouflages, disguises, masks, "role playing" and=0Aheteron= yms, "alter egos."=0A=0AIn Burrogghs' cut-ups--the cut-up uses texts to rev= eal the synchronicities=0Aand correspondences which exist among them, whic= h in turn give evidences of=0Athe "plot," the "conspiracy" going on and con= ducted by Language As Control.=0AThe cutting up is to reveal the inner anat= omy so to speak of the bodies of=0Athe Monsters, the Mobsters of the Nova M= ob and their spreading=0Avirus-word-conspiracy.=0A=0AThe "consciousness" "= outside oneself," which one "lets in" via "destruction=0Aof the ego" throug= h randomness--on the one hand may be "cosmic, the=0Auniverse,"--"a power gr= eater than ourselves"--or it may be Control--the Nova=0AMob, Big Brother, "= His Master's Voice" as was the old the RCA Victor record=0Alabel's image of= the dog listening to the giant flower of the Victrola's=0A"speaker."=0A=0A= Burroughs as he noted in the Introduction to Queer--thought of himself as= =0Abeing of the Middle Ages in his thinking regarding "psychology." (He ha= d=0Aafter all studied for a year in Vienna after graduating from Harvard.) = It=0Ais NOT the "ego" which one wants to get away from but the forces out= side one=0Awhich try to destroy one's being, take control of it and use it = for their=0Apurposes. The writer's activity is a guerrilla one against bei= ng turned=0Ainto a passive, consenting, or unwitting accomplice in the vast= complicities=0Awith the conspiracies of Control.=0A=0AIn the Introduction= to the first edition of Junkie, which is reprinted in=0Alater printings, B= urroughs notes of the little glossary of street/drug terms=0Aat the back of= the book: "Therefore a final glossary cannot be made of=0Awords whose int= entions are fugitive."=0A=0AThe writer is at once the detective and the out= law--an agent "posing" inside=0Athe imposed "seemingly random" cover of Con= trol. The secret agent/intrepid=0Areporter/private investigator/"Inspector= Lee" is ceaselessly at work to=0Adismantle and discover, uncover, recover = "evidence" to be used not simply=0Afor "cutting up" but--as Burroughs make= s clear--arranging, editing, creating=0Athe "Files" which make use of the j= uxtapositions of words, images,=0Amemories,dreams, fictions and facts, so = as to be making an ongoing=0A"fugitive" language which at once perceives an= d deceives Control.=0A=0Athe writer is not attempting to become "ego-less"-= -but a series of=0A"identities" which are 'disguises" and "camouflages" suc= h that the writer=0Abecomes "El Hombre Invisible" as one of Burroughs' own = sobriquets "pictured"=0Ahim. The writer participates in a series of anonym= ous, heteronymous,=0Apseudonymous and invented personas" parts," "roles," "= charcters." This is=0Anot to destroy the "identity" of the writer at the c= ore, but to preserve the=0Awriter in order to continue writing for writing = is the means of survival in=0Aa world in which both the "seemingly random" = and the "obvious' are bent on=0Amaintaining their control over one.=0A=0ATh= e great Jazz musician Don Cherry used to very often say--"Free Jazz can=0Ao= nly be played by superbly disciplined musicians." Burroughs' years of work= =0Awith the cut ups in texts, images, sound recordings, film--this has=0Aaf= finities with Rimbaud's "long reasoned derangement of the senses" in order= =0Ato arrive at the Unknown," which for Burroughs is the being always a ste= p=0Aahead of the Control, of Language. For Burroughs this to make possible= not=0Aonly travel in space, but travel in time for the writer.=0A=0ABurrou= ghs was always precise on the point that no work was done when he was=0Ausi= ng drugs. Drugs are Control which wipes out the writer. Tabula rasa.=0AHav= ing been a long term addict like Burroughs, it was only after one gets=0Aaw= ay from that Control, that one enters writing--and why writing is very=0Adi= fferent from becoming "outside" to oneself--it is the means to find a way= =0Ato exist as oneself--to survive--what one knows of the Forces of Control= .=0AIt is that necessity of survival the necessity that is the motherfucke= r of=0Ainvention that is involved with the fugitive, "outlaw," "outsider" a= spect of=0Awriting, the need for the "undercover" aspects, and the reason w= hy so much=0Athat one finds around does not appear to one as it does to oth= ers. It is too=0Asee what is hidden in plain site/sight/cite and at the sam= e time see how=0Amany things that "seem" to be "liberating" are disguised = traps, or inside=0Aout reflections of what they purport to be the opposite = of, in opposition=0Ato. Often the concept of "opposition" itself can be us= ed as a diversion=0Afrom what is the overall issue of Control and an essay = at understanding and=0Arecognising as much as possible its manifestations.= =0A=0AAn aspect of this is the breaking down seemingly of voices in which J= im=0Anotes "all characters seem to be one." The key is that they "seem"= to be=0A"one." From the point of view of the writer, they are not one, bu= t many,=0Aand constitute a swarm. The swarm is camouflaged by this "seemin= g" to be=0Aone--if it is simply "one" then it can be easily crushed. The m= ultiple=0A"identities" of the writer creates such a swarm, a way of continu= ally being=0A"a minority of one" "on the move" whose "intentions are fugit= ive"--a=0A"minority of one" whose intentions are to appear now as "one," no= w as=0A"another," and in turn as a swarm which may appear to the eyes of Co= ntrol as=0A"one."=0A=0AKurt Schwitters is one of the truly profound "cut-up= " artists--and his=0Acollage "method" was to use what he found in the stree= t. Again, Picasso's=0A"I do not seek, I find." This is Burroughs' method = in the cut-ups--he used=0Athe found texts of newspapers, things found in th= e street, passages found in=0Ahis favorite writers, in turn collaging these= edited cut-ups, which he put=0Athrough many transumuttations of his own cu= tting and pasting by hand--and=0Athe n arranging--along side the passages f= rom his dream journals, and others=0Afrom the memories which were stimulate= d in turn by the collaged cut-ups and=0Adreams and fictions, poetry of othe= r writers. This for=0ABurroughsconstitutes the writer's method of time tra= vel--to be able to=0Atravel among=0Amemory, dream, imagined places and pers= ons, factually recorded ones known=0Aand unknown to the writers and so crea= te extensions of fugitive=0A=0AAs Burroughs writes in the Intro to Queer--w= riting is for him a matter of=0Alife and death. On the day that he shot hi= s wife, he feels that the forces=0A"outside" were in Control, and the use o= f drugs was the allowing of Control=0Ato reduce him to zombie sitting on th= e edge of his bed staring at his foot=0Afor what was a period in which time= is "junk time" only measured by the=0Adrops from the syringe, the injected= transfusions of Control.=0A=0AThe Carny world, the hustlers, the small tim= e dope peddlers, snitches,=0Athieves, punks and assorted "low life" and "cr= iminal" doctors, scientists=0Aetc that populate Burroughs' universe are his= verison in a sense of the=0AMedieval Carnival, in which the masks fall awa= y and the Emperor really has=0Ano clothes, Death walks nonchalantly in broa= d daylight, the Sins come out to=0Aplay, and the monstrous buffoons that ar= e the forces of Order are for a day=0Aor a few truly Buffoons. That is the= meaning of "Naked Lunch"--the title=0Afrom Kerouac's saying that it was th= e moment when indeed what was on the=0Aforks was seen for what it is--not u= nlike the scene of The Last Supper in=0ABunuel's Viridiana, the Feast of th= e the deformed, the degenerate, the=0Adiseased and their having their "pict= ure taken" by a woman facing them who=0Alifts her dress up to bare her "cam= era eye" as the "recorder" of=0A"posterity" that "degrades"not only the La= st Supper, but particularly its=0Arepresentations. In a sense, this method= destroys not what is the Last=0ASupper itself but the use of its represent= ations as methods of Control The=0Awoman's "camera" image "exposes" the d= egeneration and diseased ("Word=0AVirus") "state of the image" and "image o= f the state" as a "rotting=0Aedifice". (A leper--literally a "rotting one,= " plays prominent part in all=0Aof this, including the violating of Viridi= ana, the former Nun now a secular=0A"doer of good." Among the "rotting edi= fices" of the film is Franco's=0ASpain--this is 1961--where "miraculously B= unuel made this, one of his finest=0Aworks.)=0A=0A"Look at it this way," so= to speak. A reporter does not necessarily become=0A"more objective" and "= less present" via self-censorship and editing, but=0Amore representative o= f the point of view of the "editorial board" which in=0Aturn is accountable= to the "board of directors" and they are accountable to=0Athe ultimate hol= ders of the accounts--the advertisers whose payments for=0ASpace enable the= "reporting" to exist as an extension of their "ideology, "=0Atheir efforts= at Control. (Burroughs' grandfather was Ivy Lee, one of the=0Afirst great= "Image Makers," who created John D. Rockefller's image and whom=0AHitler w= as intersted in hiring.)=0A=0AThis is why really good reporters are so ofte= n running afoul of the papers=0Awho employ them, let alone governments, sta= te espionage agencies,=0Aauthorities of al sorts whom they are "investigati= ng" and "reporting on."=0AThe rise of infotainment and the increasing emplo= yment of huge=0Acorporate-state-intlligence-connected "news media" and "tra= nslators" like=0Ateh sinister MEMRI which controls the Ameircan media's ne= ws and=0Atranslations from the Middle East and uses disinformation, planted= stories,=0Adis-translations regularly) are bent on destroying the actual e= xistence of=0Athe reporter who does not want to "lose their ego" or "their = own writing" to=0Aa bunch of special interest groups, governments, corporat= ions, infotainments=0Aand "think tank consortiums."=0A=0AThe high death tol= l of reporters and photo journalists, media persons, in=0Awar times and one= s engaged in trying to investigate drug cartels,=0Agangsterism, corporate f= rauds is for this reason. The reporter will not let=0Ago of that "minority= of one" standpoint which is the necessity of someone=0Aactually attemptin= g to understand and "report" what is going on, outside of=0Athe Control as = much as it is possible, which is very hard when from al sides=0Aone is a ta= rget.=0A=0AThe same might be said of using machines which are produced by c= ompanies for=0Athe production of "randomness"and "cut-ups." Why "take them= on faith," for=0Aone's "search" to "get outside oneself?" It might be not= so much a "loss of=0Aego" as a "liberation" but the surrendering of "onese= lf" to the corporate=0Amachine and becoming another cog in the wheel of the= a mass production of=0Atexts "reflecting" the "point of view' of that part= icular company's=0Aconception of "randomness" and "cut-ups."=0A=0AIf one ha= s an awareness of the "fugitive intentions" of language--for=0A"one's own s= urvival"--in turn causes one makes this demand, this need for=0Athe examina= tion of all language, for the "fugitive intentions" of Control.=0AIn a soci= ety which so "values" such phrases as "the bottom line," and "the=0Abuck s= tops here" (yeah right--) and prints "In God We Trust" on its money,=0Aalon= g with the phrase "E Pluribus Unum" which can be interpreted many ways,=0An= ot al of them "good," is not the "bottom line" to put "trust" in Trusts?=0A= "trust me, man," says the smiling dope dealer, the used car salesperson, th= e=0Avoice of the "Con Inside" inserted there from the time of birth. Trust= me=0Asays the smiling politician--and the smiling Opponent, the Opposition= .=0A"Trust me, believe in me, obey me, love me."=0A=0AThe basic idea of muc= h of the thinking of Control is this--to get persons to=0Alive, work and th= ink in ways which are against their "own best interest"=0Aand as much as p= ossible in the "best interests" of Control.=0A=0AThe mystical aspect of the= found which Murat notes i wrote of a few days ago=0Aand this is often invo= lved in my own work. There is also this Burroughsian=0Aaspect of a writing= which wants to live, by the means which necessity gives=0Ait, and not, as = much as this is possible, by "taking signs as wonders." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:55:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Thumb-typed cellphone novels dominate Japanse bestsellers--re codes & technologies & criticism-- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Thank you Jim Murat and Patrick for your letters speaking of codes and access--i was put off the cable access for the last two-three days it's been below zero here in Milwaukee so you can slice notations in the ground for rubBEings--which are very neat, no spillage, the earth is so hard-- growing up in Vermont, walking in the country side in the deep freezes in January, clap your hands, one clap--and the sound waves carrying through space snap the frozen and ice covered branches off trees-- http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html?th&emc=th --- this article on cellphone novels is very fraught with possibilities and novel ideas, some bordering on novelty-- the new cell phone text message vocabulary with its very limited, very short sentences, and the use of emoticons--hard to read for those over 25 years old--("don't trust anyone over 25")-and for purists has to be written only on the cell phone--practitioners who move on to composing on the computer noticeably gain in vocabulary-- the small vocabulary is a bit like that in Orwell's 1984, though the use of emoticons keeps if from being as limited emotionally--gives it a touch a "visual poetry"-- also one writes with only the thumb-- minimization of the "digits" of the hand--no "digits"! the paradox that this paring down to the thumbed-only text message smattered with emoticons should be producing not haiku-like poems but block buster novels, chockfull of the most over-coded, overladen emotions is an interesting reflection on the media involved. The telephone, the the typed message, the grafik novels that influence these cellphone novels, all meet in these torrents of small, simple sentences, turning units of brevity into an extended narrative drama by the continual addition of events without the interruption of replies. The "interactivity of the media is transformed into a separate sphere. what's interested me in the history of technologies and of codes and the codes in discussion here--is how quick "human nature" is to recognize in every technology and code the aspects to be used "to advantage," the "criminal " aspects--which in turn affect the developments of further "security" aspects-- there's also the inexplicable drive to make things which finds codes as it goes along, and finds beauty, poetry, subversion, humor in the puns, paradoxes, hypocrisies or obdurate existences of what may appear to anyone but the artist as a "blank" code--as in a lot of Art Brut-- t as Paul Virilio has written numerous times, each technology produces a new form of the Accident--so each new form of code produces its new forms of security, surveillance, secrecy, espionage--new possibilities for propaganda and the mass media dissemination of the "transparent" and "obvious" which actually are "loaded" images and words-- what interests me are the ways that across the uses made of codes one finds very strange bed fellows as it were-- i agree with Patrick that there as yet doesn't really exist much writing on code poetry,. code literature--and that is shoulnd't have words like "new" and "media" in it--(it would be like those old textbooks on "new media" post-McLuhan)-- i personally don't posses the knowledge to undertake his-- so what i have been working with which is related with codes are the ways in which one finds codes already existing around one yet in a peculiar way like rubBEings, and as rubBEings and paintings, which are nearly hidden until one begins working with them and they begin to appear--as though from nowhere and yet from the very ground itself-- the codes are symptoms of a language which for some time is telling one of itself-- the most coded and hidden language is especially that in plain sight, the most obvious-- the code aspect of the emoticon and short sentence transmitted as text over a cell phone-- a visual/written SILENT message transmitted over a machine designed for the transmission of the VOICE--specifically within a demographic which doesn't read books but comic books-- brings one back to Burroughs' numerous arguments and examples for the development of a silent form of visual writing--that is, a language which would be apprehended without vocalization in reading--and so bring a silence in to the mind-- yet at the same time the reader is most likely not interested in silence but in the ipod strapped and plugged into the ears the text message becomes a further development in the history of the "epistolary novel" blurring into the more Picaresque forms of the Grafik novels-- or religious propaganda booklets like those series already found on buses in comic book styles that could be easily transposed into cell phone books-- another use of technology which becomes almost immediately made use of with each new kind that appears is propaganda, which has become almost "invisible"--the obvious as symptom of propaganda in code that one is so habituated to that one does not recognize it as code-- code has a great ability to generate belief--confidence--"truth"--which makes it ideal for "cons"--the "hustle"--"disinformation campaigns"--stockmarket manipulations--(Baudelaire saw this immediately with the telegraph--) there;'s also with belief itself the necessity for some things never to be forgotten and many others to be completely forgotten--so codes need to be found for indicating and manipulating events and signs to be received in the proper form of memory--as the never to be forgotten or as the instantly forgotten-- Writing about the tentatively named "New Extreme Experimental American Poetry," one can can ask about the significance of the use of the web by "Curveball," Jenny Holzer and The CIA, all basically for a very similar purpose. Because images from the web are believed to be real, in all three cases, and in the selling to the world by Colin Powell of "Curveball's story," all are given an unquestioning reception at the time. (btw i just learned the "chapter" on Waterboarding and Poetry" will be at Wordforword site--) The common denominator seems to be the name of an authority plus the network equals truth. And as though an applause button has been generated in the public, there's an instantaneous "high approval rating." If the "approval" can be turned on so easily for war, and later on for work purporting to be "opposed" to at least war memos-- based on the use of some internet images--it makes one wonder how coded persons have become in their thinking, or unthinking responses. A form of "authoritarianism" is established unquestioningly, in plain view, and as though "nothing is happening." One wonders if Holzer's exhibit, exactly the same, had instead a different artist's name on it. Someone unknown, or someone who was purprosrted to have "conservative" political views. Would this show, exactly the same in every other way, then be taken to be a celebration of Rumsfeld's memos? One possibility of doing some pieces of the annals of New Extreme Experimental American poetry is to use video clips, net images, scanned type written and hand written passages, al manner of different forms and media--including parodies of theses--there is also the element in which they are literature in themselves, when fiction enters in and is able create actions which ignite the strange incendiary meetings of codes that "just happened to be lying around at the moment." The tendency to restrict poetry, code poetry, any poetry, exclusively to questions of form and formal-related issues, allows poets to convince themselves this is a "resistance" rather than a "head in the sand" response to the "transparent" "obvious" codes which none the less are controlling their thoughts and world more than they will allow themselves to know. This is one of the great messages of of code--to make one think one is too smart to be fooled by it, when one is actually being its puppet. By essaying to broaden the areas in which code is seen to be interrelated and operative, is to expand the awareness and possibilites of art work or criticism. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html?th&emc=th --- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:35:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: in the rasping of these many worlds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed in the rasping of these many worlds { on a foreign planet a great claw moves dark masses echo safety's incarnate form { serrated edges hold things in its grasp imaginary in our sad faltering { thud echoes through the mantle up and down safety in the curling inward home { knowing neither home nor sea nor sky follow down beneath our fulling surface { dimly lit and friction takes its course hiding from the universe and death { othering murmurs everywhere abroad cuddling quietly in endless sleep { alive and everywhere and endless claws always deep below beyond the deep { on every planet murmuring and maws http://www.alansondheim.org/internals.bmp ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:03:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amy king Subject: This Friday -- STOBB, LIN, and YOUNG In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MiPOesias presents ~~ STOBB ~~ LIN ~~ YOUNG Friday, January 25th @ 7:00 p.m. Stain Bar – Williamsburg, Brooklyn ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WILLIAM STOBB is the author of Nervous Systems, a 2006 National Poetry Series selection and For Better Night Vision, a limited edition chapbook produced by the Black Rock Press at the University of Nevada. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, American Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, and online at MiPOesias, Three Candles, Cricket Online Review, and nthposition. Stobb hosts the monthly audio column on poetry and poetics, "Hard to Say," on miporadio. With David Krump, he co-curates the reading series at the Pump House Regional Arts Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Stobb is Associate Professor of English at Viterbo University. 1. http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/stobb_william_e.html 2. http://www.mipoesias.com/2007/stobb_william.htm TAO LIN is the author a poetry-collection, you are a little bit happier than i am (Action Books, 2006), a story-collection, Bed (Melville House, 2007), and a novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee (Melville House, 2007). Melville House is publishing his second poetry-collection, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, in 2008. His web site is called Reader of Depressing Books. 1. http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/lin_tao.html 2. http://www.mipoesias.com/2007/lin_tao.htm MIKE YOUNG is the co-editor of NOÖ Journal, a free literary/political magazine. His work has or will appear in MiPOesias, Backwards City Review, realpoetik, Juked, elimae, BlazeVOX, 3:AM and elsewhere. A chapbook of his work is forthcoming from Transmission Press. He sleeps most of the time in Massachusetts. http://www.mipoesias.com/2007/young_mike.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STAIN BAR 766 Grand Street Brooklyn , NY 11211 (L train to Grand Street Stop, walk 1 block west) 718/387-7840 http://www.stainbar.com/ Hope you'll stop by! Amy King http://www.mipoesias.com http://miporeadingseries2007.blogspot.com/2007/09/january-2008.html --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:33:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Karmin Subject: JOB: S. New Hampshire University MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit (this is a forward so please don't respond to me. good luck!) Southern New Hampshire University invites applications for the full-time position of Assistant Professor in Creative Writing/Composition. In this position, the successful candidate will also serve as the director of a vital and growing BA program in creative writing. The candidate will have excellent credentials in one of the following: nonfiction, poetry, or screenplay. A record that demonstrates the ability to teach composition is also important. The candidate must be well prepared to teach cross-genre as well as appropriate genre workshops and an introductory course in creative writing. One or two sections of freshman composition per semester will be included in the teaching load. The successful candidate will have vision and initiative as well as a strong record of administrative experience. MFA required at the time of appointment; significant publication preferred. SNHU is a private institution known for small classes, innovative curriculum, and a first-rate teaching faculty. Creative writing is one of the fastest growing majors and the campus currently is the home of Amoskeag, a national literary journal founded in 1983; the New Hampshire Writers' Project; and the MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. The University offers excellent benefits and a highly collegial atmosphere. The traditional New England campus is located in Manchester, 50 miles north of Boston and 40 miles from the coast. Applicants should include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, evidence of teaching ability in the relevant areas, and four references (names, addresses, and e-mail contact). Review of applications will begin January 20, 2008. Please submit applications online, with Creative Writing/Composition in the Subject line, to employment(at)snhu.edu (replace (at) with @). EOE/AA. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:59:30 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alison Croggon Subject: Re: The Beautiful Throbbed Emanentation In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Fascinating and disturbing work, Alan. I found it impossible not to think of Hans Bellmer ... similar expressions of the dislocations and brutalities of eroticism - a kind of visual expression of touch, which is always partial, as opposed to sight, which comprehends. Thanks - A On Jan 17, 2008 11:09 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > The Beautiful Throbbed Emanentation > > > The following is a culmination of certain directions associated with mo- > tion capture - in particular, operating too near and too far from the > receiving antenna, with mixed sensors. In both positions, the configur- > ation generates furious behavior as clusters of sensors shoot to ragged > infinities and back again. Heads may detach and the cartoon integrity > returns as such. The reading, however, is different, as is the jectivity; > the reading is external, jectivity internal. The reading searches for > coherency: which body belongs with which organ? Jectivity follows organ, > head, and limb paths, identification with approaching, consummating, > withdrawing, churning. This is Brownian motion, but radically integral. > > So what is being modeled? For one thing, slow-simple movement, carefully > seducing, caressing, antenna and sensor alike. For another, electronic > jitters which threaten to break apart the world. > > In all of these instances there are two or three figures; at times, they > duplicate or fall behind or beyond one another; at times they ingest one > another; at times flail uselessly apart; at times, entangle. They cohere > and the video/project/ion is one of cohering, hysteric communality at the > catastrophic limit. Sheave-skins, which are usually reserved for too-close > caress or voyeurism in Second Life, split constantly here; wounds heal, > reopen, the body channels the body. Mind-only emptiness, no mind running > these emanents into the ground. > > Violence, abjection, arousal, caress, tumescence, thickening, cutting of > the sheaves. Sheave-figures which I am sure will soon be independent of > our desire or construct. > > (This is some of the most advanced video/mocap work I've done; I'm always > amazed that both beauty and wonder can come out of such poverty. It's the > machines which are talking, which are rubbing against one another, which > parlay > communication into visionary ekstasis. I must learn, I continue to learn, > how > to listen, how to see, what is proffered, what is not within my powers of > conjuration. Magic is magic because it always come from the Other. I have > lost > expectation.) > > Abjection is the most difficult. How to dis/comfort and fetishize, hold > and release simultaneously. These emanants do this naturally, as Azure > Carter, original model, follows suit. > > http://www.alansondheim.org/throbbed.mp4 > > Abjection is the most difficult, less so as the camera moves in, cuts > through > sheaves. For the viewer there is the level of the subterranean bvh code in > dialog with the exigencies of Poser models, but there are also levels of > organs > and affect, and it is the breasts and hands, high-speed maternal display, > that > provide tremulous scaffolding: > > http://www.alansondheim.org/wideinternals.mp4 > > > --- > -- Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:53:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kyle Schlesinger Subject: Ron Silliman's Woundwood Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Published in 2004, this chapbook went out of print overnight. Digging through boxes last week I happened upon a few copies missing dustjackets and decided to make a few more which are now available at: www.cuneiformpress.com Cheers, Kyle ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:13:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: fwd: ~American Indian Political Prisoner Honored in Santa Fe Jan 31 & Feb 2~ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit fyi :*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤*³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤*³´ Please FWD to friends in Santa Fe & New Mexico area «:*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤*³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤³´`*:»§«:*´`³¤*³´ ~American Indian Political Prisoner Honored in Santa Fe Jan 31 & Feb 2~ IN THE SPIRIT OF LEONARD PELTIER VISIONS OF US PRISONER #896937-132 press release and update 01.19.08 Thursday January 31st, 7:00 pm El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, 1615 B Paseo de Peralta, phone: 505-992-0591 info@ElMuseoCultural.org, Directions and info for El Museo: http://elmuseocultural.org Saturday February 2nd, 7:00 pm Railyard Performance Center 1611 B Paseo de Peralta, 505-982-8309 Author/Editor/Spoken-Word Performer Harvey Arden along with guest performers. Mark Holtzman [aka Silent Bear] will honor the gathering with his music on the Jan 31 venue only. These and other dedicated and talented people will offer their personal thoughts of Leonard Peltier. Harvey Arden with the passion and spirit in the words of Leonard Peltier will make the event something not to be missed. This passionate spoken word performance is based on the Leonard Peltier book-Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance. Prison Writings was written in 1999 by the Native American political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, whose words were adapted into a powerful stage-play by his editor, Harvey Arden. Leonard's words are just as poignant today as when the book first appeared and deserves the attention of the entire nation. Leonard's parole hearing is scheduled for December, 2008. Prison Writings is a collection of Peltier's essays and poems, reflecting his life and his work from within the prison walls. Defending his People and being Indian is his only crime. The cultural traditions of his people connect Leonard and each of us to the Wakan Tanka--The Great Mystery This spiritual connection and his personal sacrifice to the Creator keeps him strong and unbroken. His life is connected to each of us. Each day this innocent man suffers for his people; in fact,now that you know his truth, he also suffers for you. What will you do now? During the horrific early 1970's Reign of Terror on the Lakota (Sioux) reservation at Pine Ridge South Dakota, an infamous time of violence and corruption existed. Complicit tribal officials hired local thugs known as GOONS --'Guardians of the Oglala Nation', who--with the blessing of the U.S. Government--carried out an unprovoked series of assaults on the traditional people on the Pine Ridge reservation. SD. Behind these attacks was Big Energy's desire for uranium under Sioux lands, then being secretly negotiated between the U.S. government and compliant Tribal officials. Two FBI agents were killed on June 26, 1975 during a gun battle on The Jumping Bull Property. Leonard Peltier was falsely framed for the murder of the two FBI agents. The other defendants charged with the same crime had been acquitted by a jury. They were defending their people from an unprovoked attack. Self defense--a basic human right--was denied Leonard Peltier and his legal team. Following the discovery of new evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Mr. Peltier demanded a new trial. The Eighth Circuit court ruled, "There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and data improperly withheld from the defense been made available to him." Yet, the court denied Mr. Peltier a new trial. The jury sentenced Mr. Peltier to two consecutive life terms. Judge Heaney, who authored the decision denying a new trial, has since voiced firm support for Mr. Peltier's release, stating that: "The FBI used improper tactics to convict Mr. Peltier". Judge Heaney also stated that: "The FBI was equally responsible for the shoot-out, and that Mr. Peltier's release would promote healing with Native Americans". So why is this story of Judicial Racism hidden from the public eye? The late Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International, International Indian Treaty Council, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Coretta Scott King, Mikhail Gorbachev, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller, Robert Redford, the European Parliament, and a host of other notables all have worked, petitioned, and pleaded for Leonard Peltier's release. For the American Indian Nations as well as the world at large, the continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier is Americas Judicial embarrassment. The spirit of the Sun-dancer who is Leonard Peltier confronted with the treachery and ugliness of life has transcended and has become the message,of hope, courage, and integrity for his People for his family and each of us. Peltier has been behind prison bars for more than half of his life (he turned 63 this past September). He remains a model prisoner, establishing numerous humanitarian projects within the prison system as well as back on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Petitions will be available at both performances appealing for Leonard's release in his upcoming December 2008 parole hearing (scheduled the last month of the Bush presidency). If Mr. Peltier is denied release at this hearing or not granted Presidential clemency-he will not receive another opportunity for freedom until the 2017 parole hearing. His official release date is 2041. Leonard's voice from inside the cage asks you, "What will you do now?" Be the change, question everything, it's your duty as a citizen. Be one voice if in your heart you can stand in support. Join your voice with ours and together we can create change. For further information or to become part of the healing.... Please contact: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC)- www.leonardpeltier.net The Oglala Commemoration can be reached at www.oglalacommemoration.com holding events each June 26th and following Leonards requests to implement many projects on the Rez. Information about Harvey Arden or to order his books- www.haveyouthought.com. Locally, Prison Writings may be found at Hotel Santa Fe's Picuris Art Shop- 982-1200 (and will be available along with other titles by Mr. Arden at the above events). www.MyLifeIsMySunDance.com to learn more about these and other upcoming Peltier events-including the screen play being produced in Santa Fe this Summer, " My Life is My Sun dance" or contact Keith Rabin at keith@mylifeismysundance.com Some excerpts were furnished by: Stephanie M. Schwartz (SilvrDrach@Gmail.com) from the article, "Transcendent Magic," March 2007 issue of Namaste Magazine. Please read the entire article compiled by Stephanie M Schwartz. See the hand outs at the event. We thank her greatly. In Peace Keith Rabin keith@mylifeismysundance.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:42:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "David A. Kirschenbaum" Subject: **Advertise in Boog City 48** Comments: To: "UB Poetics discussion group "@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Please forward ----------------------- Advertise in Boog City 48 *Deadline --Thurs. Jan. 29-Ad or ad copy to editor --Sat. Feb. 9-Issue to be distributed Email to reserve ad space ASAP We have 2,250 copies distributed and available free throughout Manhattan's East Village, and Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. ----- Take advantage of our indie discount ad rate. We are once again offering a 50% discount on our 1/8-page ads, cutting them from $80 to $40. (The discount rate also applies to larger ads.) Advertise your small press's newest publications, your own titles or upcoming readings, or maybe salute an author you feel people should be reading, with a few suggested books to buy. And musical acts, advertise your new albums, indie labels your new releases. (We're also cool with donations, real cool.) Email editor@boogcity.com or call 212-842-BOOG(2664) for more information. thanks, David -- David A. Kirschenbaum, editor and publisher Boog City 330 W.28th St., Suite 6H NY, NY 10001-4754 For event and publication information: http://boogcityevents.blogspot.com/ T: (212) 842-BOOG (2664) F: (212) 842-2429 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:33:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Camille Martin Subject: Camille Martin's Codes of Public Sleep MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I'm very pleased to announce the publication of my first full-length = poetry collection, Codes of Public Sleep, by Toronto's BookThug. The = book should win an award for the clever design alone, which features a = "Yukaghir love letter" on the front and back covers. =20 Highlights - two longish poems: "call me i" (written on the train The = City of New Orleans between New Orleans and Chicago) and the title poem, = "Codes of Public Sleep" (public space and private acts in pre-Katrina = New Orleans); and several series of shorter poems, many written in = Toronto, including "at limnic realm," "fabled hue," and "hollow bowl," a = series of haibun. =20 Codes of Public Sleep can be purchased from Small Press Distribution: =20 http://www.spdbooks.org/SearchResults.asp?Title=3Dcodes+of+public+sleep&A= uthor=3D&Subtitle=3D&submit=3DSearch = =20 =20 or Apollinaire's Bookshoppe in Toronto: =20 http://www.apollinaires.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=3DPROD&Store_Code=3D= apollinaire&Product_Code=3D3026 = =20 =20 From the back cover: =20 Codes of Public Sleep breaks open the code of private thought to modes = of knowing catastrophe that defy insufficient isolating sagas. Camille = Martin's poetry is the shattering signal from a laudably wild tongue = that will not keep still for our death-drive culture. This is a = remarkable collection - Carla Harryman =20 Cheers, Camille ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:33:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Thumb-typed cellphone novels dominate Japanse bestsellers--re codes & technologies & criticism-- In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > speaking of codes and access--i was put off the cable access for the last > two-three days > it's been below zero here in Milwaukee so you can slice notations in the > ground for rubBEings--which are very neat, no spillage, the earth is so > hard-- > growing up in Vermont, walking in the country side in the deep freezes in > January, clap your hands, one clap--and the sound waves carrying through > space snap the frozen and ice covered branches off trees-- > > http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html?th&emc=th --- that doesn't seem to be the full url/code, david. curious to read it though. searched on the site but couldn't find it. cold. yes, so i hear. had the packers/giants game on the tv on sunday. i heard -4 fahrenheit with a wind chill of -20. yikes. i'm still wearing my shorts out here on the west coast. i'm told i have a case of victoria winter denial. but it's convenient to have them on to jog in. > this article on cellphone novels is very fraught with possibilities and > novel ideas, some bordering on novelty-- > the new cell phone text message vocabulary with its very limited, > very short > sentences, and the use of emoticons--hard to read for those over 25 years > old--("don't trust anyone over 25")-and for purists has to be written only > on the cell phone--practitioners who move on to composing on the computer > noticeably gain in vocabulary-- yes, well, thankfully the cell-phone is not the entire range of computing for young people. what would it be like if it did voice recognition rather than typing? the phone messages have to be short and sweet, don't they. the technology mandates a sort of compression. but there are interesting things going on with cell phones. there's a type of art called 'locative media' (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locative_media ). generally the ones i've heard about involve gps and cell phones. for instance, one might register to participate in a local history project. once registered, one's cell phone beeps when one is close to a site involved in the project; at that point, one's cell phone shows text and images concerning the site. a similar sort of gps/cellphone thang is where you register for a local dating service and your cell beeps when you're within 50 feet of a match. and then there are hide and seek team games. to quote from the wikipedia site: "Locative media is many things: A new site for old discussions about the relationship of consciousness to place and other people. A framework within which to actively engage with, critique, and shape a rapid set of technological developments. A context within which to explore new and old models of communication, community and exchange. A name for the ambiguous shape of a rapidly deploying surveillance and control infrastructure." net art is changing via cell phone networks. with a local emphasis. and a mobile, location oriented aspect that situates it both virtually and down home. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:47:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CA Conrad Subject: CAConrad's ANNUAL SEXIEST POEM OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR 2007 GOES TO... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline CAConrad's ANNUAL SEXIEST POEM OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR 2007 GOES TO... THE BIG MELT, by President of the United Hearts (Factory School, 2007) DETAILS HERE: http://sexiestPOEMaward.blogspot.com The Sexiest Poem of the Year Award is given annually to a finely crafted poem demonstrating a fearlessness which confronts injustice. The panel of judges is CAConrad sitting in five different chairs manifesting five different facial expressions. The judges must have a unanimous decision in order for the award to be granted. In the case where a unanimous decision is not decided upon, no award will be granted that year. GO HERE: http://sexiestPOEMaward.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:42:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Thumb-typed cellphone novels dominate Japanse bestsellers--re codes & technologies & criticism-- In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > The tendency to restrict poetry, code poetry, any poetry, > exclusively > to questions of form and formal-related issues, allows poets to convince > themselves this is a "resistance" rather than a "head in the > sand" response > to the "transparent" "obvious" codes which none the less are controlling > their thoughts and world more than they will allow themselves to > know. This > is one of the great messages of of code--to make one think one is > too smart > to be fooled by it, when one is actually being its puppet. By essaying to > broaden the areas in which code is seen to be interrelated and > operative, is > to expand the awareness and possibilites of art work or criticism. at this point, forgive me for quoting myself. this is from my original post on 'code poetry': -- the term "code poetry" is a good one partly because it is open. it isn't a 'school of poetry' made up of a central group. it's poetry that has some sort of intense engagement with code. and it opens poetry to types of language and, well, codes, that haven't been so prominently associated with poetry before. also, it avoids limiting its focus to computation. it refers as prominently to matters of language and culture as to computation. and that's a healthy inclusive broadness. much as i would like to see a more intense engagement within the art and poetry worlds with issues concerning the role of programming in art (not simply programming as a technician's job), it's important to keep the juice flowing from many areas through poetry, and the term 'code poetry' does that quite nicely. -- glad to hear you have something in the wordforword.info issue that includes some 'code poetry', david--and i agree it's important "to broaden the areas in which code is seen to be interrelated and operative" to "expand the awareness and possibilites of art work or criticism". and you have done that in this thread quite admirably! even though something may be, in principle, open, sometimes force is required to add to the 'open'. just got the 'oulipo compendium' in the mail today, the book edited by harry mathews mentioned recently in the discussion of the random. very juicy to me, and certainly about time i had a good look at it. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:29:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Dispute over Transcriptions and Editing of Robert Frost Notebooks - Column - New York Times MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline More adventures from the realms of code- how doth one "transcribe the hand of the Master" and who and how control the editing of it?-- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/books/22frost.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin--- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:32:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bruce Covey Subject: new issue of coconut In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Coconut Eleven—featuring spicy new poems by Liz Waldner, Carla Harryman, Dorothea Lasky, Chris Pusateri, Peter Davis, Melissa Benham, Amber Nelson, Kismet Al-Hussaini, Kathleen Rooney & Elisa Gabbert, Anna Fulford, Marco Giovenale, Michael Sikkema, Sun Yung Shin, Maureen Thorson, Jordan Davis, Mara Vahratian, Philip Metres, Janet Holmes, Fritz Ward, Susan Scarlata, Jeni Olin, Jon Link, and Rebecca Hazelton—is now live on the web. http://www.coconutpoetry.org Bruce Covey Coconut Editor ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:49:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Heller Subject: BURT HATLEN Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Received sad news yesterday that Burt Hatlen died yesterday. He was our crowd's scholar, a tremendous enthusiast for experimental and contemporary poetry, head of the National Poetry Foundation at Orono and organizer of the best literary conferences in the country. A good friend to many on this list. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:40:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Kelleher Subject: Literary Buffalo Newsletter 1.22.08-1.27.08 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 LITERARY BUFFALO 01.22.08-01.27.08 ___________________________________________________________________________ BABEL WE ARE NOW OFFERING A 2-EVENT SPRING SUBSCRIPTION FOR =2440. Tickets for individual Babel events are also on sale. Call 832-5400 or visi= t http://www.justbuffalo.org/babel. March 13 Derek Walcott, St. Lucia, Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize, =2425= April 24 Kiran Desai, India, Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize, =2425 ___________________________________________________________________________ EVENTS THIS WEEK 01.25.08 JUST BUFFALO/THE POETRY COLLECTION AT UB/GUSTO AT THE GALLERY present: Fluxus at the Knox: An Evening of Textual and Performance Work Featuring Alison Knowles, Mike Basinski and Buffluxus, & student performers Friday, January 25, 7 p.m. Albright-Knox Art Gallery & JUST BUFFALO INTERDISCIPLINARY PROGRAM Beat The Blues: A Night Of Spoken Word And Down Home Music _Featuring: LaShaun Phoenix Moore, N'Tare Ali Gault & _ Sonny Mayo and the Delta Drivers _ Friday, January 25, 8 p.m._ Hallwalls Cinema, 341 Delaware Avenue =40 Tupper Admission: =244, =243 students/seniors, =242 members of Just Buffalo or Hal= lwalls ___________________________________________________________________________ OPEN READINGS As of January, Just Buffalo's Open Reading series is no longer active. Lee= Farallo has told us that he needs a change. We are grateful for all the ye= ars he has put in and wish him luck as he moves on. At present, there is n= o one to take over for Lee, so we are suspending the third Sunday readings = at Rust Belt Books and the second Wednesday readings at the Carnegie Art Ce= nter indefinitely. If these events become active again, we will let you kn= ow. Meantime, we are still sponsoring two open mic readings a month - one a= t Center for Inquiry on the first Wednesday, and one at Tru-teas on the fir= st Sunday of each month. ___________________________________________________________________________ JUST BUFFALO MEMBERS-ONLY WRITER CRITIQUE GROUP Members of Just Buffalo are welcome to attend a free, bi-monthly writer cri= tique group in CEPA's Flux Gallery on the first floor of the historic Marke= t Arcade Building across the street from Shea's. Group meets 1st and 3rd We= dnesday at 7 p.m. Call Just Buffalo for details. ___________________________________________________________________________ WESTERN NEW YORK ROMANCE WRITERS group meets the third Wednesday of every m= onth at St. Joseph Hospital community room at 11a.m. Address: 2605 Harlem R= oad, Cheektowaga, NY 14225. For details go to www.wnyrw.org. ___________________________________________________________________________ JOIN JUST BUFFALO ONLINE=21=21=21 If you would like to join Just Buffalo, or simply make a massive personal d= onation, you can do so online using your credit card. We have recently add= ed the ability to join online by paying with a credit card through PayPal. = Simply click on the membership level at which you would like to join, log = in (or create a PayPal account using your Visa/Amex/Mastercard/Discover), a= nd voil=E1, you will find yourself in literary heaven. For more info, or t= o join now, go to our website: http://www.justbuffalo.org/membership/index.shtml ___________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE If you would like to unsubscribe from this list, just say so and you will b= e immediately removed. _______________________________ Michael Kelleher Artistic Director Just Buffalo Literary Center Market Arcade 617 Main St., Ste. 202A Buffalo, NY 14203 716.832.5400 716.270.0184 (fax) www.justbuffalo.org mjk=40justbuffalo.org ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:07:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CA Conrad Subject: Re: CAConrad's ANNUAL SEXIEST POEM OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR 2007 GOES TO... In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline A couple folks have written saying the link doesn't work? Try this: http://SEXIESTpoemAWARD.blogspot.com That one should work, CAConrad http://PhillySound.blogspot.com On Jan 22, 2008 5:47 AM, CA Conrad wrote: > CAConrad's ANNUAL SEXIEST POEM OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR 2007 GOES TO... > THE BIG MELT, by President of the United Hearts (Factory School, 2007) > DETAILS HERE: http://sexiestPOEMaward.blogspot.com > > The Sexiest Poem of the Year Award is given annually to a finely crafted > poem demonstrating a fearlessness which confronts injustice. The panel of > judges is CAConrad sitting in five different chairs manifesting five > different facial expressions. The judges must have a unanimous decision in > order for the award to be granted. In the case where a unanimous decision > is not decided upon, no award will be granted that year. > > GO HERE: http://sexiestPOEMaward.blogspot.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:41:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beckett Subject: New at E-values... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ...my interview with Jessica Grim: http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:52:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Tod Edgerton Subject: Re: Camille Martin's Codes of Public Sleep In-Reply-To: <4784CDC4B5E9D84AA76749D05E69C76E873B00@mail3.arts.ryerson.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Woo hoo, Camille! Congratulations!! xo Tod Camille Martin wrote: I'm very pleased to announce the publication of my first full-length poetry collection, Codes of Public Sleep, by Toronto's BookThug. The book should win an award for the clever design alone, which features a "Yukaghir love letter" on the front and back covers. Highlights - two longish poems: "call me i" (written on the train The City of New Orleans between New Orleans and Chicago) and the title poem, "Codes of Public Sleep" (public space and private acts in pre-Katrina New Orleans); and several series of shorter poems, many written in Toronto, including "at limnic realm," "fabled hue," and "hollow bowl," a series of haibun. Codes of Public Sleep can be purchased from Small Press Distribution: http://www.spdbooks.org/SearchResults.asp?Title=codes+of+public+sleep&Author=&Subtitle=&submit=Search or Apollinaire's Bookshoppe in Toronto: http://www.apollinaires.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=apollinaire&Product_Code=3026 From the back cover: Codes of Public Sleep breaks open the code of private thought to modes of knowing catastrophe that defy insufficient isolating sagas. Camille Martin's poetry is the shattering signal from a laudably wild tongue that will not keep still for our death-drive culture. This is a remarkable collection - Carla Harryman Cheers, Camille _____________________ Michael Tod Edgerton MFA '06 Literary Arts Brown University ---- Doctoral Student Department of English 36 Park Hall University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602 tod@uga.edu "The meaning of certainty is getting burned. Though truth will still escape us, we must put our hands on bodies. Staying safe is a different death, the instruments of defense eating inward without evening out the score." - Rosmarie Waldrop, Lawn of Excluded Middle --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:56:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Backwoods Lowery for your listening pleasure MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Backwoods Lowery The Lowery organ was a fixture for decades; in Morgantown, there's a music shop that specializes in them, but they're expensive. Nonetheless, I found an old Lowery Mini-Genie, which looks like a Casio plastic keyboard (61 keys), but was apparently made by JVC for Lowery fans in the early-80s who wanted something portable. Although early digital, it sounds like nothing else and I recorded extended lounging which will surely find its way into avatar videos. So here for your listening enjoyment, http://www.alansondheim.org/lowery2.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/lowery6.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/lowery7.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/lowery8.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/lowery10.mp3 http://www.alansondheim.org/lowery11.mp3 which are all based on one or another closely-watched rhythm or timbre, somewhat similar, modulated for the most part in overly-strict time signatures developed for easy early-80s listening. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:10:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Cassandra Laity Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Thank you for the post Michael. Sad news indeed. He will be much missed. Cassandra Cassandra Laity=20 Associate Professor Co-Editor Modernism/Modernity=20 Drew University=20 Madison, NJ 07940 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:21:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN In-Reply-To: <200801221549.m0MFnjkq000141@ms-smtp-04.rdc-nyc.rr.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Oh this is very sad; two Orono NPF titans in such short succession. Burt was such a gentleman in all ways. Michael Heller wrote: > Received sad news yesterday that Burt Hatlen died yesterday. He was > our crowd's scholar, a tremendous enthusiast for experimental and > contemporary poetry, head of the National Poetry Foundation at Orono > and organizer of the best literary conferences in the country. A good > friend to many on this list. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:37:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Adam Fieled Subject: Rachel Blau DuPlessis in Mipoesias MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Check out an interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis in the new Mipoesias: http://www.mipoesias.com/INTERVIEWS2008/fieled_duplessis.html Also, Jason Bredle, Todd Colby, Stephen Spender here: http://www.adamfieled.blogspot.com A new e-book from Blazevox here: http://www.blazevox.org/ebk-af.pdf Cheers!! Ad --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:06:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Tribbey, Hugh R." Subject: Re: Camille Martin's Codes of Public Sleep In-Reply-To: A<4784CDC4B5E9D84AA76749D05E69C76E873B00@mail3.arts.ryerson.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Congratulations, Camille. Hugh -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On Behalf Of Camille Martin Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 1:34 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Camille Martin's Codes of Public Sleep I'm very pleased to announce the publication of my first full-length poetry collection, Codes of Public Sleep, by Toronto's BookThug. The book should win an award for the clever design alone, which features a "Yukaghir love letter" on the front and back covers. =20 Highlights - two longish poems: "call me i" (written on the train The City of New Orleans between New Orleans and Chicago) and the title poem, "Codes of Public Sleep" (public space and private acts in pre-Katrina New Orleans); and several series of shorter poems, many written in Toronto, including "at limnic realm," "fabled hue," and "hollow bowl," a series of haibun. =20 Codes of Public Sleep can be purchased from Small Press Distribution: =20 http://www.spdbooks.org/SearchResults.asp?Title=3Dcodes+of+public+sleep&A= u thor=3D&Subtitle=3D&submit=3DSearch =20 =20 or Apollinaire's Bookshoppe in Toronto: =20 http://www.apollinaires.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=3DPROD&Store_Code=3D= apo llinaire&Product_Code=3D3026 =20 =20 From the back cover: =20 Codes of Public Sleep breaks open the code of private thought to modes of knowing catastrophe that defy insufficient isolating sagas. Camille Martin's poetry is the shattering signal from a laudably wild tongue that will not keep still for our death-drive culture. This is a remarkable collection - Carla Harryman =20 Cheers, Camille ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:46:25 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alexander Jorgensen Subject: TIBETAN MCLEOD WRITER'S COLLECTIVE In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 Am currently putting together a list of poets, organizers, people wishing to donate books. I have received lots of support from people like Pen Creeley, Catherine Daly, Deborah Poe, David Baptiste-Chirot, Paul Nelson, Tyrone Williams and others. Any "short cuts" and advisories, talent, is appreciated. About making a difference, isn't it. (?) As many of you know, My wife and I, with the assistance of others, including many local artists (and all of India), we are organizing, as people who have lived in many countries and traveled, who have and currently reside within a sometimes constraining state-controlled system, a center and outreach program that is designed to enable greater access, so ideas can compete. And 2008 seems as good a time as ever. For the few years, we have traveled and lived in the area of McLeod Ganj, India and elsewhere. The center is slated to open in Feb 2008. You can contact me with any questions or information. Please, NO money (especially NOT dollars). Alexander Jorgensen c/o Santanu Bandyopadhyay Central Govt. Quarters, Block D-1, Flat 109 16/7 Dover Lane, Kolkata 700029, India -- Alexander Jorgensen bangdrum@fastmail.fm -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Accessible with your email software or over the web ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:52:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charlotte Mandel Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN In-Reply-To: <200801221549.m0MFnjkq000141@ms-smtp-04.rdc-nyc.rr.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Mike, thank you for letting us know. He is very much to be missed. I'm forwarding your announcement to the HD Society List - so many there who will have known and worked with him in various ways. all best, Charlotte On Jan 22, 2008, at 10:49 AM, Michael Heller wrote: Received sad news yesterday that Burt Hatlen died yesterday. He was our crowd's scholar, a tremendous enthusiast for experimental and contemporary poetry, head of the National Poetry Foundation at Orono and organizer of the best literary conferences in the country. A good friend to many on this list. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:31:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Camille Martin's Codes of Public Sleep In-Reply-To: <4784CDC4B5E9D84AA76749D05E69C76E873B00@mail3.arts.ryerson. ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed And a damn fine book it is! Mark At 02:33 AM 1/22/2008, you wrote: >I'm very pleased to announce the publication of my first full-length >poetry collection, Codes of Public Sleep, by Toronto's BookThug. The >book should win an award for the clever design alone, which features >a "Yukaghir love letter" on the front and back covers. > > > >Highlights - two longish poems: "call me i" (written on the train >The City of New Orleans between New Orleans and Chicago) and the >title poem, "Codes of Public Sleep" (public space and private acts >in pre-Katrina New Orleans); and several series of shorter poems, >many written in Toronto, including "at limnic realm," "fabled hue," >and "hollow bowl," a series of haibun. > > > >Codes of Public Sleep can be purchased from Small Press Distribution: > > > >http://www.spdbooks.org/SearchResults.asp?Title=codes+of+public+sleep&Author=&Subtitle=&submit=Search > > > > > >or Apollinaire's Bookshoppe in Toronto: > > > >http://www.apollinaires.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=apollinaire&Product_Code=3026 > > > > > > From the back cover: > > > >Codes of Public Sleep breaks open the code of private thought to >modes of knowing catastrophe that defy insufficient isolating sagas. >Camille Martin's poetry is the shattering signal from a laudably >wild tongue that will not keep still for our death-drive culture. >This is a remarkable collection - Carla Harryman > > > >Cheers, > >Camille ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:15:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gerald Schwartz Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit He was a great friend, one who permitted me "to return to a meadow... that is a place of first permission, everlasting omen of what is " I will especially always remember trading stories of Kay Boyle. And I regret only that his once planned book on her remains unfinsihed. Pax et bonum, Gerald Schwartz > Received sad news yesterday that Burt Hatlen died yesterday. He was > our crowd's scholar, a tremendous enthusiast for experimental and > contemporary poetry, head of the National Poetry Foundation at Orono > and organizer of the best literary conferences in the country. A > good friend to many on this list. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:03:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN In-Reply-To: <001301c85d3b$f24411a0$63ae4a4a@yourae066c3a9b> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Yes, I remember his lovely George Oppen lecture for the SF State Poetry Center.He focused on Oppen's poem, "We have begun to say good-bye..." Ominous, in retrospect. Invevitably, ominous for us all! Stephen Vincent http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Gerald Schwartz wrote: He was a great friend, one who permitted me "to return to a meadow... that is a place of first permission, everlasting omen of what is " I will especially always remember trading stories of Kay Boyle. And I regret only that his once planned book on her remains unfinsihed. Pax et bonum, Gerald Schwartz > Received sad news yesterday that Burt Hatlen died yesterday. He was > our crowd's scholar, a tremendous enthusiast for experimental and > contemporary poetry, head of the National Poetry Foundation at Orono > and organizer of the best literary conferences in the country. A > good friend to many on this list. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:10:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Oulipo Compendium MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT got 'oulipo compendium' the other day. terrific book. there's one passage though that is quite wrong. and i've heard perhaps echoes of this passage elsewhere. not sure if this book is the source of the error. somehow i doubt it. the passage: "One of Bourbaki's essential traits was its attempting to give axiomatic theories a systematic, coherent and hierarchic organization; to build the house of mathematics according to an architecture of "structures". This trait brought it not only greatness but failure; for its choice of a "foundation"--set theory--became obsolete at the very moment when the undertaking was reaching its maturity. The Bourbakian concept proved incapable of assimilating either the explosive new developments in logic or the theory of categories." (p 42) set theory is by no means obsolete. it is still foundational to mathematics and is relied on heavily by contemporary mathematics/mathematicians. Bourbaki was by no means the first to attempt an axiomatic development of mathematics. If I understand Bourbaki aright, what distinguished their attempt was their 'constructivism'. For instance, I'm under the impression they did not accept existence proofs that proceeded by contradiction (reductio ad absurdum); instead, they demanded that existence proofs construct the entity (whose existence was to be proved). another (related) characteristic was their attitude toward the potential versus the actually infinite, which is an ongoing issue in the development of mathematics. since the time of the greeks, we have known that unless one is very careful, proofs that assume the existence of the actually infinite can lead to contradictions. this is partly why the work of georg cantor was so poorly received during his lifetime. some of his contemporaries, such as the influential Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincaré were deeply resistant to Cantor's ideas. Henri Poincaré has been very influential on French mathematics. Bourbaki's constructivism surely is related to Poincaré's constructivist inclinations. The problem with Bourbaki's constructivism is that it's difficult or impossible to construct contemporary mathematics without assuming the existence of the actually infinite and having recourse to things like existence proofs by reductio ad absurdum. I'm under the impression that Bourbaki flounders via these sorts of issues. Not anything to do with the failure of set theory. Or perhaps it is the failure of their limited, constructivist form of set theory. I am by no means an expert on these issues, however, so I might be all wet. But that's what I have got from my reading on these sorts of issues over the years. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:38:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Small Press Traffic Subject: SPT's Poets Theater 1/25/08 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline *SMALL PRESS TRAFFIC =97 POETS THEATER 2008* Please join us for another tantalizing night of plays, featuring new interpretations of Poets Theater classics. This is our annual fundraiser, so come out and support SPT -- Wine & refreshments will be served alongside amazing contemporary Poets Theater. Join us! *FRIDAY JANUARY 25, 7:30pm:* 1980s POETS THEATER REVIVIFIED: THREE PLAYS RE-EXAMINED, RE-ANIMATED, & RE-STAGED "Particle Arms" by Alan Bernheimer (excerpts) "Third Man" by Carla Harryman (excerpts) "Creative Floors" by Kit Robinson And stay tuned for news about other upcoming events through our website =97= * http://www.sptraffic.org/html/events.htm* =97 and our new blog: *http://smallpresstraffic.blogspot.com/* Unless otherwise noted,our events are presented in: Timken Lecture Hall California College of the Arts 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco See you there! David Buuck, Cynthia Sailers, & Stephanie Young PT08 Co-curators Small Press Traffic 415 551-9278 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:00:32 -0500 Reply-To: tyrone williams Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: tyrone williams Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is terrible news. I got to know Burt only in the last few years and he was always a gentle and kind conversationist. Tyrone -----Original Message----- >From: Maria Damon >Sent: Jan 22, 2008 2:21 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN > >Oh this is very sad; two Orono NPF titans in such short succession. >Burt was such a gentleman in all ways. > >Michael Heller wrote: >> Received sad news yesterday that Burt Hatlen died yesterday. He was >> our crowd's scholar, a tremendous enthusiast for experimental and >> contemporary poetry, head of the National Poetry Foundation at Orono >> and organizer of the best literary conferences in the country. A good >> friend to many on this list. Mike Tyrone Williams ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:21:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: UbuWeb Subject: UBUWEB :: Publishing The Unpublishable MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit UbuWeb :: /ubu Editions Publishing The Unpublishable Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith 2008 http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub.html What constitutes an unpublishable work? It could be many things: too long, too experimental, too dull; too exciting; it could be a work of juvenilia or a style you've long since discarded; it could be a work that falls far outside the range of what you're best known for; it could be a guilty pleasure or it could simply be that the world judges it to be awful, but you think it's quite good. We've all got a folder full of things that would otherwise never see the light of day. Invited authors were invited to ponder to that question. The works found here are their responses, ranging from an 1018-page manuscript (unpublishable due to its length) to a volume of romantic high school poems written by a now-respected innovative poet. You get the idea. The web is a perfect place to test the limits of unpublishability. With no printing, design or distribution costs, we are free to explore that which would never have been feasible, economically and aesthetically. While this exercise began as an exploration and provocation, the resultant texts are unusually rich; what we once considered to be our trash may, after all, turn out to be our greatest treasure. The series will conclude when the 100th manuscript is published. Please note that the series is by invitation only. 001 Bruce Andrews "WhDiP, a sequence from White Dialect Poetry" 445pp (PDF, 825k) 002 Bruce Andrews "Libretto from White Dialect Poetry" 166pp (PDF, 476k) 003 Robert Fitterman "Hi My Name Is: A Libretto" 21pp (PDF, 120k) 004 Doug Nufer "Rumor" 21pp (PDF, 244k) 005 Claude Closky "Couché sur le ventre" 15pp (PDF, 24k) 006 Stephen Dirle "Onan The Illiterate" 1080pp (PDF, 3.8mb) 007 Kimberly J. Rosenfield "The Unsurpassed Joy" 53pp (PDF, 272k) 008 Simon Morris "An Intolerable Piece of Writing: Pedagogy as Performed Absence" 90pp (PDF, 396k) 009 Craig Dworkin "Maps" 8pp (PDF, 156k) 010 Peter Manson "English in Mallarmé" 88pp (PDF, 684k) 011 Jamba Dunn "American Dust" 124pp (PDF, 588k) 012 George Kuchar "The Kiss of Frankenstein" 27pp (PDF, 296k) 013 Tim Davis - "Sweet Little Racist Landscape Suite" Low Resolution - 7pp (PDF, 4mb) High Resolution - 7pp (PDF, 12.4mb) 014 Brian Kim Stefans "Booty, Egg On" 160pp (PDF, 14.8mb) 015 Brian J. Davis "Voice Over" 23pp (PDF, 212k) 016 Mary Jo Bang "By M" 4pp (PDF, 8.2mb) 017 Michael Scharf "Selected Criticism, Jeffrey Jullich" 252pp (PDF, 2.3mb) 018 Tan Lin "BIB." 269pp (PDF, 956k) 019 Mónica de la Torre "Overkill: First Poems in English (1993-1995)" 16pp (PDF, 188k) 020 Jeremy Sigler "Math" 34pp (PDF, 3mb) 021 Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch from "Conversations Over Stolen Food" 66pp (PDF, 364k) 022 Christian Bök "The Xenotext Experiment" 11pp (PDF, 220k) 023 Tom Johnson "The Voice of New Music (1972-1982)" 294pp (PDF, 7.8mb) 024 Ara Shirinyan "Speech Genres 1-2" 294pp (PDF, 7.8mb) 025 Stephen Ratcliffe "Cloud / Ridge" 479pp (PDF, 656k) 026 Stephen Ratcliffe "Human / Nature" 1003pp (PDF, 1.1mb) 027 Eiríkur Örn Nordahl "Hemd stafakarlanna, 1.hluti" 2pp (PDF, 11.6mb) 028 Charles Bernstein "Three Works" 8pp (PDF, 230k) 029 Michael Coffey "Magnus Cooney" 57pp (PDF, 412k) 030 Raphael Rubinstein "Through a Blue Field" 10pp (PDF, 188k) 031 Kenneth Goldsmith All "The Numbers From Numbers" 22pp (PDF, 177k) 032 Alan Licht "Spring Without Alan Licht" 20pp (PDF, 220k) http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub.html UbuWeb http://ubu.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:34:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ruth Lepson Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable hi jim an old family friend who is a mathematician (as my mom was, in set theory) says wikipedia has a great article on Bourbaki. hope it solves something. ruth On 1/22/08 6:10 PM, "Jim Andrews" wrote: > got 'oulipo compendium' the other day. terrific book. >=20 > there's one passage though that is quite wrong. and i've heard perhaps > echoes of this passage elsewhere. not sure if this book is the source of = the > error. somehow i doubt it. >=20 > the passage: >=20 > "One of Bourbaki's essential traits was its attempting to give axiomatic > theories a systematic, coherent and hierarchic organization; to build the > house of mathematics according to an architecture of "structures". This > trait brought it not only greatness but failure; for its choice of a > "foundation"--set theory--became obsolete at the very moment when the > undertaking was reaching its maturity. The Bourbakian concept proved > incapable of assimilating either the explosive new developments in logic = or > the theory of categories." (p 42) >=20 > set theory is by no means obsolete. it is still foundational to mathemati= cs > and is relied on heavily by contemporary mathematics/mathematicians. >=20 > Bourbaki was by no means the first to attempt an axiomatic development of > mathematics. If I understand Bourbaki aright, what distinguished their > attempt was their 'constructivism'. For instance, I'm under the impressio= n > they did not accept existence proofs that proceeded by contradiction > (reductio ad absurdum); instead, they demanded that existence proofs > construct the entity (whose existence was to be proved). >=20 > another (related) characteristic was their attitude toward the potential > versus the actually infinite, which is an ongoing issue in the developmen= t > of mathematics. since the time of the greeks, we have known that unless o= ne > is very careful, proofs that assume the existence of the actually infinit= e > can lead to contradictions. this is partly why the work of georg cantor w= as > so poorly received during his lifetime. some of his contemporaries, such = as > the influential Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincar=E9 were deeply resistan= t > to Cantor's ideas. >=20 > Henri Poincar=E9 has been very influential on French mathematics. Bourbaki'= s > constructivism surely is related to Poincar=E9's constructivist inclinatio= ns. >=20 > The problem with Bourbaki's constructivism is that it's difficult or > impossible to construct contemporary mathematics without assuming the > existence of the actually infinite and having recourse to things like > existence proofs by reductio ad absurdum. >=20 > I'm under the impression that Bourbaki flounders via these sorts of issue= s. > Not anything to do with the failure of set theory. Or perhaps it is the > failure of their limited, constructivist form of set theory. >=20 > I am by no means an expert on these issues, however, so I might be all we= t. > But that's what I have got from my reading on these sorts of issues over = the > years. >=20 > ja > http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:42:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ALDON L NIELSEN Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN In-Reply-To: 26723014.1201046432622.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > From the time I first met Burton Hatlen some two decades ago, he was always among the most encouraging and friendly towards the work that I was trying to do. My wife and I treasure memories of dinner with him in San Diego during the ALA conferences, sitting around talking about the need for something like, say, a modernist studies association -- I have lost a great friend -- poetry has lost a great champion -- <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> We are enslaved by what makes us free -- intolerable paradox at the heart of speech. --Robert Kelly Sailing the blogosphere at: http://heatstrings.blogspot.com/ Aldon L. Nielsen Kelly Professor of American Literature The Pennsylvania State University 116 Burrowes University Park, PA 16802-6200 (814) 865-0091 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:47:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Probably someone misunderstands what Russell's Paradox actually did to Hilb= erts program or got confused by a popular account of the incompleteness the= orems and came away with the idea that mathematics is irrational. it happen= s all the time. Modern Axiomatic Set Theory is alive and well the last time i checked. Also, while i'm not mathematics historian myself and i stop understanding f= oundational issues somewhere around where the lambda calculus begins, and a= ny way I gave up on the whole idea as unimportant after uncle ludwig wins h= is battle with turing in the lectures on the foundations of mathematics, bu= t your description of constructivism sounds more like what i understood Bro= uwer's intuitionism to be, that is, only accepting positive proofs and reje= cting ideas like proof by contradiction (and not just reductio) and consequ= ently the law of the excluded middle as well as the the law of non-contradi= ction. without recourse to wikipedia, are they the same thing, or might one= be constructivist without being an intuitionist. Or an intuitionist withou= t being a constructivist, like Wittgenstein and Turing, although they disag= reed on so much else. or is the one a subset of the other, and if so, which= one?=20 is a constructivist always an intuitionist or an intuitionist always a cons= tructivist? or do they merely converge in a fruitful area of overlap. i always wished i could see the romance of numbers beyond figures on paper = and real things, and I think i maybe got close a couple of times with trig = and mathematical logic. but in the end i just couldn't get it all to hang t= ogether in my head. On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Jim Andrews wrote: > got 'oulipo compendium' the other day. terrific book. > > there's one passage though that is quite wrong. and i've heard perhaps > echoes of this passage elsewhere. not sure if this book is the source of = the > error. somehow i doubt it. > > the passage: > > "One of Bourbaki's essential traits was its attempting to give axiomatic > theories a systematic, coherent and hierarchic organization; to build the > house of mathematics according to an architecture of "structures". This > trait brought it not only greatness but failure; for its choice of a > "foundation"--set theory--became obsolete at the very moment when the > undertaking was reaching its maturity. The Bourbakian concept proved > incapable of assimilating either the explosive new developments in logic = or > the theory of categories." (p 42) > > set theory is by no means obsolete. it is still foundational to mathemati= cs > and is relied on heavily by contemporary mathematics/mathematicians. > > Bourbaki was by no means the first to attempt an axiomatic development of > mathematics. If I understand Bourbaki aright, what distinguished their > attempt was their 'constructivism'. For instance, I'm under the impressio= n > they did not accept existence proofs that proceeded by contradiction > (reductio ad absurdum); instead, they demanded that existence proofs > construct the entity (whose existence was to be proved). > > another (related) characteristic was their attitude toward the potential > versus the actually infinite, which is an ongoing issue in the developmen= t > of mathematics. since the time of the greeks, we have known that unless o= ne > is very careful, proofs that assume the existence of the actually infinit= e > can lead to contradictions. this is partly why the work of georg cantor w= as > so poorly received during his lifetime. some of his contemporaries, such = as > the influential Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincar=E9 were deeply resist= ant > to Cantor's ideas. > > Henri Poincar=E9 has been very influential on French mathematics. Bourbak= i's > constructivism surely is related to Poincar=E9's constructivist inclinat= ions. > > The problem with Bourbaki's constructivism is that it's difficult or > impossible to construct contemporary mathematics without assuming the > existence of the actually infinite and having recourse to things like > existence proofs by reductio ad absurdum. > > I'm under the impression that Bourbaki flounders via these sorts of issue= s. > Not anything to do with the failure of set theory. Or perhaps it is the > failure of their limited, constructivist form of set theory. > > I am by no means an expert on these issues, however, so I might be all we= t. > But that's what I have got from my reading on these sorts of issues over = the > years. > > ja > http://vispo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:06:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: BURT HATLEN Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Disposition: inline I'm very sorry to hear of Burt Hatlen's passing. I was really happy to met him in Orono in 2004--I was very surprised & delighted to see a Patrick Kavanagh commemorative mug for sale on a table there. I didn't know Burt but he seemed to be "in charge." I approached & asked him about the mug & he told me lots about Kavanagh visiting Orono, which seems just as unlikely to me now as it did then. It was a wonderful connection though, & made me feel at home in Orono (kind of)! Thank you Burt! Mairead Mairéad Byrne Associate Professor of English Rhode Island School of Design 2 College Street Providence, RI 02903 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:56:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit it's fantastic that there's such a link between bourbaki and oulipo. interesting that bourbaki proceeds, in a sense, via constraint, at various levels. as does oulipo. the broadest sort of constraint is via axiom, formal system. but, within that schema, there's another sort of constraint bourbaki defined itself by, if i understand correctly, and that was the constraint of its constructivism. it is constrained in not admitting certain types of proofs in its enterprise of constructing all of mathematics axiomatically. constructivism constrained itself to no assumption of the existence of the actually infinite and also did not admit things like existence proofs that proceeded by reductio. these are serious constraints that, i gather, ultimately limited the ability of bourbaki to carry through on parts of its mission. yet surely that was important to do, especially if it ended up helping settle the question of just exactly where such 'high abstraction' methods are necessary. ja http://vispo.com ps: would love to attend a lecture on the diagonal method in cantor, turing, godel, and whatever else its been used in. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:00:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Andy Campbell at Leicester, Jan 31 MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Andy Campbell is one of the more interesting digital writers. He's giving a lecture at De Montfort University, Leicester, on Jan 31. He started creating digital fiction in the 90's for the Amiga computer (some of that early work is also on his site). He's been at it quite a while. Is now using Flash, mainly for the Net. Lecture Info: http://www.ioctsalon.com Andy's site: http://dreamingmethods.com ja ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 05:46:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eric Hoffman Subject: Oppen quoting Blake MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Help! I'm trying to locate a passage from Oppen's "daybooks" or "papers" where he quotes Blake's Jerusalem: "I must create a system, or be enslav'd by another man's." Is this in the new Cope book or in one of DuPlessis', Anderson's, Young's, Davidson's, or Cope's selections in Sulfur, Conjunctions, Iowa Review, Ironwood, Germ or Jubilat respectively? Thanks in advance, Eric --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:41:21 -0500 Reply-To: jofuhrman@excite.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joanna Fuhrman Subject: Reading for Burckhardt and Jacquette MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sunday • February 3 • 2 PMFrom Here Look Home:A Poetry Reading in Honor of Rudy Burckhardt and Yvonne Jacquette Throughout their careers, artists Rudy Burckhardt and Yvonne Jacquette had unusually strong ties to the New York poetry world. Poet David Lehman, author of The Last Avant-Garde (Doubleday, 1998), will introduce a special poetry reading dedicated to Burckhardt and Jacquette, featuring Jordan Davis, Joanna Fuhrman, Ange Mlinko, Charles North, Ron Padgett, Simon Pettet, Wang Ping, Daniel Shapiro, David Shapiro, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Trevor Winkfield, and Bill Zavatsky. Presented in conjunction with Under New York Skies: Nocturnes by Yvonne Jacquette and Street Dance: The New York Photographs of Rudy Burckhardt.RESERVATIONS REQUIREDFor reservations and information please call 212.534.1672, ext. 3395.FREE with Museum admission! _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:47:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Amalgamated Writing Programs Launch Morally Repugnant Poets-and-Theorists Exhibit MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Amalgamated Writing Programs Announce Morally Repugnant Poets-and-Theorists Exhibit by Mike Freakman New York, Dec. 22, 2007 – Darien Credenza, the Executive Muckamuck of Amalgamated Writing Programs announced that a Morally Repugnant Poets-and-Theorists Exhibit will be held at the organization’s annual congress in New York. The exhibit is the first of what is planned as a series of didactic displays at Amalgamated’s popular annual gatherings. Credenza told AHP2 News that the exhibit would emphasize that Amalgamated was a nonpartisan service organization. “Yes we have no ideology. We only have craft. That is why we need not only to repudiate literary theorists and cultural critics but also the poets who have been brainwashed by them into spouting their Un-Amalgamated dogma.” !!read all about it!! Go to to get the full story, exclusively at /Ubu Editions, Publishing the Unpublishable, #28 edited by Kenneth Goldsmith **tell them Freakman sent you** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 07:59:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Fwd: Artists Against The War/Panel-Webcast Tonight//online gallery MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: The Nation Date: Jan 23, 2008 7:28 AM Subject: Artists Against The War/Panel-Webcast Tonight To: david.chirot@gmail.com [image: EmailNation] Dear EmailNation Subscriber, The Society of Illustratorsin New York City is currently presenting a powerful show sponsored by *The Nation*. Artists Against The War is the expression of over sixty leading graphic artists and illustrators working in the United States and abroad whose anguish has compelled them to produce works that challenge the self-destructive ignorance, indifference, incompetence and corruption that is the result of US Middle East foreign policy. The works of art give a voice to those whose views are not represented by the mainstream media. Check out the online version of the show here. A related panel discussion will take place *tonight, Wednesday, January 23*, at the Society of Illustrators in Manhattan. And thanks to the Society, the full proceedings will be available for viewing at the Society's website. So tune in tonight at 7:00pm--and see the action in person if you're in or around the New York City area. Media: The First Casualty in Iraq *The Nation* is sponsoring a panel discussion tonight, January 23, on the nature of communications in wartime. How do words and images get stymied in the run-up and roll-out of war? Panelists include *Steven Heller*, designer, essayist and historian; *Christian Parenti*, author and *Nation* writer; *David Wallis*, author and *Nation* illustrator *Steve Brodner* as moderator. The panel is part of the Artists Against the War exhibition. At the Society of Illustrators, 128 E. 63 St. $10 admission. Free of charge for students. Finally, please visit The Nation onlineto read new *Nation* blogs, to view newsfeed links updated each day, to see when *Nation * writers are appearing on TV and radio, to get info on nationwide activist campaigns, and to read exclusive online reports and special weekly selections from *The Nation* magazine! Best Regards, Peter Rothberg, *The Nation* ------------------------------ You are currently subscribed to EmailNation as: david.chirot@gmail.com. You shouldn't be on this list if you didn't sign up. If you want to stop receiving this newsletter, replying to this e-mail will not work. To unsubscribe, Click here. You shouldn't be on this list if you didn't sign up. If you want to stop receiving this newsletter, replying to this e-mail will not work. To unsubscribe, Click here You are receiving this message because you are a member of the Nation community. If you want to stop receiving messages like this from us, replying to this e-mail will not work. Instead, Click here<#117a718c903f630e_> . The Nation, 33 Irving Pl, New York, NY 10003 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:49:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "David A. Kirschenbaum" Subject: Boog City presents Instance Press and The Moldy Peaches' Toby Goodshank Comments: To: "UB Poetics discussion group "@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable please forward=20 ---------------- =20 Boog City presents =20 d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press =20 Instance Press (Boulder, Colo.; New York City; Oakland, Calif.) =20 Tues. Jan. 29, 6:00 p.m. sharp, free =20 ACA Galleries 529 W.20th St., 5th Flr. NYC =20 Event will be hosted by Instance Press co-editor Stacy Szymaszek =20 =20 Featuring readings from =20 Kimberly Lyons Kevin Varrone Craig Watson=20 =20 and music from =20 The Moldy Peaches' Toby Goodshank =20 =20 There will be wine, cheese, and crackers, too. =20 Curated and with an introduction by Boog City editor David Kirschenbaum =20 ------ =20 **Instance Press http://www.instancepress.com/ =20 Instance Press is a small poetry press co-edited by Beth Anderson, Elizabet= h Robinson, and Stacy Szymaszek. Visit their website for information on their titles and ordering through Small Press Distribution. =20 =20 *Overall Performer Bios* =20 **Toby Goodshank http://www.myspace.com/tobygoodshank =20 A prolific performer, Moldy Peach Goodshank inhabits the stages of NYC solo and with bands Double Deuce (along with sister Angela Babyskin) and The Tri-Lambs (with Angela and her sister Crystal Babyskin). These projects hav= e "Goodshank" written all over them, with his signature heart-felt pornographic tendencies lending the songs a sense of erotic wonder and innocence. If Anti-Folk has ever known a legend in the making, destined to have his records collected by the troubled teenagers of the future, it is Toby Goodshank. =20 =20 **Kimberly Lyons http://home.jps.net/~nada/lyons.htm =20 Kimberly Lyons is the author of Saline (Instance Press), Abracadabra (Granary Books), and, with artist Ed Epping, Mettle (Granary Books), as wel= l as many chapbooks and pamphlets. Phototherapique is forthcoming from Yo-Yo Labs/Katalanch=E9 Press. You can read her article =B3The Itineraries of Anticipation (Women & the Poetry Project)=B2 at the above site. She lives in Brooklyn. =20 =20 **Kevin Varrone http://www.durationpress.com/bookstore/ebooks/varrone/varrone.pdf =20 Kevin Varrone is the author of g-point Almanac: id est (Instance Press) and g-point Almanac (7/21-9/21) (Ixnay Press). Recent poems can be found in Big Bridge #12, Cross Connect, and Duration Press' ebook series (see above site). He lives in Philadelphia, where he teaches writing at Temple University and the University of the Arts. =20 =20 **Craig Watson http://www.chicagopostmodernpoetry.com/cwatson.htm =20 Craig Watson is the author of Secret Histories (Burning Deck Press), True News (Instance Press), and Free Will (Roof Books), among others. He lives i= n Rhode Island, where he works as a dramaturg and producer in a professional theater. You can read an interview with Watson at the above site. =20 =20 ---- =20 Directions: C/E to 23rd St., 1/9 to 18th St. Venue is bet. 10th and 11th avenues =20 Next event: Tues. Feb. 26, 2007 Punch Press/Damn the Caesars (Buffalo, N.Y.) =20 -- David A. Kirschenbaum, editor and publisher Boog City 330 W.28th St., Suite 6H NY, NY 10001-4754 For event and publication information: http://www.welcometoboogcity.com T: (212) 842-BOOG (2664) F: (212) 842-2429 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:46:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Grant Jenkins Subject: BURT HATLEN MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear list, Burt was a mentor to me, though separated always by vast geography, but he was also a very generous person. His work on Oppen was seminal to mine, and he graciously wrote a letter for me. During the 1950s conference in Orono, he gave up his seat at the VIP table so that my wife could site next to her idol, Stephen King. Quite the mensch, that Burt. He will be missed. Grant -- G. Matthew Jenkins Director of the Writing Program Faculty of English Language & Literature The University of Tulsa Tulsa, OK 74104 918.631.2573 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:03:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabriel Gudding Subject: on conchology blog: obedience to the illusion of literature MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ My Experience in a Neuroscience Laboratory Obedience to the Illusion of Literature: Ginsberg, Mallarmé, Bourdieu Nada Gordon, Dada, and the Selling off of Kasey & Gary Fifteen Minute Poem for Ron Silliman [Removed from Blog b/c Construed as Negative] To the Sun at Anchor - excerpt/Chapbook Sale Fifteen Minute Poem for Eileen Myles Fifteen Minute Poem for Lola Ridge The Fruits of Celibacy: The Vision Songs of the Shakers Fifteen Minute Poem for David Shapiro: Masculinity and the Performance of Friendship Bourdieu on the Tactic of Scandal The Fetish of Technique: "Avant-Garde" or "Post Avant" blah blah blah More Reviews of _Rhode Island Notebook_ http://rhodeislandnotebook.blogspot.com/ http://gabrielgudding.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:30:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CA Conrad Subject: Philadelphia Poetry Hotel for 2008 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline details here: http://poetryhotel.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:45:48 -0600 Reply-To: dgodston@sbcglobal.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Godston Subject: Following Monk Institute MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Following Monk Institute The Following Monk Institute, scheduled for June 2008, at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, will investigate and celebrate the North Carolina roots of Thelonious Monk's family and music. Highlights of the institute will include guided tours of Monk's birthplace in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and the Newton Grove plantation where his ancestors were slaves and where relatives still live today. The Following Monk Institute is a rare opportunity to tour sites of Monk's early life and heritage and the geography of eastern North Carolina. Led by Sam Stephenson, director of the Jazz Loft Project at the Center for Documentary Studies, participants will have the unique experience of hearing from some of Monk's family members—Duke neurobiologist Erich Jarvis, educator Pam Monk Kelley of New Haven, Connecticut, and Gaston Monk, an educator from Pitt County, North Carolina—about their extensive research on the family tree, and from Monk's son, T.S. Monk, about the relationship between the family and Monk's music. Participants will also hear from historians and musicians who will discuss the cultural and musical significance of Monk's North Carolina heritage. Speakers will include Monk's last saxophonist and family friend, Paul Jeffrey, and Georgetown University's Maurice Jackson, who will explore the links between Monk's music and spirituals and rural church music. Renowned pianist Henry Butler will also present an exclusive concert based on the same topic. Guggenheim Award-winning poet Betty Adcock will read a poem, commissioned for this event as a tribute to the role of Monk's mother and the other female pillars in his life. The institute will include an exclusive presentation of sounds and images of Monk's 1959 Town Hall rehearsals that took place in the New York loft of Hall Overton and photographer W. Eugene Smith, whose obsessive photo and audio documentation provides profound new glimpses of the complexities of Monk and his music. This is a first-time preview of a major project at the Center for Documentary Studies, involving the exploration and documentation of rich untold stories of the after-hours New York jazz scene in the late 1950s to mid-1960s as seen through encounters in Smith's loft. MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION If you would like to receive updates about the plans for the Following Monk Institute, please call the Jazz Loft Project at 919-660-3668 or email smm49@duke.edu. more at: http://cds.aas.duke.edu/jazzloft/followingmonk.html#details ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:32:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Jim--sorry about the incomplete address for the Japanese Ceil phone novels; the correct one is included below--also some separate articles re aspects of the digital & writing by my brother Paul Andre Harris and the Oulipo section of his web site, with further links to other sites in French and English--quite a wide and interesting variety including public works projects done by oulipo members with tramway systems, etc etc--his own essays on oulipo, ways of teaching oulipo, using it for teaching, papers by students using it, etc-- he also has at his web site a section on the codes of the Watts Towers, which he's been studying and involved with for some years now--inspired by family friend the jazz musician Don Cherry-- also links with the journal SubStance which he co-edits and the International Society for Study of Time of which he's the president--so there may be lot of use there-- there is also this year the forthcoming Oulipo A Primer of Potential Literature an anthology of the leading oulipo writers edited by Warren F Motte Jr. re codes--i think there's a tendency towards a fetishization and mystification of the aura of the digital and its codes--as though these create a separate realm outside of the "old" ways and rules of the "dirty old town" of the Pogues song--a virtuality of virtue, of purified, discrete elements manipulated for the benefit and pleasure of an elite--an intriguing branch of Formalism to be "explored" and "played with"-- Codes have consequences, however, in a very real world, and codes can also be "fixed." The wonders of "random, chance programs can just as easily be found in the roulette wheel which just so happens, "by chance, " to always come out on the side of the house. In the pizza place which was the news hub for this sort of information in the mafia neighborhood I used to live in in Somerville, MA, there was a saying--Mr. V-- " is going to have an accident." Sure enough, a day or so later, it's in the news--"Mr V HAS had an accident" Crossing the street, hit by a bread truck he didn't see coming out of nowhere from around the corner. Well, people had been telling him for a while he better make a new eye appointment, hadn't they. Poor old guy. But that's life. "Accidents WILL happen." Burroughs wrote of these sorts of things which one could create via cut ups of images and sounds, the "accidents" which are inserted into the seemingly innocuous daily round. Using a cheap old 8 mm camera, a crummy old tape recorder--or nowadays a video cam--create your own "framing" "evidence" of the "crimes" committed" by your "enemies"--those annoying neighbors--your ex, the local congressperson whose views are getting you in dutch, set them up, "catch them in the act", (created in the editing room), print it, lick the envelope, stamp and address it, and off it goes! Besides the "fixing" of codes, mightn't one begin to investigate the forging of them? After all this is whathappened in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq--the use of forged documents, of faked information, verified by information found on the Internet--which itself had been a source of the information fed as part of the top secret information in the first place. Barry Schwabsky and I have been exchanging letters about art forgeries, and it struck me that Benjamin's essay on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" might be thought of from a different point of view, if one considers how awash with forgeries the art world actually is. What becomes of the "aura" of the original when it is actually a "forgery"--and what then becomes of the "reproduction"? Does the forgery subvert not only the "original" but the "reproduction" also? There is also the question of the "signature" and the "caption" attached to the code. For example--you see a poem and at the bottom it says it is by so and so, a recognized and famous person and you think ah!! Wow! That's deep! That's innovative!! You see a name you don't know at all, and your response is a bit muted, a bit unsure, even if you liked the poem, you might think--well,hmm. I better look that up and see what so and so says about it. A photo in the paper of a person that looks like anyone--except the caption reads, so and so is charged with murder. "My God! look at these terrifying and ominous eyebrows!" The same photo, this time captioned, "Avant-Garde Poet." "Ah! What sensitive and radical energy shines in the eyes!" Again, the caption reads "Banker dead at 63." "Fat capitalist swine!" One of the aspects of codes you are discussing in relation with writing is sets and constraints. For Godel, sets are consistent but incomplete, just as constraints are. For myself, it is the areas of incompleteness and inbetweenness that are of interest--the "hidden in plain site/sight/cite" which is the code that goes unnoticed while the attention is drawn to the "correct" codes. By "reading between the lines" and "across the lines," "against the grain" as well as "with it," across the sets rather than being restricted within them--one is essaying to "connect the dots" of the things visible and invisible as it were, of the codes "meant to be seen" and those not. Lines begin in cracks, strati, faults, breakages in the earth and continue into forms that become writing, codes--"lines of flight"-- Language is a symptom of a society's "code" of behaviours and beliefs. It is in the "obvious" aspects of codes that things speak a hidden language, while in a more obviously coded language they obviously speak one begging to be recognized as a code. It is not only new ways of writing but new ways of reading that are necessary, as without learning to be an ever more aware and alive reader, one is ever dependent on "authorities" to tell one who and what to read. And how to read what it is one is to read. And that is precisely the problem with the codes as they are being constructed ever more rigorously by the authorities, for the authorities and for authoritarianism. "Question authority" --seems to be reversed more often than not to --"Authorities question"-- or --"how dare you question so and so's authority?"-- Is "Obey" then one of the first words written into the code? "Without question"? "Thou shalt not kill"--"Collective punishment is a war crime"--one of the interesting aspects of the study of codes is how they can used to justify the employment of their exact opposites in the spheres of action. Are codes themselves true, or only true depending upon who has employed them? "Mr V, who was to have had an accident today, was himself saved by an accident. The truck that was scheduled to hit him at the intersection of Belmont and Somerville Ave at 3: 05, driven by A. di Salvo of 735 W Evergreen, collided with a school bus . . . " HYPER-LEX: A Technographical Dictionary electronic book review 4 http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr4/harris.htm --- oulipohttp://myweb.lmu.edu/pharris/oulipo.htm --- The New Code. - Review - book review | Afterimage | http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2479/is_5_27/ai_61535396 --- city of words http://myweb.lmu.edu/pharris/city_of_words.htm --- Thumbs Race as Japan's Best Sellers Go Cellular http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html?em&ex=1201237200&en=0315c80335a78d3c&ei=5087%0A --- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:15:17 -0500 Reply-To: jofuhrman@excite.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joanna Fuhrman Subject: feb. 3rd reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I forgot to say where.... Museum of the City of New YorkLocation: 1220 Fifth Avenue, @ 104th street, New York, New York, 10029, United States jf _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:42:42 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Glass Subject: Ralph Lichtensteiger's Angel One (for jesse glass) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A remarkable video and an interesting collaging of insights about what art is. Take a look at Ralph Lichtensteiger's blog Time 4 Time: http://time4time.blogspot.com/2008/01/angel-one-for-jesse-glass.html Blake saw angels in a tree. Lichtensteiger proves that the archetypal form can ride accidents of chance to reveal itself in the 21st century; but it's the intention behind the camera work--the framing that is really remarkable here. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:30:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Evans Subject: Burt Hatlen Remembered Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The Bangor Daily News's top cultural writer, Alicia Anstead, contributed the following front-page article about Burton Hatlen's life today: http://bangornews.com/news/t/city.aspx?articleid=159261&zoneid=176 I thought Poetics List members for whom the BDN is not daily reading might want to see it. The obituary that also ran today is here http://legacy.com/bangornews/Obituaries.asp? Page=Lifestory&PersonId=101724577 We are only beginning to measure our loss here in Orono. The tributes and reminiscences on this list are truly a help. Steve * * * * Steve Evans Associate Professor of English Graduate Studies Coordinator New Writing Series Coordinator 313 Neville Hall University of Maine Orono, ME 04469 207-581-3818 www.thirdfactory.net ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:32:38 -0500 Reply-To: az421@freenet.carleton.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob McLennan Subject: new(ish) on rob's clever blog Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT new(ish) on rob's clever blog -- 12 or 20 questions: with Laisha Rosnau -- Elizabeth Smart: A Fugue Essay on Women and Creativity by Kim Echlin -- from Missing Persons (a novel in progress) -- 12 or 20 questions: with Catherine Hunter -- the fourth issue of ottawater (www.ottawater.com/), an Ottawa poetry pdf annual, edited by rob mclennan, is now online -- Jill Hartman and Brea Burtons Booty and Natalie Zina Walschots Thumbscrews -- some upcoming Edmonton, Ottawa + even Calgary & Vancouver readings: -- 12 or 20 questions: with Gary Barwin -- 12 or 20 questions: with Rosmarie Waldrop -- 12 or 20 questions: with Sharon Thesen -- Chus Patos Charenton, trans. Erin Moure -- ongoing notes: some recent American poetry collections by Zawacki, Padgett, Young & Byrne -- 12 or 20 questions: with Rachel Zucker -- rereading paige ackerson-kiely / on the airplane back to edmonton (poem) -- 12 or 20 questions: with Greg Hollingshead -- ongoing notes: some (more) magazines; (West Coast Line, NOON, filling Station, Arc) -- Ottawa Poet Laureate (redux); -- ongoing notes: some magazines; (CV2, The Capilano Review, The New Quarterly, Matrix) -- another christmas in old glengarry -- newly released: Poetics.ca #8 www.robmclennan.blogspot.com + some other new things at the alberta, writing blog www.albertawriting.blogspot.com + some other new things at ottawa poetry newsletter, www.ottawapoetry.blogspot.com + some other other new things at the Chaudiere Books blog, www.chaudierebooks.blogspot.com -- poet/editor/publisher ...STANZAS mag, above/ground press & Chaudiere Books (www.chaudierebooks.com) ...coord.,SPAN-O + ottawa small press fair ...13th poetry coll'n - The Ottawa City Project .... 2007-8 writer in residence, U of Alberta * http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:57:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Aleph Zero, etc. Plop. Frog. Infinite circles, disappearing. (*The Structure of Escape) * Jim, When Foucault asserts that every word (or code) darkens, suppresses other meanings around it, creating a negative space of charged silence, isn't he asserting the reality of this space by applying the reductive method, by contradiction, to language? Ciao, Murat On Jan 22, 2008 6:10 PM, Jim Andrews wrote: > got 'oulipo compendium' the other day. terrific book. > > there's one passage though that is quite wrong. and i've heard perhaps > echoes of this passage elsewhere. not sure if this book is the source of > the > error. somehow i doubt it. > > the passage: > > "One of Bourbaki's essential traits was its attempting to give axiomatic > theories a systematic, coherent and hierarchic organization; to build the > house of mathematics according to an architecture of "structures". This > trait brought it not only greatness but failure; for its choice of a > "foundation"--set theory--became obsolete at the very moment when the > undertaking was reaching its maturity. The Bourbakian concept proved > incapable of assimilating either the explosive new developments in logic > or > the theory of categories." (p 42) > > set theory is by no means obsolete. it is still foundational to > mathematics > and is relied on heavily by contemporary mathematics/mathematicians. > > Bourbaki was by no means the first to attempt an axiomatic development of > mathematics. If I understand Bourbaki aright, what distinguished their > attempt was their 'constructivism'. For instance, I'm under the impressio= n > they did not accept existence proofs that proceeded by contradiction > (reductio ad absurdum); instead, they demanded that existence proofs > construct the entity (whose existence was to be proved). > > another (related) characteristic was their attitude toward the potential > versus the actually infinite, which is an ongoing issue in the developmen= t > of mathematics. since the time of the greeks, we have known that unless > one > is very careful, proofs that assume the existence of the actually infinit= e > can lead to contradictions. this is partly why the work of georg cantor > was > so poorly received during his lifetime. some of his contemporaries, such > as > the influential Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincar=E9 were deeply resist= ant > to Cantor's ideas. > > Henri Poincar=E9 has been very influential on French mathematics. Bourbak= i's > constructivism surely is related to Poincar=E9's constructivist > inclinations. > > The problem with Bourbaki's constructivism is that it's difficult or > impossible to construct contemporary mathematics without assuming the > existence of the actually infinite and having recourse to things like > existence proofs by reductio ad absurdum. > > I'm under the impression that Bourbaki flounders via these sorts of > issues. > Not anything to do with the failure of set theory. Or perhaps it is the > failure of their limited, constructivist form of set theory. > > I am by no means an expert on these issues, however, so I might be all > wet. > But that's what I have got from my reading on these sorts of issues over > the > years. > > ja > http://vispo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:58:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martha King Subject: Fwd: Reading Feb 7 NYC - please post correction In-Reply-To: <8CA2731F7BCE2EF-A08-A4D@webmail-me11.sysops.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" RESENT as I have not seen this posted AND the subject line of the original h= ad the date wrong!=C2=A0 The reading is on February 7...which in fact is Chi= nese New Year.=C2=A0 Thank you --Martha King -----Original Message----- From: gpwitd@aol.com To: poetics@listserv.buffalo.edu Sent: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:08 am Subject: Reading Feb 10 in NYC - please post Martha King and Elinor Nauen present=C2=A0=20 =C2=A0 Andrei Codrescu=C2=A0 and=C2=A0 Sharon Mesmer=20 =C2=A0 Thursday, February 7, 2008 (Chinese New Year!) 6:30 =E2=80=93 8:30 p.m.=C2=A0=20 =C2=A0 at The Telephone Bar & Grill =E2=80=93 149 Second Avenue btw 9th & 10th Stre= ets=20 In the Lounge =C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=C2=A0=20 * Excellent food and drink available * All trains to Union Square, 6 to Astor Place, F to Second Avenue =C2=A0 Andrei Codrescu is the author of New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Wri= ting from the City, a collection in response to the catastrophe that devasta= ted his adopted city in 2005. In 1989 he returned to his native Romania to c= over the collapse of a catastrophic history and wrote The Hole in the Flag:=20= An Exile's Tale of Return and Revolution. History is explored playfully in a= book-length interview called Miracle and Catastrophe: an interview with And= rei Codrescu by Robert Lazu, published in Romania by Hartmann publishers in=20= 2005. Otherwise, he has no interest in catastrophe, which is why he comes to= New York only twice a year.=20 Codrescu's other books are more about miracles, really. They include: Wakefi= eld, a novel; It Was Today: New Poems; Casanova in Bohemia; Alien Candor: Se= lected Poems 1970-1997; The Blood Countess; Messiah; Ay, Cuba: a Socio-Eroti= c Journey and Hail, Babylon: Looking at American Cities. For more info, visi= t www.codrescu.com or www.corpse.org. Sharon Mesmer (aka Annoying Diabetic Bitch) has been active in the New York=20= City literary scene since moving from Chicago and receiving a MacArthur Scho= larship from Brooklyn College on the recommendation of Allen Ginsberg. (We w= on=E2=80=99t tell you when.) Known as a poet and performance artist, she=E2= =80=99s performed internationally, especially as a founding member of the Me= llow Freakin' Woodies band. Among her poetry collections are Half Angel/ Hal= f Lunch and Lonely Tylenol, an art-poetry collaboration with David Humphrey.= =20 Her texts blur poetry/prose distinctions so cleverly that reviewers habitual= ly call her prose poetic, as well as =E2=80=9Cwitty=E2=80=9D =E2=80=9Cdazzli= ng=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9Cdeep.=E2=80=9D Her prose works include a collection= of short fiction, The Empty Quarter and a full length novel In Ordinary Tim= e. Mesmer's works have also appeared in Rattapallax, Lungfull!, The World, G= argoyle and other literary magazines. She is currently English-language edit= or of American Book Jam, a Japanese literary magazine, and teaches at New Sc= hool University. =C2=A0 Admission is FREE but please=20 CONTRIBUTE GENEROUSLY when we pass the hat All proceeds go to the readers =C2=A0 Coming up: March 6, Eileen Myles and Sanjna Singh; April 3, Maggie Dubris an= d Geoffrey O=E2=80=99Brien =C2=A0 For more information: enauen@aol.com=C2=A0=C2=A0 or=C2=A0 gpwitd@aol.com=20 More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail! ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.= aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:54:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amy king Subject: Fwd: Reading Feb 7 NYC - please post correction In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801231257m4d03ba75w978ac34f4fdf52f@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Martha, Your original post was released the day you posted it, and all posts are released as written. Please view your original post in the archives here: http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0801&L=poetics&D=1&O=A&P=33450 Additionally, all list members may check the public archives anytime: http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/poetics.html You can sort messages by date, author, or subject line. Thanks, Amy --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:45:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Kimmelman, Burt" Subject: BURTON HATLEN MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Coincidentally, I sent Burt Hatlen an email message yesterday to tell = him how much I was loving reading a certain essay of his on George = Oppen, and asking him if there were any plans to publish a collection of = his essays. =20 Burt was a gentle and generous man, and he was brilliant. I am one of a = lot of people who were helped in so many ways by him, and who greatly = admire, I dare say, his prodigious achievement as a scholar (and I = greatly enjoyed his poetry too). His critical writing was unique and = uniquely important. He deeply understood what he was writing about, and = his language was precise always, his insights breathtaking, as was his = breadth. I do hope a volume of his essays can see the light of day. =20 I will miss corresponding with him. He would sign his communiqu=E9s to = me, modestly, as "Burt (the Other)" How awful that he is gone, and so = soon after Sylvester Pollet. =20 Burt Kimmelman =20 ------------------------------ =20 Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:49:32 -0500 From: Michael Heller Subject: BURT HATLEN =20 Received sad news yesterday that Burt Hatlen died yesterday. He was our = crowd's scholar, a tremendous enthusiast for experimental and = contemporary poetry, head of the National Poetry Foundation at Orono and = organizer of the best literary conferences in the country. A=20 good friend to many on this list. Mike =20 =20 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:10:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: Burt Hatlen Remembered Comments: To: Steven.Evans@MAINE.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Thanks Steve. It looks very much like a life well lived. Richly lived. = In the blessed land of poetry, the borders of which are kept open. Mairead >>> Steve Evans 01/23/08 3:30 PM >>> The Bangor Daily News's top cultural writer, Alicia Anstead, =20 contributed the following front-page article about Burton Hatlen's =20 life today: http://bangornews.com/news/t/city.aspx?articleid=3D159261&zoneid=3D176 I thought Poetics List members for whom the BDN is not daily reading =20 might want to see it. The obituary that also ran today is here http://legacy.com/bangornews/Obituaries.asp?=20 Page=3DLifestory&PersonId=3D101724577 We are only beginning to measure our loss here in Orono. The tributes =20 and reminiscences on this list are truly a help. Steve * * * * Steve Evans Associate Professor of English Graduate Studies Coordinator New Writing Series Coordinator 313 Neville Hall University of Maine Orono, ME 04469 207-581-3818 www.thirdfactory.net ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:52:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Fwd: Lift the Gaza Blockade: Call on Congress to Speak Up and Join Us in the Streets! In-Reply-To: <514816910.1821751105@org.orgDB.mail.democracyinaction.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jewish Voice for Peace Date: Jan 23, 2008 6:50 AM Subject: Lift the Gaza Blockade: Call on Congress to Speak Up and Join Us in the Streets! To: david.chirot@gmail.com The 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are facing a tremendous humanitarian and medical crisis. Israel's sharp restrictions on fuel and electricity have severely damaged the provision of safe drinking water, forcing people to make do with extremely poor quality water which is dangerous to their health. A group of Israeli organizations is planning a major action for Saturday, January 26th, to bring a relief convoyof desperately needed water filters to be distributed in Gaza by their Palestinian partner there, The End the Siege Campaign. We must not stand idle. Join our solidarity rallies THIS WEEK in Boston, Philly, and San Francisco! Call on Congress to speak up! The United States must call for an immediate end to the siege on Gaza, urging Israel to open its border crossings to people and goods. Rep. Barbara Lee has called on Secretary of State Condolezza Rice to request that the Administration "do all it can to secure the delivery of these vital humanitarian goods and services to Gaza." (For full letter in pdf format,click here: page 1, page 2 ) If you live in Rep. Lee's Congressional District, click hereto send her a letter of thank you. If you live elsewhere in the United States, click hereto send a letter to your Congressperson urging them to speak out on Gaza today. To unsubscribe, click here . ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:13:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: David Askevold 1940,2008 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed David Askevold (I knew and loved David Askevold, and for years felt close to him. He was a major influence on my life, the lives of his students and friends, al- most everyone who knew him. His work was unique and in a very deep sense, unfathomable and veering, nothing else is like it, it ventured into terri- tories I didn't know existed. The doors he opened were unique. More than anyone else, he exemplified the spirit of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, during the period it was considered the finest art school in North America. And David was the finest teacher of art I knew; he didn't teach so much as opened space for his students to learn. His classes were sessions among equals, intense, serious, playful, world. He had a soft voice and an uncanny laugh. He was beautiful. He believed in the deep value of art and lived that way. He was indescribable, and I'm at a loss for further words here, these are poor enough.) > From iansmurray@sympatico.ca Wed Jan 23 18:47:51 2008 Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:47:32 -0500 From: Ian Murray To: Ian Murray Subject: Fwd: ART METROPOLE REMEMBERS DAVID ASKEVOLD 1940 - 2008 artmetropole.com 788 King Street West 2nd Floor, Toronto, Canada M5V 1N6 T 416.703.4400 F 416.703.4404 info@artmetropole.com OBITUARY DAVID ASKEVOLD 1940 - 2008 It is with deep personal regret that we inform you of the passing of the artist and educator David Askevold. David died peacefully, in a Halifax hospital, on Wednesday January 23, 2008. One of Canada's most influential artists and an important figure in many international art movements of the last 40 years, Askevold's work as an arts educator has also had great importance on an international level. David was a long-time colleague and contributor to Art Metropole, and one of our first Artist Life Members. He will be greatly missed. The funeral will be family only. A memorial and exhibition will be organized for later in the year. Personal sympathies may be forwarded to David's wife and daughter: Norma Ready and Kyla Ready-Askevold 15 Penhorn Drive Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B2Y 3K2 Canada Sincerely, Ian Murray for the Board of Directors Art Metropole Art Metropole is a non-profit artist-run centre incorporated in 1974. We'd like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, as well as private donors for their support. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:19:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > Also, while i'm not mathematics historian myself and i stop > understanding foundational issues somewhere around where the > lambda calculus begins, and any way I gave up on the whole idea > as unimportant after uncle ludwig wins his battle with turing in > the lectures on the foundations of mathematics, but your > description of constructivism sounds more like what i understood > Brouwer's intuitionism to be, that is, only accepting positive > proofs and rejecting ideas like proof by contradiction (and not > just reductio) and consequently the law of the excluded middle as > well as the the law of non-contradiction. yes, you're right that what i was thinking of is Brouwer's approach. i'm wrong. apologies. i'm spreading misinformation. just spent the last couple of hours reading about bourbaki. for instance, http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/logic/jrh0105.htm . nowhere are they classified as constructivists in the sense i said they were. i can't find any characterization of their philosophy concerning matters of the potential versus the actually infinite. nor on matters concerning existence proofs by reductio. which probably means they were OK with assuming the existence of the actually infinite if needed and with existence proofs by reductio, when needed. i just think it's so cool, the strong relation between oulipo and bourbaki. i know, many poets would be horrified at the thought of such an alignment of mathematics and poetry. but both can profit from the influence of each other. as apparently was the case with bourbaki and oulipo. math culture can be boring, rigid, narrow, trivial. without relation to or participation in art, and with only a practical sense of beauty and aspiration. without calling. without a sense of social responsibility and vision. ultra 9-5. pocket calculators. white shirt. corporate dull. fussy. regimented. task-masterish. neurotic. the energy of slaves. it needs the strengths of art culture to give it a different sense of itself and the world, and its place in the world. not simply as the brains and theorists behind the engineering, but as artists toward a better world, toward a sense of appreciation of the cosmos and the explanatory power of mathematics in this world. mathematics as the poetry of science. in its intense engagement with language. which, i gather, was a deep concern of bourbaki. and poetry needs engagement with other fields also. particularly with science. such a pathetic cultural gulf between the arts and sciences. poets without a sense of the intensity of engagement with language present in mathematics. poets afraid of mathematics. or angry at it or what it represents to them. and here is oulipo and bourbaki doing something profoundly different in that regard. inspiring, really. truly. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:24:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: evidence from the scanner MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed (later this week) evidence from the large scanner point-cloud into abject objects of desire, smeared pixels and the conjuration of the true real organism http://www.alansondheim.org/azureleg1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azureleg2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azureleg3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azureleg4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azureleg5.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurelega.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurelegb.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurelegc.jpg (earlier this week) evidence from the large scanner: Azure Carter film noir templates for continuance of research into the obscenity of the night http://www.alansondheim.org/azuren1.gif http://www.alansondheim.org/azuren2.gif http://www.alansondheim.org/azuren12.gif http://www.alansondheim.org/azuren21.gif http://www.alansondheim.org/azuren32.gif http://www.alansondheim.org/azuresit.gif (David Askevold would have liked this; in a way the translucency of the digital and pristine quality of the analogic, that sort of thing, would have resonated. I remember the two of us scuttling down a barren coastal cliff, jagged rocks all the way, in the middle of a pitch-dark and stormy Nova Scotia winter night. We were recording a foghorn and its echoes, holding on for dear life. I can see the scanner images through an uncanny the memory of these soundings, which are with me here in West Virginia, a 35-year-old tape. I'd dedicate these works to him if that weren't such an absurd, meaningless gesture, especially in the face and body of death.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:49:10 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alexander Jorgensen Subject: Attn: Early Spring Readings - Looking to organize In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 Will be Stateside in March and am currently in the midst of organizing some readings, the most notable, perhaps, at Xavier University. Any open slots and information related to locales btw Midwest and East Coast would be appreciated. My work has appeared in journals both online and in print, with new work to appear in upcoming Big Bridge, Otoliths (and this is gonna be an IMPORTANT one for those interested in VISPO), and Vibrant Gray. Is gonna be old-style, I guess, that hop into the back of an old honda civic, thumbing it if need be, all in two weeks, and drive from there to there, taking a pit-stop in Indiana to visit James Dean -- then back to China. Some work online http://www.alexanderjorgensen.com Regards, AGJ -- Alexander Jorgensen bangdrum@fastmail.fm -- http://www.fastmail.fm - I mean, what is it about a decent email service? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:13:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Adam Fieled Subject: PFS Post: Matina Stamatakis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Check out lovely new work from Matina Stamatakis on PFS Post: http://www.artrecess.blogspot.com Books! "Opera Bufa" http://www.lulu.com/content/1137210 "Beams" http://www.blazevox.org/ebk-af.pdf --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:34:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > There is also the question of the "signature" and the "caption" > attached to > the code. For example--you see a poem and at the bottom it says > it is by so > and so, a recognized and famous person and you think ah!! Wow! That's > deep! That's innovative!! You see a name you don't know at all, and your > response is a bit muted, a bit unsure, even if you liked the > poem, you might > think--well,hmm. I better look that up and see what so and so says about > it. > > A photo in the paper of a person that looks like anyone--except > the caption > reads, so and so is charged with murder. "My God! look at these > terrifying > and ominous eyebrows!" The same photo, this time captioned, "Avant-Garde > Poet." "Ah! What sensitive and radical energy shines in the > eyes!" Again, > the caption reads "Banker dead at 63." "Fat capitalist swine!" Yes, the context, the frame, is part of the code, isn't it. Rather depressing, in a sense. Work never 'stands on its own'. It does and doesn't, if it does at all. The frame, the context, is active in determining what the piece means to anybody. Even if a work creates 'a world of its own', the frame enters the world of the work as inevitably as water flowing downhill. Meaning is always constructed not simply from what is read but we must bring our world view into the construction, including our view of the work itself. and the author. and so on. we can find this depressing or respond to it as best we can and not attempt to resist the inevitable but go with it. that the frame is so active in the shaping of how people respond also means that there's a dynamic going on that's a source of energy. it's interactive. it's interactive in ways we have no control over. yet it is possible to open the work to allowing people to make of it what they will in a more engaging way than if we assume the poem can live in its own imagined world that people can decipher as we intend them to do. > One of the aspects of codes you are discussing in relation with writing is > sets and constraints. For Godel, sets are consistent but incomplete, just > as constraints are. For myself, it is the areas of incompleteness and > inbetweenness that are of interest--the "hidden in plain site/sight/cite" > which is the code that goes unnoticed while the attention is drawn to the > "correct" codes. By "reading between the lines" and "across the lines," > "against the grain" as well as "with it," across the sets rather > than being > restricted within them--one is essaying to "connect the dots" of > the things > visible and invisible as it were, of the codes "meant to be seen" > and those > not. Lines begin in cracks, strati, faults, breakages in the earth and > continue into forms that become writing, codes--"lines of flight"-- Yes. Most of the work I've done the last several years is explicitly interactive. Inevitably in the above senses, but also in various other ways. Sometimes there's a compositional interactivity; people are invited to compose, in some sense. put the sound icons together. or create and configure brushes or pens. or 'complete' the poem via writing. or type the concept and the piece does something with the concept. and so on. sometimes there's a game dimension. sometimes one is invited to play the piece like an instrument of some sort, either sonic or visual or both. if there is a 'whole' to this sort of work, then it is a combinatorium, a space of possibilities. one is invited to imagine the whole space while probably not ever experiencing the whole thing. i think that part of what comes out of our experience of apparently new forms of interactivity is a deeper understanding of how interactivity is not new and a deeper understanding of how it is present in other things/media/art/situations. when i was writing my first dhtml (dynamic html) interactive pieces in the 90's, i was interested in the notion that texts could now have behavior. the wreader does something and the text responds. i did a bit of resarch on what had been written previously on text having behavior. i didn't find much, but mcgann had written about the matter a bit in relation to language poetry. which was cool, i thought. but we know more now about the notion of text having behavior as a result of the apparently new type of textual behaviors via programmed codes. texts do not 'stand on their own' but have a 'life' independent of the writer nonetheless, and a life dependent on the author and the context/frame/environment they are received in. also, writers do anticipate certain ranges of responses and sort of write combinatoria via anticipation of multiple responses, at any juncture in the poem. ambiguity is a kind of branching, an opening up to multiple possibilities and wreadings. also, however new a form of interactivity is, it has to engage our old means of making meaning. and expand those into new territory. sometimes the adjustment is figuring out how it is doing the former before we can work it into the latter. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:44:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Camille Martin Subject: Camille Martin's new website MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I recently created a website to house some of my poetry, collages and = visual poetry, essays, and upcoming reading dates: =20 http://www.camillemartin.ca =20 =20 Enjoy! =20 Camille =20 Camille Martin Toronto POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU =20 =20 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:55:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable On 22 Jan 2008 at 19:47, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > Probably someone misunderstands what Russell's Paradox actually did > to Hilberts program or got confused by a popular account of the > incompleteness theorems and came away with the idea that mathematics > is irrational. it happens all the time. The interesting thing is that in nearly every case the people who try to i= ntuit or infer a postmodern worldview from math and science get it wrong. They conclude the world is irrational because of Cantor or morals are relative because of Einstein or that we can't know anything because of Heisenberg. They've heard a little, understood less, and they get it wrong. They go on= from misunderstanding to error. That's the essence of why the postmodern worldview is so messed up: it started with misunderstandings and went on t= o wrong conclusions from there. And then they, like the creationists, insist= that any subsequent attempt at clarifying explanation is "only a theory", as if= a theory is something excreted during a bout with the flu. They know what th= ey believe, and they are fundamentalist about it -- even while, ironically, r= ejecting "foundationalism". Nothing, in short, is true except what the postmodernis= t happens to believe -- but that is _really_ true: so true that no account o= f where he or she has misunderstood the basic ideas is possible. Postmodern Bard What asks the new postmodern bard Whose anti-reality ways Have made her chopped-up prose so hard To praise? She asks we say that all we know Is language and habit and fear: That all is fake as her own faux Career. She keeps her hatreds clear and bright, Detecting the patriarch=B4s stench On every guy who doesn=B4t write In French. All principles are infra dig, Self-interest is all she infers - Except your heart is not as big As hers. No, not for her the outward sweep Of science=B4s infinite shore - She feels her creed within her deep Heart=B4s core She=B4s sure she=B4s sure, and sure her claim It=B4s not her intent to be right Is right, as if there were no shame In sight. Sincerely sure that nothing=B4s true, Unladen by theory or thought, She knows it=B4s true she=B4s right, while you Are not. Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:46:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Mushroom Cloud on Czech TV in the Tradition of Svejk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Long live the good soldier Svejk! http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/index.html?th&emc=th --- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:56:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amy king Subject: Reminder - Tomorrow Comments: To: new-poetry@wiz.cath.vt.edu In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MiPOesias presents ~~ STOBB ~~ LIN ~~ YOUNG Friday, January 25th @ 7:00 p.m. Stain Bar – Williamsburg, Brooklyn ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WILLIAM STOBB is the author of Nervous Systems, a 2006 National Poetry Series selection and For Better Night Vision, a limited edition chapbook produced by the Black Rock Press at the University of Nevada. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, American Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, and online at MiPOesias, Three Candles, Cricket Online Review, and nthposition. Stobb hosts the monthly audio column on poetry and poetics, "Hard to Say," on miporadio. With David Krump, he co-curates the reading series at the Pump House Regional Arts Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Stobb is Associate Professor of English at Viterbo University. 1. http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/stobb_william_e.html 2. http://www.mipoesias.com/2007/stobb_william.htm TAO LIN is the author a poetry-collection, you are a little bit happier than i am (Action Books, 2006), a story-collection, Bed (Melville House, 2007), and a novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee (Melville House, 2007). Melville House is publishing his second poetry-collection, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, in 2008. His web site is called Reader of Depressing Books. 1. http://www.mipoesias.com/Poetry/lin_tao.html 2. http://www.mipoesias.com/2007/lin_tao.htm MIKE YOUNG is the co-editor of NOÖ Journal, a free literary/political magazine. His work has or will appear in MiPOesias, Backwards City Review, realpoetik, Juked, elimae, BlazeVOX, 3:AM and elsewhere. A chapbook of his work is forthcoming from Transmission Press. He sleeps most of the time in Massachusetts. http://www.mipoesias.com/2007/young_mike.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ STAIN BAR 766 Grand Street Brooklyn , NY 11211 (L train to Grand Street Stop, walk 1 block west) 718/387-7840 http://www.stainbar.com/ Hope you'll stop by! Amy King http://www.mipoesias.com http://miporeadingseries2007.blogspot.com/2007/09/january-2008.html -- Blog http://www.amyking.org/blog --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:13:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Warren Lloyd Subject: Mei Mei Berssenbrugge Query In-Reply-To: <47986079.19398.A5CEDC4@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Has anyone out there seen, read or just heard how Mei Mei Berssenbrugge's first 'pamphlet' of poetry "Fish Souls" ( Greenwood) was written. Or better yet does anyone own one who is willing to send me some or all of the poems pdf or copies??? Apparently it is really rare. I've been unable to find it anywhere for less than 285.00 and libraries in my area ( including inter-library options) just don't have it, including UB's special collections. Please back channel if anyone can help! Thanks !! Warren : --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:05:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kyle Schlesinger Subject: Dan Featherston's The Clock Maker's Memoir Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Cuneiform is pleased to announce the publication of: THE CLOCK MAKER'S MEMOIR by Dan Featherston=20 Advanced praise for The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir: Through a series of poised, meditative stanzas, The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir takes on the formidable topics of time and memory. What=B9s evident throughou= t this book is a careful craftsmanship leading to novel perspectives all around the clock.=20 =8B Lisa Jarnot=20 The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir registers the world=B9s variety in small catalogs of storms, shadows, dreams, memories, and rituals of childhood. In such forms, time returns each time with a difference. Likewise, the supple measure of these poems returns us to a rhythm or tone each time with a difference, sounding a subtle echo of slipped in sleep. As William Blake declares, =B3There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find / Nor can his Watch Fiends find it.=B2 Yet Dan Featherston finds it =8B through alert and resourceful art.=20 =8B Devin Johnston=20 With its precise music, The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir navigates the immeasurable distance between the clock=B9s face and the face worn by lived experiences. I= n these poems, memoir is not some static repository: it is a poesis of the present tense. Featherston=B9s craft and his unblinking commitment to particulars fashion a lyric search that one can trust to ask the questions, the necessary questions of time, space, and how we find one another amidst all this memory.=20 =8BRichard Deming=20 Dan Featherston is the author of two booklength collections of poetry, Into the Earth (Quarry Press) and United States (Factory School), as well as fiv= e shorter collections. He lives in Philadelphia with Rachel McCrystal and their dog Fredo. This book will soon be available from Small Press Distribution (www.spdbooks.org). Order direct from Cuneiform (www.cuneiformpress.com) and you'll receive FREE SHIPPING. Send a $12 check to: Cuneiform | 214 Nort= h Henry Street | Brooklyn, NY 11222 For those of you in New York City, Featherston will read from this book at Peace on A 166 Avenue A #2 (between 10th and 11th) on Friday February 1st a= t 8pm. BYOB $5 recommended donation. Other titles from Cuneiform Press: Ron Silliman=B9s Woundwood Ted Greenwald=B9s Two Wrongs Bill Berkson=B9s Sudden Address Sarah Campbell, ed. I Have Imagined a Center // Wilder Than This Region: A Tribute to Susan Howe Gregg Biglieri=B9s Sleepy with Democracy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:40:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: Fwd: AWP Conference Schedule Change In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Please DO NOT reply. This is an automatically generated message and replies to this message will not be received. Dear Catherine Daly, Below is information for you regarding two recent schedule changes. SCHEDULE CHANGES ... Due to a recently broken wrist, Louise Gl=FCck has cancelled her appearance= at the conference. AWP wishes her a swift recovery to stay, as Stephen Colbert would say, 'wrist-strong.' Rae Armantrout will read with Mark Strand on Friday night at 8:30 in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton New York. The reading is sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Rae Armantrout is a native Californian whose poems are masterful contradictions; according to Robert Creeley, her poems have 'a quiet and enabling signature.' He adds, 'I don=B9t think there=B9s another poet writi= ng who is so consummate in authority and yet so generous to her readers and company alike.' Her poems are telegenically 'regional,' filled with bungalows, newscasters and swimming pools yet they ring with an immaterial clarity that quietly subsumes her readers and listeners in a radical and eerily funny vision. She was at the center of the first generation of Language Poets, the group in the US most often credited with introducing poetry to postmodernity. Since then Rae Armantrout has forged a growing international reputation--publishing eight remarkable books of poems, most recently Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2004) and Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan, 2001), as well as countless poems anthologized (Best American Poetry 2002, and Postmodern American Poetry, a Norton Anthology, 1994) and gathered in diverse journals such as Conjunctions, Partisan Review, and the LA Times. In 2000, A Wild Salience, a collection of critical writings on th= e work of Rae Armantrout, was published (Burning Deck). She has directed the New Writing Series at University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) since 1989, and co-organized the Page Mother=B9s Conference in 1999. She has taug= ht writing at UCSD for almost two decades. --=20 All best, Catherine Daly c.a.b.daly@gmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:35:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Camille Martin's new website MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit wow wonderful stuff On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:44:18 -0500 Camille Martin writes: > I recently created a website to house some of my poetry, collages and > visual poetry, essays, and upcoming reading dates: > > > > http://www.camillemartin.ca > > > > Enjoy! > > > > Camille > > > > Camille Martin > > Toronto > > POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:36:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Karmin Subject: A Sing Economy: new anthology from Flim Forum Press MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit A Sing Economy is the second Flim Forum Press anthology and contains extensive selections from 20 contemporary poets: Kate Schapira Barrett Gordon Jennifer Karmin Stephanie Strickland Mathew Timmons Kaethe Schwehn Harold Abramowitz & Amanda Ackerman Jaye Bartell Jessica Smith David Pavelich Erin M. Bertram Laura Sims Deborah Poe a.rawlings & francois luong Michael Slosek Kevin Thurston Hannah Rodabaugh Tawrin Baker and three cover films by Scott Puccio Available January 31-February 2 at the 2008 AWP Book Fair in NYC. Drop by and say hello at the Flim Forum table: #491 Americas Hall II, access from 3rd floor. http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2008exhibitorslist.php Flim Forum Press is an independent press that provides SPACE for emerging poets working in a variety of experimental modes. Founded in 2005, Flim Forum Press is edited by Matthew Klane and Adam Golaski. http://www.flimforum.blogspot.com To purchase the anthologies A Sing Economy or Oh One Arrow please send a check (payable to Flim Forum Press) for $20 (includes shipping and handling), or $30 for both books, to: Flim Forum Press PO Box 549 Slingerlands, NY 12159 UPCOMING EVENTS WITH FLIM FORUM AUTHORS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *2/6/08 - Cambridge, MA: Grolier Books at Harvard http://www.theharvardadvocate.com/order.html *2/8/08 - Albany, NY: Jawbone at UAG Gallery http://upstateartistsguild.org *3/5/08 - Berkeley, CA: Pegasus Books Downtown http://www.pegasusbookstore.com *3/15/08 - Los Angeles, CA: Betalevel http://betalevel.com *3/19/08 - Ithaca, NY: The Ithaca Bookery http://www.thebookery.com/boo_ld.taf *3/20/08 - Cortland, NY: SUNY Cortland http://www.cortland.edu/english *3/20/08 - Buffalo, NY: Rust Belt Books http://artvoice.com/directory/rust_belt_books *3/22/08 - Buffalo, NY: Small Press Book Fair http://www.buffalosmallpress.org *4/12/08 - Providence, RI: Publicly Complex http://www.ada-books.com *4/19/08 - Chicago, IL: Red Rover Series http://groups.yahoo.com/group/redroverseries ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:14:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <47986079.19398.A5CEDC4@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Interesting comments Marcus, but I again renew my challenge to you to prese= nt me with examples of five postmodern thinkers who actually believe that n= othing is true but what they believe. In the past I've given you plenty of examples of non-postmodernists who rej= ect some of the positions that you hold to be essential for a "correct" wor= ld view. Taking just the example in this email of foundationalism. One of t= he leading critics of foundationalism whose work is still held to be fundam= ental to the coherence theory of epistemological justification is Laurence = Bonjour at the University of Washington. I can say with 100% certainty from= my personal acquaintance with the man that you're never going to find a LE= SS postmodern worldview. Politically, he's aligned more or less with Nozick= as opposed to Rawls at the other end of the spectrum, and metaphilosophica= lly he's dedicated to the traditional analytic method that descends from th= e modern era in philosophy. He's the only professional philosopher I've eve= r met who thinks that Quine is unimpressive due to a lack of rigour, and wh= en=20 someone brings up someone like Heidegger or Foucault, he tends to say "cont= inental philosophy?" and shrug his shoulders because he doesn't consider hi= s unfamiliarity with them to be any sort of impediment to his work. That having been said, he's probably more aware than anyone of the problems= with foundationalism and although he has at this point recanted his earlie= r coherentism and his thought currently runs towards a modified version of = foundationalism, he's intellectually honest enough to admit that as a theor= y of knowledge it has real problems that no one has overcome as of yet. I'm offering you this description of my former professor as an example of t= he kind of intellectual honesty you're going to have to display in order fo= r anyone to take your "postmodern theorist" bogeyman seriously. Show me whe= re you are finding these people who are absolute relativists and believe in= nothing but the subjectivity of the self. Find me Five well known and resp= ected thinkers in the field you're criticizing who hold the beliefs you're = attributing to the group of "postmodernists" as a whole. Because if you can't do that, then you're just making straw men of opposing= viewpoints and as a result I have developed the suspicion that you're an o= bjectivist since that sort of sophistry was an important part of ayn rand's= "philosophy." If that's the case then there's no point in having a conversation with you = about this and your position is just as anti-rational as the position you h= ave repeatedly attributed to "postmodernists." The first requirement of int= ellectual honesty is to admit to oneself the possibility of one's position = being wrong. If you can't do that, then I wish you'd stop riding this parti= cular hobby-horse, because it could be an interesting discussion but only i= f freed from argument by appeal to dogma. Thanks, Jason On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Marcus Bales wrote: > On 22 Jan 2008 at 19:47, Jason Quackenbush wrote: >> Probably someone misunderstands what Russell's Paradox actually did >> to Hilberts program or got confused by a popular account of the >> incompleteness theorems and came away with the idea that mathematics >> is irrational. it happens all the time. > > The interesting thing is that in nearly every case the people who try to = intuit or > infer a postmodern worldview from math and science get it wrong. They > conclude the world is irrational because of Cantor or morals are relative > because of Einstein or that we can't know anything because of Heisenberg. > They've heard a little, understood less, and they get it wrong. They go o= n from > misunderstanding to error. That's the essence of why the postmodern > worldview is so messed up: it started with misunderstandings and went on = to > wrong conclusions from there. And then they, like the creationists, insis= t that > any subsequent attempt at clarifying explanation is "only a theory", as i= f a > theory is something excreted during a bout with the flu. They know what t= hey > believe, and they are fundamentalist about it -- even while, ironically, = rejecting > "foundationalism". Nothing, in short, is true except what the postmoderni= st > happens to believe -- but that is _really_ true: so true that no account = of where > he or she has misunderstood the basic ideas is possible. > > Postmodern Bard > > What asks the new postmodern bard > =09Whose anti-reality ways > Have made her chopped-up prose so hard > =09To praise? > > She asks we say that all we know > =09Is language and habit and fear: > That all is fake as her own faux > =09Career. > > She keeps her hatreds clear and bright, > Detecting the patriarch=B4s stench > On every guy who doesn=B4t write > =09In French. > > All principles are infra dig, > =09Self-interest is all she infers - > Except your heart is not as big > =09As hers. > > No, not for her the outward sweep > =09Of science=B4s infinite shore - > She feels her creed within her deep > =09Heart=B4s core > > She=B4s sure she=B4s sure, and sure her claim > =09It=B4s not her intent to be right > Is right, as if there were no shame > =09In sight. > > Sincerely sure that nothing=B4s true, > =09Unladen by theory or thought, > She knows it=B4s true she=B4s right, while you > =09Are not. > > Marcus > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:10:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetry Project Subject: Events at The Poetry Project January/February In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable The darkness surrounds us here at The Poetry Project but we will not succumb. Here are next week=B9s readings: Monday, January 28, 8 PM Jee Leong Koh & Ada Lim=F3n Born in Singapore, Jee Leong Koh read English at Oxford University and completed his Creative Writing MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. His poems hav= e appeared in Singaporean anthologies, and in American and British journals such as Crab Orchard Review, Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, The Ledge Magazine, and Mimesis. His poem =B3Brother=B2 has been selected by Natasha Trethewey for the Best New Poets Anthology 2007, to be published by the University of Virginia Press. He published his chapbook Payday Loans in April 2007. Of the chapbook, Marie Howe says, =B3Smart, irreverent, often unnerving, these sonnets smirk, smile, argue and bless.=B2 In 2006 the Singaporean government banned the reading of one of these sonnets, because =B3it promotes the homosexual lifestyle.=B2 The ban makes Jee Leong Koh out to be more dangerous than he really is. Ada Lim=F3n, a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at NYU, has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and NYFA. She is the author of two books of poetry, lucky wreck and This Big Fake World. Wednesday, January 30, 8 PM Jen Hofer & Daniel Machlin Jen Hofer=B9s recent and forthcoming publications include lip wolf, a translation of Laura Sol=F3rzano=B9s lobo de labio (Action Books, 2007); PUREsexSWIFTsex and September, books two and three of Dolores Dorantes by Dolores Dorantes (Counterpath and Kenning Editions, 2007); Sin puertas visibles: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Mexican Women (University of Pittsburgh Press and Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2003); slide rule (subpress, 2002); The Route, a collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos, 2008), Laws (Dusie Books, 2008); and a book-length series of anti-war-manifesto poems titled one (Palm Press, 2008). She has published poems and translations in numerous small-press publications, including 1913, Aufgabe, Circumference, The Brooklyn Rail, eoagh, Jacket, The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Ma= r con Soroche, and War and Peace. Jen lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches poetics at CalArts and works as a court interpreter. She is a member of the Little Fakers collective which creates and produces Sunset Chronicles, a neighborhood-based serial episodic drama populated entirely by hand-made marionettes inhabiting lost, abandoned and ghost spaces in Los Angeles, and is happily a founding member of the City of Angels Ladies=B9 Bicycle Association, also known as The Whirly Girls. Dan Machlin was born and raise= d in NYC. His first book-length collection of poems Dear Body: was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in September 2007. Previous works include several chapbooks: 6x7 (Ugly Duckling), This Side Facing You (Heart Hammer Press), and In Rem (@ Press), as well as Above Islands (Immanent Audio), an audio C= D collaboration with singer/cellist Serena Jost. His poems and reviews have appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Brooklyn Rail, Fence, Tarpaulin Sky, Crayon, and Soft Targets. Dan is founding editor and publisher of Futurepoem books, and a former co-curator of The Segue Series at Bowery Poetry Club in NYC. Friday, February 1, 10 PM Anna Joy Springer & Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi Anna Joy Springer is a prose writer and visual artist who makes Grotesques. That is, she creates hybrid texts combining sacred and profane elements in order to prompt intensely embodied conceptual-emotional experiences in readers. Formerly a singer in the Bay Area bands, Blatz, The Gr'ups, and Cypher in the Snow, Anna Joy has toured the United States and Europe being = a wild feminist punk performer, and she has also toured with the all-women spoken word extravaganza, Sister Spit. Author of the illustrated novella Th= e Birdwisher (Birds of Lace Press, January 2008), she is currently finishing her first "novel," The Vicious Red Relic, Love. She received her MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2002, and she is an Assistant Professor of Literature at University of California, San Diego where she truly loves teaching courses in Experimental Writing, Graphic Texts, and Postmodern Feminist Literatures. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is pursuing her M.F.A. in fiction at Brown University and is the 2008 National Small Press Month Co-ordinator. Become a Poetry Project Member! http://poetryproject.com/membership.php Fall Calendar: http://www.poetryproject.com/calendar.php The Poetry Project is located at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery 131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue New York City 10003 Trains: 6, F, N, R, and L. info@poetryproject.com www.poetryproject.com Admission is $8, $7 for students/seniors and $5 for members (though now those who take out a membership at $85 or higher will get in FREE to all regular readings). We are wheelchair accessible with assistance and advance notice. For more info call 212-674-0910. If you=B9d like to be unsubscribed from this mailing list, please drop a line at info@poetryproject.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:36:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Jason Quackenbush wrote: > Interesting comments Marcus, but I again renew my challenge to you > to present me with examples of five postmodern thinkers who actually > believe that nothing is true but what they believe. Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern thinkers = who say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they believe, even t= hough I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely acts on that belief= in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead their lives that makes me think = they're more interested in building a coterie of cross-supporting social, politica= l, financial, and professional people who will refer to, defer to, hire, and = promote one another, than in worrying about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion.= I urge them to have the courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY tha= t nothing is true but what they believe, then I want to see them believe themselves to, say, health. Or even better, into bad health and then into = good health again. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Jason Quackenbush wrote: > In the past I've given you plenty of examples of non-postmodernists > who reject some of the positions that you hold to be essential for a > "correct" world view.< I don't know what a "correct" world view would be. I'm pretty sure, though= , that people who say there's nothing out there, but still get regular medical checkups and pay their health insurance premiums are frauds. Why aren't such people successfully living on love and pale moonlight if there's real= ly nothing out there? Jason Quackenbush wrote: > Taking just the example in this email of foundationalism. > One of the leading critics of foundationalism whose > work is still held to be fundamental to the coherence theory of > epistemological justification is Laurence Bonjour at the University > of Washington. I can say with 100% certainty from my personal > acquaintance with the man that you're never going to find a LESS > postmodern worldview.< Wow -- 100% certainty but no foundationalism, eh? Fundamental to the coherence theory, but no foundationalism, eh? Words are tricky things, and= so is grammar. It's hard to be a real postmodernist, particularly if one has = the view that there are people who are good, smart people who are working hard= to try to get ideas and language to coincide, to get things right, insofar= as any human being can get things right. You seem to be making my points for me, here. A fellow who is working hard to get something right is not a postmodernist? Well, duh. Jason Quackenbush wrote: > Politically, he's aligned more or less with > Nozick as opposed to Rawls at the other end of the spectrum, and > metaphilosophically he's dedicated to the traditional analytic > method that descends from the modern era in philosophy. He's the > only professional philosopher I've ever met who thinks that Quine is > unimpressive due to a lack of rigour, and when > someone brings up someone like Heidegger or Foucault, he tends to > say "continental philosophy?" and shrug his shoulders because he > doesn't consider his unfamiliarity with them to be any sort of > impediment to his work. Well, I remain over on the Rawls side, but still, so what -- this fellow s= ounds as if he's someone I could easily admire. Again, though, what is your point? = He's anti-foundationalist and non-postmodern -- but so what? So was Socrates. Jason Quackenbush wrote: > That having been said, he's probably more aware than anyone of the > problems with foundationalism and although he has at this point > recanted his earlier coherentism and his thought currently runs > towards a modified version of foundationalism, he's intellectually > honest enough to admit that as a theory of knowledge it has real > problems that no one has overcome as of yet.< Oh, so he's not an anti-foundationalist, per se, after all -- and yet he's= also not a post-modernist. Hmm. But it seems to me that the traits you're describin= g in this man are not the traits of postmodernists, and yet your use of him in = this context prompts me to think that you think of him as a postmodernist who demonstrates none of the traits or beliefs of the postmodernists. He sound= s like an admirable guy. So do you. From what I've read of your writing here= and there online, and from what you say about Bonjour, it doesn't seem to me a= s if either of you are people who hold the views I'm criticizing. Jason Quackenbush wrote: > ... I have developed the suspicion > that you're an objectivist since that sort of sophistry was an > important part of ayn rand's "philosophy."< Sorry, my opinion of Rand, and the sociopaths who tend to believe her nove= ls are philosophy, is even lower than my opinion of postmodernists. Perhaps, if you're willing to engage in the endeavor, we could try, first,= to define what we can agree to mean when we say "postmodern"? Marcus > On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > On 22 Jan 2008 at 19:47, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > >> Probably someone misunderstands what Russell's Paradox actually > did > >> to Hilberts program or got confused by a popular account of the > >> incompleteness theorems and came away with the idea that > mathematics > >> is irrational. it happens all the time. > > > > The interesting thing is that in nearly every case the people who > try to intuit or > > infer a postmodern worldview from math and science get it wrong. > They > > conclude the world is irrational because of Cantor or morals are > relative > > because of Einstein or that we can't know anything because of > Heisenberg. > > They've heard a little, understood less, and they get it wrong. > They go on from > > misunderstanding to error. That's the essence of why the > postmodern > > worldview is so messed up: it started with misunderstandings and > went on to > > wrong conclusions from there. And then they, like the > creationists, insist that > > any subsequent attempt at clarifying explanation is "only a > theory", as if a > > theory is something excreted during a bout with the flu. They know > what they > > believe, and they are fundamentalist about it -- even while, > ironically, rejecting > > "foundationalism". Nothing, in short, is true except what the > postmodernist > > happens to believe -- but that is _really_ true: so true that no > account of where > > he or she has misunderstood the basic ideas is possible. > > > > Postmodern Bard > > > > What asks the new postmodern bard > > Whose anti-reality ways > > Have made her chopped-up prose so hard > > To praise? > > > > She asks we say that all we know > > Is language and habit and fear: > > That all is fake as her own faux > > Career. > > > > She keeps her hatreds clear and bright, > > Detecting the patriarch=B4s stench > > On every guy who doesn=B4t write > > In French. > > > > All principles are infra dig, > > Self-interest is all she infers - > > Except your heart is not as big > > As hers. > > > > No, not for her the outward sweep > > Of science=B4s infinite shore - > > She feels her creed within her deep > > Heart=B4s core > > > > She=B4s sure she=B4s sure, and sure her claim > > It=B4s not her intent to be right > > Is right, as if there were no shame > > In sight. > > > > Sincerely sure that nothing=B4s true, > > Unladen by theory or thought, > > She knows it=B4s true she=B4s right, while you > > Are not. > > > > Marcus > > > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.10/1241 - Release Date: > 1/24/2008 9:58 AM > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:31:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth James Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <4798F6DC.17678.CA86053@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Marcus -- Just to get a word in edgewise: Jason asked you to name five postmodernists who claim that nothing is true but what they believe. You named Rorty. So you still have four to go. -- Ken Quoting Marcus Bales : > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > Interesting comments Marcus, but I again renew my challenge to you > > to present me with examples of five postmodern thinkers who > actually > > believe that nothing is true but what they believe. > > Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern > thinkers > who > say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they believe, > even t> hough I > agree with you that not a single one of them routinely acts on that > belief> in > their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm between what > they're > willing to say and how they actually lead their lives that makes me > think > they're > more interested in building a coterie of cross-supporting social, > politica> l, > financial, and professional people who will refer to, defer to, hire, > and > promote > one another, than in worrying about truth, beauty, justice, or > proportion.> I urge > them to have the courage of their convictions. If they're going to > SAY tha> t > nothing is true but what they believe, then I want to see them > believe > themselves to, say, health. Or even better, into bad health and then > into > good > health again. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > In the past I've given you plenty of examples of > non-postmodernists > > who reject some of the positions that you hold to be essential for > a > > "correct" world view.< > > I don't know what a "correct" world view would be. I'm pretty sure, > though> , that > people who say there's nothing out there, but still get regular > medical > checkups and pay their health insurance premiums are frauds. Why > aren't > such people successfully living on love and pale moonlight if there's > real> ly > nothing out there? > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > Taking just the example in this email of foundationalism. > > One of the leading critics of foundationalism whose > > work is still held to be fundamental to the coherence theory of > > epistemological justification is Laurence Bonjour at the > University > > of Washington. I can say with 100% certainty from my personal > > acquaintance with the man that you're never going to find a LESS > > postmodern worldview.< > > Wow -- 100% certainty but no foundationalism, eh? Fundamental to the > > coherence theory, but no foundationalism, eh? Words are tricky > things, and> so > is grammar. It's hard to be a real postmodernist, particularly if one > has > the > view that there are people who are good, smart people who are working > hard> > to try to get ideas and language to coincide, to get things right, > insofar> as any > human being can get things right. You seem to be making my points for > me, > here. A fellow who is working hard to get something right is not a > postmodernist? Well, duh. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > Politically, he's aligned more or less with > > Nozick as opposed to Rawls at the other end of the spectrum, and > > metaphilosophically he's dedicated to the traditional analytic > > method that descends from the modern era in philosophy. He's the > > only professional philosopher I've ever met who thinks that Quine > is > > unimpressive due to a lack of rigour, and when > > someone brings up someone like Heidegger or Foucault, he tends to > > say "continental philosophy?" and shrug his shoulders because he > > doesn't consider his unfamiliarity with them to be any sort of > > impediment to his work. > > Well, I remain over on the Rawls side, but still, so what -- this > fellow s> ounds as > if he's someone I could easily admire. Again, though, what is your > point? > He's > anti-foundationalist and non-postmodern -- but so what? So was > Socrates. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > That having been said, he's probably more aware than anyone of the > > problems with foundationalism and although he has at this point > > recanted his earlier coherentism and his thought currently runs > > towards a modified version of foundationalism, he's intellectually > > honest enough to admit that as a theory of knowledge it has real > > problems that no one has overcome as of yet.< > > Oh, so he's not an anti-foundationalist, per se, after all -- and yet > he's> also not > a post-modernist. Hmm. But it seems to me that the traits you're > describin> g in > this man are not the traits of postmodernists, and yet your use of > him in > this > context prompts me to think that you think of him as a postmodernist > who > demonstrates none of the traits or beliefs of the postmodernists. He > sound> s > like an admirable guy. So do you. From what I've read of your writing > here> and > there online, and from what you say about Bonjour, it doesn't seem to > me a> s if > either of you are people who hold the views I'm criticizing. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > ... I have developed the suspicion > > that you're an objectivist since that sort of sophistry was an > > important part of ayn rand's "philosophy."< > > Sorry, my opinion of Rand, and the sociopaths who tend to believe her > nove> ls > are philosophy, is even lower than my opinion of postmodernists. > > Perhaps, if you're willing to engage in the endeavor, we could try, > first,> to > define what we can agree to mean when we say "postmodern"? > > Marcus > > > > > > > On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > > > On 22 Jan 2008 at 19:47, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > >> Probably someone misunderstands what Russell's Paradox actually > > did > > >> to Hilberts program or got confused by a popular account of the > > >> incompleteness theorems and came away with the idea that > > mathematics > > >> is irrational. it happens all the time. > > > > > > The interesting thing is that in nearly every case the people > who > > try to intuit or > > > infer a postmodern worldview from math and science get it wrong. > > They > > > conclude the world is irrational because of Cantor or morals are > > relative > > > because of Einstein or that we can't know anything because of > > Heisenberg. > > > They've heard a little, understood less, and they get it wrong. > > They go on from > > > misunderstanding to error. That's the essence of why the > > postmodern > > > worldview is so messed up: it started with misunderstandings and > > went on to > > > wrong conclusions from there. And then they, like the > > creationists, insist that > > > any subsequent attempt at clarifying explanation is "only a > > theory", as if a > > > theory is something excreted during a bout with the flu. They > know > > what they > > > believe, and they are fundamentalist about it -- even while, > > ironically, rejecting > > > "foundationalism". Nothing, in short, is true except what the > > postmodernist > > > happens to believe -- but that is _really_ true: so true that no > > account of where > > > he or she has misunderstood the basic ideas is possible. > > > > > > Postmodern Bard > > > > > > What asks the new postmodern bard > > > Whose anti-reality ways > > > Have made her chopped-up prose so hard > > > To praise? > > > > > > She asks we say that all we know > > > Is language and habit and fear: > > > That all is fake as her own faux > > > Career. > > > > > > She keeps her hatreds clear and bright, > > > Detecting the patriarch´s stench > > > On every guy who doesn´t write > > > In French. > > > > > > All principles are infra dig, > > > Self-interest is all she infers - > > > Except your heart is not as big > > > As hers. > > > > > > No, not for her the outward sweep > > > Of science´s infinite shore - > > > She feels her creed within her deep > > > Heart´s core > > > > > > She´s sure she´s sure, and sure her claim > > > It´s not her intent to be right > > > Is right, as if there were no shame > > > In sight. > > > > > > Sincerely sure that nothing´s true, > > > Unladen by theory or thought, > > > She knows it´s true she´s right, while you > > > Are not. > > > > > > Marcus > > > > > > > > > -- > > No virus found in this incoming message. > > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.10/1241 - Release Date: > > 1/24/2008 9:58 AM > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:16:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > re codes--i think there's a tendency towards a fetishization and > mystification of the aura of the digital and its codes--as though these > create a separate realm outside of the "old" ways and rules of the "dirty > old town" of the Pogues song--a virtuality of virtue, of > purified, discrete > elements manipulated for the benefit and pleasure of an elite--an > intriguing > branch of Formalism to be "explored" and "played with"-- just about all of my work is available for free on the net. also, no one pays me to do this work. i don't spend a lot on the equipment. anything you need to view the work, such as the shockwave and flash plugins, is free. some of the work is available in portuguese, french, spanish, italian, finnish, and chinese. the work does not require a high-end computer to run properly on. my own machine is four years old. which is fine because i have to know if the work will run on average machines ok. the download times range from dial-up speeds to broadband, depending on the work. most of the work is ok for dialup. i had a job for a while working as a programmer for an academic musician/digital artist. he had a $500,000 grant from a gov agency seeking to encourage dev for super highspeed networks. the developed work was seen by a remarkably small audience in performances. and much of the new media scene art is for performance or gallery. remarkably small audiences, remarkably expensive work. but i am very net oriented. partly because i'm a writer and the main paradigm is publish. not perform or show. but beyond that, i like the net because it is not justly described as for an elite, these days, david. yes it costs some money. but not an arm and a leg. i know people on welfare here in canada who have an internet connection and a decent computer. the paperback used to be cheap and there was an explosion of literacy. books aren't so cheap anymore. the internet, as a whole, is. "elite"? i don't think so. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:46:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: some characteristics of organic and emanent life MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed some characteristics of organic and emanent life homeostasis - boundary maintenance + (coherency of avatar body) elaboration: coherency references a body that remains topologically connected, no matter what external and internal motions occur. consideration: of course the body may be split by wounding, division, and other processes; in these cases, the body homeostatically repositions itself. external motions: the organism or emanent changing position in relation to the external world (space time coordinates); internal motion: processes, motions, within the body of the organism. immunity - identity maintenance + (database accountancy) elaboration: immunological processes based on body identification (organism) and database stability and stable addressing of whole and parts (emanent). consideration: relationship of dis/ease and disease/hacking. identity maintenance occurs within absolute fluidity; with organism, motility and bodily changes (disease/death/exhaustion/dissolution/decay/ extinction/mutation etc.), and with emanent, 'remakes' (new textures, bodies, accouterments, etc.), corporate transformations (economy, merger, dissolution, etc.), and interest/disinterest/defuge in relation to maintenance. culture - remembrance and communality + (history of interactivity) elaboration: organism - culture occurring 'all the way down,' with internal/external memories/storage/data-processing/quantum and molecular, etc. memory and communality inhere. emanent - relation- ship of external (organic) or internal (digital) mind to avatar _steerage_ (which is intentional). consideration: mind inhabits organism inhabits mind; inherence is primordial, backgrounding. there is a complex relationship between this inhabitation and issues of health, disease, death, etc. - issues that simultaneously reify and parcel the body, and a turn towards moments or places/spaces of body (pain for example) that call for tending. there are qualitatively different tendings for organism and emanent; it is a matter of time before they coalesce. negation - circumscription of an other + (avatar interactions, game physics) elaboration: circumscription sends the other to the pale; structures gesture and language, transforms ikonic into indexical. consideration: semantics of avatar boundaries on a subtextual level; semantics of organic boundaries on the supra-textual. the latter is ikonic, the former, indexical. (perhaps there is no place for the symbolic in the midst of emanents and organisms.) consumption and excretion tropisms (energy flow) elaboration: evanescent organic life as abject spew, continuous breathing. a stationary emanent requires no energy; a stationary organism continues its tropic behavior. consideration: nature of the tropism, energy-seeking, pollution- fleeing. direction of emanent irrelevant; energy comes from external steerage. variegated metabolic processes (chemical, quantum, atomic) elaboration: striations and differentiations within organism. epistemologically, organism transforms internally and externally from horizon to horizon; emanent possesses epistemological equivalence (substance) and differentiation occurs in syntactics. consideration: herbert simon's nearly decomposable hierarchies; differentiation in organism occurs on the level of the phoneme. emanent and organism meet on the plane of semantics, sememe. -- absorption and excretion elaboration: or circulation, necessary for organism, and only for emanent in the sense that mind requires circulation (as do computers in terms of cycles, energy-flow, etc.). consideration: note in all of these instances we're considering life in terms of the _metabolic,_ flux-processes, remembering, identity, recognitions, tropisms, negations, perceptions. -- reproduction elaboration: organisms most often self-reproduce through one or multiple generations; emanents do not. organic emanent minds do but not electronic emanent minds, do not. consideration: reproduction is not necessarily a constituent of life - dreams of the loch ness monster point in another direction. and there is always the exhaustion, punctum, of the 'last of a species' or reproductive pool, which is becoming more and more common. say that reproduction temporally smears the organic while identity spatially restricts the organic. ----- carrier image (reproductive plan, layout) + (template) elaboration: reproduction is haunted by the organism to be, whether template or internal processes. consideration: with organism, reproduction is always already uncanny; with emanent, reproduction is canny. with organism, internal and with emanent external, steered. the emanent is always already hallucinatory, which is not to say inexact or 'unreal'; its model and modeling are elsewhere. let us say that the emanent is freed from reproduction but an emanent class is bound to steering mind for continued existence. maintenance of interiority elaboration: what goes on inside, stays inside, is maintained inside. for organism this includes temperature control (or adjustments to non-control); for emanents, this again is a matter of contiguity at best. consideration: wounds close, bruises heal, diseases disperse; there is an ideal at the back of organism, backgrounding organism, as if primordial (and when i use 'primordial' here, i mean nothing meta- physical, only primitives, backgroundings, against or within which everything else occurs). nothing immediately with emanents, but a long time ago, in irc (internet relay chat), netsplit would occur, and members of coherent communities would be cut off from each other - there would for example be two, not one *love channels. it would be of interest to think through the metabolism and political economy of irc channels and channel communities as organisms. biome and niche maintenance (immediate vicinity cleanup) elaboration: what happens outside the body of the organism, more or less in the immediate vicinity (think of potential exceptions such as albatross or plankton, bring them into the model by including mobile niches, evanescent biomes). emanents also tend to control their immediate vicinity; sl avatars will have a 'home' teleport site, will fly to a certain height, will be admitted or not to restricted territories (and may create restricted territories of their own). consideration: mobile niches within evanescent biomes are of great interest; they reflect the potential of taz (temporary autonomous zones) and extend the concepts of home and territory - the latter might be considered a personal niche, and the former, that biome which provides a necessary degree of comfort for its species and occupants. different species may connote different biome definitions which overlap and are displaced from 'human geography' and its defining characteristics. contiguity of body or bodies + (substructure of sheave-skin) elaboration: organic body held together by skeletal (internal and external) structures, skin and muscle, etc.; the sheave-skin held together by parent-child relationships and restrictions on size and angle. contiguity is complex with sheave-skins; importing a bvh file into blender requires hand-setting the parent-child relationships, and motion capture models permit extensions and topological remodelings of these. generally organic bodies are topographically defined; there are physical restraints to size, etc. while emanent bodies are topological, once 'set' into structure by node assignments. again, the latter reference external steerage. consideration: this external steerage of emanents is mapped in various ways - through mind and gui or other interfaces, through virtual reality interaction software, through software itself which may operate emanents autonomously, so that the emanent becomes nothing more than an output display of a program epistemologically other. of course this may change in the future; there is no reason why emanents should not be autonomous and locally-so, so that steerage, communication, etc., is part and parcel of the emanent software, integral to it, inhering. regulated, homeostatic communication elaboration: organisms and emanents are nodes, channels, transmitters, receptors, codes, encodings, decodings, part-objects and their per- ception, skins and sheave-skins and their perception. to the extent that regulation occurs, cohering semantics emerges; to the extent that noise or parasitism enters the systems, transformations and possible mutations occur, beneficial or destructive, possibly inher- ited or not (and the latter, with emanent mind-steering, becomes to some extent an issue of conscious choice). consideration: one begins to approach a _plasma model_ within which forms flux, and flux forms, stases are imminent and always in the process of forming and dissolving; memory is primordial (in the above sense). -- internal and external + (between mind and emanent) elaboration: internal processes are homeostatically regulated in organism; it is moot whether such occur in emanents except to the extent that _emanents are inherently part of the gamespace, do not ontologically exist other than as gamespace._ consideration: external communication - one might bring issues of data-bases with both organism and emanent, steerage, community and individual memory, community and individual hallucination, etc. it's here that language comes forth as the mutual orienting of cognitive domains (maturana); while one might speak of the cosmos as languaging and only languaging (epistemologically and ontologically), one might also conceive of languaging as ikonic in terms of the primordial, the thinging of language, or language grounded (as in electronic grounding) in things. in this sense, language is literally an after- thought, shape-riding. -- emitters and receptors (within and without organisms) elaboration: sm (sado-masochist/abject) maws/fits/misfits, the contradictory transformed into the contrary or wayward. consideration: emitters and receptors are in-line, online, bought into line vis-a-vis codings. without emitter and receptor interfaces, languaging doesn't happen; one might think then of emitters and receptors _themselves_ as ikonic languages, so that sign-flows are fundamental (but not symbols or indices). ---- emitter and receptor codings (entranceways and exits) elaboration: entrances and exits but also molecular or protocol structures, sm touch/scent/contact. information must obey etiquette, otherwise it's noise. etiquette touches on the aesthetics and efficiency of coding. _coded emanents have no code_; their code is external steerage, subtextual beneath the surface, in the dis/splay of sheave-skin. consideration: it's important to think through analog/ikonic and digital/indexical here. organism code is ikonic to the extent that, for example, dna coding _is_ molecular, while emanent code is indexical since to some extent programming languages are interchange- able, they're teleologically drawn-out to steerage goals, and they form/construct a performative layer which runs the emanent directly. ---- domain orientations (tropic turns towards energy, communication potentials) elaboration: organisms are tropic, turning towards, away, or skew- orthogonally; emanents are tropic through camera positioning (without the camera, emanents are invisible, non-existent, which are not equiv- alent) within the aegis of mind. consideration: cameras move emanents as residue, dejecta, abject stain on occasion blocking the field of view. pollutions and abjections (body disposal, chemical slough) -- purifications and expulsions elaboration: this operates on the epistemological if not ontological dichotomy described re: kristeva, douglas, etc. organisms are channels and flows; the flows channel, and the channels flow. the abject is integral to organism, just as purification and expulsion may be integral to emanent. consideration: this may be far too simplistic, but it's a step at least. when the true world is considered, emanent and organism are interpenetrated, intermingled, formed and in/formed together at the limit. emanents and avatars inhere, cohere, mishmash, spew, emit, slur, slough, intermingle, interpenetrate, within the true world, they are true-world- ing, in a sense mind-only, but only in the sense that steerage is always present, from language through metabolic process through retinal process- ing, immunological defense systems, heartbeat, hormonal maintenance, soft- ware updating and replacement, membrane filtering, and so forth. this is _not_ life force, but inherited and inhering organization in relation to reproduction, within which the carrier image is but a dream, our dream, our presentification of the future anterior. (elements marked + pertain in particular to emanent/avatar process. note that in the above, 'emanent' and 'avatar' are to some extent equivalent, although the latter is mostly reserved for entities within second life and other online/offline 'virtual' worlds.) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:22:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Jason, Let Marcus name four, let him name three, let him name two, let him name one. "Imply" does not count? Ciao, Murat On Jan 24, 2008 4:14 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > Interesting comments Marcus, but I again renew my challenge to you to > present me with examples of five postmodern thinkers who actually believe > that nothing is true but what they believe. > > In the past I've given you plenty of examples of non-postmodernists who > reject some of the positions that you hold to be essential for a "correct= " > world view. Taking just the example in this email of foundationalism. One= of > the leading critics of foundationalism whose work is still held to be > fundamental to the coherence theory of epistemological justification is > Laurence Bonjour at the University of Washington. I can say with 100% > certainty from my personal acquaintance with the man that you're never go= ing > to find a LESS postmodern worldview. Politically, he's aligned more or le= ss > with Nozick as opposed to Rawls at the other end of the spectrum, and > metaphilosophically he's dedicated to the traditional analytic method tha= t > descends from the modern era in philosophy. He's the only professional > philosopher I've ever met who thinks that Quine is unimpressive due to a > lack of rigour, and when > someone brings up someone like Heidegger or Foucault, he tends to say > "continental philosophy?" and shrug his shoulders because he doesn't > consider his unfamiliarity with them to be any sort of impediment to his > work. > > That having been said, he's probably more aware than anyone of the > problems with foundationalism and although he has at this point recanted = his > earlier coherentism and his thought currently runs towards a modified > version of foundationalism, he's intellectually honest enough to admit th= at > as a theory of knowledge it has real problems that no one has overcome as= of > yet. > > I'm offering you this description of my former professor as an example of > the kind of intellectual honesty you're going to have to display in order > for anyone to take your "postmodern theorist" bogeyman seriously. Show me > where you are finding these people who are absolute relativists and belie= ve > in nothing but the subjectivity of the self. Find me Five well known and > respected thinkers in the field you're criticizing who hold the beliefs > you're attributing to the group of "postmodernists" as a whole. > > Because if you can't do that, then you're just making straw men of > opposing viewpoints and as a result I have developed the suspicion that > you're an objectivist since that sort of sophistry was an important part = of > ayn rand's "philosophy." > > If that's the case then there's no point in having a conversation with yo= u > about this and your position is just as anti-rational as the position you > have repeatedly attributed to "postmodernists." The first requirement of > intellectual honesty is to admit to oneself the possibility of one's > position being wrong. If you can't do that, then I wish you'd stop riding > this particular hobby-horse, because it could be an interesting discussio= n > but only if freed from argument by appeal to dogma. > > Thanks, > Jason > > On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > On 22 Jan 2008 at 19:47, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > >> Probably someone misunderstands what Russell's Paradox actually did > >> to Hilberts program or got confused by a popular account of the > >> incompleteness theorems and came away with the idea that mathematics > >> is irrational. it happens all the time. > > > > The interesting thing is that in nearly every case the people who try t= o > intuit or > > infer a postmodern worldview from math and science get it wrong. They > > conclude the world is irrational because of Cantor or morals are > relative > > because of Einstein or that we can't know anything because of > Heisenberg. > > They've heard a little, understood less, and they get it wrong. They go > on from > > misunderstanding to error. That's the essence of why the postmodern > > worldview is so messed up: it started with misunderstandings and went o= n > to > > wrong conclusions from there. And then they, like the creationists, > insist that > > any subsequent attempt at clarifying explanation is "only a theory", as > if a > > theory is something excreted during a bout with the flu. They know what > they > > believe, and they are fundamentalist about it -- even while, ironically= , > rejecting > > "foundationalism". Nothing, in short, is true except what the > postmodernist > > happens to believe -- but that is _really_ true: so true that no accoun= t > of where > > he or she has misunderstood the basic ideas is possible. > > > > Postmodern Bard > > > > What asks the new postmodern bard > > Whose anti-reality ways > > Have made her chopped-up prose so hard > > To praise? > > > > She asks we say that all we know > > Is language and habit and fear: > > That all is fake as her own faux > > Career. > > > > She keeps her hatreds clear and bright, > > Detecting the patriarch=B4s stench > > On every guy who doesn=B4t write > > In French. > > > > All principles are infra dig, > > Self-interest is all she infers - > > Except your heart is not as big > > As hers. > > > > No, not for her the outward sweep > > Of science=B4s infinite shore - > > She feels her creed within her deep > > Heart=B4s core > > > > She=B4s sure she=B4s sure, and sure her claim > > It=B4s not her intent to be right > > Is right, as if there were no shame > > In sight. > > > > Sincerely sure that nothing=B4s true, > > Unladen by theory or thought, > > She knows it=B4s true she=B4s right, while you > > Are not. > > > > Marcus > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:11:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CA Conrad Subject: OUTSIDE THE CANADIAN CONSOLATE TODAY AT 11a.m. PLEASE BE THERE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline All across the US and Canada (and other countries) today is a DAY OF ACTION to encourage the Canadian Parliament to NOT deport US soldiers and their families who have fled to Canada seeking asylum. THINGS ARE LOOKING GOOD, but, we need to show support! Details, links, etc., on PhillySound today's date: http://PhillySound.blogspot.com *"I saw fundamental violations of basic human rights every day or two... and since I never saw one soldier or officer criticized or disciplined for carrying out such violations... I fear, and believe, that what I saw was only the tip of the iceberg in Iraq." -- Joshua Key, fled to Canada in 2005 with his wife Brandi and four children.* With much respect, CAConrad http://PhillySound.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:39:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stuart Ross Subject: Re: Camille Martin's new website In-Reply-To: <4784CDC4B5E9D84AA76749D05E69C76E873AFD@mail3.arts.ryerson.ca> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Great site, Camille! Nice mix of text and visual and demonstration of process. Stuart On 1/24/08 7:44 AM, "Camille Martin" wrote: > I recently created a website to house some of my poetry, collages and visual > poetry, essays, and upcoming reading dates: > > > > http://www.camillemartin.ca > > > > Enjoy! > > > > Camille > > > > Camille Martin > > Toronto > > POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:38:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ONE LESS Subject: One Less: # 3 Film is Out. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit One Less Magazine presents its third Issue, Film for purchase. Contributors include: Erik Anderson, Eric Baus, James Belflower, David Berridge, Elizabeth Block, Christophe Casamassima, Mei Mei Chang, Marcus Civin, Bruce Covey, Tony D'Arpino, Catherine Daly, Patrick James Dunagan, Raymond Farr, Anne Heide, Stephanie Heit, Jane Jortiz-Nakagawa, Justin Katko! Sandra Korchenko, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Mara Leigh, Sean MacInnes, Nick-e Melville, Simon Perchik, Elizabeth Robinson, Sharon (Wren) Rogers, Edward Smallfield, Nico Vassilakis To order the third issue, Film, please send $10 payable to One Less Magazine at the following address: One Less Magazine c/o Nikki Widner 6 Village Hill Road Williamsburg, MA 01096 You can also purchase issues @ our blog: www.onelessmag.blogspot.com For a one-year subscription, please send $18 to the above mailing address. Nikki Widner & David Gardner, Editors Visit: onelessmag.blogspot.com One Less Magazine c/o Nikki Widner 6 Village Hill Road Williamsburg, MA 01096 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:41:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ONE LESS Subject: One Less Magazine: Call For Submissions, Issue Four: Open MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit If you are a reader of One Less, we would be pleased to read your work for Issue Four which is an open call for submissions, you pick your theme. Please follow the specific guidelines below and send either (by postal mail or electronic files): 3-5 Pages of Poetry; 5-10 Pages of Prose; 1-5 Pages of Artwork (Imageable size: 4.5” x 6.5”) (Please be aware that we can only print images in black and white. Images should be in grayscale as JPEG or TIFF files at 300 dpi for photographic/filmic works and 600 dpi for line drawings.) Send your submission, cover letter, and bio to: One Less Magazine (c/o) Nikki Widner 6 Village Hill Road Williamsburg,MA 01096 Or by e-mail to: onelessartontherange@yahoo.com Deadline: July 31,2008 Enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope (with adequate postage) if you would like your work to be returned. Do not send us originals. Also note that we only accept artwork that meets our guidelines above. We will read work in August and reply in early September at the latest. Nikki Widner & David Gardner, Editors Visit: onelessmag.blogspot.com One Less Magazine c/o Nikki Widner 6 Village Hill Road Williamsburg, MA 01096 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:08:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Camille Martin's new website In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > > I recently created a website to house some of my poetry, > collages and visual > > poetry, essays, and upcoming reading dates: > > > > > > > > http://www.camillemartin.ca enjoyed the collages very much, camille. especially "enjoy the sights and sounds of nature" at http://www.camillemartin.ca/index.php?pr=Collages_2 . was this a post-katrina piece? ja ps: the two graphic links on http://www.camillemartin.ca/index.php?pr=Codes_of_Public_Sleep to your book don't seem to be working. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:35:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrote: the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so. Of course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three billion people, have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to the internet. Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessarily an "elite" occupation -- even if it's merely an avocation. You have to have the education, the time, and the energy to pursue art after you've achieved your subsistence needs. The pyramid flattens out dramatically at the top: the number of people who can afford the time and energy to pursue art after having invested in an education that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the inclination to pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. The numbers are inescapable. Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:49:34 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: PFS Post: Matina Stamatakis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ----- Original Message ---- From: Adam Fieled =0ATo: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: Thursday, 24 January= , 2008 9:13:31 PM=0ASubject: PFS Post: Matina Stamatakis=0A=0ACheck out lov= ely new work from Matina Stamatakis on PFS Post:=0A =0A http://www.artrec= ess.blogspot.com=0A =0A =0A =0A =0A Books!=0A =0A "Opera Bufa"=0A h= ttp://www.lulu.com/content/1137210=0A =0A "Beams"=0A http://www.blazevox= .org/ebk-af.pdf =0A=0A =0A---------------------------------=0ALooking = for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:22:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <4798F6DC.17678.CA86053@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Marcus, First, you're talking about several things at once, each more "dire" than the former. To wit, > To my mind, it is that chasm between what they're willing to say and how > they actually lead their lives that makes me think they're more intereste= d > in building a coterie > This, taken on its own, doesn't seem to make much sense. It's intellectual rigor that we're talking about, and believing in nothing but what one says would seem to discourage any type of "coterie" or community. Next, > of cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional people > who will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in worry= ing > about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. > This is mere supposition, and I doubt that you have examples of well-known theorists who behave like this. If so, now would be a good time to give us names. And lastly, > I urge them to have the courage of their convictions. > So, even if I don't 'believe' in my field of research --primarily because I'm *unsure* of my research as being "true" ( do you mean, universal?) -- I should still declare my allegiance far and wide? To declare a theory as my own belief would be intellectually lazy and arrogant at best, not to mentio= n prime time for someone to come along and disprove me. -Ryan On Jan 24, 2008 8:36 PM, Marcus Bales wrote: > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > Interesting comments Marcus, but I again renew my challenge to you > > to present me with examples of five postmodern thinkers who actually > > believe that nothing is true but what they believe. > > Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern thinkers > who > say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they believe, even > though I > agree with you that not a single one of them routinely acts on that belie= f > in > their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm between what they're > willing to say and how they actually lead their lives that makes me think > they're > more interested in building a coterie of cross-supporting social, > political, > financial, and professional people who will refer to, defer to, hire, and > promote > one another, than in worrying about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion= . > I urge > them to have the courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY > that > nothing is true but what they believe, then I want to see them believe > themselves to, say, health. Or even better, into bad health and then into > good > health again. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > In the past I've given you plenty of examples of non-postmodernists > > who reject some of the positions that you hold to be essential for a > > "correct" world view.< > > I don't know what a "correct" world view would be. I'm pretty sure, > though, that > people who say there's nothing out there, but still get regular medical > checkups and pay their health insurance premiums are frauds. Why aren't > such people successfully living on love and pale moonlight if there's > really > nothing out there? > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > Taking just the example in this email of foundationalism. > > One of the leading critics of foundationalism whose > > work is still held to be fundamental to the coherence theory of > > epistemological justification is Laurence Bonjour at the University > > of Washington. I can say with 100% certainty from my personal > > acquaintance with the man that you're never going to find a LESS > > postmodern worldview.< > > Wow -- 100% certainty but no foundationalism, eh? Fundamental to the > coherence theory, but no foundationalism, eh? Words are tricky things, an= d > so > is grammar. It's hard to be a real postmodernist, particularly if one has > the > view that there are people who are good, smart people who are working har= d > to try to get ideas and language to coincide, to get things right, insofa= r > as any > human being can get things right. You seem to be making my points for me, > here. A fellow who is working hard to get something right is not a > postmodernist? Well, duh. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > Politically, he's aligned more or less with > > Nozick as opposed to Rawls at the other end of the spectrum, and > > metaphilosophically he's dedicated to the traditional analytic > > method that descends from the modern era in philosophy. He's the > > only professional philosopher I've ever met who thinks that Quine is > > unimpressive due to a lack of rigour, and when > > someone brings up someone like Heidegger or Foucault, he tends to > > say "continental philosophy?" and shrug his shoulders because he > > doesn't consider his unfamiliarity with them to be any sort of > > impediment to his work. > > Well, I remain over on the Rawls side, but still, so what -- this fellow > sounds as > if he's someone I could easily admire. Again, though, what is your point? > He's > anti-foundationalist and non-postmodern -- but so what? So was Socrates. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > That having been said, he's probably more aware than anyone of the > > problems with foundationalism and although he has at this point > > recanted his earlier coherentism and his thought currently runs > > towards a modified version of foundationalism, he's intellectually > > honest enough to admit that as a theory of knowledge it has real > > problems that no one has overcome as of yet.< > > Oh, so he's not an anti-foundationalist, per se, after all -- and yet he'= s > also not > a post-modernist. Hmm. But it seems to me that the traits you're > describing in > this man are not the traits of postmodernists, and yet your use of him in > this > context prompts me to think that you think of him as a postmodernist who > demonstrates none of the traits or beliefs of the postmodernists. He > sounds > like an admirable guy. So do you. From what I've read of your writing her= e > and > there online, and from what you say about Bonjour, it doesn't seem to me > as if > either of you are people who hold the views I'm criticizing. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > ... I have developed the suspicion > > that you're an objectivist since that sort of sophistry was an > > important part of ayn rand's "philosophy."< > > Sorry, my opinion of Rand, and the sociopaths who tend to believe her > novels > are philosophy, is even lower than my opinion of postmodernists. > > Perhaps, if you're willing to engage in the endeavor, we could try, first= , > to > define what we can agree to mean when we say "postmodern"? > > Marcus > > > > > > > On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > > > On 22 Jan 2008 at 19:47, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > >> Probably someone misunderstands what Russell's Paradox actually > > did > > >> to Hilberts program or got confused by a popular account of the > > >> incompleteness theorems and came away with the idea that > > mathematics > > >> is irrational. it happens all the time. > > > > > > The interesting thing is that in nearly every case the people who > > try to intuit or > > > infer a postmodern worldview from math and science get it wrong. > > They > > > conclude the world is irrational because of Cantor or morals are > > relative > > > because of Einstein or that we can't know anything because of > > Heisenberg. > > > They've heard a little, understood less, and they get it wrong. > > They go on from > > > misunderstanding to error. That's the essence of why the > > postmodern > > > worldview is so messed up: it started with misunderstandings and > > went on to > > > wrong conclusions from there. And then they, like the > > creationists, insist that > > > any subsequent attempt at clarifying explanation is "only a > > theory", as if a > > > theory is something excreted during a bout with the flu. They know > > what they > > > believe, and they are fundamentalist about it -- even while, > > ironically, rejecting > > > "foundationalism". Nothing, in short, is true except what the > > postmodernist > > > happens to believe -- but that is _really_ true: so true that no > > account of where > > > he or she has misunderstood the basic ideas is possible. > > > > > > Postmodern Bard > > > > > > What asks the new postmodern bard > > > Whose anti-reality ways > > > Have made her chopped-up prose so hard > > > To praise? > > > > > > She asks we say that all we know > > > Is language and habit and fear: > > > That all is fake as her own faux > > > Career. > > > > > > She keeps her hatreds clear and bright, > > > Detecting the patriarch=B4s stench > > > On every guy who doesn=B4t write > > > In French. > > > > > > All principles are infra dig, > > > Self-interest is all she infers - > > > Except your heart is not as big > > > As hers. > > > > > > No, not for her the outward sweep > > > Of science=B4s infinite shore - > > > She feels her creed within her deep > > > Heart=B4s core > > > > > > She=B4s sure she=B4s sure, and sure her claim > > > It=B4s not her intent to be right > > > Is right, as if there were no shame > > > In sight. > > > > > > Sincerely sure that nothing=B4s true, > > > Unladen by theory or thought, > > > She knows it=B4s true she=B4s right, while you > > > Are not. > > > > > > Marcus > > > > > > > > > -- > > No virus found in this incoming message. > > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.10/1241 - Release Date: > > 1/24/2008 9:58 AM > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:34:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: <47999155.9487.F03C9EE@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave walls, were elitist? I cannot agree that half of the population, having access, could ever be truly called elitist. The only thing "necessarily" elite about art --as in, nothing one *needs* to do could be considered "elite," inasmuch as food and shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is that not everyone can pull it off. But hell, not everyone can pull off quiche. -Ryan On Jan 25, 2008 7:35 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrote: > the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so. > > Of course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three billion > people, > have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to the internet. > > Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessarily an "elite" > occupation -- > even if it's merely an avocation. You have to have the education, the > time, and > the energy to pursue art after you've achieved your subsistence needs. The > pyramid flattens out dramatically at the top: the number of people who can > afford the time and energy to pursue art after having invested in an > education > that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the inclination > to > pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. The numbers are > inescapable. > > Marcus > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:55:59 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Larissa Shmailo Subject: Novack, Shmailo, Goetsch, Hoffman at Cornelia Street Cafe Mon 1/28 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear List Friends: =20 I am reading this Monday at the Cornelia Street Cafe (just off Bleecker) in=20= =20 this fine company. Hope you can come. Details below. =20 Best regards, Larissa Downstairs @ The Cornelia Street Cafe=20 CAROL NOVACK (MAD HATTERS' REVIEW) + LARISSA SHMAILO (TWiN Poetry) + DOUGLAS GOETSCH (JANE STREET PRESS) accompanied by composer/pianist JOHN PAPADOULUS Emcee: ROXANNE HOFFMAN (POETS WEAR PRADA) @ The Cornelia Street Caf=E9=20 29 Cornelia Street (off Bleecker) NYC 10014 =20 212.989.9319=20 $7 cover includes 1 house drink Take 1 to Christopher St. or A|C|E|D|F|B to West 4th St. NJ PATH to Christopher or 9th St. =20 Larissa Shmailo (http://myspace.com/larissaworld)=20 "The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line." -Rollo May _http://_ (http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com/)=20 _www.myspace.com/twineastcoast_ (http://www.myspace.com/thenonetworld)=20 **************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. =20 (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=3Daolcmp00300= 0000025 48) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:07:11 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Larissa Shmailo Subject: Invitation to join TWiN East Coast, the spoken word poetry collective MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Friends: TWiN Poetry is pleased to announce the launch of its newest MySpace page, _http://_ (http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com/) _www.myspace.com/twineastcoast_ (http://www.myspace.com/twineastcoast) "Pick of the Week" features begin Friday, February 1. TWiN is an informal collective of poets, spoken word artists, and all those who enjoy spoken word poetry with music. For more information about us, please see or listen to our manifesto on the blog of any TWiN page, or contact me, Larissa Shmailo, at _slidingsca@aol.com_ (mailto:slidingsca@aol.com) . Best regards, Larissa Larissa Shmailo (http://myspace.com/larissaworld) "The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line." -Rollo May _http://www.myspace.com/twinpoetry_ (http://www.myspace.com/twinpoetry) _http://_ (http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com/) _www.myspace.com/thenonetworld_ (http://www.myspace.com/thenonetworld) _http://_ (http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com/) _www.myspace.com/larissaworld_ (http://www.myspace.com/thenonetworld) **************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:31:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Adam Tobin Subject: Unnameable Books (Brooklyn): Calendar of Events In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear friends, We are very very very very very excited about these upcoming events at 456 Bergen Street. The first upcoming, upcoming THIS WEEKEND, SUNDAY AT 5 PM, is very exciting: The St. Petersburg Review, an excellent new journal which publishes contemporary Russian literature in translation, has flown in a genuine Russian poet from Russia, one Aleksander Skidan, whose book is being published this week (tr. Genya Turovskaya) by our favorite neighbors Ugly Duckling Presse, and we have arranged for Unnameable Books to be the Brooklyn stop on his American tour. He will be accompanied by Matvei Yankelevich, an Ugly Duckling editor, whose recent book of translations of the great Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms, TODAY I WROTE NOTHING, may be the only book in the history of the world which both made the Unnameable Books TOP 10 BOOKS OF THE YEAR List AND received a fawning, thoughtful essay by George Saunders in the New York Times Book Review. The next event at Unnameable, coming NEXT WEEKEND, Saturday at 3 pm, is organized by the Ohio-based Essay Press, whose representatives are in town for the big AWP shindig over in Manhattan. They are bringing together three (count 'em, three!) terrific poets you've probably heard of, if you pay attention to such things: CARLA HARRYMAN, KRISTIN PREVALLET and JENNY BOULLY. Essay Press has recently reprinted Boully's THE BODY: AN ESSAY, whose first edition, from Slope Editions a few years back, became an instant classic and went quickly out of print. They also published Prevallet's latest book: I, AFTERLIFE: AN ESSAY IN MOURNING TIME, which was one of my favorite books of 2007 and could easily have made my Top 10 List if I hadn't been so intent on including so many dead white males. I gather that they are soon to publish a book of Carla Harryman's, entitled ADORNO'S NOISE, which seems a likely contender to make my best-of-2008 list. Scroll to the bottom of this email for some relevant poems, blurbs and links. *** Meanwhile, here is a small calendar of the future, which you can print out and post on your refrigerator: *** Sunday, January 27 at 5 pm: St. Petersburg Review presents Aleksander Skidan & & Matvei Yankelevich Saturday February 2 at 3 pm: Essay Press presents Carla Harryman & Kristin Prevallet & Jenny Boully Saturday February 9 at ? pm: The Burning Chair Saturday, February 16 at 8 pm: THEY ARE FLYING PLANES launch party Sunday, February 24 at 4 pm: Sona Books presents Corrine Fitzpatrick & Stephen Motika & Joanna Sondheim & Paolo Javier w/ Ernest Concepcion *** And here is a link to George Saunder's essay in the New York Times praising the book from which Matvei Yankelevich will be reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/books/review/Saunders-t.html? *** Advance Praise for Aleksander Skidan's forthcoming book, RED SHIFTING: "To read a book this fierce, this honest, to disappear into these beautiful, wrecked songs-and to disappear 'more fully' precisely because they question 'the idea of the wrecked song'-is a singular, moving experience. The poems in Red Shifting, translated beautifully by Genya Turovskaya, display a near-physical, wounding intelligence, an intelligence unflinchingly aware of what it means to think history's recklessness." -- CHRISTIAN HAWKEY "Anyone interested in the vital pulse of contemporary Russian poetry will be richly rewarded by this expertly translated selection of Aleksandr Skidan's work. It is visionary and transgressive, erotic and Corybantic, ancient and immediate, and 'it strikes suddenly/like a crooked needle in the heart.'" -- MICHAEL PALMER *** And here, the first paragraph of a six-paragraph poem by Carla Harryman (from her City Lights book THERE NEVER WAS A ROSE WITHOUT A THORN): FISH SPEECH In the beginning, there was nothing. No cattails, no wigs, no paws. There was no doom. No lavendar or shirt sleeves. No burn no yellow or rest. Neither was there beginning. No light went out. No one held her own against an army of misshapen events. There were no chains. There was no writing or speech. There was nothing to shave, nothing to swim, and nothing to cut. Clouds were not clouds. Silence was neither dominant nor peaceful but silent. There was no salt or smell. No twisted seaweed. Or any buoyant flowering possibility of an ambiguous growth. There were no killers and fleeting lives. There were neither chains of events nor metaphor. There were no stories or bones. No mulch or cocoons. No lizard, pelicans, or fish. *** Thanks for reading, Adam *** Unnameable Books 456 Bergen St. Brooklyn, NY 11217 unnameablebooks@earthlink.net (718) 789-1534 www.unnameablebooks.net *** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:20:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <4798F6DC.17678.CA86053@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed On Thu, 24 Jan 2008, Marcus Bales wrote: > Jason Quackenbush wrote: >> Interesting comments Marcus, but I again renew my challenge to you >> to present me with examples of five postmodern thinkers who actually >> believe that nothing is true but what they believe. > > Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern thinkers who > say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they believe, even though I > agree with you that not a single one of them routinely acts on that belief in > their day to day lives. I can agree with you that Rorty's version of pragmatism ultimately leads to nihilism, although that's because I think Rorty is mistaken about his concept of truth as intersubjective agreement. However, I don't think it's fair to him to say that he believes that nothing is out there. Rorty stated on a number of occasions that he admires and more or less agrees with Arthur Fine's philosophy of science, which has at it's heart a desire to do away with both anti-realism and realism and instead to accept what Fine calls our Natural Ontological Attitude that stuff exists as it appears to exist. Fine believes that the hardcore metaphysical arguments of scientific realism amount to a stamp of the foot and the insistence about scientific facts "NO REALLY!" I'm grossly oversimplifying another former professor of mine here, but perhaps more to the point is an essay in Rorty's collection Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (the name of the particular essay escapes me now) where he makes the distinction between "lumps" and "objects." In Rorty's view, lumps are the things that definitely exist and happen and behave independent of our perception of them, and we make objects of them "by our own lights" intersubjectively agreeing about how to speak about them. Which is to say, I don't think he ever believed that there was nothing but what he thought was the case, but rather that Nagel's "View from Nowhere" version of objectivity had real problems. I don't think Rorty ever got his epistemology as well worked out on this subject as did Fine, and I think that he was led into error as a result, but again, I'm not sure it's fair to say he believed there was nothing but his subjective perspective of the world. Rather, his subjective perspective of the world was all he had to go on, and argument with people who disagree with him on important points had to be done "by his own lights." Or to put it another way, Rorty didn't believe that nothing was true but what he believed, but rather believed that truth and falsity is a statement about a fact that is ultimately based on intersubjective agreement. Again, I think this particular view leads to nihilism at least, if not relativism, but Rorty vehemently denied that it did and spent a lot of time arguing against his critics that that was an inevitable result of his thinking. > I don't know what a "correct" world view would be. I'm pretty sure, though, >that > people who say there's nothing out there, but still get regular medical > checkups and pay their health insurance premiums are frauds. Why aren't > such people successfully living on love and pale moonlight if there's really > nothing out there? I'd absolutely agree with you. THe world is what it is. but i'm really not sure that anybody doesn't think that. > Jason Quackenbush wrote: >> Taking just the example in this email of foundationalism. >> One of the leading critics of foundationalism whose >> work is still held to be fundamental to the coherence theory of >> epistemological justification is Laurence Bonjour at the University >> of Washington. I can say with 100% certainty from my personal >> acquaintance with the man that you're never going to find a LESS >> postmodern worldview.< > > Wow -- 100% certainty but no foundationalism, eh? Fundamental to the > coherence theory, but no foundationalism, eh? Words are tricky things, and so > is grammar. It's hard to be a real postmodernist, particularly if one has the > view that there are people who are good, smart people who are working hard > to try to get ideas and language to coincide, to get things right, insofar as any > human being can get things right. You seem to be making my points for me, > here. A fellow who is working hard to get something right is not a > postmodernist? Well, duh. Epistemological theory as currently understood by the analytic tradition in philosophy: the five minute version. One knows something when one has a belief that is true and that one is justified in believing to be true. Foundationalism in epistemology being the view that justification comes from inference from foundational belief, and coherence theory being that justification comes from the way a belief hangs together in a coherent picture of the world. I disagree with both and with the idea of knowledge as justified true belief because they're theories expounded upon by treating everyday common words as jargon and because they're attempts to answer a question (How do we know that we know something?) that given a correct understanding isn't a sensible question. that you know somehting is shown through the way you live. to take over your example, that I know I'm a person living in the world with a body is shown by my moving around, that I go to the doctor, that I eat when I'm hungry, etc. What's interesting here I think is that this is a view that was held by the very non-postmodern Ludwig Wittgenstein (which is how I came to it) and also by the father of all the postmodern thinkers Martin Heidegger. > Jason Quackenbush wrote: >> Politically, he's aligned more or less with >> Nozick as opposed to Rawls at the other end of the spectrum, and >> metaphilosophically he's dedicated to the traditional analytic >> method that descends from the modern era in philosophy. He's the >> only professional philosopher I've ever met who thinks that Quine is >> unimpressive due to a lack of rigour, and when >> someone brings up someone like Heidegger or Foucault, he tends to >> say "continental philosophy?" and shrug his shoulders because he >> doesn't consider his unfamiliarity with them to be any sort of >> impediment to his work. > > Well, I remain over on the Rawls side, but still, so what -- this fellow sounds as > if he's someone I could easily admire. Again, though, what is your point? He's > anti-foundationalist and non-postmodern -- but so what? So was Socrates. My point is that you characterized postmodernism as an opposition to foundationalism. I was just pointing out that opposition to foundationalism doesn't equal postmodernism. If you accept that they aren't coextensive, then there's no problem. > > Jason Quackenbush wrote: >> ... I have developed the suspicion >> that you're an objectivist since that sort of sophistry was an >> important part of ayn rand's "philosophy."< > > Sorry, my opinion of Rand, and the sociopaths who tend to believe her novels > are philosophy, is even lower than my opinion of postmodernists. Oh good. That's a real relief. I always worry when I have conversations like this that I've gotten myself involved in a conversation with a crypto-objectivist. > Perhaps, if you're willing to engage in the endeavor, we could try, first, to > define what we can agree to mean when we say "postmodern"? I think that may be a good place to start. Particularly given that there is a postmodern "poetics" that is ultimately something relevant to the list. To my mind, postmodernism is a general set of trends in the world of intellectuals that begin roughly at the close of the second world war and last until about the turn of the last century. it's characterized primarily by those who can be described as "postmodern" taking seriously the phenomenological methods of Martin Heidegger and the semiotics of Ferdinand Saussure. In combination you get a rejection of a couple of ideas that originated during the protestant reformation and enlightenment that play rather largely in western thought prior to about the mid twentieth century. Those are first and foremost the idea that there is a progress to history in the sense that it occurs in recognizable epochs that are engaged in dialectic with eachother. The second is that the sign and the signified have to bear some formal, intrinsic relationship to one another. I think the rejection of both of these ideas has particularly far reaching consequences, and the folks who spent the last sixty or so years exploring those consequences and their work are what I mean when I use the word "postmodern." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:29:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <9778b8630801250622ub739acaga411dbc22bcbbd7f@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote: > And lastly, > >> I urge them to have the courage of their convictions. >> > So, even if I don't 'believe' in my field of research --primarily because > I'm *unsure* of my research as being "true" ( do you mean, universal?) -- I > should still declare my allegiance far and wide? To declare a theory as my > own belief would be intellectually lazy and arrogant at best, not to mention > prime time for someone to come along and disprove me. I have a suspicion that Marcus's response to this would be that that's exactly what someone should do and risk disproof. that having been said i know of all sorts of theories that are also my own beliefes (the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, the theory of contractualist ethics, the law of the excluded middle, the copernican theory that the sun is in the center of the solar system (although the theory of relativity does allow that to say something is at the physical center of a system is a choice of reference frame and therefore fairly inconsequential as it turns out), and there are others...). ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:35:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: <9778b8630801251134x3567788dtefe03655ae8fdbba@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed I'm guessing, and this may be a bit of a non-sequitur, but of the groups that made cave paintings, the guys who did the paintings on the walls probably weren't the low men on the totem pole in the various tribes that neolithic cultures were organized in. The only group I can think of who were engaged in creative pursuits that were not an elite were the craftsmen of the various feudal governments which allocated power by heredity and where tradesmen were more or less on a par with the peasant farmers as far as social standing goes. On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote: > So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave walls, > were elitist? > > I cannot agree that half of the population, having access, could ever be > truly called elitist. The only thing "necessarily" elite about art --as in, > nothing one *needs* to do could be considered "elite," inasmuch as food and > shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is that not everyone can pull it off. But > hell, not everyone can pull off quiche. > > -Ryan > > On Jan 25, 2008 7:35 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > >> On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrote: >> the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so. >> >> Of course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three billion >> people, >> have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to the internet. >> >> Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessarily an "elite" >> occupation -- >> even if it's merely an avocation. You have to have the education, the >> time, and >> the energy to pursue art after you've achieved your subsistence needs. The >> pyramid flattens out dramatically at the top: the number of people who can >> afford the time and energy to pursue art after having invested in an >> education >> that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the inclination >> to >> pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. The numbers are >> inescapable. >> >> Marcus >> > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:19:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carol Novack Subject: Afghani Journalisrn Student Sentenced To Death MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline *From:* Sarah Hoffman *Sent:* Friday, January 25, 2008 5:32 PM *To:* Ftw *Cc:* Larry Siems; Anna Kushner *Subject:* RAN: AFGHANISTAN: Journalist Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh sentenced to death for blasphemy. Dear Friends, We received this urgent RAN about the death sentence handed down to Afghan journalist Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, and are asking that you please send an appeal to President Hamid Karzai asking for his immediate and unconditional release. More details are below, followed by a sample appeal. Thank you! Best, Sarah Hoffman Freedom to Write Program Associate PEN American Center 588 Broadway, Suite 303 New York, NY 10012 212.334.1660 ext. 111 sarah@pen.org ------------------------------ *INTERNATIONAL PEN WRITERS IN PRISON COMMITTEE* *RAPID ACTION NETWORK* *24 January 2008* * * *RAN 02/08 * * * *AFGHANISTAN**: Journalist Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh sentenced to death for blasphemy.* * * *The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN is shocked by the death sentence handed down to journalist Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh on 22 January 2008 for blasphemy. International PEN calls upon President Hamid Karzai to personally intervene in this case as a matter of urgency, and calls for the immediate and unconditional release of journalist Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh in accordance with Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. * * * According to PEN's information, twenty-three year-old Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, journalism student at Balkh university and reporter for the local daily *Jahan-e-Naw* (*The New World*), was arrested on 27 October 2007 in Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh province, northern Afghanistan for distributing allegedly anti-Islamic literature. He was detained by National Directorate of Security (NDS) forces on blasphemy charges after downloading and giving to friends an article that allegedly said the Prophet Mohammed ignored women's rights. He was not the author of the article. He was also reportedly accused of possessing allegedly anti-Islamic books and starting un-Islamic debates in his classes. Whilst Kambakhsh admits to circulating the article, he denies the accusations of blasphemy. Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh was tried by an Islamic court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh Province, on 22 January 2008, and sentenced to death. The trial was reportedly held behind closed doors, and he had no legal representation. Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh is feared to be targeted for association with his brother, prominent journalist Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, who works for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting and has been under escalating pressure for his critical reporting on local officials and warlords. ** * * *Please send appeals:* - Expressing shock at the death sentence handed down to journalist Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh on blasphemy charges; - calling for President Karzai to intervene to secure his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Afghan law and Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. *SAMPLE APPEAL LETTER** * * * [Date] His Excellency Hamid Karzai President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan c/o Said T. Jawad Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Afghanistan Embassy of Afghanistan 2341 Wyoming Ave., NW Washington, DC 20008 Fax: 202.483.6488 Your Excellency, I am writing to express my shock regarding the death sentence passed down to my colleague, journalist Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh. I understand that on January 22, 2008, Mr. Kambakhsh, a journalism student at Balkh University and reporter for the local daily *Jahan-e-Naw* (*The New World*), was tried by an Islamic court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Balkh Province, convicted of blasphemy, and sentenced to death. The trial was reportedly held behind closed doors, and he had no legal representation. I am seriously concerned about the circumstances surrounding the charges and sentencing of Mr. Kambakhsh. I therefore urge you to intervene to secure his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Afghan law and Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter. Sincerely, Your name and signature -- MAD HATTERS' REVIEW: Edgy & Enlightened Literature, Art & Music in the Age of Dementia: http://www.madhattersreview.com KEEP THE MAD HATTERS ALIVE! MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION HERE: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/contribute/donate/580 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:42:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Steven D. Schroeder" Subject: Anti- Issue #1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable The first issue of Anti- is now available at http://anti-poetry.com/ = with 22 poems by Karen J. Weyant, D. Antwan Stewart, Jay Robinson, = Anthony Robinson, Jayne Pupek, Nate Pritts, Gary L. McDowell, Louise = Mathias, Joseph Mains, Tim Lockridge, Rose Kelleher, Brent Goodman, = Elisa Gabbert, Adam Fieled, Mackenzie Carignan, and Jeff Calhoun. Upcoming Featured Poets include Aaron Belz, Mary Biddinger, Anna Evans, = David Graham, Peter Jay Shippy, Jake Adam York, and more. Plus a super-secret current-poetry-event mystery project to be revealed = soon! Steven D. Schroeder Editor Anti- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:55:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: <9778b8630801251134x3567788dtefe03655ae8fdbba@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On 25 Jan 2008 at 14:34, Ryan Daley wrote: > So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave > walls, were elitist?< Yep, the ones who had the time and energy left over from subsistence were elites. You don't imagine that cave paintings were done by every man-jack, woman, and child in neolithic times, do you? Of course not -- the paintings were done by an elite. > I cannot agree that half of the population, having access, could > ever be truly called elitist. The only thing "necessarily" elite about art > --as in, nothing one *needs* to do could be considered "elite," inasmuch as > food and shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is that not everyone can pull it off. > But hell, not everyone can pull off quiche. Most people spend most of their time on satisfying their needs and wants in pretty conventional ways. They don't make art for any number of reasons, but mostly because they have neither the inclination nor the time. The people who make art in any society are a small elite, compared to the size of the population. Even if you count every student enrolled in creative writing in this country as "artists", you're going to have a very small percentage of 300 million. Add up everyone you want to call "an artist" in the country and you're not going to come to 150 million people, your "half the population" nonsense! Artists are a small, elite minority. They have the time, education, and energy to pursue an endeavor that is not what they do for their principal means of subsistence. And where it is their principal means of subsistence, only a tiny fraction of artists makes enough of a living from it so that it is their vocation as well as their avocation -- not counting the teachers, of course, who, after all, are being paid to teach, not pursue their own art, by educational institutions. But even if you count all the art teachers, all the artists, and all the students, in the US, for example, a rich country where there are MORE teachers, artists, and art students than in poorer countries, even counting all of them together, they are still an elite minority out of the whole population of the US. That artists are a small elite in any population seems a non-controversial claim, and it's astonishing to hear anyone dispute it. It takes determination, inclination, education, time, and energy taken away from earning a living to be an artist. People who can afford the education, time, and energy taken away from earning a living are always a small elite within a larger population. They're part of a marginally larger small elite in rich countries than in poor countries, of course, but no matter how you slice it, they're an elite. Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:57:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Philip Roth & William Faulkner MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I've recently read a John Yardley essay (old) in the Washington Post (also old) concerning the amount of space the Modern American Library has given to Roth. I like Roth. He's a major American noveliest, but he ain't no Faulkner. Not that close. & MAL has given him more pages, space, etc, than W F. That's not right. What if something called the Modern Russian Library gave Joan Didion (her Russian equivalent) more space than Tolstoy? & I also like Didion. But she's no Tolstoy. We need perspective: important minor writers, or even major writers such as Roth are not the same as a unique world kick ass influences such as Faulkner. Does .buffalo.edu deal at all with fiction? --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:02:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Larry O. Dean" Subject: Woodland Pattern Book Center Poetry Marathon Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi all, For anyone interested who lives in the Milwaukee area, I'll be reading during the noon hour tomorrow at Woodland Pattern's 14th Annual Poetry Marathon. Info here: http://www.woodlandpattern.org/marathon_2008.shtml Whether you stop by to hear me, or any of the other fabulous readers lined up, it ought to be a terrific time. Thanks! Best, Larry http://larryodean.com http://myspace.com/larryodean ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:28:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Starr Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <47986079.19398.A5CEDC4@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Marcus Bales wrote: Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern thinkers who say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they believe, even though I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely acts on that belief in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead their lives that makes me think they're more interested in building a coterie of cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional people who will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in worrying about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. I urge them to have the courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY that nothing is true but what they believe, then I want to see them believe themselves to, say, health. Or even better, into bad health and then into good health again. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I write: Dear Marcus, Please retrieve your straw man. You'll find it burning with bright dancing flames on pp. 333ff. in Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_. When the smoke clears, you may find the text of interest. To wit, Derrida & Rorty, outside of the caricatures of neo-con lickspittles like Roger Kimball and the half-assed musings of drunken grad parties, do not deny the existence of truth. Period. End of story. If you want to know the argument that IS being made, read the damn texts. -Ron Starr ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:07:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <9778b8630801250622ub739acaga411dbc22bcbbd7f@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Marcus Bales wrote: > > To my mind, it is that chasm between what they're willing to say and how > > they actually lead their lives that makes me think they're more interested > > in building a coterie Ryan Daley wrote: > This, taken on its own, doesn't seem to make much sense. It's > intellectual rigor that we're talking about, and believing in nothing but what > one says would seem to discourage any type of "coterie" or community. Not in the least -- the coterie is social, financial, professional. What they say in the "intellectual" way is just fashionable nonsense, calculated to obfuscate and obscure, so that no one has to work too hard at anything resembling intellectual rigor. It's a coterie to promote and hire one another, to publish and admire one another, not one intent on doing any actual work. The coterie must only agree that they like one another and will help one another -- they don't have to agree on any actual intellectual program beyond jargonizing their fashionable nonsense together. Marcus Bales wrote: > > of cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional people > > who will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in worrying > > about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. Ryan Daley wrote: > This is mere supposition, and I doubt that you have examples of > well-known theorists who behave like this. If so, now would be a good time to > give us names.< I'm asserting that this is what nearly all the chattering classes do just this, not just theorists. Careerism is endemic in every occupation, even philosophy. Sturgeon's Law applies to philosophy, too: 90% of everything is crap. I don't have to "give names". We are all, I suppose, the same about our philosophers and poets as we are about our Congressmen: everyone's a crook except ours. Ryan Daley wrote: > So, even if I don't 'believe' in my field of research --primarily because > I'm *unsure* of my research as being "true" ( do you mean, universal?) > -- I should still declare my allegiance far and wide? To declare a theory > as my own belief would be intellectually lazy and arrogant at best, not to > mention prime time for someone to come along and disprove me. Of course a becoming modesty about one's research is a good thing. By the time one is doing real resarch, however, one imagines that the researcher has had to make some choices about field and dream, and has some idea what he or she does in fact believe about how the world works or doesn't work. One may hold one's beliefs contingent on better data or evidence, of course, but one must have _some_ beliefs, true or not, in order to do any research at all, it seems to me. And of course, making a claim and having it disproved, if it has not a matter of having had such beliefs routinely disproved before, is a good thing in and of itself. The goal is, of course, to get it right, but if you get it wrong in an interesting way, that can be as significant and important as getting it right. So being "disproved" is not, prima facie, a bad thing. I can't see how a postmodernist would go about proving or disproving anything, though. On what grounds would a postmodernist say anything is better or worse than anything else? As for your "artists are not an elite" claim, I just looked up the figures from the US Census from 2000 online (http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr- 25.pdf), and it turns out that self-identified artists, designers, sports, and media people, all in one lump in the census, are 2.5 million people out of 280 million people -- not even 1%, even giving you sports and media people as "artists".. Add in all the Architecture, draftsmen, cartographers, engineers, surveyors, etc, which are also all lumped together in one group, and you have about 4.4 million more. Add them to the Artists category and you get about 7 million out of 280 million, or about 2. 5% Of course, that requires that you agree that surveyors and engineers, for example, are "artists", which I'd say is a debatable proposition at best. But even granting that everyone who has even a remote claim to be an artist in the US _is_ an artist, including architects, engineers, surveyors, draftsmen -- hell, add in a million of the 7.5 million teachers as an estimate of the arts teachers of all kinds, and call it 8 million artists out of 280 million people, and round upwards and say it's the magnificent total of 3% -- all in all, I'd say that 3% is a small elite -- what would you say? Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:16:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Feudal governments, during what era? Feudal implies a larger society of castes, marked by religious and monetary (or landed) elites, using this status to govern others. Feudal doesn't apply to group hierarchies of hunters having more clout than gatherers, etc. Now, if you mean rank in a hierarchical group (hunter, gatherer), I might suggest that there might have been, in some larger groups, an individual nominated or agreed upon as being the "artist," the most capable of rendering images of group activities and triumphs/defeats. But hunters and gatherers in an elite? I would agree that the idea of elite art stems from a moment when art no longer represented the result, or depiction of, "the hunt" (i.e., as representative of group efforts, situations, fate and futures). Once the communal aspect of art leaves that environment, the potential for elite art becomes possible. But not until that point, because depiction doesn't detach from experience until the artists seeks to -- a la Red Badge of Courage -- depict an event she/he doesn't witness. But I think we're past that. Now, is there really any point in pointing out what art is elitist and what's not? -Rd On Jan 25, 2008 4:35 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > I'm guessing, and this may be a bit of a non-sequitur, but of the groups > that made cave paintings, the guys who did the paintings on the walls > probably weren't the low men on the totem pole in the various tribes that > neolithic cultures were organized in. The only group I can think of who were > engaged in creative pursuits that were not an elite were the craftsmen of > the various feudal governments which allocated power by heredity and where > tradesmen were more or less on a par with the peasant farmers as far as > social standing goes. > > On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote: > > > So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave > walls, > > were elitist? > > > > I cannot agree that half of the population, having access, could ever be > > truly called elitist. The only thing "necessarily" elite about art --as > in, > > nothing one *needs* to do could be considered "elite," inasmuch as food > and > > shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is that not everyone can pull it off. But > > hell, not everyone can pull off quiche. > > > > -Ryan > > > > On Jan 25, 2008 7:35 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > >> On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrote: > >> the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so. > >> > >> Of course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three > billion > >> people, > >> have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to the internet. > >> > >> Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessarily an "elite" > >> occupation -- > >> even if it's merely an avocation. You have to have the education, the > >> time, and > >> the energy to pursue art after you've achieved your subsistence needs. > The > >> pyramid flattens out dramatically at the top: the number of people who > can > >> afford the time and energy to pursue art after having invested in an > >> education > >> that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the > inclination > >> to > >> pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. The numbers are > >> inescapable. > >> > >> Marcus > >> > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:19:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: this ungainly one. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed this ungainly one. over a half hour at top speed, I wanted to see what happens with extended improvisation bound to permanent rhythm. with a rhythm of steel ferrules. hot notes beckoning. what happened that I saw was severe carpal tunnel in my right wrist and elbow. it was close to impossible for me to play this fast for any length of time. so i thought; now my hand and arm shake with jabs of pain. you can hear this occasioned at http://www.alansondheim.org/hotsmall.mp3 . the other Lowery have been removed to make room for this ungainly one. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:21:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline > > To declare a theory as my own belief would be intellectually lazy and > arrogant at best, not to mention prime time for someone to come along and > disprove me. The example was meant -- misunderstood due to the unfortunate omission of the word "all" before "theory" -- to be somewhat meta: it seems somewhat self-defeating, especially in one's own field or area of interest, to adhere to the theories of others as personal gospel. -RD. On Jan 25, 2008 4:29 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote: > > > And lastly, > > > >> I urge them to have the courage of their convictions. > >> > > So, even if I don't 'believe' in my field of research --primarily > because > > I'm *unsure* of my research as being "true" ( do you mean, universal?) > -- I > > > > should still declare my allegiance far and wide? To declare a theory > > as my > > > own belief would be intellectually lazy and arrogant at best, not to > > mention > > > prime time for someone to come along and disprove me. > > > > I have a suspicion that Marcus's response to this would be that that's > exactly what someone should do and risk disproof. > > that having been said i know of all sorts of theories that are also my own > beliefes (the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, the theory of > contractualist ethics, the law of the excluded middle, the copernican theory > that the sun is in the center of the solar system (although the theory of > relativity does allow that to say something is at the physical center of a > system is a choice of reference frame and therefore fairly inconsequential > as it turns out), and there are others...). > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:12:28 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable You don't need to be part of the elite to be elitist. Anyway, I always quot= e Jasper Johns (and I think I've done so on this listserv before): Artists = are the elite of the servant class. Although that's actually the inverse of= what Pierre Bourdieu says, which is something to the effect that (sorry I = can't be exact about this, I'm away from home so can't look it up) that art= ists come from the dominated part of the dominating group.=0A=0A=0A----- Or= iginal Message ----=0AFrom: Jason Quackenbush =0ATo: POETICS@= LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: Saturday, 26 January, 2008 6:35:15 AM=0ASubjec= t: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct a= ddress=0A=0AI'm guessing, and this may be a bit of a non-sequitur, but of t= he groups that made cave paintings, the guys who did the paintings on the w= alls probably weren't the low men on the totem pole in the various tribes t= hat neolithic cultures were organized in. The only group I can think of who= were engaged in creative pursuits that were not an elite were the craftsme= n of the various feudal governments which allocated power by heredity and w= here tradesmen were more or less on a par with the peasant farmers as far a= s social standing goes.=0A=0AOn Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote:=0A=0A> = So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave walls,= =0A> were elitist?=0A>=0A> I cannot agree that half of the population, havi= ng access, could ever be=0A> truly called elitist. The only thing "necessar= ily" elite about art --as in,=0A> nothing one *needs* to do could be consid= ered "elite," inasmuch as food and=0A> shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is th= at not everyone can pull it off. But=0A> hell, not everyone can pull off qu= iche.=0A>=0A> -Ryan=0A>=0A> On Jan 25, 2008 7:35 AM, Marcus Bales wrote:=0A>=0A>> On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrot= e:=0A>> the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so.=0A>>=0A>> O= f course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three billion=0A= >> people,=0A>> have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to t= he internet.=0A>>=0A>> Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessa= rily an "elite"=0A>> occupation --=0A>> even if it's merely an avocation. Y= ou have to have the education, the=0A>> time, and=0A>> the energy to pursue= art after you've achieved your subsistence needs. The=0A>> pyramid flatten= s out dramatically at the top: the number of people who can=0A>> afford the= time and energy to pursue art after having invested in an=0A>> education= =0A>> that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the inclina= tion=0A>> to=0A>> pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. Th= e numbers are=0A>> inescapable.=0A>>=0A>> Marcus=0A>>=0A> ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:35:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Exercise for Beginning MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Exercise for Beginning Today I got on the stationary Bike that you sit down on. I thought riding Recumbent would be easier on the joints Boy does that require some extra Work. I mean, it's nothing like real cycling The fresh air, the sights and sounds The whizzing cars, But when I turn the fan on high And I'm watching candidates appear In front of an audience just like me =96They seem smaller when I go faster =97 I wonder how we'll vote It's nothing like being on the road But somehow, my reward is in the cold squirt bottle. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 10:37:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Camille Martin Subject: Re: Camille Martin's new website MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Jim Andrews wrote: =20 > enjoyed the collages very much, camille. especially "enjoy the sights = and > sounds of nature" at = http://www.camillemartin.ca/index.php?pr=3DCollages_2 . > was this a post-katrina piece? ha! hadn't thought of that. shoulda called it bitch katrina, comin' atcha =20 camille > ps: the two graphic links on > http://www.camillemartin.ca/index.php?pr=3DCodes_of_Public_Sleep to = your book > don't seem to be working. thanks, i hope they're working now ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:29:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dillon Westbrook Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <17719.131.107.0.106.1201307331.squirrel@131.107.0.106> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed I think it's safer to say Rorty denies the object-existence of truth, which I think amounted to an outright denial of truth's 'truthiness' for many people. Here's how Rorty put it in 1989's Contingency, irony and solidarity.: " We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most in things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human language, and that human languages are human creations." Rorty regards this, I think rightly, as a statement which should not be controversial, which is not to trivialize the debate, just to point out how nice and cogent his position is. To find a 20th cent. phil who argues with the first statement, about worlds being 'out there', you've got to go to Nelson Goodman or Cassirer. To find a 20th cent. phil who thinks 'truth is whatever you believe', you've got to go to Dondald Davidson- except he recanted that position completely (and it was probably an over-simplification to begin with). Part of the book quoted above is dedicated to a funny debate where Rorty tries to convince Davidson to maintain his old position, while Davidson maintains he has to abandon it. Can I say again how much I liked Rorty- what a shame I never crashed one of his lectures at Stanford while he was still alive. Dillon On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:28 PM, Ron Starr wrote: > Marcus Bales wrote: > > Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern > thinkers who > say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they believe, > even > though I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely > acts on > that belief in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm > between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead > their lives > that makes me think they're more interested in building a coterie of > cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional > people who > will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in > worrying > about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. I urge them to have the > courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY that nothing > is true > but what they believe, then I want to see them believe themselves > to, say, > health. Or even better, into bad health and then into good health > again. > Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. > > I write: > > Dear Marcus, > > Please retrieve your straw man. You'll find it burning with bright > dancing > flames on pp. 333ff. in Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_. > When the smoke clears, you may find the text of interest. > > To wit, Derrida & Rorty, outside of the caricatures of neo-con > lickspittles like Roger Kimball and the half-assed musings of > drunken grad > parties, do not deny the existence of truth. Period. End of story. > > If you want to know the argument that IS being made, read the damn > texts. > > -Ron Starr ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:06:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit i'm an ignorant elitist with fairly good taste could never be part of the elite they wouldn't accept me unless of course i got really "famous" even winning a pen oakland award hasn't helped my status with the elite of which many on this lisst are tho they'll refute that until they "die" On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:12:28 +0000 Barry Schwabsky writes: > You don't need to be part of the elite to be elitist. Anyway, I > always quote Jasper Johns (and I think I've done so on this listserv > before): Artists are the elite of the servant class. Although that's > actually the inverse of what Pierre Bourdieu says, which is > something to the effect that (sorry I can't be exact about this, I'm > away from home so can't look it up) that artists come from the > dominated part of the dominating group. > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Jason Quackenbush > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Sent: Saturday, 26 January, 2008 6:35:15 AM > Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone > novels correct address > > I'm guessing, and this may be a bit of a non-sequitur, but of the > groups that made cave paintings, the guys who did the paintings on > the walls probably weren't the low men on the totem pole in the > various tribes that neolithic cultures were organized in. The only > group I can think of who were engaged in creative pursuits that were > not an elite were the craftsmen of the various feudal governments > which allocated power by heredity and where tradesmen were more or > less on a par with the peasant farmers as far as social standing > goes. > > On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote: > > > So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave > walls, > > were elitist? > > > > I cannot agree that half of the population, having access, could > ever be > > truly called elitist. The only thing "necessarily" elite about art > --as in, > > nothing one *needs* to do could be considered "elite," inasmuch as > food and > > shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is that not everyone can pull it > off. But > > hell, not everyone can pull off quiche. > > > > -Ryan > > > > On Jan 25, 2008 7:35 AM, Marcus Bales > wrote: > > > >> On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrote: > >> the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so. > >> > >> Of course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three > billion > >> people, > >> have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to the > internet. > >> > >> Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessarily an > "elite" > >> occupation -- > >> even if it's merely an avocation. You have to have the education, > the > >> time, and > >> the energy to pursue art after you've achieved your subsistence > needs. The > >> pyramid flattens out dramatically at the top: the number of > people who can > >> afford the time and energy to pursue art after having invested in > an > >> education > >> that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the > inclination > >> to > >> pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. The > numbers are > >> inescapable. > >> > >> Marcus > >> > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:12:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Digital Artists Handbook! (from Netbehaviour Digest) (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message: 4 Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:08:42 +0000 From: Ruth Catlow Subject: [NetBehaviour] digital artists handbook To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" A GOOD THING! :) Ruth http://www.digitalartistshandbook.org/ A new and valuable resource: the Digital Artists Handbook, which is now live at www.digitalartistshandbook.org. Folly believe the Handbook makes a serious contribution to free/libre open source culture, and adds a crucial and empowering new perspective to media arts. The Handbook is ready to go public ? thanks to the sterling work of its editors Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes De Valk of GOTO10. In the collaborative spirit of the handbook, we would really love your help in promoting it. "In the next week, it would be great if you could blog it, link to it, sell it (only figuratively speaking of course!), and promote it far and wide. Tell your friends, your colleagues, and the people you come into contact with that there's a new book for digital artists that could potentially change their life, or at least their practice. As part of a collaborative effort to promote the handbook, we?d love you to link to us from your website and we?ve even created a handy little button that you can use. Just visit http:// www.digitalartistshandbook.org/?q=node/32 to view the code and the Digital Artists Handbook button. We hope your website or blog will wear the badge with pride, and of course in return we?d be delighted to host a reciprocal link to your site or blog on the Digital Artists Handbook site. Because the handbook hasn?t been launched so far we?re not top of the search ratings for ?digital artists handbook? yet, so anything you can do to link to and promote the site would be highly appreciated. Do write to our Communications Coordinator Matt Wootton at matt.wootton@folly.co.uk and let us know what page of your own site you would like us to reciprocally link to." ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:46:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J.P. Craig" Subject: writers who were visual artists? Comments: cc: Katy Floyd Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Hello listafarians, I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She inquires: > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > made visual art on occasion. I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at katy.floyd@gmail.com. JP Craig http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:20:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: new journal MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit FRUGAL books presents: /PLAN B/ /a binational limited-edition poetry journal./ /one copy for each participant and 25 copies for sale to the public./ /works by the same group of writers each month for one year:/ /see below for list of participating writers./ // /(that is, for / // Lyn Hejinian Roman Lujan Brian Whitener Harold Abramowicz Karen Silver Inti Garcia Hugo Garcia Manriquez Alejandro Tarrab Jesse Seldess Jorge Solis Patrick Durgin Kapil Bhanu Jen Hofer Jocelyn Saidenberg Miriam Moscona Guy Bennet Leon Epigmenio Arturo Ramirez-Lara Juan Manuel Portillo Juliana Spahr Jorge Esquinca Alan Mills Rodrigo Flores Sawako Nakayasu Dolores Dorantes Luis Felipe Fabre Paul Vangelisti Ray Di Palma) * 12 issues: $120 6 issues: $90 3 issues: $50 individual issues: $20 * prices include delivery within mexico and the u.s. * if you are interested, please contact: dolores dorantes: doloresdorantes@yahoo.com.mx or jen hofer: jenhofer@gmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:41:20 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Patrick F. Durgin" Subject: sur le blog MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit at www.da-crouton.com a new series of flash reflections and crib notes, "On the fate of the poetic image at the hands of the anthology wars." See also last fall's notes "On Posterity." see also www.kenningeditions.com for ample offerings in retail therapy. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:28:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Daley Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: <470058.66367.qm@web86013.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Barry, You don't need to be part of the elite to be elitist. Well, that's somewhat convenient to the discussion. Sure...I'll bite. But why not? If you're not using your elitism as an elite would, and you're certainly not using your elitism to show to others less elite than you that you're elitist, are you elite? Not likely, because you fail to use your elitism on grounds that both define the term and differentiate those "accused" of it. I also think that Johns might have it closer than Bourdieu, that the artist is closer to proletarian than worker. On a more personal level, I think what bothers me most about calling artists elitists is boorish and cliche. Other than that, I think sometimes the term is warranted, sometimes not, like most labels. -Ryan On Jan 26, 2008 1:12 AM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > You don't need to be part of the elite to be elitist. Anyway, I always > quote Jasper Johns (and I think I've done so on this listserv before): > Artists are the elite of the servant class. Although that's actually the > inverse of what Pierre Bourdieu says, which is something to the effect that > (sorry I can't be exact about this, I'm away from home so can't look it up) > that artists come from the dominated part of the dominating group. > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Jason Quackenbush > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Sent: Saturday, 26 January, 2008 6:35:15 AM > Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels > correct address > > I'm guessing, and this may be a bit of a non-sequitur, but of the groups > that made cave paintings, the guys who did the paintings on the walls > probably weren't the low men on the totem pole in the various tribes that > neolithic cultures were organized in. The only group I can think of who were > engaged in creative pursuits that were not an elite were the craftsmen of > the various feudal governments which allocated power by heredity and where > tradesmen were more or less on a par with the peasant farmers as far as > social standing goes. > > On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote: > > > So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave > walls, > > were elitist? > > > > I cannot agree that half of the population, having access, could ever be > > truly called elitist. The only thing "necessarily" elite about art --as > in, > > nothing one *needs* to do could be considered "elite," inasmuch as food > and > > shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is that not everyone can pull it off. But > > hell, not everyone can pull off quiche. > > > > -Ryan > > > > On Jan 25, 2008 7:35 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > >> On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrote: > >> the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so. > >> > >> Of course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three > billion > >> people, > >> have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to the internet. > >> > >> Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessarily an "elite" > >> occupation -- > >> even if it's merely an avocation. You have to have the education, the > >> time, and > >> the energy to pursue art after you've achieved your subsistence needs. > The > >> pyramid flattens out dramatically at the top: the number of people who > can > >> afford the time and energy to pursue art after having invested in an > >> education > >> that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the > inclination > >> to > >> pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. The numbers are > >> inescapable. > >> > >> Marcus > >> > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:33:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: tenant wanted mid-March to mid- or end of August MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Hi - We're looking for someone, responsible, to sublet our small loft in Brooklyn for $700/month, from mid-March to the middle or end of August. The price includes water, heat, and gas; you'd have to pay electricity and Net (both of which are inexpensive). We're leaving our books, plants, and some equipment in the loft, but there's plenty of room. We're looking for non-smokers. The loft will hold two people (one bed), one extremely comfortably. We're located near BAM, the Atlantic-Pacific subway stop, Long Island Railroad, Atlantic Center, and both Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. Please write to Alan Sondheim, sondheim@panix.com, or call 718-813-3285 if you're interested. (Please pass this on, and thanks!) - Alan Sondheim and Azure Carter ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:10:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Brian Cassidy, Bookseller" Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? Comments: To: katy.floyd@gmail.com, supercrisp@gmail.com In-Reply-To: <672A00C0-C61E-4F36-BA5F-C1D867545776@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > > made visual art on occasion. Off the top of my head, I can think of: Henry Miller William S. Burroughs James Purdy Jack Kerouac Elizabeth Bishop e.e cummings Sylvia Plath Kenward Elmslie Joe Brainard (a writer who painted? or a painter who wrote?...hmmm...) Many more I'm sure. Hope this helps. Best, Brian Cassidy brian cassidy, bookseller shop @ 471 wave st. monterey ca mail: po box 8636 monterey ca 93943 (831) 656-9264 / 233-4780 (c) books@briancassidy.net http://www.briancassidy.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:26:12 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "W.B. Keckler" Subject: Review of Craig Watson's Secret Histories (Burning Deck) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit New on Joe Brainard's Pyjamas... A review of Craig Watson's infernal surprise _Secret Histories_ (Burning Deck) and some Japanese scanning... Other bon bons in a blind man's bonbonniere can be found @ _http://www.joebrainardspyjamas.blogspot.com/_ (http://www.joebrainardspyjamas.blogspot.com/) **************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music. (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025 48) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:36:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: <9778b8630801261428w4035250cl1dd3bbcba12fbc25@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline > > while this topic has migrated considerably from the math and poetry theme > earlier, I did want to mention that I've got a book length sequence (it ends > the unpublished sequel to DaDaDa, which is entitled OOD: Object-Oriented > Design) that does some interesting things with the ideas of cosmology, > freedom, and modern algebra which arose at the same time... and the ways > these ideas still hold in computer technology and poetry -- All best, Catherine Daly c.a.b.daly@gmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:36:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Leonard Kress Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Henry Miller=20 Kenneth Patchen. Leonard Kress Associate Professor Communications/Humanities www.harrowgatepress.com >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> Hello listafarians, I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She =20 inquires: > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > made visual art on occasion. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:45:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: <470058.66367.qm@web86013.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I like both of those quotes and agree with them. On Jan 25, 2008, at 10:12 PM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > You don't need to be part of the elite to be elitist. Anyway, I > always quote Jasper Johns (and I think I've done so on this > listserv before): Artists are the elite of the servant class. > Although that's actually the inverse of what Pierre Bourdieu says, > which is something to the effect that (sorry I can't be exact about > this, I'm away from home so can't look it up) that artists come > from the dominated part of the dominating group. > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Jason Quackenbush > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Sent: Saturday, 26 January, 2008 6:35:15 AM > Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone > novels correct address > > I'm guessing, and this may be a bit of a non-sequitur, but of the > groups that made cave paintings, the guys who did the paintings on > the walls probably weren't the low men on the totem pole in the > various tribes that neolithic cultures were organized in. The only > group I can think of who were engaged in creative pursuits that > were not an elite were the craftsmen of the various feudal > governments which allocated power by heredity and where tradesmen > were more or less on a par with the peasant farmers as far as > social standing goes. > > On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote: > >> So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave >> walls, >> were elitist? >> >> I cannot agree that half of the population, having access, could >> ever be >> truly called elitist. The only thing "necessarily" elite about art >> --as in, >> nothing one *needs* to do could be considered "elite," inasmuch as >> food and >> shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is that not everyone can pull it >> off. But >> hell, not everyone can pull off quiche. >> >> -Ryan >> >> On Jan 25, 2008 7:35 AM, Marcus Bales >> wrote: >> >>> On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrote: >>> the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so. >>> >>> Of course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three >>> billion >>> people, >>> have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to the >>> internet. >>> >>> Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessarily an "elite" >>> occupation -- >>> even if it's merely an avocation. You have to have the education, >>> the >>> time, and >>> the energy to pursue art after you've achieved your subsistence >>> needs. The >>> pyramid flattens out dramatically at the top: the number of >>> people who can >>> afford the time and energy to pursue art after having invested in an >>> education >>> that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the >>> inclination >>> to >>> pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. The >>> numbers are >>> inescapable. >>> >>> Marcus >>> >> ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:59:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone novels correct address In-Reply-To: <9778b8630801252016h3a7d1cecp397ce41bc5a08fc4@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was thinking of the feudal period in China prior to the reforms in the late shou that led to promotion by merit instead of by heredity. Of the similar period in Japan leading up to the Edo period, and of the similar period Europe from the fall of the roman empire to roughly the beginning of the reformation. During those particular feudalisms we don't know the names of most of the artists because nobody thought they were important enough to keep a record of. They were of the same social status as coopers, cobblers, smiths, masons, and weavers. Even more interesting is the fact that performing artists, the professionals at least, were largely on the same strata as thieves, beggars, and prostitutes in the same period in europe, although I don't think the same is true of feudal china and feudal japan. On Jan 25, 2008, at 8:16 PM, Ryan Daley wrote: > Feudal governments, during what era? Feudal implies a larger > society of > castes, marked by religious and monetary (or landed) elites, using > this > status to govern others. Feudal doesn't apply to group hierarchies of > hunters having more clout than gatherers, etc. Now, if you mean > rank in a > hierarchical group (hunter, gatherer), I might suggest that there > might have > been, in some larger groups, an individual nominated or agreed upon > as being > the "artist," the most capable of rendering images of group > activities and > triumphs/defeats. > > But hunters and gatherers in an elite? > > I would agree that the idea of elite art stems from a moment when > art no > longer represented the result, or depiction of, "the hunt" (i.e., as > representative of group efforts, situations, fate and futures). > Once the > communal aspect of art leaves that environment, the potential for > elite art > becomes possible. But not until that point, because depiction > doesn't detach > from experience until the artists seeks to -- a la Red Badge of > Courage -- > depict an event she/he doesn't witness. But I think we're past > that. Now, is > there really any point in pointing out what art is elitist and > what's not? > > -Rd > > > > On Jan 25, 2008 4:35 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > >> I'm guessing, and this may be a bit of a non-sequitur, but of the >> groups >> that made cave paintings, the guys who did the paintings on the walls >> probably weren't the low men on the totem pole in the various >> tribes that >> neolithic cultures were organized in. The only group I can think >> of who were >> engaged in creative pursuits that were not an elite were the >> craftsmen of >> the various feudal governments which allocated power by heredity >> and where >> tradesmen were more or less on a par with the peasant farmers as >> far as >> social standing goes. >> >> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Ryan Daley wrote: >> >>> So, let me get this straight: early man and woman, marking on cave >> walls, >>> were elitist? >>> >>> I cannot agree that half of the population, having access, could >>> ever be >>> truly called elitist. The only thing "necessarily" elite about >>> art --as >> in, >>> nothing one *needs* to do could be considered "elite," inasmuch >>> as food >> and >>> shelter aren't "elite" wants-- is that not everyone can pull it >>> off. But >>> hell, not everyone can pull off quiche. >>> >>> -Ryan >>> >>> On Jan 25, 2008 7:35 AM, Marcus Bales >>> wrote: >>> >>>> On 24 Jan 2008 at 21:16, Jim Andrews wrote: >>>> the internet, as a whole, is "elite"? i don't think so. >>>> >>>> Of course it's "elite" -- half the world's population, some three >> billion >>>> people, >>>> have never even made a phone call, much less logged on to the >>>> internet. >>>> >>>> Quite apart from that, though, art is itself necessarily an "elite" >>>> occupation -- >>>> even if it's merely an avocation. You have to have the >>>> education, the >>>> time, and >>>> the energy to pursue art after you've achieved your subsistence >>>> needs. >> The >>>> pyramid flattens out dramatically at the top: the number of >>>> people who >> can >>>> afford the time and energy to pursue art after having invested >>>> in an >>>> education >>>> that gave them an appreciation of other peoples' art, and the >> inclination >>>> to >>>> pursue their own, is very very small -- it's an elite. The >>>> numbers are >>>> inescapable. >>>> >>>> Marcus >>>> >>> >> ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:11:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <4F6E6671-7A84-482C-B634-6027D72C5F88@mac.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think there are some serious problems with Rorty's conception of truth as intersubjective agreement. Take for example this thought experiment: Imagine a post apocalyptic world where gunpowder and bullets are no longer produced and haven't been seen in a half dozen generations. In this world, everyone knows how guns used to work and understands the principle, but the also know that there are no more bullets and so no gun will fire. A loaded gun is sitting on a table. It contains the last unfired bullet ever manufactured. Now by rorty's conception of truth, the fact that anyone in this culture would agree that this gun isn't loaded, we'd have to say that the proposition "this is an unloaded gun" is true for them. It's only untrue for us because I've given us the God's Eye View in the thought experiment. So in the end, what we have is the truth that you can fire a bullet from an unloaded gun. Which is nonsensical. Better to go with a disquotational view of truth whereby the truth of propositions is just that they say what is the case and accept that we don't always know what is the case. What is the case is not something that is determined by my own lights, but how I put it into words is, and that's a critical distinction that rortian neo- pragmatism doesn't make. It annoys me though, because Rorty tends to apply his misunderstanding of Wittgenstein as a justification at this point, talking about Language-games as though they were real parts oflanguage and not a form of model. On Jan 26, 2008, at 8:29 AM, Dillon Westbrook wrote: > I think it's safer to say Rorty denies the object-existence of > truth, which I think amounted to an outright denial of truth's > 'truthiness' for many people. Here's how Rorty put it in 1989's > Contingency, irony and solidarity.: > > " We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is > out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the > world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with > common sense, that most in things in space and time are the effects > of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that > truth is not out there is to say that where there are no sentences > there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human language, > and that human languages are human creations." > > Rorty regards this, I think rightly, as a statement which should > not be controversial, which is not to trivialize the debate, just > to point out how nice and cogent his position is. To find a 20th > cent. phil who argues with the first statement, about worlds being > 'out there', you've got to go to Nelson Goodman or Cassirer. To > find a 20th cent. phil who thinks 'truth is whatever you believe', > you've got to go to Dondald Davidson- except he recanted that > position completely (and it was probably an over-simplification to > begin with). Part of the book quoted above is dedicated to a funny > debate where Rorty tries to convince Davidson to maintain his old > position, while Davidson maintains he has to abandon it. Can I say > again how much I liked Rorty- what a shame I never crashed one of > his lectures at Stanford while he was still alive. > > Dillon > > On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:28 PM, Ron Starr wrote: > >> Marcus Bales wrote: >> >> Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern >> thinkers who >> say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they >> believe, even >> though I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely >> acts on >> that belief in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm >> between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead >> their lives >> that makes me think they're more interested in building a coterie of >> cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional >> people who >> will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in >> worrying >> about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. I urge them to have the >> courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY that nothing >> is true >> but what they believe, then I want to see them believe themselves >> to, say, >> health. Or even better, into bad health and then into good health >> again. >> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. >> >> I write: >> >> Dear Marcus, >> >> Please retrieve your straw man. You'll find it burning with bright >> dancing >> flames on pp. 333ff. in Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of >> Nature_. >> When the smoke clears, you may find the text of interest. >> >> To wit, Derrida & Rorty, outside of the caricatures of neo-con >> lickspittles like Roger Kimball and the half-assed musings of >> drunken grad >> parties, do not deny the existence of truth. Period. End of story. >> >> If you want to know the argument that IS being made, read the damn >> texts. >> >> -Ron Starr ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:36:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <17719.131.107.0.106.1201307331.squirrel@131.107.0.106> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Didn't Rorty speak of a "community of values?" He struck me as a good, secular progressive. Ron Starr wrote: Marcus Bales wrote: Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern thinkers who say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they believe, even though I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely acts on that belief in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead their lives that makes me think they're more interested in building a coterie of cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional people who will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in worrying about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. I urge them to have the courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY that nothing is true but what they believe, then I want to see them believe themselves to, say, health. Or even better, into bad health and then into good health again. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I write: Dear Marcus, Please retrieve your straw man. You'll find it burning with bright dancing flames on pp. 333ff. in Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_. When the smoke clears, you may find the text of interest. To wit, Derrida & Rorty, outside of the caricatures of neo-con lickspittles like Roger Kimball and the half-assed musings of drunken grad parties, do not deny the existence of truth. Period. End of story. If you want to know the argument that IS being made, read the damn texts. -Ron Starr --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:32:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=iso-8859-1; reply-type=response Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit cummings, Patchen ----- Original Message ----- From: "J.P. Craig" To: Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008 1:46 PM Subject: writers who were visual artists? > Hello listafarians, > I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She > inquires: > >> I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual >> artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm >> looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also >> made visual art on occasion. > > I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > JP Craig > http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:06:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Heller Subject: Fwd: announcement to post Comments: To: british-irish-poets@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Comments: cc: poetryetc@jiscmail.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed >Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:39:40 -0500 (EST) >From: AugustineJane@cs.com >Subject: announcement to post >To: mh7@nyu.edu >X-Mailer: 7.0 for Windows sub 8001 >X-Spam-Flag: NO >Original-recipient: rfc822;mh7@mail.nyu.edu > >News for all of you poets who are going to the Associated Writing >Programs convention in New York City next week: > >Marsh Hawk Press will be at table #270 in The Americas Hall I, 3rd >floor of the Hilton Hotel books from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. all >three days, Thurs. Jan.31 through Sat. Feb.2. On Saturday after >2:30 p.m. the book fair is OPEN TO THE PUBLIc, so spread the word to >friends and colleagues that this is a great chance to buy beautiful >poetry books at steeply discounted prices. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:38:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? Comments: To: supercrisp@GMAIL.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Derek Walcott is a painter. That's a start! Mairead >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> Hello listafarians, I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She =20 inquires: > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > made visual art on occasion. I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question =20 along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at =20 katy.floyd@gmail.com. JP Craig http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 02:40:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Walter K. Lew" Subject: Mark Nowak/Ian Teh Join Feb. 1 shadoWord Show in Brooklyn Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Mark Nowak, author of the forthcoming COAL MOUNTAIN ELEMENTARY (Coffeehouse Press) and editor of XCP: Crosscultural Poetics, will be presenting a new work that combines his text with the images of Ian Teh at the first show of "Poets of the Unreeled": POETS OF THE UNREELED!--A CinePoetry & Performance Extravaganza MULTIMEDIA POETS, artists, and musicians Linh Dinh, Wang Ping, Mark Nowak & Ian Teh, Paolo Javier (with Ernest Concepcion & Vinay Chowdhry), Jeremy James Thompson, Kate Ann Heidelbach, dennis M. somera, Mike Estabrook, and Dillon Westbrook give live narrations of classic films, screen new videos, pay homage to jazz drummers, and redraw on-stage some present scenes. FIRST SHOW: Friday, Feb. 1st, 7-9 pm. At the Galapagos Art Space. $6. 70 North 6th St., between Kent and Wythe, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 3.5 blocks from the Bedford Ave. stop of the L train. For further info, see . SECOND SHOW: Saturday, Feb. 2nd, Midnight-2 am. At the Bowery Poetry Club. $8. 308 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. More info at . Curated by Walter K. Lew for shadoWord production . For some recent work by the participating poets and performers, see: Linh Dinh Short poetry videos: Mark Nowak Ian Teh Paolo Javier Edits the online journal at Wang Ping Ernest Concepcion Mike Estabrook "The Road to Nam" (short video): Jeremy James Thompson Dillon Westbrook Kate Ann Heidelbach, dennis M. somera ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:50:13 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Glass Subject: Poe's Sketches--American Writers Who Were Visual Artists MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Some of Poe's art work--primarily sketches--are extant, and they show a skilled hand. Samuel Greenberg is a 20th century example. Jess ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 01:02:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: Re: Camille Martin's new website In-Reply-To: <4784CDC4B5E9D84AA76749D05E69C76E873B22@mail3.arts.ryerson.ca> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit > > enjoyed the collages very much, camille. especially "enjoy the > sights and > > sounds of nature" at > http://www.camillemartin.ca/index.php?pr=Collages_2 . > > was this a post-katrina piece? > > ha! hadn't thought of that. shoulda called it > bitch katrina, comin' atcha > > camille i remember you moved from new orleans to toronto during katrina. so this startling picture of nature, i wondered if it was a post-katrina piece for you. it's great to see you are doing your own web site. it has a good feel to it. like it is home made and explorative. and could still be around in several years because it is undertaken seriously. best wishes with it, camille. hoping your move to toronto has been good, ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:43:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <707172.52658.qm@web52412.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit He was a good secular progressive, but he didn't manage to veer away from a stance of cultural relativism in ethics and politics as well as he thought he had. Given his view of the nature of values, he believed that the best (his) values would win out in a free market of ideas where everyone comes to the table and advocates for their own beliefs by their own lights. The problem is that everyone coming to the table and advocating for their own beliefs by their own lights is itself a value and and if you try to justify it you get a vicious regression. He tried very hard to get out of this trap and I think he thought he was successful, but he never got there for me. I much prefer the more rationalistic and stolid traditional social contract type progressives like Rawls and Scanlon. One of my biggest problems with Rorty is that if you take his neo-pragmatic view on epistemology as workable and accurate, the arguments of Rawls and Scanlon--who in my opinion are the most persuasive exponents of progressive values in 20th Century american philosophy--don't amount to much. It's a big problem for a system to undermine those it agrees with when it's goal is to let everyone have a seat at the table. On Jan 26, 2008, at 6:36 PM, steve russell wrote: > Didn't Rorty speak of a "community of values?" He struck me as a > good, secular progressive. > > Ron Starr wrote: Marcus Bales wrote: > > Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern > thinkers who > say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they believe, > even > though I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely > acts on > that belief in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm > between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead > their lives > that makes me think they're more interested in building a coterie of > cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional > people who > will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in > worrying > about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. I urge them to have the > courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY that nothing > is true > but what they believe, then I want to see them believe themselves > to, say, > health. Or even better, into bad health and then into good health > again. > Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. > > I write: > > Dear Marcus, > > Please retrieve your straw man. You'll find it burning with bright > dancing > flames on pp. 333ff. in Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature_. > When the smoke clears, you may find the text of interest. > > To wit, Derrida & Rorty, outside of the caricatures of neo-con > lickspittles like Roger Kimball and the half-assed musings of > drunken grad > parties, do not deny the existence of truth. Period. End of story. > > If you want to know the argument that IS being made, read the damn > texts. > > -Ron Starr > > > > --------------------------------- > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:29:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: murm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed murm http://www.alansondheim.org/murm.mp3 homeohZtahZayehZthmuhZ - boundar+ maayentenanCLAWLAWLAWLAWe + (CLAWLAWLAWLAWoherrrrrenCLAWLAWLAWLAWOO+ ofukuukuukuukulsh! avatar bod+) elaborashunt: CLAWLAWLAWLAWoherrrrrenCLAWLAWLAWLAWOO+ refukuukuukuukuerrrrrenCLAWLAWLAWLAWehZ a bod+ THOOOOOOOOat remaayenhZ topologayeCLAWLAWLAWLAWalulululull+ CLAWLAWLAWLAWonneCLAWLAWLAWLAWted, no matternrnrnrnr wanedanedanedanedhat ex-tasis-tahZayehZthmuhZ-tahZayehZthmuhZ-tahZayehZternrnrnrnrnl andrea ayenternrnrnrnrnl moshunthZ oCLAWLAWLAWLAWCLAWLAWLAWLAWur. CLAWLAWLAWLAWonhZayederrrrrashunt: ofukuukuukuukulsh! 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THOOOOOOOOe organayehZm. http://www.alansondheim.org/murm.mp3 ayemmunayet+ - ayedentayet+ maayentenanCLAWLAWLAWLAWe + (databahZe aCLAWLAWLAWLAWCLAWLAWLAWLAWountanCLAWLAWLAWLAWOO+) elaborashunt: ayemmunologayeCLAWLAWLAWLAWl proCLAWLAWLAWLAWehZhzehZ bahZed on bod+ ayedentayefukuukuukuukuayeCLAWLAWLAWLAWashunt (organayehZm) andrea databahZe hZtabayelayet+ andrea hZtable addrehZhzayeng ofukuukuukuukulsh! wanedanedanedanedhole andrea parthZ (emanent). CLAWLAWLAWLAWonhZayederrrrrashunt: relashuntshayep ofukuukuukuukulsh! dayehZthmuhZ/eahZe andrea dayehZeahZe/haCLAWLAWLAWLAWkayeng. ayedentayet+ maayentenanCLAWLAWLAWLAWe oCLAWLAWLAWLAWCLAWLAWLAWLAWurhZ wanedanedanedanedayeTHOOOOOOOOayen abhZolute fukuukuukuukuluayedayet+; wanedanedanedanedayeth organayehZm, motayelayet+ andrea bodayel+ CLAWLAWLAWLAWhangehZ (dayehZeahZe/death/ex-tasis-tahZayehZthmuhZ- tahZayehZthmuhZ-tahZayeshauhZshunt/dayehZhzolushunt/deCLAWLAWLAWLAWa+/ ex-tasis-tahZayehZthmuhZ-tahZayehZthmuhZ- tahZayehZtayenCLAWLAWLAWLAWshunt/mutashunt etCLAWLAWLAWLAWOO.), andrea wanedanedanedanedayeth emanent, remakehZ (neodeo^oode tex-tasis-tahZayehZthmuhZ-tahZayehZthmuhZ-tahZayehZturehZ, bodayeehZ, aCLAWLAWLAWLAWCLAWLAWLAWLAWouternrnrnrnrmenthZ, etCLAWLAWLAWLAWOO.), CLAWLAWLAWLAWorporate tranhZfukuukuukuukuormashunthZ (eCLAWLAWLAWLAWonom+, merrrrrgerrrrr, dayehZhzolushunt, etCLAWLAWLAWLAWOO.), andrea ayenternrnrnrnrehZt/dayehZayenternrnrnrnrehZt/defukuukuukuukuuge ayen relashunt \taut maayentenanCLAWLAWLAWLAWe. http://www.alansondheim.org/murm.mp3 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:45:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dillon Westbrook Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <7CC93EEE-946F-4CC4-AB77-4E3F46049DE5@myuw.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think you have a problem here if and only if the party in question continues to believe the gun is unloaded after it goes off. Most pragmatisms, I think Rorty's included, allow for adjustment of belief based on circumstance. Rorty's only radical in the sense that he thinks adjustment of language is equally significant. Otherwise, all these people are committed to is a material conditional: "If there are no bullets, then no gun will fire". Again, he's not an irrealist about the world, nor is he an idealist about thought. A genuine problem may be the world in which we DON'T remember what guns or bullets are, a loaded gun appears on a table, and everyone agrees its harmless, even after someone died from it going off (they attribute the death to a heart attack or witchcraft or something). That might seem, to those of us who understand guns, to be very problematic. The neo-pragmatist response here would probably have to rely on some robust notion of evolution and casual reasoning, hoping the whole thing would get sorted out in a generation or so. I really can't say whether Rorty misunderstands Wittgenstein. Which Wittgenstein are we talking about? Do you have a text in mind? Certainly Rorty takes up the investigations over the tractatus, so all talk of 'what is the case' is less important to Rorty, just as it seems less important to the late Wittgenstein, no. (fun discussion though) On Jan 26, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > I think there are some serious problems with Rorty's conception of > truth as intersubjective agreement. Take for example this thought > experiment: Imagine a post apocalyptic world where gunpowder and > bullets are no longer produced and haven't been seen in a half > dozen generations. In this world, everyone knows how guns used to > work and understands the principle, but the also know that there > are no more bullets and so no gun will fire. A loaded gun is > sitting on a table. It contains the last unfired bullet ever > manufactured. Now by rorty's conception of truth, the fact that > anyone in this culture would agree that this gun isn't loaded, we'd > have to say that the proposition "this is an unloaded gun" is true > for them. It's only untrue for us because I've given us the God's > Eye View in the thought experiment. So in the end, what we have is > the truth that you can fire a bullet from an unloaded gun. Which is > nonsensical. > > Better to go with a disquotational view of truth whereby the truth > of propositions is just that they say what is the case and accept > that we don't always know what is the case. What is the case is not > something that is determined by my own lights, but how I put it > into words is, and that's a critical distinction that rortian neo- > pragmatism doesn't make. It annoys me though, because Rorty tends > to apply his misunderstanding of Wittgenstein as a justification at > this point, talking about Language-games as though they were real > parts oflanguage and not a form of model. > > On Jan 26, 2008, at 8:29 AM, Dillon Westbrook wrote: > >> I think it's safer to say Rorty denies the object-existence of >> truth, which I think amounted to an outright denial of truth's >> 'truthiness' for many people. Here's how Rorty put it in 1989's >> Contingency, irony and solidarity.: >> >> " We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world >> is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that >> the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, >> with common sense, that most in things in space and time are the >> effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say >> that truth is not out there is to say that where there are no >> sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human >> language, and that human languages are human creations." >> >> Rorty regards this, I think rightly, as a statement which should >> not be controversial, which is not to trivialize the debate, just >> to point out how nice and cogent his position is. To find a 20th >> cent. phil who argues with the first statement, about worlds being >> 'out there', you've got to go to Nelson Goodman or Cassirer. To >> find a 20th cent. phil who thinks 'truth is whatever you believe', >> you've got to go to Dondald Davidson- except he recanted that >> position completely (and it was probably an over-simplification to >> begin with). Part of the book quoted above is dedicated to a funny >> debate where Rorty tries to convince Davidson to maintain his old >> position, while Davidson maintains he has to abandon it. Can I say >> again how much I liked Rorty- what a shame I never crashed one of >> his lectures at Stanford while he was still alive. >> >> Dillon >> >> On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:28 PM, Ron Starr wrote: >> >>> Marcus Bales wrote: >>> >>> Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern >>> thinkers who >>> say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they >>> believe, even >>> though I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely >>> acts on >>> that belief in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm >>> between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead >>> their lives >>> that makes me think they're more interested in building a coterie of >>> cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional >>> people who >>> will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in >>> worrying >>> about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. I urge them to have the >>> courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY that >>> nothing is true >>> but what they believe, then I want to see them believe themselves >>> to, say, >>> health. Or even better, into bad health and then into good health >>> again. >>> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. >>> >>> I write: >>> >>> Dear Marcus, >>> >>> Please retrieve your straw man. You'll find it burning with >>> bright dancing >>> flames on pp. 333ff. in Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of >>> Nature_. >>> When the smoke clears, you may find the text of interest. >>> >>> To wit, Derrida & Rorty, outside of the caricatures of neo-con >>> lickspittles like Roger Kimball and the half-assed musings of >>> drunken grad >>> parties, do not deny the existence of truth. Period. End of story. >>> >>> If you want to know the argument that IS being made, read the >>> damn texts. >>> >>> -Ron Starr ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 08:35:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Warren Lloyd Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <479BB64F0200001E00003FC2@risd.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he would have considered himself a visual artist Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. That's a start! Mairead >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> Hello listafarians, I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She inquires: > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > made visual art on occasion. I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at katy.floyd@gmail.com. JP Craig http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:10:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Robert Capa - "Mexican Suitcases' of Lost Negatives from Spanish Civil War Recovered MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/arts/design/27kenn.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin--- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 12:30:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit , ferlenghetti, harold norse kerouac henry miller saroyan clifford odets how far back do want to go? the list goes on On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:46:33 -0500 "J.P. Craig" writes: > Hello listafarians, > I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She > > inquires: > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > I'm > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who > also > > made visual art on occasion. > > I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > JP Craig > http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 12:32:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit brainard not pre 60's nor elmslie burroughs borderline bukowski patchen On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:10:04 -0800 "Brian Cassidy, Bookseller" writes: > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > I'm > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who > also > > > made visual art on occasion. > > Off the top of my head, I can think of: > > Henry Miller > William S. Burroughs > James Purdy > Jack Kerouac > Elizabeth Bishop > e.e cummings > Sylvia Plath > Kenward Elmslie > Joe Brainard (a writer who painted? or a painter who > wrote?...hmmm...) > > Many more I'm sure. Hope this helps. > > Best, > Brian Cassidy > > brian cassidy, bookseller > shop @ 471 wave st. monterey ca > mail: po box 8636 monterey ca 93943 > (831) 656-9264 / 233-4780 (c) > books@briancassidy.net > http://www.briancassidy.net > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:03:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Karmin Subject: JOB: Hamilton College MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit (this is a forward. please don't respond to me. good luck!) Hamilton College: The English Department invites applications for a two-year appointment, with the possibility of renewal, in Creative Writing, specializing in poetry. Teaching load is five courses annually: two sections of introduction to creative writing, a senior workshop or an intermediate poetry workshop, & two literature courses. PhD or MFA with additional graduate training in literature required. While we have a particular need in U.S. Latina/o literatures, we welcome all applications. Appointment to begin July 1, 2008. Review of applications will commence February 15 & continue until the position is filled. Please send c.v. & a letter of application to: Professor Naomi Guttman, Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:14:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <419594.64808.qm@web50206.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Also William Carlos Williams. At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: >Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he would >have considered himself a visual artist > >Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. >That's a start! >Mairead > > >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> >Hello listafarians, >I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She >inquires: > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > > made visual art on occasion. > >I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question >along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at >katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > >JP Craig >http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > > >--------------------------------- >Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:15:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <20080127.123335.1476.19.skyplums@juno.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Gysin At 12:32 PM 1/27/2008, you wrote: >brainard not pre 60's >nor elmslie burroughs borderline bukowski patchen > >On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:10:04 -0800 "Brian Cassidy, Bookseller" > writes: > > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > > I'm > > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who > > also > > > > made visual art on occasion. > > > > Off the top of my head, I can think of: > > > > Henry Miller > > William S. Burroughs > > James Purdy > > Jack Kerouac > > Elizabeth Bishop > > e.e cummings > > Sylvia Plath > > Kenward Elmslie > > Joe Brainard (a writer who painted? or a painter who > > wrote?...hmmm...) > > > > Many more I'm sure. Hope this helps. > > > > Best, > > Brian Cassidy > > > > brian cassidy, bookseller > > shop @ 471 wave st. monterey ca > > mail: po box 8636 monterey ca 93943 > > (831) 656-9264 / 233-4780 (c) > > books@briancassidy.net > > http://www.briancassidy.net > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:16:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Recent posts on NOMADICS blog Comments: To: Britis-Irish List Comments: cc: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) Check out my recent postings on NOMADICS blog =96 = http://pjoris.blogspot.com Revised Provisional 08 Reading Schedule Synthetic, not Artificial Life? Pablo, Gertrude & Alice: The Puppets Simone de Beauvoir at 100 Reviews Belle Gironda & Nicole Peyrafitte in Performance Latest signandsight Offerings enjoy, Pierre ___________________________________________________________ The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan ___________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris 244 Elm Street Albany NY 12202 h: 518 426 0433 c: 518 225 7123 o: 518 442 40 71 Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 email: joris@albany.edu http://pierrejoris.com Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:29:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <479BB64F0200001E00003FC2@risd.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) And Walcott was talking about this this morning as I was listening (still more or less asleep) to a BBC program ("The Word" I think it is called, a weekly lit discussion) that also had on someone who just published a book of paintings & drawings by writers (including Faulkner and Conrad among others). Pierre On Jan 26, 2008, at 10:38 PM, Mairead Byrne wrote: > Derek Walcott is a painter. > That's a start! > Mairead > >>>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> > Hello listafarians, > I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She > inquires: > >> I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual >> artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm >> looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also >> made visual art on occasion. > > I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > JP Craig > http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ ___________________________________________________________ The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan ___________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris 244 Elm Street Albany NY 12202 h: 518 426 0433 c: 518 225 7123 o: 518 442 40 71 Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 email: joris@albany.edu http://pierrejoris.com Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:40:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Ezra Pound: Poet - A. David Moody - Book Review - New York Times MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/books/review/McGrath-t.html?ref=books --- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:44:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Ciccariello Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <672A00C0-C61E-4F36-BA5F-C1D867545776@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline This might be of interest....... http://bibliorgy.blogspot.com/2007/08/writers-who-were-artists.html - Peter Ciccariello On Jan 26, 2008 1:46 PM, J.P. Craig wrote: > Hello listafarians, > I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She > inquires: > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > > made visual art on occasion. > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:24:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kyle Schlesinger Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <419594.64808.qm@web50206.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Do book arts / artists books count? If so, the list in that area alone would be staggering. Cheers//Kyle www.kyleschlesinger.com www.cuneiformpress.com www.cuneiformpress.blogspot.com > From: Warren Lloyd > Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group > Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 08:35:54 -0800 > To: > Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? > > Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he would have > considered himself a visual artist > > Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. > That's a start! > Mairead > >>>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> > Hello listafarians, > I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She > inquires: > >> I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual >> artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm >> looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also >> made visual art on occasion. > > I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > JP Craig > http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > > > --------------------------------- > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:34:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martha King Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <20080127.123335.1476.19.skyplums@juno.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Robert Duncan (drawings); Wright Morris, Jonathan Williams (photographs);James Broughton (film) - gosh must be many others, but these pop to mind.? --Martha King -----Original Message----- From: steve d. dalachinsky To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Sent: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 12:32 pm Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? brainard not pre 60's nor elmslie burroughs borderline bukowski patchen On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:10:04 -0800 "Brian Cassidy, Bookseller" writes: > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > I'm > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who > also > > > made visual art on occasion. > > Off the top of my head, I can think of: > > Henry Miller > William S. Burroughs > James Purdy > Jack Kerouac > Elizabeth Bishop > e.e cummings > Sylvia Plath > Kenward Elmslie > Joe Brainard (a writer who painted? or a painter who > wrote?...hmmm...) > > Many more I'm sure. Hope this helps. > > Best, > Brian Cassidy > > brian cassidy, bookseller > shop @ 471 wave st. monterey ca > mail: po box 8636 monterey ca 93943 > (831) 656-9264 / 233-4780 (c) > books@briancassidy.net > http://www.briancassidy.net > > ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:15:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Crockett Subject: Listenlight new issue 14 Comments: To: wom-po@lists.usm.main.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline And a warm welcome for the new Co-Editor, Mackenzie Carignan ~! Listenlight 14 Featuring --- Francis Raven Kara Dorris Phil Primeau Richard Lopez Mackenzie Carignan Christopher Mulrooney Angela Papala Craig Perez William Harris http://listenlight.net Your happy editors, JC, MC ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:55:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Skip Fox Subject: Re: Poe's Sketches--American Writers Who Were Visual Artists In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Someone might have already mentioned e. e. cummings or Kenneth Ratchen. If so, I apologize. -----Original Message----- From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On Behalf Of Jesse Glass Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2008 1:50 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Poe's Sketches--American Writers Who Were Visual Artists Some of Poe's art work--primarily sketches--are extant, and they show a skilled hand. Samuel Greenberg is a 20th century example. Jess ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:05:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: new on rhubarb is susan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Hello all -- After a long delay, two new reviews up on rhubarb is susan, along with some scurrlious and excellently sourced gossip. Julie Doxsee, in Unpleasant Event Schedule, and Timothy Liu, in Slope: http://rhubarbissusan.blogspot.com/2008/01/timothy-liu-and-to-dust-thou-shalt.html http://rhubarbissusan.blogspot.com/2008/01/julie-doxsee-two-dears-two-tours.html http://rhubarbissusan.blogspot.com/ Thanks for tuning in, and do join the discussion in the comments. Yours, Simon "Perez Hilton" DeDeo ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:32:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <9373AE16-9444-48DD-9331-8EB601FE40EB@mac.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed By American I assume USian is meant. In the world, or the Americas, at large there are dozens at least. At 01:29 PM 1/27/2008, you wrote: >And Walcott was talking about this this morning as I was listening >(still more or less asleep) to a BBC program ("The Word" I think it is >called, a weekly lit discussion) that also had on someone who just >published a book of paintings & drawings by writers (including >Faulkner and Conrad among others). > >Pierre >On Jan 26, 2008, at 10:38 PM, Mairead Byrne wrote: > >>Derek Walcott is a painter. >>That's a start! >>Mairead >> >>>>>"J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> >>Hello listafarians, >>I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She >>inquires: >> >>>I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual >>>artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm >>>looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also >>>made visual art on occasion. >> >>I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question >>along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at >>katy.floyd@gmail.com. >> >> >>JP Craig >>http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > >___________________________________________________________ > >The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan >___________________________________________________________ >Pierre Joris >244 Elm Street >Albany NY 12202 >h: 518 426 0433 >c: 518 225 7123 >o: 518 442 40 71 >Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 >email: joris@albany.edu >http://pierrejoris.com >Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com >____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:55:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Halvard Johnson Subject: Re: Poe's Sketches--American Writers Who Were Visual Artists In-Reply-To: <001101c8612f$5bb27b80$f4954682@win.louisiana.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) Surely you mean Kenneth Scratchen. Hal "If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune, and if someone pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity." --Benjamin Disraeli Halvard Johnson ================ halvard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html http://entropyandme.blogspot.com http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com http://www.hamiltonstone.org http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html On Jan 27, 2008, at 3:55 PM, Skip Fox wrote: > Someone might have already mentioned e. e. cummings or Kenneth > Ratchen. If > so, I apologize. > > -----Original Message----- > From: UB Poetics discussion group > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On > Behalf Of Jesse Glass > Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2008 1:50 AM > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Subject: Poe's Sketches--American Writers Who Were Visual Artists > > Some of Poe's art work--primarily sketches--are extant, and they > show a > skilled hand. > > Samuel Greenberg is a 20th century example. Jess ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:35:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.1.20080127131427.06b7c270@earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Henri Michaux was an interesting switch-hitter in that his 'marks' corresponded to a kind of writing. Stephen V http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Mark Weiss wrote: Also William Carlos Williams. At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: >Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he would >have considered himself a visual artist > >Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. >That's a start! >Mairead > > >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> >Hello listafarians, >I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She >inquires: > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > > made visual art on occasion. > >I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question >along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at >katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > >JP Craig >http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > > >--------------------------------- >Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:59:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <20080127.123335.1476.19.skyplums@juno.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Everyone's forgetting that guy who painted the Sistine Chapel. Michael A was one of the best poets of his time. "steve d. dalachinsky" wrote: brainard not pre 60's nor elmslie burroughs borderline bukowski patchen On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:10:04 -0800 "Brian Cassidy, Bookseller" writes: > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > I'm > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who > also > > > made visual art on occasion. > > Off the top of my head, I can think of: > > Henry Miller > William S. Burroughs > James Purdy > Jack Kerouac > Elizabeth Bishop > e.e cummings > Sylvia Plath > Kenward Elmslie > Joe Brainard (a writer who painted? or a painter who > wrote?...hmmm...) > > Many more I'm sure. Hope this helps. > > Best, > Brian Cassidy > > brian cassidy, bookseller > shop @ 471 wave st. monterey ca > mail: po box 8636 monterey ca 93943 > (831) 656-9264 / 233-4780 (c) > books@briancassidy.net > http://www.briancassidy.net > > --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:02:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: steve russell Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists?/Correction, NO not American In-Reply-To: <20080127.123335.1476.19.skyplums@juno.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit sorry. I didn't follow the links closely. Michael A doesn't qualify. "steve d. dalachinsky" wrote: brainard not pre 60's nor elmslie burroughs borderline bukowski patchen On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:10:04 -0800 "Brian Cassidy, Bookseller" writes: > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > I'm > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who > also > > > made visual art on occasion. > > Off the top of my head, I can think of: > > Henry Miller > William S. Burroughs > James Purdy > Jack Kerouac > Elizabeth Bishop > e.e cummings > Sylvia Plath > Kenward Elmslie > Joe Brainard (a writer who painted? or a painter who > wrote?...hmmm...) > > Many more I'm sure. Hope this helps. > > Best, > Brian Cassidy > > brian cassidy, bookseller > shop @ 471 wave st. monterey ca > mail: po box 8636 monterey ca 93943 > (831) 656-9264 / 233-4780 (c) > books@briancassidy.net > http://www.briancassidy.net > > --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:15:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <626423.12594.qm@web82605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Rosemary Mayer, Vito Acconci, Art-Language, Guy Debord, Klossowki, Dan Graham, Steve Willats, David Askevold, Adrian Piper, Delacroix, Leandro Katz, Tom Zummer. On Sun, 27 Jan 2008, Stephen Vincent wrote: > Henri Michaux was an interesting switch-hitter in that his 'marks' corresponded to a kind of writing. > > Stephen V > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > > > Mark Weiss wrote: Also William Carlos Williams. > > At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: >> Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he would >> have considered himself a visual artist >> >> Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. >> That's a start! >> Mairead >> >>>>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> >> Hello listafarians, >> I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She >> inquires: >> >>> I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual >>> artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm >>> looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also >>> made visual art on occasion. >> >> I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question >> along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at >> katy.floyd@gmail.com. >> >> >> JP Craig >> http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ >> >> >> >> --------------------------------- >> Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > > ======================================================================= Work on YouTube, blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com . Tel 718-813-3285. Webpage directory http://www.alansondheim.org . Email: sondheim@panix.com. http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/sondheim for theory; also check WVU Zwiki, Google for recent. Write for info on books, cds, performance, dvds, etc. ============================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:40:58 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ----- O= Now that this has been opened up to the world--Victor Hugo!=0A=0A=0A----- O= riginal Message ----=0AFrom: Stephen Vincent =0ATo: P= OETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: Monday, 28 January, 2008 8:35:11 AM=0AS= ubject: Re: writers who were visual artists?=0A=0AHenri Michaux was an inte= resting switch-hitter in that his 'marks' corresponded to a kind of writing= . =0A=0AStephen V=0Ahttp://stephenvincent.net/blog/=0A=0A=0AMark Weiss wrote: Also William Carlos Williams.=0A=0AAt 11:35 AM = 1/27/2008, you wrote:=0A>Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm = not sure he would =0A>have considered himself a visual artist=0A>=0A>Mairea= d Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter.=0A>That's a start!=0A>Mairead= =0A>=0A> >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>>=0A>Hello listafarians,=0A>I'= m asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She=0A>inquire= s:=0A>=0A> > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visu= al=0A> > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm= =0A> > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also= =0A> > made visual art on occasion.=0A>=0A>I'm afraid I wasn't much help, s= o I offered to pass her question=0A>along to this list. If you can help, dr= op her a note at=0A>katy.floyd@gmail.com.=0A>=0A>=0A>JP Craig=0A>http://jpc= raig.blogspot.com/=0A>=0A>=0A>=0A>---------------------------------=0A>Neve= r miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:05:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Ezra Pound: Poet - A. David Moody - Book Review - New York Times In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Seems like quite a hatchet piece on Pound by the reviewer. I wonder if the book is also out to make Pound seem like an idiot. Definitely does not make me want to read the book. Also seems like the reviewer is more interested in getting across the fact that he thinks Eliot the greatest thing since sliced bread. charles charles alexander chax press chax@theriver.com 650 e. ninth st. tucson arizona 85705 520 620 1626 On Jan 27, 2008, at 11:40 AM, David Chirot wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/books/review/McGrath-t.html? > ref=books --- > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:13:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: Fwd: David Brady, GENESIS, exhibition opening Saturday, February 2, 7-9pm In-Reply-To: <1101957974954.1101948818925.276.8.9193002@scheduler> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline David did a great performance / visual collaboration for me @ the Hammer with Amde Hamilton... now this!!! [image: Brady] GENESIS David Brady February 2nd - March 8th, 2008 Reception: Saturday, February 2nd, 7 - 9 PM HIGH ENERGY CONSTRUCTS 990 N. Hill St. #180 Los Angeles, CA 90012 323.227.7920 www.highenergyconstructs.com This email was sent to c.a.b.daly@gmail.com, by info@highenergyconstructs.com Update Profile/Email Address| Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe= =99 | Privacy Policy = . Email Marketing by High Energy Constructs | 990 N. Hill St.#180 | Los Angeles | CA | 90012 --=20 All best, Catherine Daly c.a.b.daly@gmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:17:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? Comments: To: junction@EARTHLINK.NET Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Yes, I'm sorry, I withdraw Walcott. But what about all you dudes sending = in names of artist/writers (rather than writer/artists)! Okay, I can't = say Hopkins, mumble mumble .... um. Mairead >>> Mark Weiss 01/27/08 5:32 PM >>> By American I assume USian is meant. In the world, or the Americas,=20 at large there are dozens at least. At 01:29 PM 1/27/2008, you wrote: >And Walcott was talking about this this morning as I was listening >(still more or less asleep) to a BBC program ("The Word" I think it is >called, a weekly lit discussion) that also had on someone who just >published a book of paintings & drawings by writers (including >Faulkner and Conrad among others). > >Pierre >On Jan 26, 2008, at 10:38 PM, Mairead Byrne wrote: > >>Derek Walcott is a painter. >>That's a start! >>Mairead >> >>>>>"J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> >>Hello listafarians, >>I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She >>inquires: >> >>>I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual >>>artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm >>>looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also >>>made visual art on occasion. >> >>I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question >>along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at >>katy.floyd@gmail.com. >> >> >>JP Craig >>http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > >___________________________________________________________ > >The poet: always in partibus infidelium -- Paul Celan >___________________________________________________________ >Pierre Joris >244 Elm Street >Albany NY 12202 >h: 518 426 0433 >c: 518 225 7123 >o: 518 442 40 71 >Euro cell: (011 33) 6 75 43 57 10 >email: joris@albany.edu >http://pierrejoris.com >Nomadics blog: http://pjoris.blogspot.com >____________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:17:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lil Norton Subject: Model Homes Issue 2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Lil' Norton is proud to present, Model Homes issue 2, now yours to discover. Join us in experiencing the benchmark configurations of Dorothy Trujillo Lusk Lawrence Giffin Tan Lin Judith Goldman Kit Robinson Robert Fitterman Carla Harryman Jennifer Scappettone Tao Lin Louis Cabri Seth Landman Catriona Strang & Nancy Shaw Individual issue and Subscription orders are now available through the Model Homes website. All correspondence, support, and inquiries welcome. We will be at the Patrick Lovelace book booth at AWP bookfair this year in NYC (Jan.30-Feb.2nd) with the Lil' Norton family, new issues in hand, and hope to see many of you there. Stop buy and bloc party! Lastly, copies of issue 1 are presently limited to just 25(!), purchasable now until Jan.30. Remaining issues will be sold (out) at AWP. 8.5 x 7, 64p, saddle stitched, made with love. issn# 1938-8136 a Lil' Norton production http://modelhomepage.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:23:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think the problem is essential to any conception of truth that talks about it as being intersubjective agreement. The point being that, specifics of the thought experiment aside, it is conceivable that there is a world where people would intersubjectively agree that something is true in fact, when it isn't in fact true. There's a problem here that Rorty can't get around because his recasting of what it means for something to be true loses a critical and crucial way in which we use the word true and as such, is philosophers nonsense. which is to say that he misunderstands the late and the early wittgenstein, who weren't as different as most folks would have people believe, and to that end, I highly recommend Ray Monk's "How to Read Wittgenstein" which is the only ntroduction to Uncle L I've read that gets it close to what I think is right. Rorty goes awry all over the place with Wittgenstein, and the ways in which he goes awry are particularly strange I think for someone who appreciates Heidegger. That is, he fails to understand the importance of the "form of life" to Wittgenstein's conception of the dissolving of philosophical problems and instead cherry picks the idea of a language game, recasts it as a sort of peircean building block of language, and leaves out the more crucial elements of Wittgenstein's program, which is to get philosophers to stop talking so much garbage about the world. Which is to say that I think the late Wittgenstein is still as concerned with the early wittgenstein's program of outlining what the world is, but he's much more cautious about it. Which is strange I think, taking Heidegger into account, there's a certain sense where Dasein and wittgensteins "Our Form of LIfe" have a great deal of overlap and agreement. But that's an aside. My beef with Rortgenstein is that he's still the analytic philosopher trying to work out what language is rather than the continental mystic who knows what language is and is trying to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle. I think that the latter is a much better picture of Wittgenstein, both early and late, than is a more traditional "Ordinary Language" reading. On Jan 27, 2008, at 7:45 AM, Dillon Westbrook wrote: > I think you have a problem here if and only if the party in > question continues to believe the gun is unloaded after it goes > off. Most pragmatisms, I think Rorty's included, allow for > adjustment of belief based on circumstance. Rorty's only radical in > the sense that he thinks adjustment of language is equally > significant. Otherwise, all these people are committed to is a > material conditional: "If there are no bullets, then no gun will > fire". Again, he's not an irrealist about the world, nor is he an > idealist about thought. A genuine problem may be the world in which > we DON'T remember what guns or bullets are, a loaded gun appears on > a table, and everyone agrees its harmless, even after someone died > from it going off (they attribute the death to a heart attack or > witchcraft or something). That might seem, to those of us who > understand guns, to be very problematic. The neo-pragmatist > response here would probably have to rely on some robust notion of > evolution and casual reasoning, hoping the whole thing would get > sorted out in a generation or so. > > I really can't say whether Rorty misunderstands Wittgenstein. Which > Wittgenstein are we talking about? Do you have a text in mind? > Certainly Rorty takes up the investigations over the tractatus, so > all talk of 'what is the case' is less important to Rorty, just as > it seems less important to the late Wittgenstein, no. > > (fun discussion though) > > On Jan 26, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > >> I think there are some serious problems with Rorty's conception of >> truth as intersubjective agreement. Take for example this thought >> experiment: Imagine a post apocalyptic world where gunpowder and >> bullets are no longer produced and haven't been seen in a half >> dozen generations. In this world, everyone knows how guns used to >> work and understands the principle, but the also know that there >> are no more bullets and so no gun will fire. A loaded gun is >> sitting on a table. It contains the last unfired bullet ever >> manufactured. Now by rorty's conception of truth, the fact that >> anyone in this culture would agree that this gun isn't loaded, >> we'd have to say that the proposition "this is an unloaded gun" is >> true for them. It's only untrue for us because I've given us the >> God's Eye View in the thought experiment. So in the end, what we >> have is the truth that you can fire a bullet from an unloaded gun. >> Which is nonsensical. >> >> Better to go with a disquotational view of truth whereby the truth >> of propositions is just that they say what is the case and accept >> that we don't always know what is the case. What is the case is >> not something that is determined by my own lights, but how I put >> it into words is, and that's a critical distinction that rortian >> neo-pragmatism doesn't make. It annoys me though, because Rorty >> tends to apply his misunderstanding of Wittgenstein as a >> justification at this point, talking about Language-games as >> though they were real parts oflanguage and not a form of model. >> >> On Jan 26, 2008, at 8:29 AM, Dillon Westbrook wrote: >> >>> I think it's safer to say Rorty denies the object-existence of >>> truth, which I think amounted to an outright denial of truth's >>> 'truthiness' for many people. Here's how Rorty put it in 1989's >>> Contingency, irony and solidarity.: >>> >>> " We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world >>> is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that >>> the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, >>> with common sense, that most in things in space and time are the >>> effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To >>> say that truth is not out there is to say that where there are no >>> sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human >>> language, and that human languages are human creations." >>> >>> Rorty regards this, I think rightly, as a statement which should >>> not be controversial, which is not to trivialize the debate, just >>> to point out how nice and cogent his position is. To find a 20th >>> cent. phil who argues with the first statement, about worlds >>> being 'out there', you've got to go to Nelson Goodman or >>> Cassirer. To find a 20th cent. phil who thinks 'truth is whatever >>> you believe', you've got to go to Dondald Davidson- except he >>> recanted that position completely (and it was probably an over- >>> simplification to begin with). Part of the book quoted above is >>> dedicated to a funny debate where Rorty tries to convince >>> Davidson to maintain his old position, while Davidson maintains >>> he has to abandon it. Can I say again how much I liked Rorty- >>> what a shame I never crashed one of his lectures at Stanford >>> while he was still alive. >>> >>> Dillon >>> >>> On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:28 PM, Ron Starr wrote: >>> >>>> Marcus Bales wrote: >>>> >>>> Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern >>>> thinkers who >>>> say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they >>>> believe, even >>>> though I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely >>>> acts on >>>> that belief in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm >>>> between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead >>>> their lives >>>> that makes me think they're more interested in building a >>>> coterie of >>>> cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional >>>> people who >>>> will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in >>>> worrying >>>> about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. I urge them to have >>>> the >>>> courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY that >>>> nothing is true >>>> but what they believe, then I want to see them believe >>>> themselves to, say, >>>> health. Or even better, into bad health and then into good >>>> health again. >>>> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. >>>> >>>> I write: >>>> >>>> Dear Marcus, >>>> >>>> Please retrieve your straw man. You'll find it burning with >>>> bright dancing >>>> flames on pp. 333ff. in Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of >>>> Nature_. >>>> When the smoke clears, you may find the text of interest. >>>> >>>> To wit, Derrida & Rorty, outside of the caricatures of neo-con >>>> lickspittles like Roger Kimball and the half-assed musings of >>>> drunken grad >>>> parties, do not deny the existence of truth. Period. End of story. >>>> >>>> If you want to know the argument that IS being made, read the >>>> damn texts. >>>> >>>> -Ron Starr ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:51:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joshua Wilkinson Subject: Poem Films MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Dear All, Rabbit Light Movies Episode #6 is up online now. New poemfilms featuring Joyelle McSweeney, Nicole Burgund, Ana Bozicevic-Bowling, Jason Bredle, Julia Cohen / Mathias Svalina, J.W. Marshall, Christian Hawkey, Robyn Schiff, & Dana Ward. And Kristi Maxwell. Past Episodes include: Eric Baus, Kate Greenstreet, Sawako Nakayasu, Andrea Rexilius, Jon Woodward, Sommer Browning, Julie Doxsee, Lily Brown, Zachary Schomburg, Stephanie Young, Allison Titus, George Kalamaras, Joshua Poteat, J'Lyn Chapman, Nathan Bartel, Chuck Stebelton, Jaswinder Bolina, and amazing poems from Catherine Wagner reading from her her new chapbook at Danny's in Chicago last fall. It's at http://www.rabbitlightmovies.com Future episodes will have Paul Fattaruso, Christine Deavel, Johannes Goransson, Claire Becker, Michael Rerick, Philip Jenks, Brandon Shimoda, Adam Clay, and many, many, many more. thanks for any interest, Joshua Marie Wilkinson ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:40:16 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Danny Snelson Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <235306.17165.qm@web86002.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline djuna barnes On Jan 28, 2008 10:40 AM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > ----- O > Now that this has been opened up to the world--Victor Hugo! > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Stephen Vincent > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > Sent: Monday, 28 January, 2008 8:35:11 AM > Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? > > Henri Michaux was an interesting switch-hitter in that his 'marks' > corresponded to a kind of writing. > > Stephen V > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > > > Mark Weiss wrote: Also William Carlos Williams. > > At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: > >Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he would > >have considered himself a visual artist > > > >Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. > >That's a start! > >Mairead > > > > >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> > >Hello listafarians, > >I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She > >inquires: > > > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also visual > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but I'm > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who also > > > made visual art on occasion. > > > >I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > >along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > >katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > > > >JP Craig > >http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > > > > > > >--------------------------------- > >Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:55:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit if we're expanding ted joans painted in the 50's ginsberg photos charles henri ford collage etc gerd stern wallace berman and his crew DH Lawrence oops sorry he's not american but ha, he did live in new mexico where he painted alot if ya wanna go ouside america buson victor hugo henri chopin breton oh gysin too was english but let's remember we were asked pre-1960 american so no gysin and what about women ???? and non whites other than ted joans oh baraka sorta paints oops that's post 60s perhaps again michaux not usa american thoreau? oh wait what's his name shit i'm braindead now he wrote the congo ah got it vachel lindsay he painted somewhat like birchfield again michael A not american and he was a painter who wrote there's millions of them like in america MARSDEN HARTLEY for one On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:14:40 -0500 Mark Weiss writes: > Also William Carlos Williams. > > At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: > >Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he would > > >have considered himself a visual artist > > > >Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a > painter. > >That's a start! > >Mairead > > > > >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> > >Hello listafarians, > >I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. She > >inquires: > > > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also > visual > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > I'm > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who > also > > > made visual art on occasion. > > > >I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > >along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > >katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > > > >JP Craig > >http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > > > > > > >--------------------------------- > >Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:58:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit most of these are not pre 160's and deborg was french as were some others on that list lots of fluxus folks jackson maclow On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:15:03 -0500 Alan Sondheim writes: > Rosemary Mayer, Vito Acconci, Art-Language, Guy Debord, Klossowki, > Dan > Graham, Steve Willats, David Askevold, Adrian Piper, Delacroix, > Leandro > Katz, Tom Zummer. > > > On Sun, 27 Jan 2008, Stephen Vincent wrote: > > > Henri Michaux was an interesting switch-hitter in that his 'marks' > corresponded to a kind of writing. > > > > Stephen V > > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > > > > > > Mark Weiss wrote: Also William Carlos > Williams. > > > > At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: > >> Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he > would > >> have considered himself a visual artist > >> > >> Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. > >> That's a start! > >> Mairead > >> > >>>>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> > >> Hello listafarians, > >> I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. > She > >> inquires: > >> > >>> I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also > visual > >>> artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > I'm > >>> looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. who > also > >>> made visual art on occasion. > >> > >> I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > >> along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > >> katy.floyd@gmail.com. > >> > >> > >> JP Craig > >> http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > >> > >> > >> > >> --------------------------------- > >> Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > > > > > > > ======================================================================= > Work on YouTube, blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com . Tel > 718-813-3285. > Webpage directory http://www.alansondheim.org . Email: > sondheim@panix.com. > http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/Members/sondheim for theory; also > check WVU > Zwiki, Google for recent. Write for info on books, cds, performance, > dvds, > etc. ============================================================= > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:53:08 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roy Exley Subject: Roy Exley - Writers who were visual artists? Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit If we're now worldwide let us not forget August Strindberg, and oh yes, with regard to Stephen Vincent's reference to Michaux, he also wrote several books including 'Miserable Miracle' (a must read for substance surfers!)and a book of his poetry 'Spaced, Displaced' is published by Bloodaxe Books. Roy Exley. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:39:04 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alexander Jorgensen Subject: ATTN: NEW OTOLITHS - VISPO - CHINA series In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2007/12/alexander-jorgensen-from-china-series.html Enjoy!! -- Alexander Jorgensen bangdrum@fastmail.fm -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Email service worth paying for. Try it for free ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 07:13:56 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beckett Subject: New Issue of Otoliths Is Up MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit and it is worth checking out at: _http://the-otolith.blogspot.com_ (http://the-otolith.blogspot.com) **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:56:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Andrews Subject: binary meditation on Notre Dame Cathedral MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit binary meditation on Notre Dame Cathedral: http://vispo.com/dbcinema/notredame others: http://vispo.com/dbcinema/meditations.htm dbCinema is a graphic synthesizer i'm writing. ja http://vispo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:39:01 -0500 Reply-To: clwnwr@earthlink.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Heman Subject: reading wednesday at the boxcar lounge; new "cutout" from Purgatory Pie Press; feature at Back Fence February 10; next CLWN WR event at SAFE-T-GALLERY on March 20; Alex Caldiero in town in early May MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Hi folks - this is just to let you know that i'm a last minute addition to this Wednesday's "Friends of Tuesday Shorts" reading at the Boxcar Lounge at 168 Avenue B (between e. 10th and e. 11th streets in the east village) - for those of you who don't know Tuesday Shorts you can find them at www.myspace.com/tuesdayshorts they're an interesting little blogzine that only publishes stories of 100 words or less - they have a weekly reading period between noon saturday and noon sunday and if you're accepted you'll appear in the following week's issue - they won't answer personally but you'll know in a couple of days if your work was accepted (it will either be up on the site or it won't be) - i'll be reading with Mike Young, Donald Capone and Shelly Rae Rich - the reading starts at 8 PM and should be a lot of fun * * * yesterday i was at the Purgatory Pie Press studio in lower manhattan signing copies of my first totally new cutout in over a quarter of a century - it's issued as part of their 2007 PurgaSquare2 [that 2 should be a superscript] Card Series (a subscription series of art and poetry postcards handprinted (letterpress) by Dikko Faust) - each card is 5-1/2 inches square and is limited to an edition of 144 copies (each is signed and numbered by Dikko and also signed by the respective poet/artist) - mine is a fairy tale with a twist (which is why it became a cutout that folds through the third dimension) - for those of you who don't know my cutouts they are "participatory cut-out multiples on paper" in the tradition of inexpensive artists' books - they have been shown in a small two-man show (with Alex Caldiero) at the Brooklyn Museum - in a retrospective at the BACA's Downtown Cultural Center - and in group shows in Toronto, Los Angeles and Brooklyn - as well as being included in a text book on writing poetry, in an anthology of performance scenarios and in the upcoming PLAY BOOK to be published by Proteus Gowanus - the new cutout (which is titled "Once Upon") is available for $9 from Purgatory Pie Press (postage included - they can be reached through their website: www.purgatorypiepress.com ) and in another week should be available at Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn where two of my other cutouts are currently on display as part of their 2007/2008 interdisciplinary themed "Play" show (for more details see: www.proteusgowanus.com ) * * * and for those of you who are interested i'll be featuring at Robert Dunn's Asbestos series at the Back Fence on Sunday, February 10 at 3 PM - this well known Village venue is located at 155 Bleecker St. at the corner of Thompson and can be reached by the A, C, E, B, D, F and V to West 4th St. - admission is $5 plus a $3 minimum at the bar - there's also an an open mic. * * * plus mark your calendar. The next big CLWN WR event is scheduled for March 20 at the SAFE-T-GALLERY in DUMBO. Pencilled in so far are feature Liza Wolsky and special guests R. Nemo Hill, Sheila Lanham, Richard Loranger, Jane Ormerod, Moira T. Smith, Joanne Pagano Weber and Francine Witte, with another feature and a couple of more guests still to be added. * * * and for those of you who were enthralled by Utah poet Alex Caldiero's October 2006 performances at CLWN WR events at ABC No Rio and SAFE-T-GALLERY and his feature at the Nightingale Lounge in the east village, he'll be back again in early May to perform at the Mad Hatter's Review extravaganza benefit on May 4 at the Bowery Poetry Club and will once again feature at Nightingale on Monday May 5, as well as at the Brownstone Poets series in Brooklyn on saturday May 3 - more details will follow - if you've never heard him you're in for a treat Bob Heman clwnwr@earthlink.net EarthLink Revolves Around You. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:38:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Kelleher Subject: Literary Buffalo Newsletter 01.28.08-02.03.08 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=ISO-8859-1 LITERARY BUFFALO 01.28.08-02.03.08 ___________________________________________________________________________ BABEL WE ARE NOW OFFERING A 2-EVENT SPRING SUBSCRIPTION FOR =2440. Tickets for individual Babel events are also on sale. Call 832-5400 or visi= t http://www.justbuffalo.org/babel. March 13 Derek Walcott, St. Lucia, Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize, =2425= April 24 Kiran Desai, India, Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize, =2425 ___________________________________________________________________________ EVENTS THIS WEEK 02.01.08 Just Buffalo Presents The Big Read, February 2008, featuring Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. Kickoff Press Conference Friday, February 1, 10 a.m. Ring of Knowledge, Central Library, Lafayette Visit: http://www.justbuffalo.org/events/bigread.shtml for complete schedul= e. & Just Buffalo/Gusto at the Gallery Nickel City Poetry Slam Feature: Eric Darby Friday, February 1, 7 p.m. Clifton Hall, Albright-Knox Art Gallery 02.03.08 Burchfield-Penney Poets and Writers Karen Sands-O'Connor/Jennifer Ryan Poetry Reading Sunday, February 3, 2 p.m. Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo State College & Just Buffalo/Tru-Teas Ryki Zuckerman Plus spots for open readers/Broadsides for sale Sunday, February 3, 4 p.m. Insite Gallery, 810 Elmwood Ave. ___________________________________________________________________________ OPEN READINGS As of January, Just Buffalo's Open Reading series is no longer active. Lee= Farallo has told us that he needs a change. We are grateful for all the ye= ars he has put in and wish him luck as he moves on. At present, there is n= o one to take over for Lee, so we are suspending the third Sunday readings = at Rust Belt Books and the second Wednesday readings at the Carnegie Art Ce= nter indefinitely. If these events become active again, we will let you kn= ow. Meantime, we are still sponsoring two open mic readings a month - one a= t Center for Inquiry on the first Wednesday, and one at Tru-teas on the fir= st Sunday of each month. ___________________________________________________________________________ JUST BUFFALO MEMBERS-ONLY WRITER CRITIQUE GROUP Members of Just Buffalo are welcome to attend a free, bi-monthly writer cri= tique group in CEPA's Flux Gallery on the first floor of the historic Marke= t Arcade Building across the street from Shea's. Group meets 1st and 3rd We= dnesday at 7 p.m. Call Just Buffalo for details. ___________________________________________________________________________ WESTERN NEW YORK ROMANCE WRITERS group meets the third Wednesday of every m= onth at St. Joseph Hospital community room at 11a.m. Address: 2605 Harlem R= oad, Cheektowaga, NY 14225. For details go to www.wnyrw.org. ___________________________________________________________________________ JOIN JUST BUFFALO ONLINE=21=21=21 If you would like to join Just Buffalo, or simply make a massive personal d= onation, you can do so online using your credit card. We have recently add= ed the ability to join online by paying with a credit card through PayPal. = Simply click on the membership level at which you would like to join, log = in (or create a PayPal account using your Visa/Amex/Mastercard/Discover), a= nd voil=E1, you will find yourself in literary heaven. For more info, or t= o join now, go to our website: http://www.justbuffalo.org/membership/index.shtml ___________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE If you would like to unsubscribe from this list, just say so and you will b= e immediately removed. _______________________________ Michael Kelleher Artistic Director Just Buffalo Literary Center Market Arcade 617 Main St., Ste. 202A Buffalo, NY 14203 716.832.5400 716.270.0184 (fax) www.justbuffalo.org mjk=40justbuffalo.org ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:14:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Skip Fox Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? In-Reply-To: <479D10F00200001E00003FFC@risd.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Might have missed it. Mina Loy. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:07:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charlie Rossiter Subject: writers who were visual artists In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Looks as if the list includes folks who were around pre-1960 but may still be around were these mentioned bukowski Ginsberg (photography) Diane DiPrima I hear has been in some art shows Ted Kooser paints well If you're want some names of living writers doing art, you might want to get a list of contributors to the show "Crossing Boundaries: Visual Art by Writers" co-sponsored by The Poetry Center at Passaic Co. community College and the Paterson Museum in Apr/May 2006 Charlie > POETICS Digest - 26 Jan 2008 to 27 Jan 2008 (#2008-28) > > > > > > "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> > > > > href="http://listserv.buffalo.edu/css/local.css" type="text/css" /> > LISTSERV® archives at LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > > > > > > bgcolor="#003399"> > > > >
> src="http://listserv.buffalo.edu/images/ub-logob.gif" > alt="University at Buffalo / The State University of New > York"/> >
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style="color:white;padding-left:0px;padding-top:2px;padding-bottom:0px"> > src="http://listserv.buffalo.edu/images/list2b.png" > alt="listerv.buffalo.edu"/> > > > > >
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POETICS Digest - 26 Jan 2008 to 27 Jan 2008 (#2008-28)

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Table of contents:

> >
    >
  1. writers who were visual artists? >
  2. Review of Craig Watson's Secret Histories (Burning > Deck) >
  3. oulipo info & sites; forthcoming primer & cellphone > novels correct address >
  4. Oulipo Compendium >
  5. Fwd: announcement to post >
  6. Mark Nowak/Ian Teh Join Feb. 1 shadoWord Show in > Brooklyn >
  7. Poe's Sketches--American Writers Who Were Visual > Artists >
  8. Camille Martin's new website >
  9. murm
      >
    • murm > (01/27)
      From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
    >
  10. Robert Capa - "Mexican Suitcases' of Lost Negatives from > Spanish Civil War Recovered >
  11. JOB: Hamilton College >
  12. Recent posts on NOMADICS blog >
  13. Ezra Pound: Poet - A. David Moody - Book Review - New York > Times >
  14. Listenlight new issue 14 >
  15. new on rhubarb is susan >
  16. writers who were visual artists?/Correction, NO not > American >
  17. Fwd: David Brady, GENESIS, exhibition opening Saturday, > February 2, 7-9pm >
  18. Model Homes Issue 2 >
> > > > > >

>


> > alt="Powered by LISTSERV(R)" border=0> > > Browse the href="http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?LIST=POETICS">POETICS online > archives. > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:04:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Murat Nemet-Nejat Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Jason, Is Wittgenstein really trying to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle or just that the bottle does not exist? In the statement, "what the world is," is there not the assumption that the world must be embodied in predicates (the world *is*), which to me is not necessarily (clearly) so. Ciao, Murat On Jan 27, 2008 11:23 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > I think the problem is essential to any conception of truth that > talks about it as being intersubjective agreement. The point being > that, specifics of the thought experiment aside, it is conceivable > that there is a world where people would intersubjectively agree that > something is true in fact, when it isn't in fact true. There's a > problem here that Rorty can't get around because his recasting of > what it means for something to be true loses a critical and crucial > way in which we use the word true and as such, is philosophers nonsense. > > which is to say that he misunderstands the late and the early > wittgenstein, who weren't as different as most folks would have > people believe, and to that end, I highly recommend Ray Monk's "How > to Read Wittgenstein" which is the only ntroduction to Uncle L I've > read that gets it close to what I think is right. > > Rorty goes awry all over the place with Wittgenstein, and the ways in > which he goes awry are particularly strange I think for someone who > appreciates Heidegger. That is, he fails to understand the importance > of the "form of life" to Wittgenstein's conception of the dissolving > of philosophical problems and instead cherry picks the idea of a > language game, recasts it as a sort of peircean building block of > language, and leaves out the more crucial elements of Wittgenstein's > program, which is to get philosophers to stop talking so much garbage > about the world. Which is to say that I think the late Wittgenstein > is still as concerned with the early wittgenstein's program of > outlining what the world is, but he's much more cautious about it. > > Which is strange I think, taking Heidegger into account, there's a > certain sense where Dasein and wittgensteins "Our Form of LIfe" have > a great deal of overlap and agreement. But that's an aside. > > My beef with Rortgenstein is that he's still the analytic philosopher > trying to work out what language is rather than the continental > mystic who knows what language is and is trying to show the fly the > way out of the fly bottle. I think that the latter is a much better > picture of Wittgenstein, both early and late, than is a more > traditional "Ordinary Language" reading. > On Jan 27, 2008, at 7:45 AM, Dillon Westbrook wrote: > > > I think you have a problem here if and only if the party in > > question continues to believe the gun is unloaded after it goes > > off. Most pragmatisms, I think Rorty's included, allow for > > adjustment of belief based on circumstance. Rorty's only radical in > > the sense that he thinks adjustment of language is equally > > significant. Otherwise, all these people are committed to is a > > material conditional: "If there are no bullets, then no gun will > > fire". Again, he's not an irrealist about the world, nor is he an > > idealist about thought. A genuine problem may be the world in which > > we DON'T remember what guns or bullets are, a loaded gun appears on > > a table, and everyone agrees its harmless, even after someone died > > from it going off (they attribute the death to a heart attack or > > witchcraft or something). That might seem, to those of us who > > understand guns, to be very problematic. The neo-pragmatist > > response here would probably have to rely on some robust notion of > > evolution and casual reasoning, hoping the whole thing would get > > sorted out in a generation or so. > > > > I really can't say whether Rorty misunderstands Wittgenstein. Which > > Wittgenstein are we talking about? Do you have a text in mind? > > Certainly Rorty takes up the investigations over the tractatus, so > > all talk of 'what is the case' is less important to Rorty, just as > > it seems less important to the late Wittgenstein, no. > > > > (fun discussion though) > > > > On Jan 26, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > > >> I think there are some serious problems with Rorty's conception of > >> truth as intersubjective agreement. Take for example this thought > >> experiment: Imagine a post apocalyptic world where gunpowder and > >> bullets are no longer produced and haven't been seen in a half > >> dozen generations. In this world, everyone knows how guns used to > >> work and understands the principle, but the also know that there > >> are no more bullets and so no gun will fire. A loaded gun is > >> sitting on a table. It contains the last unfired bullet ever > >> manufactured. Now by rorty's conception of truth, the fact that > >> anyone in this culture would agree that this gun isn't loaded, > >> we'd have to say that the proposition "this is an unloaded gun" is > >> true for them. It's only untrue for us because I've given us the > >> God's Eye View in the thought experiment. So in the end, what we > >> have is the truth that you can fire a bullet from an unloaded gun. > >> Which is nonsensical. > >> > >> Better to go with a disquotational view of truth whereby the truth > >> of propositions is just that they say what is the case and accept > >> that we don't always know what is the case. What is the case is > >> not something that is determined by my own lights, but how I put > >> it into words is, and that's a critical distinction that rortian > >> neo-pragmatism doesn't make. It annoys me though, because Rorty > >> tends to apply his misunderstanding of Wittgenstein as a > >> justification at this point, talking about Language-games as > >> though they were real parts oflanguage and not a form of model. > >> > >> On Jan 26, 2008, at 8:29 AM, Dillon Westbrook wrote: > >> > >>> I think it's safer to say Rorty denies the object-existence of > >>> truth, which I think amounted to an outright denial of truth's > >>> 'truthiness' for many people. Here's how Rorty put it in 1989's > >>> Contingency, irony and solidarity.: > >>> > >>> " We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world > >>> is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that > >>> the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, > >>> with common sense, that most in things in space and time are the > >>> effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To > >>> say that truth is not out there is to say that where there are no > >>> sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human > >>> language, and that human languages are human creations." > >>> > >>> Rorty regards this, I think rightly, as a statement which should > >>> not be controversial, which is not to trivialize the debate, just > >>> to point out how nice and cogent his position is. To find a 20th > >>> cent. phil who argues with the first statement, about worlds > >>> being 'out there', you've got to go to Nelson Goodman or > >>> Cassirer. To find a 20th cent. phil who thinks 'truth is whatever > >>> you believe', you've got to go to Dondald Davidson- except he > >>> recanted that position completely (and it was probably an over- > >>> simplification to begin with). Part of the book quoted above is > >>> dedicated to a funny debate where Rorty tries to convince > >>> Davidson to maintain his old position, while Davidson maintains > >>> he has to abandon it. Can I say again how much I liked Rorty- > >>> what a shame I never crashed one of his lectures at Stanford > >>> while he was still alive. > >>> > >>> Dillon > >>> > >>> On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:28 PM, Ron Starr wrote: > >>> > >>>> Marcus Bales wrote: > >>>> > >>>> Once again, start with Rorty. I think I can find five postmodern > >>>> thinkers who > >>>> say, or at least imply, that nothing is true but what they > >>>> believe, even > >>>> though I agree with you that not a single one of them routinely > >>>> acts on > >>>> that belief in their day to day lives. To my mind, it is that chasm > >>>> between what they're willing to say and how they actually lead > >>>> their lives > >>>> that makes me think they're more interested in building a > >>>> coterie of > >>>> cross-supporting social, political, financial, and professional > >>>> people who > >>>> will refer to, defer to, hire, and promote one another, than in > >>>> worrying > >>>> about truth, beauty, justice, or proportion. I urge them to have > >>>> the > >>>> courage of their convictions. If they're going to SAY that > >>>> nothing is true > >>>> but what they believe, then I want to see them believe > >>>> themselves to, say, > >>>> health. Or even better, into bad health and then into good > >>>> health again. > >>>> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. > >>>> > >>>> I write: > >>>> > >>>> Dear Marcus, > >>>> > >>>> Please retrieve your straw man. You'll find it burning with > >>>> bright dancing > >>>> flames on pp. 333ff. in Rorty's _Philosophy and the Mirror of > >>>> Nature_. > >>>> When the smoke clears, you may find the text of interest. > >>>> > >>>> To wit, Derrida & Rorty, outside of the caricatures of neo-con > >>>> lickspittles like Roger Kimball and the half-assed musings of > >>>> drunken grad > >>>> parties, do not deny the existence of truth. Period. End of story. > >>>> > >>>> If you want to know the argument that IS being made, read the > >>>> damn texts. > >>>> > >>>> -Ron Starr > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:10:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit hey if we stray out of america the daddy of em all william blake On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:40:16 +0900 Danny Snelson writes: > djuna barnes > > On Jan 28, 2008 10:40 AM, Barry Schwabsky > > wrote: > > > ----- O > > Now that this has been opened up to the world--Victor Hugo! > > > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > > From: Stephen Vincent > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > > Sent: Monday, 28 January, 2008 8:35:11 AM > > Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? > > > > Henri Michaux was an interesting switch-hitter in that his > 'marks' > > corresponded to a kind of writing. > > > > Stephen V > > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > > > > > > Mark Weiss wrote: Also William Carlos > Williams. > > > > At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: > > >Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he > would > > >have considered himself a visual artist > > > > > >Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. > > >That's a start! > > >Mairead > > > > > > >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> > > >Hello listafarians, > > >I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. > She > > >inquires: > > > > > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also > visual > > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > I'm > > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. > who also > > > > made visual art on occasion. > > > > > >I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > > >along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > > >katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > > > > > > >JP Craig > > >http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > > > > > > > > > > >--------------------------------- > > >Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:19:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "David A. Kirschenbaum" Subject: N.Y. Press Picks Instance Press/Moldy Peach Toby Tomorrow MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Pre-AWP in NYC: from New York Press, What to do January 23-29 **Tuesday January 29, 6:00 p.m., free** (READING/MUSIC) WHAT A PEACH Millions of peaches, wait, make that one. Moldy Peaches? Toby Goodshank performs at Boog City?s d.a. levy lives: celebrating the renegade press. The series hosts a different non-New York City small press each month. This time around it?s Instance Press, with editors in Boulder, Colo.; Oakland, Calif., and New York City, the latter being Stacy Szymaszek, the Poetry Project at St. Mark?s Church?s artistic director. With readings from Kimberly Lyons, Kevin Varrone, and Craig Watson. ACA Galleries 529 W. 20th St., 5th Flr. (betw. 10th & 11th aves.) C/E to 23rd St. (8th Ave.) or 1/9 to 18th St. (7th Ave.) For more info: 212-842-BOOG (2664) or editor@boogcity.com For more info on Boog City: http://www.welcometoboogcity.com View listing: http://nypress.com/21/4/abouttown/about3.cfm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:32:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Artifact Reading Series Subject: 2 announcements for Digital Artifact Magazine MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline ** READING AT ATA FOR DIGITAL ARTIFACT MAGAZINE Friday, February 22, 2008. 8 PM. $6 Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia St., SF (415) 824-3890, ata@atasite.org *Wheelchair accessible* Digital Artifact Magazine is a new, web-based journal that explores digital and global culture using hybrid aesthetic tactics. Join us for a reading and screening by contributors from Issue 1 (Summer 2007), as we solicit submissions for Issue 2. Readings by David Christensen, Soledad De Costa, Camille Roy, Will Skinker, Sarah Fran Wisby. Screenings by Faye Driscoll, Kara Hearn, Jessica Lawless, Julianna Mundim, Kirthi Nath, Katina Papson, Sherri Wood. digitalartifactmagazine.com digitalartifactmagazine.blogspot.com digitalartifactmagazine@gmail.com ________________________________________________________________________________ DIGITAL ARTIFACT MAGAZINE **Call for submissions** ISSUE 2: TRANSNATIONALISM Deadline: May 15, 2008 Digital Artifact Magazine interrogates narrative in contemporary culture through fiction, criticism, experimental prose, and web-based audio-visual work. We're specifically interested in the impact of digital culture and globalization on contemporary narrative(s). How do these phenomena create new forms of story, text, language, and literature? What kinds of narratives have emerged from specific elements such as web sites, chatrooms, video games, Myspace, internet porn, digital photography, web cams, blogs, internet media and cell phones, as well as broad trends such as the breakdown of national boundaries, the increased speed of communication, and the globalization of culture, capitalism, and war? The second issue of Digital Artifact will examine the idea of transnationalism. What is the transnational space in literature and art? How do we describe the textual and digital interactions between countries, classes, cultures, languages, and identities? How do we write/track border crossings, migrations, translations, trans-cultural identities and conversations? In particular, we are interested in narratives that cross boundaries between the countries of the so-called first, second, and third worlds, narratives of migration, war, global society, cosmopolitanism and refugee culture. What does nationalism mean in our time? What is your (trans)nationality? We invite creative responses that explore these question through fiction, criticism, experimental prose, or web-based audio-visual work. Our aesthetic tendencies are always on display at digitalartifactmagazine.com. Submission Guidelines We accept e-mail submissions only. Send submissions to digitalartifact@gmail.com. In the subject heading, include your last name and the word "submission." Do not send previously published work, and let us know if the work gets accepted elsewhere. One submission per person, please. Include a brief (50-100 word) bio with your work. We will read and respond to submissions between May 15 and July 15. We regret that we cannot provide payment for accepted content at this time. **We accept text pieces up to 2,000 words in length. Please paste your work as plain text directly into the e-mail. You may also send a text document as an attachment in addition to pasting the content, if formatting is important to the piece. **For images, we accept visual files in pdf, jpeg, and gif format. Please send low-res (72 dpi) versions for submission review. **For sound, send mp3 files, zipped if possible, at a length of 5 minutes or less. **For video footage, email QuickTime files, compressed for web, again in the vicinity of 5 minutes or less. Links to videos posted online also work. If we have difficulty looking at your video due to compatibility issues, we will email you with information about uploading your submission to the Digital Artifact YouTube account. -- Artifact Reading Series Artifact Press Digital Artifact www.artifactsf.org www.artifactseries.blogspot.com www.digitalartifactmagazine.com www.digitalartifactmagazine.blogspot.com Artifact is a Member of the Intersection for the Arts Incubator Program ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:14:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lil Norton Subject: New Lil' Norton Book! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Lil' Norton is pleased to announce the publication of its first ever book, "Comment is Free: Participatory Politics for a New Age," an essay on democracy compiled by Lawrence Giffin, with an afterword, "F the Prez," a diatribe compiled by Steven Zultanski. The book is available from print-on-demand service, lulu.com. It is sold at cost ($6.41), no profit will be made. THIS IS NOT A COMMODITY. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so we have foregone the frills. The essay presents a generous sampling not of expertise but of American democratic fervor and home-grown competitive spirit. In a democracy, there is no wrong answer! With the democratization of knowledge and dissemination provided by the internet, Steven Zultanski's afterword combines all the nomadic anti-authoritarian zeal of anonymous bloggers and rhizomatic messageboard scriptors. The proof of the pudding is in the taste-test. Order your copy today. http://www.lulu.com/content/1923717 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:10:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marcus Bales Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On 27 Jan 2008 at 20:23, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > I think the problem is essential to any conception of truth that > talks about it as being intersubjective agreement. The point being > that, specifics of the thought experiment aside, it is conceivable > that there is a world where people would intersubjectively agree > that something is true in fact, when it isn't in fact true.< But that's just what makes it so appealing! I think it was Ben Franklin who said: "... another beautiful theory beaten to death by a gang of brutal facts." The people who base their notion of how the world works on intersubjective truth as truth are people who really want the brutal facts to leave their beautiful theories alone. Implicit in any merely coherence theory of truth, such as intersubjective truth is, is the possibility that people will agree that something is true when in fact it isn't true. The human consequences of holding intersubjective truth to be truth is, in my view, the never-ending temptation to ghettoize the facts, and pretend that the theory is all one needs. All kinds of groups, from social cliques through advertisers and political ideologies to world religions, attempt to insist on intersubjective truth to sell and bolster the well-beings of their members and leaders. There is, of course, a continuum of means of insistence and amounts of compulsion -- please don't deliberately misunderstand and accuse me of suggesting that junior high school social cliques are actually murderous cults, or that murderous cults are really merely junior high school social cliques. Intersubjectivity of truth, or what I've been calling "postmodernism", seems to me to be nothing more than that old time religion, fundamentalism by another name, an insistence that if we just clap our hands loud enough, Tinkerbell will live. Further, though, the notion that people would preach intersubjectivity of truth and then pay their medical insurance premiums and go to the hospital when they feel sick seems to me to be hypocritical. Have, I urge the intersubjectivity- of-truth folks, the courage of your convictions: get together and talk that cancer away! Frankly, I can't see how Richard Rorty even died -- and perhaps he didn't. Surely if he and the intersubjectivity-of-truth folks talk loud enough .... Maybe pretty soon someone will roll the stone away and the tomb will be empty, eh? For me, it seems clear that those kinds of views flow directly out of the notion of intersubjectivity of truth, or postmodernism, as I call it, and the problem is that it's not the case that if everyone really believes that the Messiah will come on June 23rd at 3 o'clock in the afternoon at the top of Salisbury Hill, that he'll come. Really believing in something is not enough. But Rorty, and much of the rest of the contemporary world, seems determined to try to make it so by saying so. It is the "flow directly out of", the consequences, of holding an intersubjectivity- is-truth view of truth that seems to me to be so objectionable. It's quite a ways down the road to double-think and to that brave new dystopia so clearly seen at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries as being at the end of the intersubjectivity-as-truth slope. We needn't postulate post-apocalyptic societies and last bullets to test intersubjectivity-as-truth. Not one philosopher, however rarefied his or her views, experiments with intersubjectivity as truth by persuading the riders in the car that the philosopher has had the steering apparatus modified so it's more helm than steering wheel, and that by turning it left one goes right, but without having done the actual mechanical work, and then jerks the wheel left into oncoming traffic to see whether confident belief will trump mechanical facts. So, for philosophers, isn't all this "intersubjectivity-as-truth" stuff not much more than playing parlor games during office hours -- if it's not deliberate hypocrisy? Whatever happened to the idea that philosophy is supposed to get us from disguised nonsense to obvious nonsense? Doesn't truth have to have a certain coherence AND a certain connection to a real world out there? There are any number of millions of examples of misunderstandings arising from clear facts because of the differing contexts in which various observers got those facts. It used to be that the point of intellectually honest inquiry was to fight against the all-too-human tendency to believe that the strongman was right because he was the strongman, or the priest because he was the priest. Now, it appears, that the wielders of the tools of intellectual inquiry are throwing in with the king and the priest, in light of the fact that the necks of the former seem to be somewhat more resistant to being strangled by the intestines of the latter than hoped. It just seems to me very much as if the postmodern notion that everything is pretty much the same as everything else, one belief as good as another, so long as we all agree, is an abject surrender to the kings and the priests. What more could a king or priest hope for than that the intellectuals say "Yeah, whatever -- it's all good. We'll believe in whatever you say we ought to believe in because what difference does it make what we believe in so long as we all believe in it."? Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:06:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Fwd: Burton Hatlen In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Betsy Rose Date: Jan 28, 2008 10:47 AM Subject: Burton Hatlen Dear Poetics Listserv: Professor Burton Hatlen of the University of Maine English Department and longtime director of the National Poetry Foundation passed away on Jan. 21, 2008, of pneumonia, at age 71. He was a subscriber to the Poetics ListServ. If you think it appropriate to announce his passing on the ListServ, please do so. A very good article about him appeared in the Bangor Daily News on Jan. 23; the link is: http://bangornews.com/news/t/city.aspx?articleid=159261&zoneid=176 His obituary is also on the BDN site: http://legacy.com/bangornews/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=101724577 Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you very much, Betsy Rose, Publications Specialist National Poetry Foundation University of Maine ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:55:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: patrick dunagan Subject: Writers who were visual artists, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline The following show took place last fall in nyc (the list of participating writers is at the end) & there is a book that was published: Anita Shapolsky Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition devoted to visual art by writers, mounted in conjunction with the publication of a newbook by Donald Friedman, entitled The Writer's Brush, with introductory essays by William Gass and John Updike (Mid-List Publishers, distributed by Random House). The exhibition will contain work by more than 100 contributors, ranging from the mid-nineteenth-century until the present day and representing a diversity of styles and subjects. The show will run from 11 September until 27 October. An opening reception will take place from 6-= 8 on 13 September. Mr. Friedman will be available to sign books during the opening. Refreshments will be served. The exhibition is co-curated by Donald Friedman and John Wronoski, of Lame Duck Books and Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, MA. It will move to Pierre Menard Gallery in early winter and will be reprised at Denenberg Fin= e Arts in Los Angeles in February. A catalogue of the show will available sometime in October, featuring an introductory essay by Joseph McElroy. Shapolsky Gallery is located at 152 East 65th Street (at Third Avenue), New York, NY 10021. Telephone: 212-452-1094; email: ashapolsky@nyc.rr.com The writers whose work will be included in the exhibition are as follows: Walter Abish, Rafael Alberti, Roberta Allen, A. R. Ammons, John Ashbery, Enid Bagnold, Amiri Baraka, Djuna Barnes, Julian Beck, Andrei Bely, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorge Luis Borges, Breyten Breytenbach, Charles Bukowski, Gelett Burgess, William Burroughs, Josef Capek, Tom Clark, Daniel Clowes, Jean Cocteau, Norma Cole, Douglas Coupland, Morris Cox, Jim Crace, E.E. Cummings, Henry Darger, Annie Dillard, J.P. Donleavy, John Dos Passos, Rikk= i Ducornet, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Durrell, Russell Edson, Kenward Elmslie, Jules Feiffer, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Henri Ford, Federico Garcia Lorca, Kahlil Gibran, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Allen Ginsberg, Louise Gl=FCck, Guenter Grass, Alasdair Gray, Nikolai Gumilov, Allan Gurganus, Bri= on Gysin, Hermann Hesse, Jack Hirschman, Susan Howe, Georges Hugnet, Victor Hugo, Aldous Huxley, Tama Janowitz, Charles Johnson, Donald Justice, Anna Kavan, Weldon Kees, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Maxine Hong Kingston, Alfred Kubin, Jonathan Lethem, Mina Loy, Lucebert, Jackson Mac Low, Clarence Major= , Robert Marshall, Leonard Michaels, Henri Michaux, Henry Miller, Susan Minot= , Walter Mosley, Hugh Nissensen, Clifford Odets, Kenneth Patchen, Mervyn Peake, Sylvia Plath, Beatrix Potter, Annie Proulx, James Purdy, Alexei Remizov, Kenneth Rexroth, MacLaren Ross, Peter Sacks, William Saroyan, Mira Schor, Maurice Sendak, Leslie Marmon Silko, Charles Simic, Patti Smith, William Jay Smith, Iris Smyles, Ralph Steadman, Mark Strand, Igor Terentiev= , James Thurber, Ruthven Todd, Frederic Tuten, Josef Vachal, Janwillem Vandewetering, Cecilia Vicuna, Kurt Vonnegut, Derek Walcott, Keith Waldrop, Rosanna Warren, Lewis Warsh, Denton Welch, Marjorie Welish, Richard Wilbur, Tennesee Williams, Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Tom Wolfe, W.B. Yeats, and Unica Zuern ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:06:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth James Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium Comments: To: Marcus Bales In-Reply-To: <479DB831.18408.98F112F@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Marcus -- Still waiting for those other four postmodernists. -- KJ Quoting Marcus Bales : > On 27 Jan 2008 at 20:23, Jason Quackenbush wrote: > > I think the problem is essential to any conception of truth that > > talks about it as being intersubjective agreement. The point being > > > that, specifics of the thought experiment aside, it is conceivable > > > that there is a world where people would intersubjectively agree > > that something is true in fact, when it isn't in fact true.< > > But that's just what makes it so appealing! I think it was Ben > Franklin who > said: "... another beautiful theory beaten to death by a gang of > brutal facts." > The people who base their notion of how the world works on > intersubjective > truth as truth are people who really want the brutal facts to leave > their beautiful > theories alone. Implicit in any merely coherence theory of truth, > such as > intersubjective truth is, is the possibility that people will agree > that something > is true when in fact it isn't true. The human consequences of holding > > intersubjective truth to be truth is, in my view, the never-ending > temptation to > ghettoize the facts, and pretend that the theory is all one needs. > All kinds of > groups, from social cliques through advertisers and political > ideologies to > world religions, attempt to insist on intersubjective truth to sell > and bolster the > well-beings of their members and leaders. There is, of course, a > continuum of > means of insistence and amounts of compulsion -- please don't > deliberately > misunderstand and accuse me of suggesting that junior high school > social > cliques are actually murderous cults, or that murderous cults are > really merely > junior high school social cliques. > > Intersubjectivity of truth, or what I've been calling > "postmodernism", seems to > me to be nothing more than that old time religion, fundamentalism by > another > name, an insistence that if we just clap our hands loud enough, > Tinkerbell will > live. > > Further, though, the notion that people would preach > intersubjectivity of truth > and then pay their medical insurance premiums and go to the hospital > when > they feel sick seems to me to be hypocritical. Have, I urge the > intersubjectivity- > of-truth folks, the courage of your convictions: get together and > talk that > cancer away! Frankly, I can't see how Richard Rorty even died -- and > perhaps > he didn't. Surely if he and the intersubjectivity-of-truth folks talk > loud enough > .... Maybe pretty soon someone will roll the stone away and the tomb > will be > empty, eh? > > For me, it seems clear that those kinds of views flow directly out of > the notion > of intersubjectivity of truth, or postmodernism, as I call it, and > the problem is > that it's not the case that if everyone really believes that the > Messiah will come > on June 23rd at 3 o'clock in the afternoon at the top of Salisbury > Hill, that he'll > come. Really believing in something is not enough. But Rorty, and > much of the > rest of the contemporary world, seems determined to try to make it so > by > saying so. > > It is the "flow directly out of", the consequences, of holding an > intersubjectivity- > is-truth view of truth that seems to me to be so objectionable. It's > quite a ways > down the road to double-think and to that brave new dystopia so > clearly seen > at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries as being > at the end > of the intersubjectivity-as-truth slope. > > We needn't postulate post-apocalyptic societies and last bullets to > test > intersubjectivity-as-truth. Not one philosopher, however rarefied his > or her > views, experiments with intersubjectivity as truth by persuading the > riders in > the car that the philosopher has had the steering apparatus modified > so it's > more helm than steering wheel, and that by turning it left one goes > right, but > without having done the actual mechanical work, and then jerks the > wheel left > into oncoming traffic to see whether confident belief will trump > mechanical > facts. So, for philosophers, isn't all this > "intersubjectivity-as-truth" stuff not > much more than playing parlor games during office hours -- if it's > not > deliberate hypocrisy? > > Whatever happened to the idea that philosophy is supposed to get us > from > disguised nonsense to obvious nonsense? > > Doesn't truth have to have a certain coherence AND a certain > connection to a > real world out there? There are any number of millions of examples of > > misunderstandings arising from clear facts because of the differing > contexts in > which various observers got those facts. It used to be that the point > of > intellectually honest inquiry was to fight against the all-too-human > tendency to > believe that the strongman was right because he was the strongman, or > the > priest because he was the priest. > > Now, it appears, that the wielders of the tools of intellectual > inquiry are > throwing in with the king and the priest, in light of the fact that > the necks of the > former seem to be somewhat more resistant to being strangled by the > intestines of the latter than hoped. It just seems to me very much as > if the > postmodern notion that everything is pretty much the same as > everything else, > one belief as good as another, so long as we all agree, is an abject > surrender > to the kings and the priests. What more could a king or priest hope > for than > that the intellectuals say "Yeah, whatever -- it's all good. We'll > believe in > whatever you say we ought to believe in because what difference does > it > make what we believe in so long as we all believe in it."? > > Marcus > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:50:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dillon Westbrook Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <479DB831.18408.98F112F@marcus.designerglass.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think I'll throw in the towel defending Rorty out here after this. But the notion that those who think truth is a property of sentences and not worlds are more susceptible to being hoodwinked or becoming themsleves hoodwinkers is bogus. I'll find you plenty of correspondence theory proponents, the good-old-fashioned "truth is the way the world is folks", who have horrific political beliefs and an apparatus of "objective fact" to support them. Wasn't Boaz being 'objective' when he drew up his first phrenology charts? Do you think we have any pomos in the White House, or the Baptist convention? You're likely to find correspondence theorists all the way down the line. In fact, just about every correspondence theorist worth his salt, until the 20th century, cashed in his theory by claiming true thoughts are those that correspond with the way the world is IN GOD'S HEAD- and most of them needed that little bit to make a satisfactory theory (Descartes being the guiltiest of all). You can tie up and burn someone with any cross you like, and get the timbers from any forest, which I take it you also agree with. Personally, however, I would be much more scared of the prophet who subscribes to a correspondence theory of truth, because he might also believe in his infallibility. You won't find Rorty anywhere asserting his infallibility- always quite the opposite. He doesn't anywhere deny the existence of an objective world, so I don't think he would have any trouble countenancing the cancer that killed him. His only suggestion is that, whenever the way we talk about the world stops being useful for the purpose of doing whatever the hell it is we want to do, nefarious or benign, we will, and historically have, switch our way of talking. Occasionally, those shifts are so great that statements in our old way of talking that seemed solidly true would register now as either false or non-sensical. You know, wrath of Greek gods, flat earth, all the usual stuff we pomos talk about. My challenge to any and every correspondence theorist is: what do you do about our track record of forming true beliefs, as evaluated in hindsight from our current set? Do you really think the history of human ideas is one of coming closer and closer to the actual facts, and that the current generation holds more true beliefs than the last? If not, and we are only as good as every other historical society has been, than we really haven't got any idea how the world is put together at all, based on all the 'facts', or seemingly verified beliefs and opinions, we've had to toss out to get to where we are. I for one don't think we know a thing more about how the world works than, say, Lao Tzu (who believed in dragons and humors and a whole happy host of deities running the show) did, we just have different ways of talking. I think your worry, and perhaps Jason's also, contains it's own defeater. if there are real world consequences that obtain regardless of our beliefs, that are as important and 'dangerous' as you're holding them to be, then isn't it inevitable that we feel them? In that case, who cares what your epistemology is. A coherence theorist and a correspondence theorist are in exactly the same shoes when the hammer drops- both will have to adjust their beliefs or perish. Why should we believe that either epistemic position lends itself to individual false beliefs more or less than the other? I'm yet to see an argument to that effect in this discussion. Neither epistemology is going to tell you what the true and false statements are, only what it is for a statement to be true. You want to say 'a statement is true when it corresponds to the facts (and do stop me here if I'm getting you wrong)', Rorty wants to say, and I like his position on this that 'a statement is true when it plays a helpful role in a discussion we're having at a given moment in a particular language'. Dillon On Jan 28, 2008, at 8:10 AM, Marcus Bales wrote: > On 27 Jan 2008 at 20:23, Jason Quackenbush wrote: >> I think the problem is essential to any conception of truth that >> talks about it as being intersubjective agreement. The point being >> that, specifics of the thought experiment aside, it is conceivable >> that there is a world where people would intersubjectively agree >> that something is true in fact, when it isn't in fact true.< > > But that's just what makes it so appealing! I think it was Ben > Franklin who > said: "... another beautiful theory beaten to death by a gang of > brutal facts." > The people who base their notion of how the world works on > intersubjective > truth as truth are people who really want the brutal facts to leave > their beautiful > theories alone. Implicit in any merely coherence theory of truth, > such as > intersubjective truth is, is the possibility that people will agree > that something > is true when in fact it isn't true. The human consequences of holding > intersubjective truth to be truth is, in my view, the never-ending > temptation to > ghettoize the facts, and pretend that the theory is all one needs. > All kinds of > groups, from social cliques through advertisers and political > ideologies to > world religions, attempt to insist on intersubjective truth to > sell and bolster the > well-beings of their members and leaders. There is, of course, a > continuum of > means of insistence and amounts of compulsion -- please don't > deliberately > misunderstand and accuse me of suggesting that junior high school > social > cliques are actually murderous cults, or that murderous cults are > really merely > junior high school social cliques. > > Intersubjectivity of truth, or what I've been calling > "postmodernism", seems to > me to be nothing more than that old time religion, fundamentalism > by another > name, an insistence that if we just clap our hands loud enough, > Tinkerbell will > live. > > Further, though, the notion that people would preach > intersubjectivity of truth > and then pay their medical insurance premiums and go to the > hospital when > they feel sick seems to me to be hypocritical. Have, I urge the > intersubjectivity- > of-truth folks, the courage of your convictions: get together and > talk that > cancer away! Frankly, I can't see how Richard Rorty even died -- > and perhaps > he didn't. Surely if he and the intersubjectivity-of-truth folks > talk loud enough > .... Maybe pretty soon someone will roll the stone away and the > tomb will be > empty, eh? > > For me, it seems clear that those kinds of views flow directly out > of the notion > of intersubjectivity of truth, or postmodernism, as I call it, and > the problem is > that it's not the case that if everyone really believes that the > Messiah will come > on June 23rd at 3 o'clock in the afternoon at the top of Salisbury > Hill, that he'll > come. Really believing in something is not enough. But Rorty, and > much of the > rest of the contemporary world, seems determined to try to make it > so by > saying so. > > It is the "flow directly out of", the consequences, of holding an > intersubjectivity- > is-truth view of truth that seems to me to be so objectionable. > It's quite a ways > down the road to double-think and to that brave new dystopia so > clearly seen > at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries as being > at the end > of the intersubjectivity-as-truth slope. > > We needn't postulate post-apocalyptic societies and last bullets to > test > intersubjectivity-as-truth. Not one philosopher, however rarefied > his or her > views, experiments with intersubjectivity as truth by persuading > the riders in > the car that the philosopher has had the steering apparatus > modified so it's > more helm than steering wheel, and that by turning it left one goes > right, but > without having done the actual mechanical work, and then jerks the > wheel left > into oncoming traffic to see whether confident belief will trump > mechanical > facts. So, for philosophers, isn't all this "intersubjectivity-as- > truth" stuff not > much more than playing parlor games during office hours -- if it's not > deliberate hypocrisy? > > Whatever happened to the idea that philosophy is supposed to get us > from > disguised nonsense to obvious nonsense? > > Doesn't truth have to have a certain coherence AND a certain > connection to a > real world out there? There are any number of millions of examples of > misunderstandings arising from clear facts because of the differing > contexts in > which various observers got those facts. It used to be that the > point of > intellectually honest inquiry was to fight against the all-too- > human tendency to > believe that the strongman was right because he was the strongman, > or the > priest because he was the priest. > > Now, it appears, that the wielders of the tools of intellectual > inquiry are > throwing in with the king and the priest, in light of the fact that > the necks of the > former seem to be somewhat more resistant to being strangled by the > intestines of the latter than hoped. It just seems to me very much > as if the > postmodern notion that everything is pretty much the same as > everything else, > one belief as good as another, so long as we all agree, is an > abject surrender > to the kings and the priests. What more could a king or priest hope > for than > that the intellectuals say "Yeah, whatever -- it's all good. We'll > believe in > whatever you say we ought to believe in because what difference > does it > make what we believe in so long as we all believe in it."? > > Marcus ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:00:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <479DB831.18408.98F112F@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline "Is there no substantial truth, seeing that there are so many true things which are not truth itself?" --Blaise Pascal, from "The Wager" "Indeed when the truth which had been confined to literature emerged harsh and tragic within the context of everyday life, and could no longer be ignored, it seemed as if it were a product of literature." --Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair "Above all the practice of literature requires a rigorous reading of those texts which present themselves continuously as already written, yet are not recognized as such, in favor of those only which one is indoctrinated to know as the readable by those who write them." from "Meditations and Reflections of El Colonel" by d-b Chirot "El Colonel Smiles" is in the new Otoliths just announced http://the-otolith.blogspot.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:02:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Deep Oakland Subject: Samantha Giles' A Force to Separate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Samantha Giles' *A Force to Separate* considers each person listed by officials as homicide victims in Oakland in 2006 in the order of the discovery of their death. The total number of homicide victims for that year was 148, the highest total in more than a decade. Deep Oakland is pleased to announce that a selection of this ambitious work is now available for view at http://www.deepoakland.org/text?id=178. -- Stephanie Young & David Harrison Horton Deep Oakland www.deepoakland.org * Affiliated with neither the tourism nor better business bureaus, Deep Oakland seeks to create a compendium of inter-linked images, text and sound that represent the complications and vitality of Oakland's current moment.* ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:40:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jason Quackenbush Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <1dec21ae0801281004w58799e11t827f81cd759c9083@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote: > Jason, > > Is Wittgenstein really trying to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle > or just that the bottle does not exist? I guess it depends on how you read old uncle L. I take the metaphor to be saying that misunderstanding and philosophers nonsense were the bottle, and I think he definitely thought those existed. To be sure, I he didn't believe that there were such things as philosophical problems. At the same time, he very much understood the reasons that people act as though there are and wanted to save himself from the traps of language as much as anyone else. > In the statement, "what the world is," is there not the assumption that the > world must be embodied in predicates (the world *is*), which to me is not > necessarily (clearly) so. embodied in predicates is an interesting way of putting it. i don't think that's how Wittgenstein would put it. I am currently working on a sort of manifesto that begins with the statement that "the World is everything that is and is not anything that it isn't." we maybe get in trouble in english sometimes because the existential verb and the copular are the same word. I've often wanted to be a native french speaker with their lovely distinctions between to have and to be. But alas, is is all i got. which is to say predicates are important to talking about the world. And also that talking about the world is maybe part of our form of life, or as heidegger would have it, is the with which that Dasein takes a stand on its always already being-in-the-world. but you're right, the world is not the stuff it is. the world is everything that is and is not anything that it isn't, and if you slice that sentence up into first order predicate calculus you'll get a surprise about the domains in which there are free variables, and what exactly is the predicate of what. deep down I think "is the world" is a true predicate of "everything" and that "is not the world" is a true predicate of "anything else than everything." which is possibly just a result of reading crazy german phenomenologists and the lasting damage that it can do to one's brain, but I actually think there's an important distinction to be shown there. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:13:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "K. R. Waldrop" Subject: Jarnot again available from Burning Deck Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; delsp=yes; format=flowed Lisa Jarnot SOME OTHER KIND OF MISSION Poems, prose segments and visual pieces, 112 pages, offset, smyth-sewn ISBN 978-1-886224-12-4, paperback $14 3rd printing, 2008 Lisa Jarnot=92s 1st book is a mock-epic of the everyday as it might be =20= discovered through juxtapositions of public and private information. =93Some Other Kind of Mission suggests that Language Poetry may be =20 mutating, back to the modernism of Stein and Joyce, having been =20 permanently inflected (or deflected) by a late twentieth-century =20 sharpness and exasperation.... These are haunting, perplexing =20 narratives of the inenarrable.=94=97John Ashbery, TLS =93a turbulence-model of language, context-laden and yet future.=94=97=20= Sherry Brennan, American Book Review =94This impressive newcomer's sudden jumps and quirky mappings may =20 leave some heads spinning. Her visual poems, in particular are =20 resonant and haunting, requiring and rewarding second and third =20 looks.=94=97Tom Clark, San Francisco Chronicle =93a genre-bender of a book, transcending such limiting terms as =20 experimental writing or prose poetry.=94=97Joseph Torra, Boston Book = Review =93Some Other Kind of Mission is not a misnomer...It is a bit like =20 entering Utah's Canyonlands: the landscape is at first bleak, =20 threatening, otherworldly. But as time is spent...the richness of the =20= land begins to inundate the senses... Like all difficult terrain, it =20 invites active participation, good binoculars and a four-wheel =20 drive.=94=97John Olson, Sulfur =93Her best effects arrive as you zoom headlong right through her high-=20= energy tangle of dissociation ...in a particle accelerator where =20 connective sense is bombarded by shards of broken grammar...=94=97Albert = =20 Mobilio, Village Voice Copies available from Small Press Distribution, www.spdbooks.org =20= ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:33:13 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mIEKAL aND Subject: EROS/ION by mIEKAL aND & Maria Damon Comments: To: Theory and Writing , spidertangle@yahoogroups.com Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252; delsp=yes; format=flowed EROS/ION by mIEKAL aND & Maria Damon Eros/ion is a self-eroding, unstable cenotaph indexing love lost by =20 natural processes of decay, erosion, and circumstance, as well as by =20 unnatural processes of violence and betrayal. Past and present, =20 imagination and the everyday world of lived relationship, are re-=20 activated in aesthetic exorcism. Immersion in a bed of intertexts and =20= elemental cognates allows the emergence and working-through of =20 delicate feelings long unexpressed. The collaborative process through =20= which the text is produced mimics erosive eros, but in a sublimated =20 haven of words-as-coils, connective tissue, articulated flesh, =20 divided paths, collided intentions, dynamic misunderstandings and =20 creative camaraderie. This proximation is a lifeline we walk from the =20= woods to the kitchen, from the garden to the studio, alone and in pairs. eros/ion: NTAMO, Helsinki, Finland. Leevi Lehto, publisher. 4.25" x 6.88", 97 pages, ISBN 978-952-215-024-0, Photography by =20 CamillE Bacos, price =80 13,31 plus mailing costs. Can be ordered via Lulu.com http://www.lulu.com/content/1569733 Original hypertext version can be read here: http://www.joglars.org/erosion/ =93eros/ion is a beautifully designed instance of hypertext poetry in =20= print. There are author-produced sequences that vary from the page =20 sequences, but readers may find that they want to choose their own =20 paths=97such is the beauty and economy of the self-contained pages =20 (lexia) that they resonate as deeply on their own as they do in =20 relation to all of the others. As befits the form, themes include =20 writing, text and textuality, desire, connectivity and =91erosive =20 media.=92"=96Rita Raley =93Authors: complex entanglement of empty cloth, desire of absent flesh =20= or tantra descendent: body and name having fled, as if landscape =20 curled around lovers, death, theory itself. oh this is beautiful! =20 future anterior turned future interior, what has been subsequent lost =20= in memory, death, faint reminiscence of technology. you say 'The End =20 of History': i say, there is no end to it, commentary buries itself, =20 every enunciation is already a problem. to be done with it, to be =20 done with a sentence, is impossible. your impossibility is our death, =20= our love, as if we cannot survive the year. there are no texts, no =20 talk, no theory, no putative expression, there are only murmurs, and =20 this is the way this book, this moment, works against itself, as if =20 there were no (as if there were only) tomorrow.=94=96Alan Sondheim =93This book is delicious: replete with instances of intimacy offered =20= in a context of restraint. Poised and riveting in its exquisite use =20 of language, eros/ion embodies a sustained and generous miracle in =20 collaboration.=94=96Sheila E. Murphy Maria Damon is the author of The Dark End of the Street: Margins in =20 American Vanguard Poetry and =93Bagel Shop Jazz=94: Selected Essays for =20= Post-Literary =93America;=94 co-author (with mIEKAL aND) of Literature =20= Nation and pleasureTEXTpossesssion; and co-editor (with Ira =20 Livingston) of the forthcoming Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader. mIEKAL aND is a longtime DIY cultural anarchist & the creator of an =20 infoplex worth of visual-verbal lit, audio-art, performance ritual & =20 hypermedia distributed by Xexoxial Editions. His hypermedia works =20 reside at JOGLARS Crossmedia Broadcast. Since 1991, he has made his =20 home at Dreamtime Village. =20= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:29:42 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Caleb Cluff Subject: writers who were visual artists MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Fielding Dawson was a noted collage artist. =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D The information contained in this email and any attachment is = confidential and may contain legally privileged or copyright material. It is intended = only for the use of the addressee(s). If you are not the intended recipient of = this email, you are not permitted to disseminate, distribute or copy this = email or any attachments. If you have received this message in error, please = notify the sender immediately and delete this email from your system. The ABC does = not represent or warrant that this transmission is secure or virus free. = Before opening any attachment you should check for viruses. The ABC's = liability is limited to resupplying any email and attachments =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:08:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mairead Byrne Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? Comments: To: skyplums@JUNO.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Blake, like lots of the dudes mentioned, was an artist first, trained at = Henry Pars' drawing school, & then the Royal Academy, & that's how he = earned his bread (as an engraver). Cummings earned whatever bread he = earned as a painter, as far as I know. My understanding was that the = request was for writers who were, secondarily, visual artists. Maybe it's = a chicken-and-egg question. Mairead >>> "steve d. dalachinsky" 01/28/08 12:10 PM >>> hey if we stray out of america the daddy of em all william blake On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:40:16 +0900 Danny Snelson writes: > djuna barnes >=20 > On Jan 28, 2008 10:40 AM, Barry Schwabsky=20 > > wrote: >=20 > > ----- O > > Now that this has been opened up to the world--Victor Hugo! > > > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > > From: Stephen Vincent > > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU > > Sent: Monday, 28 January, 2008 8:35:11 AM > > Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? > > > > Henri Michaux was an interesting switch-hitter in that his=20 > 'marks' > > corresponded to a kind of writing. > > > > Stephen V > > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > > > > > > Mark Weiss wrote: Also William Carlos=20 > Williams. > > > > At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: > > >Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he=20 > would > > >have considered himself a visual artist > > > > > >Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a painter. > > >That's a start! > > >Mairead > > > > > > >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> > > >Hello listafarians, > > >I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian.=20 > She > > >inquires: > > > > > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also=20 > visual > > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but=20 > I'm > > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc.=20 > who also > > > > made visual art on occasion. > > > > > >I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > > >along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > > >katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > > > > > > >JP Craig > > >http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > > > > > > > > > > >--------------------------------- > > >Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > > >=20 >=20 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:10:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: The Mess of the True World MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed The Mess of the True World http://www.alansondheim.org/skinned.mp4 http://www.alansondheim.org/plateauwounded1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/plateauwounded2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cloth1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cloth2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cloth3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cloth4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cloth5.jpg An essay to date (rough draft with numerous slots to be filled in) culled from outlining: "The Mess of the True World" The Mess of the True World what does it mean to be in-carnated within the real/virtual/ true world? Carnated/carnal/knowledge - We could begin by introducing the true world, the world of mind in relation to ontological/epistemological shifting. The true world is primordial, in other words backgrounding. ..."however, we use the word [_materialism_] in its dictionary definition of _embodiment,_ in contract to _mind._ Thus, virtual reality, as dis- cussed within the art literature [...] is materialist, regardless of whether this experience is _real_ or _illusory._ Mental constructs, on the other hand, are nonsensory and so have no material existence." Paul Fish= wick, An Introduction to Aesthetic Computing, in Fishwick, ed., Aesthetic Computing, MIT, 2006. In this sense, the true world is materialist; how- ever I would argue that mental constructs cohere with the sensory, that a fundamental entanglement exists. For example, love or hate create sensed bodily transformations, mathematical thought creates the sensation of per- ceived 'symbol-clouds,' and so forth. what are the edge-phenomena/plastic and static limits of the body? The limits of my body within the true world are the limits of my world; here I include ontological shifts such as mathesis, semiosis, emotions and the like. Given the limited bandwidth of receptors of all sorts, and the limitations of mind (for example, in thinking through the appearance of the eighth dimension, calculating, speaking non-native languages, etc.), thought and the true world are based on extrapolation - the _gestural_ - as fundamental being. (See Tran Duc Thao on the origins of language.) The gestural follows quantum non-distributive logics (see the early experi- ments by Land on color vision), not Aristotelian distributive logics; this being-in-the-world is partial reception of part-objects transformed into inherency through gesture. All organisms have this in common. The _plastic_ limits of the body are the limits of body-inherency, whether 'real' or 'virtual' or other category - the limits of the image carried by the jectivity (introjection and projection) braid. The _static_ limits may be considered formal-measureable limits, whether in one or another space. of the geopolitical body? of the political-economic body? As soon as one brings domain-extrapolation of the body into play (i.e. sexual body, material body, imaginary body, natural body, and so forth), cultural nexus is paramount, and the body itself moves within theory as phenomenological token or punctum. And as soon as one brings variegated ontologies and epistemologies into play, analysis becomes a mush/mess/mass or miss. Terms slide against terms, carrying enormous overdetermined histories with them - but these are the only histories there are. what are the signifiers of bodily arousal/violence/meditation? how are these constituted within the true world? Herewith bee a liste of signes, or some such. But where is the arousal, violence, meditation, if not brainward, wearing the exposure, softening, hardening, quiescence of the body which simultaneously is foregrounded and absenting. In terms of emanents, the signs are symbolic; one calculates, applies them. In term of organism, the signs are ikonik, upwelling. The brain manages none of this; the brain manages, is managed - everything becomes a mess as inquiry tangles uselessly. It's this uselessness, this nexus, that is of interest - an analytical failure in the close-rubbed maw of the world. readings: what does it mean to read the real body? the virtual body? One might begin by considering language as fundamentally ikonic, that within the preconscious ('repository' of syntactics, short-term memory - another metaphor) language is clothed, associated with the true world. Language then is structured like the unconscious, and the unconscious does not necessarily splay the real. Bodies, organic and emanent (and 'organic' references the machinic phylum as well), inhere to mind, minding, tending, a posteriori interpretation and hermeneutics. Reading the body is embody- ing, is against the background of incarnation. Sheave-skins need not react or appear to sense as organic skins; the feedback is often visual or aural, not proprioceptive. Within the jectivity braid, this is an epistem- ological issue, not one of fundamental locus. On the other hand (real or virtual), one can abandon the emanent; abandoning the organic is deadly. Proceed backwards from this, from the irretrievable, intolerable, finality of death, and reading bodies, and bodily risk, become wildly disparate. Nevertheless both inhabit the true world, mind inhabits both, albeit often in qualitatively different manners, depending on ontology. what are the ontologies and epistemologies involved here? ontological status of the so-called virtual - schrodinger's cat paradox and collapse of the wave function as model for simultaneous analogic/digital readings - seeing through microscopy (tunnel, scanning, optical, etc.): are ontology and epistemology equivalent at the limit? (are analogic and digital equivalent at a parallel limit?) What difference does it make? Begin with the mess, with the corrupted reading of whatever consciousness has placed there, on the page, the rock, the emanent body, the organic body. The last carries ikonic signs, simultaneously indexical, pointing out the mute history of the being. If there were only readers of everything! If only the book of nature existed! The Ladder! Great Chain of Being! Ontologies occur in local domains, rub raw against each other, problema- tize each other. Who decided this one or that one as primordial? What's fundamental is the mixed mess, the braid. At least as far as we're con- cerned, the braid. internals and externals, static/dynamic. remnants of the visible human project, gendering of the visual/internal Human skin under the microtome, sheave-skin burrowed into by camera position. Here is the necessity of Madhyamika, co-dependent origination, depend co-origination, braided mind, image, imaginary, entity, real and virtual within, inhering to the true world. Striated, variegated trans- formations characterize life; the Visible Human Project transforms organism into emanent, habitus into data-basae. comfort, dis/comfort, ease, dis/ease, hysteria and abjection/fluid- ity (laycock's 1840 essay on hysteria, kristeva, chasseguet-smirgel) Clearly the abject lies within the primordial, the braid is braid of dissolution, corruption, decay; definitions flux in relation to the contricted passing of time. Organisms flood themselves, emanents decay with their corporations, software updating, diminishing dreamtimes as elders die off. Hysteria is convulsion, but also spew, contrary and wayward, the refusal of the body, just as death is such a refusal and catatonia. Do others refuse the body? Use it? Reuse it? Are sheave-skins exchanged? Does political economy depend on aegis? dis/ease, hysteria, and so forth of emanents Dis/ease, etc. may be modeled; turning the emanent towards abjection is necessarily a conscious decision. The hysteria of emanents is the hys- teria of the steering mind. Proliferation of emanents, duplications and other hacks, may be considered a form of hysteria. But hysteria is on the surface; emanents which are autonomous or semi-autonomous agents may exist the full range of symptoms, generated from within, without exter- nal steering. medical model and technology A medical model implies internal flows, striations, identities, vulner- abilties, immunological defenses, maintenance and so forth. Emphasis is on the cohering of parts, membranes and molecular channels. Organism runs from within; emanent runs from without. An emanent may be defined as _an image or apparition whose body and mind are elsewhere,_ an entity that exists in relation to the jectivity braid, and has apparent, but not genidentical, identity. Of course the organic body itself is genidentical only to a limited extent. One might say then that both ontologically and epistemologically, _an emanent exists within data-bases or other entities spatio-temporally distant from the visual or other residue._ What we see is surface, but surface from both within and without. _The dissection of an emanent image is the result of camera angle._ psychoanalytics and technology, psychoanalytics of emanents The psychoanalytics of emanents are two-fold: the psychoanalytics of mind steering, and the internal psychoanalytics of the machinic phylum. analogic and worn emanent boundaries edge / boundary phenomena - physics and psychophysics of the game- world edge in second life phenomena of the sheave-skin and sheave-skin internals Sheave-skin externals read as internals: anatomical mappings within Poser. phenomena of medical models in relation to edge/boundaries The medical model is for learning, for analogy of surface to surface. The medical model requires a (human) viewer. Any dissection into the substance of an organic body results in exposed and constructed surfaces; interiors always lie elsewhere, revealed by X-ray, MRI, and so forth. edge phenomena in literature, codework, mathesis of the text (cramer's and reith's programs) generalization of edge phenomena into the dialectic between tacit knowledge (polyani) and error (winograd/flores) what constitutes worlds? constructing? world of the text, inhabitation/dwelling/building (heidegger, dufrenne) what constitutes the true world? worlding? 'true world' in which lines/angles are 'trued' (affine geometry), 'true world' in the sense of 'trued' phenomenologies within which virtual, real, and ikonic are blurred and interpenetrating, somewhat equivalent, and within which traditional epistemologies of symbol/ sign/signifier/signified/index/ikon etc. break down (kalachakra tantra, jeffrey hopkins) 'reading' underlying (substructural, configuration files, guides) organization of mocap/scan through surface phenomena (and the relationship of this reading to waddington's epigenetic landscapes) who is world? communality, consensuality? the problem of other minds and the problem of consensual other minds (group hallucinations, vijnanavada, dwarf sitings, ufos, etc.) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:40:32 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Glass Subject: Ahadada Books Presents Our 17th E-Chap: Judith Skillman's Anne-Marie Derese in Translation & The Green Parrot and it's ABSOLUTELY PRICELESS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" come, come, come, to www.ahadadapress.com and check out this, and other offerings from our fine writers. Jess P.S. Sweet Potatoes--flash fictions--from Lou Rowan, The Age of the Demon Tools (with a cover guaranteed to curdle the brain of true believers), and new works from Mike Heller Yoko Danno and Alison Croggin on the way! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:45:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Karmin Subject: JOB: Fordham University MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit (this is a forward so please don't respond to me. good luck!) Fordham University: Assistant Professor/Director of Creative Writing, tenure track. Genre open (poetry, literary fiction, creative non-fiction). Research-based English department with growing undergraduate creative writing program & MA with writing concentration seeks author with terminal degree, substantial record of publication, administrative experience, & experience teaching at college level. Responsibilities include: teaching writing workshops (graduate & undergraduate); teaching undergraduate intro to literature & comp courses as needed; administration of writing program. Please send letter, c.v., three written references & writing sample consisting either of a book (which will be returned) or substantial published work to: Writing Search Committee, English Department, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458. Deadline: February 29, 2008 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:03:49 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Fernandes Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists In-Reply-To: <200801282125.m0SLPx9D012035@nucfw07.abc.net.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Almada Negreiros (1893-1970) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_de_Almada_Negreiros Mario Cesariny (1923-2006) http://portugal.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=4653 Cruzeiro Seixas (1920-) http://www.answers.com/topic/cruzeiro-seixas-artur-manuel-rodrigues-do ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:10:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Poetics List Information | Please review carefully MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline The Poetics List Sponsored by: The Electronic Poetry Center (SUNY-Buffalo/University of Pennsylvania) and the Regan Chair (Department of English, Penn) & Center for Program in Contemporary Writing (Penn) Poetics List Editor: Amy King Poetics List Editorial Board: Charles Bernstein, Julia Bloch, Lori Emerson, Amy King, Joel Kuszai, Nick Piombino Note: this Welcome message is also available at the EPC/@Buffalo page http://epc.buffalo.edu/poetics/welcome.html Poetics Subscription Registration (required) poetics.list --at -- gmail.com note our new address! 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Like all systems, the listserv 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 editors at . ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:57:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: sheila black Subject: questions about creative writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dear listservers, I am teaching a Creative Writing class to an Adult and Continuing Ed group this semester and would like your suggestions (if you choose to comment) about how to deal with publication advice. I am mainly a poet writer so I already know what to tell them about sending out the various forms of poetry. But this group of 8 people come from all walks, two of them have Master degrees in Engineering and Medical Education, some are housewives only interested in memoir writing, others just seem to be exploring this side of themselves, and there is a young man who is very good at describing landscapes. I have read each ones first pass using an exercise I learned from one of the Creative Writing classes I've taken so I've just begun to assess their writing. For the most part, they all seem to be very imaginative, above average in their writing skills, and serious about writing. I know what to say about that. But I am not a fiction writer-----prose poems--oh yes! And I am introducing them to flash fiction or sudden fiction but I do not know where that genre is received as it is so new to me. Also, I am familiar with the recent discussion of Japanese cellphone fiction (although this group is older and probably not interested in writing like that). If anyone has suggestions about e-zine fiction writing /submitting, I would appreciate it. I believe it is safe to tell them to start small --perhaps short story writing, but there is one lady who has written a book of journaling. I have only begun to look at an entry into the volumes she is producing. Finally this is a four week class for beginners that only meets two hours per week. I am talking to them about being able to critique their own work, finding a writers group to support them after this class, and writing as a discipline every day, plus the importance of sending out their work. If any of you have suggestion for me about publication for this group, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Sheila Black Sheila Black --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:19:51 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: blacksox@ATT.NET Subject: Winter with the Writers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Anybody near Central Florida- come on out Russ Golata Hosted by the Rollins College Department of English Four Acclaimed Authors Four Dazzling Evenings Master Classes - 4 p.m., Bush Auditorium Author Readings and Interviews - 8 p.m., Tiedtke Concert Hall MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM Thursday, January 31, 2008 – 8 PM Latest Release: Specimen Days “Reading Michael Cunningham is like putting on see-through glasses. He’s got this way of exposing his characters’ deepest inclinations and motivations, letting us peer through glass directly into their souls.” - The Boston Globe MARK JARMAN Thursday, February 7, 2008 – 8 PM Latest Release: Epistles “Mark Jarman . . . treats poetry as a spiritual quest . . . . He is the son and grandson of preachers and has taken the running quarrel between his father, a rationalist, and his grandfather, a would-be mystic, into the secular realm of his poems . . . . Poetry may have become his true church . . . but he doesn't escape the hard questions of his upbringing.” - The Washington Post CLAIRE KEEGAN Thursday, February 14, 2008 – 8 PM Latest Release: Walk the Blue Fields “That Keegan has a knack for storytelling is proved many times over, in stories that reject the parable approach for a more informal, intimate style . . . . Her ear seems to tune in to the rhythms of life with enviably direct phrasing.” - The New York Times Book Review JAMAICA KINCAID Thursday, February 21, 2008 – 8 PM Latest Release: Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya “Kincaid conscientiously and expertly manipulates language the way a photographer adjusts a camera’s lens, bringing her characters into clear focus and accentuating their profiles against their natural backdrop, a lush – and often perplexing – island milieu.” - The Boston Globe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:20:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eric Hoffman Subject: The Shape of Disclosure: George Oppen Centennial Symposium MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Tuesday, April 8, 3:00-9:00pm The Shape of Disclosure: George Oppen Centennial Symposium On the occasion of George Oppen's centennial and the publication of his Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers, poets and scholars gather to honor the life and work of this spare, powerful and original poet. Co-sponsored with Tribeca Performing Arts Center at BMCC and University of California Press. Funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities. 3:00pm Panel: Biographical-Historical Continuum Moderated by Michael Heller Featuring Stephen Cope on Oppen's diaries and journals, Norman Finkelstein on the late poems, Eric Hoffman on Oppen’s political identity and Kristin Prevallet on Oppen's response to World War II. 5:00pm Panel: Literary-Philosophical Spectrum Moderated by Thom Donovan Featuring Romana Huk on Oppen's relationship to metaphysics and Judeo-Christian philosophy, Burt Kimmelman on Oppen and Heidegger, Peter O'Leary on Whitman's influence on Oppen and John Taggart on Oppen's poetry as "a process of thought." 7:30pm George Oppen Centennial Reading Stephen Cope, Thom Donovan, Norman Finkelstein, E. Tracy Grinnell, Michael Heller, Erica Hunt, Burt Kimmelman, Geoffrey O’Brien, Peter O’Leary, Kristin Prevallet, Hugh Seidman, Harvey Shapiro, Stacy Szymaszek & John Taggart George Oppen was born April 24, 1908 in New Rochelle, New York, and died in San Francisco in 1984. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Of Being Numerous (1968), Oppen was also the author of Discrete Series (1934), The Materials (1962), This in Which (1965) and Primitive (1978). @ Tribeca Performing Arts Center Borough of Manhattan Community College 199 Chambers Street $10/Free to Students and Poets House Members Audiences may attend individual events or the entire symposium --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:13:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barrett Watten Subject: Nel mezzo camin! Announcing The Grand Piano 5 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Nel mezzo camin di nostra opera! Halfway along the path of our work! THE GRAND PIANO, PART 5 An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980. Part=20 4, by Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Ted Pearson, Steve Benson,= =20 Rae Armantrout, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Carla Harryman, and Lyn Hejinian http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/images/homepage/gp4front.jpg "The defiantly-lived optimism on offer in The Grand Piano is yet another=20 way in which this generation...has resisted the imperatives of the poetics,= =20 politics, and performance of self-centered melancholia. / This small verbal= =20 token seems like a passport, an efficient and elegant key to another world= =20 where literary idealism and integrity still command respect." =97Maria Damon, Rain Taxi Review of Books "Obsessively readable" =97Mark Scroggins, Culture Industry Copies of single volumes may be ordered from Small Press Distribution, Inc.= =20 Subscription to The Grand Piano (ten volumes, at three-month intervals,=20 beginning with parts 1=965), is available for $90 from Lyn Hejinian, 2639=20 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94705. Partial subscriptions starting from #2= =20 are $80; from #3, for $70; from #4, for $60: from #5, $50; etc. Order forms (color or b&w) may be downloaded at: http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/pdfs/gp15order.pdf http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/pdfs/gp15orderbw.pdf Visit the Grand Piano home site for updated links and information: http://www.thegrandpiano.org Designed and published by Barrett Watten, Mode A/This Press (Detroit), 6885= =20 Cathedral Drive, Bloomfield Twp., MI 48301. Distributed (individual orders= =20 and trade) by Small Press Distribution, Inc., 1341 Seventh Street,=20 Berkeley, CA 94710-1408. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:15:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barrett Watten Subject: Nel mezzo camin! Announcing The Grand Piano 5 / corrected Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Nel mezzo camin di nostra opera! Halfway along the path of our work! THE GRAND PIANO, PART 5 An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980. Part=20 5, by Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Ted Pearson, Steve Benson,= =20 Rae Armantrout, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Carla Harryman, and Lyn Hejinian http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/images/homepage/gp5front.jpg "The defiantly-lived optimism on offer in The Grand Piano is yet another=20 way in which this generation...has resisted the imperatives of the poetics,= =20 politics, and performance of self-centered melancholia. / This small verbal= =20 token seems like a passport, an efficient and elegant key to another world= =20 where literary idealism and integrity still command respect." =97Maria Damon, Rain Taxi Review of Books "Obsessively readable" =97Mark Scroggins, Culture Industry Copies of single volumes may be ordered from Small Press Distribution, Inc.= =20 Subscription to The Grand Piano (ten volumes, at three-month intervals,=20 beginning with parts 1=965), is available for $90 from Lyn Hejinian, 2639=20 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA 94705. Partial subscriptions starting from #2= =20 are $80; from #3, for $70; from #4, for $60: from #5, $50; etc. Order forms (color or b&w) may be downloaded at: http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/pdfs/gp15order.pdf http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/ewatten/pdfs/gp15orderbw.pdf Visit the Grand Piano home site for updated links and=20 information:http://www.thegrandpiano.org Designed and published by Barrett Watten, Mode A/This Press (Detroit), 6885= =20 Cathedral Drive, Bloomfield Twp., MI 48301. Distributed (individual orders= =20 and trade) by Small Press Distribution, Inc., 1341 Seventh Street,=20 Berkeley, CA 94710-1408. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:16:59 -0600 Reply-To: herb@eskimo.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Oulipo Compendium In-Reply-To: <479A419F.4027.11B46971@marcus.designerglass.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Fri, January 25, 2008 7:07 pm, Marcus Bales said: > As for your "artists are not an elite" claim, I just looked up the figures > from the > US Census from 2000 online (http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr- > 25.pdf), and it turns out that self-identified artists, designers, > sports, and > media people, all in one lump in the census, are 2.5 million people out of > 280 > million people -- not even 1%, even giving you sports and media people as > "artists".. Add in all the Architecture, draftsmen, cartographers, > engineers, > surveyors, etc, which are also all lumped together in one group, and you > have > about 4.4 million more. Add them to the Artists category and you get about > 7 > million out of 280 million, or about 2. 5% Of course, that requires that > you > agree that surveyors and engineers, for example, are "artists", which I'd > say is > a debatable proposition at best. But even granting that everyone who has > even a remote claim to be an artist in the US _is_ an artist, including > architects, engineers, surveyors, draftsmen -- hell, add in a million of > the 7.5 > million teachers as an estimate of the arts teachers of all kinds, and > call it 8 > million artists out of 280 million people, and round upwards and say it's > the > magnificent total of 3% -- all in all, I'd say that 3% is a small elite -- > what would > you say? One thing I would say is that you don't seem to be making any kind of distinction between any small group and an elite. Surely the distinguishing characteristic of an elite is NOT the number of people in a specific group. There are comparatively few electrical engineers in the United States, are they an elite? There's a comparatively small number of checkout clerks at grocery stores; does this constitute an elite? Bests, Herb Levy Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Forth Wort, Texas 76147 USA 817 446-9884 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:17:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Dr. Barry S. Alpert" Subject: Yves Klein, "La revolution bleue" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Yves Klein intrigued me for years, but I had a rather sketchy perspective, = never having owned and read the best printed material by and about him (eve= n lucky to have scouted one early French catalogue). My hope was that Fran= cois Levy-Kuentz's documentary on Yves Klein ("La revolution bleue", 2006, = 52 minutes). might include some archival footage--unaware that Klein had ar= ranged for filmic documentation of the major moves in his life/career. Wha= t a dazzling figure! And that career trajectory! As I was leaving the Nat= ional Gallery of Art, a stunned spectator asked me whether the film documen= ted an actual person or whether an imaginary being had been concocted by Le= vy-Kuentz=20 =20 In addition, this doc necessarily presents otherwise unavailable footage of= Pierre Restany and the Nouveaux Realistes (Klein, Jean Tinguely, Arman, Da= niel Spoerri, Cesar, and Francois Dufrene [performing sound poetry]). Othe= rs involved with the Nouveaux Realistes (but not imaged in the film) includ= ed Martial Raysse, Mimmo Rotella, then Niki de Saint Phalle, and last but n= ot least, Christo joined the group in 1963. I'm tempted to offer compariso= ns to literary manifestations which also emerged in 1960, but . . . "La Rev= olution Bleue" is available on DVD if you don't want to wait until it's scr= eened within a visual art context in your geographic range. I think this f= ilm will get somewhat overlooked, and therefore want to alert you to the gr= eat archival film footage directed by the auteur Yves Klein which it makes = accessible. Forget whatever images remain with you from the film which met= aphorically killed him, "Mondo Cane".http://www.artfifa.com/index.php?optio= n=3Dcom_film&task=3Dview&id=3D699&Itemid=3D51Barry Alpert _________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! http://biggestloser.msn.com/= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:20:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Grant Jenkins Subject: "Tulsita" Flash-Sound-Poem by the Wa-KOW! Collective at Turbulence.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The Wa-KOW! Collective's new and improved webwork Tulsita is now featured at Turbulence.org, a site devoted to net art and created by New Radio and Performing Arts. The direct link to the piece is: but it's a very cool site, so be sure to check it. Note: Make sure your speakers are on. The Wa-KOW! Collective consists of me, poet David Goldstein, musician Nathan Halverson, and photographer Mindy Stricke. -- G. Matthew Jenkins Director of the Writing Program Faculty of English Language & Literature The University of Tulsa Tulsa, OK 74104 918.631.2573 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 06:29:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: lanny quarles Subject: Re: The Mess of the True World MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit the Medea, um, is the Mess Age, or The Age of Mess (shhh,. the em / of ess, affect has fucgued the species, or made it, or whatever) wonderful alan. really amazing. the skinned model alone is major work.. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:36:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Writers who were visual artists, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit missed a few but that about sums it up shapolsky always shows v.a.by writers that's where i first saw william saroyan and maybe odets On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:55:33 -0800 patrick dunagan writes: > The following show took place last fall in nyc (the list of > participating > writers is at the end) & there is a book that was published: > > Anita Shapolsky Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition devoted > to > visual art by writers, mounted in conjunction with the publication > of > a newbook by Donald Friedman, entitled The Writer's Brush, with > introductory > essays by William Gass and John Updike (Mid-List Publishers, > distributed by > Random House). The exhibition will contain work by more than 100 > contributors, ranging from the mid-nineteenth-century until the > present day > and representing a diversity of styles and subjects. The show will > run from > 11 September until 27 October. An opening reception will take place > from 6-8 > on 13 September. Mr. Friedman will be available to sign books during > the > opening. Refreshments will be served. > > The exhibition is co-curated by Donald Friedman and John Wronoski, > of Lame > Duck Books and Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, MA. It will move > to > Pierre Menard Gallery in early winter and will be reprised at > Denenberg Fine > Arts in Los Angeles in February. A catalogue of the show will > available > sometime in October, featuring an introductory essay by Joseph > McElroy. > > Shapolsky Gallery is located at 152 East 65th Street (at Third > Avenue), New > York, NY 10021. Telephone: 212-452-1094; email: > ashapolsky@nyc.rr.com > > The writers whose work will be included in the exhibition are as > follows: > > Walter Abish, Rafael Alberti, Roberta Allen, A. R. Ammons, John > Ashbery, > Enid Bagnold, Amiri Baraka, Djuna Barnes, Julian Beck, Andrei Bely, > Elizabeth Bishop, Jorge Luis Borges, Breyten Breytenbach, Charles > Bukowski, > Gelett Burgess, William Burroughs, Josef Capek, Tom Clark, Daniel > Clowes, > Jean Cocteau, Norma Cole, Douglas Coupland, Morris Cox, Jim Crace, > E.E. > Cummings, Henry Darger, Annie Dillard, J.P. Donleavy, John Dos > Passos, Rikki > Ducornet, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Durrell, Russell Edson, Kenward > Elmslie, > Jules Feiffer, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Henri Ford, Federico > Garcia > Lorca, Kahlil Gibran, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Allen Ginsberg, > Louise > Glück, Guenter Grass, Alasdair Gray, Nikolai Gumilov, Allan > Gurganus, Brion > Gysin, Hermann Hesse, Jack Hirschman, Susan Howe, Georges Hugnet, > Victor > Hugo, Aldous Huxley, Tama Janowitz, Charles Johnson, Donald Justice, > Anna > Kavan, Weldon Kees, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Maxine Hong Kingston, > Alfred > Kubin, Jonathan Lethem, Mina Loy, Lucebert, Jackson Mac Low, > Clarence Major, > Robert Marshall, Leonard Michaels, Henri Michaux, Henry Miller, > Susan Minot, > Walter Mosley, Hugh Nissensen, Clifford Odets, Kenneth Patchen, > Mervyn > Peake, Sylvia Plath, Beatrix Potter, Annie Proulx, James Purdy, > Alexei > Remizov, Kenneth Rexroth, MacLaren Ross, Peter Sacks, William > Saroyan, Mira > Schor, Maurice Sendak, Leslie Marmon Silko, Charles Simic, Patti > Smith, > William Jay Smith, Iris Smyles, Ralph Steadman, Mark Strand, Igor > Terentiev, > James Thurber, Ruthven Todd, Frederic Tuten, Josef Vachal, > Janwillem > Vandewetering, Cecilia Vicuna, Kurt Vonnegut, Derek Walcott, Keith > Waldrop, > Rosanna Warren, Lewis Warsh, Denton Welch, Marjorie Welish, Richard > Wilbur, > Tennesee Williams, Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Tom Wolfe, W.B. Yeats, and > Unica > Zuern > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:34:08 -0500 Reply-To: tyrone williams Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: tyrone williams Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Great site, Grant! Tyrone Williams -----Original Message----- >From: Grant Jenkins >Sent: Jan 29, 2008 12:20 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: "Tulsita" Flash-Sound-Poem by the Wa-KOW! Collective at Turbulence.org > >The Wa-KOW! Collective's new and improved webwork Tulsita > is now featured >at Turbulence.org, a site devoted to net art and created by New Radio >and Performing Arts. > >The direct link to the piece is: > >but it's a very cool site, so be sure to check it. > >Note: Make sure your speakers are on. > >The Wa-KOW! Collective consists of me, poet David Goldstein, musician >Nathan Halverson, and photographer Mindy Stricke. > >-- > >G. Matthew Jenkins >Director of the Writing Program >Faculty of English Language & Literature >The University of Tulsa >Tulsa, OK 74104 >918.631.2573 Tyrone Williams ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:51:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Subject: Philip Whalen Celebration at the Poetry Project MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Celebrating the release of The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen =20 The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church Wednesday, February 6th, 8PM 131 E. 10th Street, New York City 212-674-0910; info@poetryproject.com Participants include Ron Padgett, Anne Tardos, David Meltzer, Anne Waldman, Anselm Berrigan, Suzi Winson, Jim Koller, Ammiel Alcalay, Wanda Phipps, Lewis Warsh, John Coletti, Simon Pettet, Charles Bernstein, and Michael Rothenberg ------------------------------------------------------- =20 The mountain is THERE (between two lakes)=20 I brought back a piece of its rock=20 Heavy dark-honey color=20 With a seam of crystal, some of the quartz=20 Stained by its matrix=20 Practically indestructible=20 A shift from opacity to brilliance=20 (The Zenbos say, "Lightning-flash & flint-spark") Like the mountains = where it was made =20 What we see of the world is the mind's=20 Invention and the mind=20 Though stained by it, becoming=20 Rivers, sun, mule-dung, flies-=20 Can shift instantly=20 A dirty bird in a square time=20 =20 Gone=20 Gone=20 REALLY gone=20 Into the cool=20 O MAMA!=20 =20 Like they say, "Four times up,=20 Three times down." I'm still on the mountain.=20 =20 -from Sourdough Mountain Lookout ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:54:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: Rita Wong Transparency Machine Event / available download MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Rita Wong presents a Transparency Machine Event on Monday 11 Feb, 8:00-9:30pm at Artcite, 109 University Ave. W., Windsor, . Texts she has selected for her event can be downloaded from the link at News & Events, . On the same day, Monday 11 Feb, Rita Wong will also give a poetry reading, 4:30-5:30 pm, Katzman Lounge, Vanier Hall, University of Windsor, . Rita Wong is the author of monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998) and forage (Nightwood, 2007). Her poems have appeared in anthologies such as Ribsauce: a CD/Anthology of Words by Women (Vehicule, 2001), The Common Sky: Canadian Writers Against the War (Three Squares, 2003), Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury Press, 2005), and Making a Difference: Canadian Multicultural Literatures in English (Oxford, 2007). The recipient of the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Emerging Writer Award, she teaches in Critical + Cultural Studies at the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design in Vancouver. The Transparency Machine Event Series invites a poet to discuss his or her work in the context of other texts selected and made available in advance by the poet. The event provides a forum for discussing the practice and theory of writing and reading poetry -- including practices and theories of prefixing poetry ("anti-"; "non-"), adjectivizing poetry ("poetic"), and capitalizing poetry (first letter; letters at random). Poetry prismatically refracts social, political, scientific, aesthetic languages, transforming them into something exciting and strange. How does poetic form do that? This series explores questions about the language of poetry, offering readers and writers a multi-dimensional experience of the shapes and sounds of contemporary poetry by inviting leading and emerging innovative practitioners of the art. Next event in the series: Carla Harryman, 24 March, 4-5:30 pm, Katzman Lounge. Further info, lcabri@uwindsor.ca Rita Wong's events are funded by The Canada Council, Artcite, University of Windsor Department of English Language, Literature and Creative Writing, and with support from Dr. Stephen Pender, Research Leadership Chair, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Both the talk and reading are free - as in all welcome. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:14:12 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: Writers who were visual artists, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable = Although best known as a sculptor, Carl Andre is an outstanding poet.=0A=0A= In case anyone is interested, here is the text of a review I wrote of a 199= 4 exhibition of his poetry:=0A=0A=0A=0ACARL ANDRE=0APAULA COOPER GALLERY=0A= =0ACan visual art and poetry be one and the same? Displaying 600 pages of= writing in vitrines on gallery walls as though they were drawings certainl= y frustrates some of the usual desiderata for reading poetry. Carl Andre's= exhibition Words consisted of some 600 sheets typed by the artist between = 1957 and 1980. Normally, the poet's hand is nothing to his poem, and no t= ypeface used to reproduce it is likely to effect the poem's existence. Yet= the display of Andre's poems as holograph sheets, while making it difficul= t to read them, does put us in the frame of mind to see them. That they we= re produced on a manual typewriter doesn't hurt either; a medium's obsolesc= ence cues us to see it aesthetically. The physical weight of the type bar'= s imprint, the density of ink conveyed, and of course the distinction betwe= en black and red ribbons--such factors begin to take on quasi-sculptural or= pictorial weight when the poems are presented in this manner. But all these qualities would not count for much if the typed texts were not apt t= o receive or "absorb" them. At its most interesting, Andre's poetry eschew= s standard phrasing and syntax to subject language to a "systematic derange= ment," whether by turning words into abstract visual patterns through the r= epetition of component letters, using the alphabetical order of initial let= ters as an ordering structure, or using the length of words in the same way= , as in "preface to the work itself," 1963, which proceeds from two-letter = words like "in" and "is" through three-letter words, four-letters words, an= d on to "clastic, stacked, identical, interchangeable."=0A But the effe= ct of Andre's repetitions and systems is not abstract or merely methodical.= Since the entire effort of his poetry involves the disengagement of words= from syntax, their isolation and analysis as (in Andre's words) "palpable = tactile qualities" in their own right, the presentation's emphasis on the p= oems' physical realization merely elicits a quality already inherent in the= m as texts. The poems irresistibly conjure character, narrative, and setti= ng (many sequences are called "novels" or "operas"), though leaving these u= ncannily distant and unknowable. Their repetitions are more mythic or fata= listic than formal or musical. Particularly as it emerges from this ambien= t presentation, Andre's poetry evokes a stark, elemental landscape in which= figures and objects (that is, words) stand out in the intense relief of an= immobile noon or dissolve in its unforgiving glare. While it may be tempt= ing to see his poetry in relation to a new generation of artists who work with language but are not "conceptual"--art= ists as different as Kenneth Goldsmith and Sean Landers--it is important to= keep in mind that its approximation to the condition of visual art is actu= ally contingent on a project that is irreducibly poetic, though (like the c= ontemporaneous work of John Cage or Jackson Mac Low) transgressive of the c= onventions of poetry.=0A=0A=0A----- Original Message ----=0AFrom: steve d. = dalachinsky =0ATo: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU=0ASent: = Tuesday, 29 January, 2008 5:36:05 PM=0ASubject: Re: Writers who were visual= artists, etc=0A=0Amissed a few but that about sums it up shapolsky always= shows v.a.by=0Awriters=0Athat's where i first saw william saroyan and mayb= e odets =0A=0AOn Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:55:33 -0800 patrick dunagan =0Awrites:=0A> The following show took place last fall in nyc (th= e list of =0A> participating=0A> writers is at the end) & there is a book t= hat was published:=0A> =0A> Anita Shapolsky Gallery is pleased to announce = an exhibition devoted =0A> to=0A> visual art by writers, mounted in conjunc= tion with the publication =0A> of=0A> a newbook by Donald Friedman, entitle= d The Writer's Brush, with=0A> introductory=0A> essays by William Gass and = John Updike (Mid-List Publishers, =0A> distributed by=0A> Random House). Th= e exhibition will contain work by more than 100=0A> contributors, ranging f= rom the mid-nineteenth-century until the =0A> present day=0A> and represent= ing a diversity of styles and subjects. The show will =0A> run from=0A> 11 = September until 27 October. An opening reception will take place =0A> from = 6-8=0A> on 13 September. Mr. Friedman will be available to sign books durin= g =0A> the=0A> opening. Refreshments will be served.=0A> =0A> The exhibitio= n is co-curated by Donald Friedman and John Wronoski, =0A> of Lame=0A> Duck= Books and Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, MA. It will move =0A> to=0A>= Pierre Menard Gallery in early winter and will be reprised at =0A> Denenbe= rg Fine=0A> Arts in Los Angeles in February. A catalogue of the show will = =0A> available=0A> sometime in October, featuring an introductory essay by = Joseph =0A> McElroy.=0A> =0A> Shapolsky Gallery is located at 152 East 65th= Street (at Third =0A> Avenue), New=0A> York, NY 10021. Telephone: 212-452-= 1094; email: =0A> ashapolsky@nyc.rr.com=0A> =0A> The writers whose work wil= l be included in the exhibition are as =0A> follows:=0A> =0A> Walter Abish,= Rafael Alberti, Roberta Allen, A. R. Ammons, John =0A> Ashbery,=0A> Enid B= agnold, Amiri Baraka, Djuna Barnes, Julian Beck, Andrei Bely,=0A> Elizabeth= Bishop, Jorge Luis Borges, Breyten Breytenbach, Charles =0A> Bukowski,=0A>= Gelett Burgess, William Burroughs, Josef Capek, Tom Clark, Daniel =0A> Clo= wes,=0A> Jean Cocteau, Norma Cole, Douglas Coupland, Morris Cox, Jim Crace,= =0A> E.E.=0A> Cummings, Henry Darger, Annie Dillard, J.P. Donleavy, John D= os =0A> Passos, Rikki=0A> Ducornet, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Durrell, Russel= l Edson, Kenward =0A> Elmslie,=0A> Jules Feiffer, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ch= arles Henri Ford, Federico =0A> Garcia=0A> Lorca, Kahlil Gibran, Charlotte = Perkins Gilman, Allen Ginsberg, =0A> Louise=0A> Gl=C3=BCck, Guenter Grass, = Alasdair Gray, Nikolai Gumilov, Allan =0A> Gurganus, Brion=0A> Gysin, Herma= nn Hesse, Jack Hirschman, Susan Howe, Georges Hugnet, =0A> Victor=0A> Hugo,= Aldous Huxley, Tama Janowitz, Charles Johnson, Donald Justice, =0A> Anna= =0A> Kavan, Weldon Kees, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, Maxine Hong Kingston, =0A= > Alfred=0A> Kubin, Jonathan Lethem, Mina Loy, Lucebert, Jackson Mac Low, = =0A> Clarence Major,=0A> Robert Marshall, Leonard Michaels, Henri Michaux, = Henry Miller, =0A> Susan Minot,=0A> Walter Mosley, Hugh Nissensen, Clifford= Odets, Kenneth Patchen, =0A> Mervyn=0A> Peake, Sylvia Plath, Beatrix Potte= r, Annie Proulx, James Purdy, =0A> Alexei=0A> Remizov, Kenneth Rexroth, Mac= Laren Ross, Peter Sacks, William =0A> Saroyan, Mira=0A> Schor, Maurice Send= ak, Leslie Marmon Silko, Charles Simic, Patti =0A> Smith,=0A> William Jay S= mith, Iris Smyles, Ralph Steadman, Mark Strand, Igor =0A> Terentiev,=0A> Ja= mes Thurber, Ruthven Todd, Frederic Tuten, Josef Vachal, =0A> Janwillem=0A>= Vandewetering, Cecilia Vicuna, Kurt Vonnegut, Derek Walcott, Keith =0A> Wa= ldrop,=0A> Rosanna Warren, Lewis Warsh, Denton Welch, Marjorie Welish, Rich= ard =0A> Wilbur,=0A> Tennesee Williams, Stanislaw Witkiewicz, Tom Wolfe, W.= B. Yeats, and =0A> Unica=0A> Zuern=0A> =0A> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:01:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: more mapping phenomena from the true world MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed more mapping phenomena from the true world preliminary, head / torso http://www.alansondheim.org/azurehead1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurehead2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurehead3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurehead4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurehead5.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurehead6.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurehead7.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/azurehead8.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod5.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod6.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod7.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod8.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod9.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod91.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod92.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod93.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/bod95.jpg ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:55:54 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beckett Subject: E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-S-V-A-L-U-E-S: a new and final interview MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've just posted to e-values an interview with Tom Mandel by Sheila Murphy. It is the 40th and final interview. The interview is here: _http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2008/01/interview-with-tom-mandel-by-sheila.html_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2008/01/interview-with-tom-mandel-by-sheila.html) The site will remain up but not be added to. I encourage peeps to maintain links to the site and to continue using it as a resource. A third and final print volume which will complete and amplify the documentation of the project will be published later this year. The first two print volumes are available at the Otoliths storefront, here-- _http://www.lulu.com/content/778361_ (http://www.lulu.com/content/778361) & here-- _http://www.lulu.com/content/1351093_ (http://www.lulu.com/content/1351093) (http://www.lulu.com/content/748585) Below is a list of all the interviews which have been conducted. I'm proud of the work which has been done. _Interview with Crag Hill_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/01/interview-with-crag-hill.html) (January 2005) _Interview with Thomas Fink _ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/01/interview-with-thomas-fink_28.html) (January 2005) _Interview with Nick Piombino_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/02/interview-with-nick-piombino.html) (February 2005) _Interview with Sheila E. Murphy_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/03/interview-with-sheila-e-murphy-by.html) by Thomas Fink (March 2005) _Interview with Eileen R. Tabios_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/04/interview-with-eileen-r-tabios.html) (April 2005) _Interview with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/05/jukka-pekka-kervinen-interviewed-by.html) by Mark Young (May 2005) _Interview with K. Silem Mohammad_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/06/interview-with-k-silem-mohammad.html) (June 2005) _Interview with Geof Huth by Crag Hill & Ron Silliman_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/07/interview-with-geof-huth-by-crag-hill.html) (July 2005) _Interview with Barbara Jane Reyes & Paolo Javier by Eileen R. Tabios_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/09/interview-with-barbara-jane-reyes-and.ht ml) (September 2005) _Interview with Stephen Paul Miller by Thomas Fink_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2005/10/interview-with-stephen-paul-miller-by.html) (October 2005) _Interview with Jean Vengua_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/01/interview-with-jean-vengua.html) (January 2006) _Interview with Mark Young_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/01/interview-with-mark-young.html) (January 2006) _Interview with Michael Heller by Thomas Fink_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/01/interview-with-michael-heller-by.html) (January 2006) _Interview with Bob Grumman by Geof Huth_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/01/interview-with-bob-grumman-by-geof.html) (January 2006) _Interview with Shanna Compton_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/02/interview-with-shanna-compton.html) (February 2006) _Interview with Sandy McIntosh by Thomas Fink_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/03/interview-with-sandy-mcintosh-by.html) (March 2006) _Interview with Jim McCrary_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/04/interview-with-jim-mccrary.html) (April 2006) _Interview with Gary Sullivan_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-gary-sullivan.html) (May 2006) _Interview with Aldon Lynn Nielsen_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-aldon-lynn-nielsen.html) (May 2006) _Interview with Michael Farrell by Richard Lopez_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/06/interview-with-michael-farrell-by.html) (June 2006) _Interview with CA Conrad_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/08/interview-with-caconrad.html) (August2006) _Interview with Anny Ballardini_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-anny-ballardini.html) (May 2006) _Interview with Denise Duhamel & Nick Carbo by Thomas Fink_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/09/interview-with-denise-duhamel-and-nick.html) (September 2006) _Interview with Jack Kimball_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/09/interview-with-jack-kimball.html) (September 2006) _Interview with Geoffrey Young by Thomas Fink_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/09/interview-with-geoffrey-young-by.html) (September 2006) _Interview with Jordan Stempleman_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/01/interview-with-jordan-stempleman.html) (January 2007) _Interview with Ernesto Priego_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/01/interview-with-ernesto-priego.html) (January 2007) _Interview with Catherine Daly by Thomas Fink_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/02/interview-with-catherine-daly-by-thomas.html) (February 2007) _Interview with Karri Kokko_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/02/interview-with-karri-kokko.html) (February 2007) _Interview with Jill Jones_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/03/interview-with-jill-jones.html) (March 2007) _Interview with Javant Biarujia by Sheila E. Murphy_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/04/interview-with-javant-biarujia-by.html) (April 2007) _Interview with Barry Schwabsky_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/05/interview-with-barry-schwabsky.html) (May 2007) _Interview of Peter Ganick by Sheila E. Murphy_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/06/sheila-e-murphy-interview-of-peter.html) (June 2007) _Interview with Joseph Lease by Thomas Fink_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/08/interview-with-joseph-lease.html) (August 2007) _Interview with Stephen Vincent_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/08/interview-with-stephen-vincent.html) (August 2007) _Interview with Alan Davies_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/09/interview-with-alan-davies.html) (September 2007) _INTERVIEW WITH NOAH ELI GORDON by Thomas Fink_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2007/10/interview-with-noah-eli-gordon-by.html) (October 2007) _Interview with Mary Rising Higgins by John Tritica and Bruce Holsapple_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2008/01/linescapes-interview-with-mary-rising. html) (January 2008) _Interview with Jessica Grim_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2008/01/interview-with-jessica-grim.html) (January 2008) _Interview with Tom Mandel by Sheila Murphy_ (http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2008/01/interview-with-tom-mandel-by-sheila.html) (January 2008) **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:14:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carol Novack Subject: Reminder re Feb. 1st Online Publishing Panel at AWP & Reading at the KGB Bar Comments: To: lit-events@yahoogroups.com, nycwriters , e-pubs@yahoogroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline Mad Hatters' Review Edgy & Enlightened Literature, Art & Music in the Age of Dementia Poetry, Prose & Anything Goes Reading Series Friday, February 1st, 2008, 7 =96 9 pm KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, N.Y.C. *(between Bowery & 2nd Ave. - subway F, V to 2nd Ave., exit 1st Ave. & Houston)* Presenting online journal publishers/editors in the AWP panel (10:30 =96 11:45 am, Feb. 1st: Nassau Suite, Hilton, 2nd Floor) *Habitable Planets and Black Holes: Mapping the Expanding Cyber-Universe of the New Literary Media*, & the fabul/ous/ist *Rikki Ducornet*. Rikki Ducornet, author of seven novels including the prize winning *Gazelle= , The Jade Cabinet*, and* The Fan Maker's Inquisition*. In 2004 she received the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. A third collection of short fictions has been published by The Dalkey Archive. Her drawings, lithographs, and paintings have been exhibited widely.. Eric Melbye, publisher of *Segue* and an associate professor of English/Creative Writing at Miami University Middletown. His novel *Tru* ha= s just been published by Flame Books; his co-edited anthology, *Under Our Skin: Literature of Breast Cancer*, was published in 2006 (The Illuminati Press). Carol Novack, publisher/editor of *Mad Hatters' Review*, author of a poetry chapbook, collaborative films and CDs. Whatnots may or will be found in *American Letters & Commentary, Fiction International, First Intensity, Diagram, Gargoyle, LIT, Notre Dame Review, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Oto*, et al. http://carolnovack.blogspot.com. Jonathan Penton, publisher of *Unlikely Stories*, which has been publishing transgressive literature since 1998, and film, music, visual art, cultural essays, and chapbooks since 2004. He worked on *Big Bridge* for five years. Jonathan's own poetry chapbooks are *Last Chap* (2004), *Blood* and *Salsa and Painting Rust* (2006), and* Prosthetic Gods* (2008). Charles P. Ries, poetry editor of *Word Riot*. His poetry, reviews and shor= t stories have appeared throughout the small press and he has accumulated several Pushcart nominations. Charles is a founding member of the Lake Shor= e Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes. Find mor= e at: http://www.literati.net/Ries. Tamara Kaye Sellman, publisher of *Periphery* and the director of MRCentral.net , a global network focused on magical realism. Her work has appeared widely in the US, Canada, Mexico, th= e UK, and Malaysia, most recently in *Terrain, The Hiss Quarterly, Long Story Short*, and *Cantaraville II*. She's received two Pushcart Prize nominations. Anmarie Trimble, publisher of the innovative multi-media *Born Magazine*. She teaches interdisciplinary studies at Portland State University. Her poetry has appeared in *Black Warrior Review, Field: Contemporary Poetry an= d Poetics*, and other publications. *Publications by the authors will be offered for sale by Mobile Libris .* For further info, email: madhattersreview@gmail.com (type *READINGS* in the subject line) --=20 MAD HATTERS' REVIEW: Edgy & Enlightened Literature, Art & Music in the Age of Dementia: http://www.madhattersreview.com KEEP THE MAD HATTERS ALIVE! MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION HERE: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/contribute/donate/580 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:39:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Catherine Daly Subject: Re: E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-S-V-A-L-U-E-S: a new and final interview In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline > > I'm proud of the work which has been done. And we are grateful! -- All best, Catherine Daly c.a.b.daly@gmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:54:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: Writers who were visual artists, etc In-Reply-To: <238657.1098.qm@web86004.mail.ird.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit While we are on this subject, another interesting angle is poets who are partnered with visual artists or curators and what may or may not be the impact of the partner's eye and use of the medium on the making of the poet's work. Additionally, one could also include, poets who write on the visual arts, when the art has formed a kind of 'marriage' with poetry making. I think this question is greater than keeping the focus on 'quality switch-hitters.' The dance of various kinds of partners (poets and the world of viz) - the way they inform each other can be equally rich. Thinking at the moment of Mei-Mei B and R. Tuttle - for example. Nor should anyone think that these partnerships magically lead to great painterly poems or, conversely rich literary art works. Hey doodle-do! Yeah, that, too! Stephen V http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Stephen Vincent Barry Schwabsky wrote: Although best known as a sculptor, Carl Andre is an outstanding poet. In case anyone is interested, here is the text of a review I wrote of a 1994 exhibition of his poetry: ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 07:53:27 -0500 Reply-To: jamie@rockheals.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jamie Gaughran-Perez Subject: Dustin Williamson, Sundance and more on Rock Heals MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit ((excuse the periodic mailing!)) at Rock Heals... (( www.rockheals.com )) Last week: New poetry from Dustin Williamson (NYC); a check-in with various robots on their picks for the U.S. presidential race; and music from Burial (somewhere in the UK) This week: Sundance coverage from Pam Martin (L.A.); poetry from Sara Mumolo (Oakland); and music from The Black Kids (Jacksonville, Fla.) Next week: Super Tuesday fallout... Come on by and enjoy these and 129 more weeks of goodness in the archives... jamie.gp -- Jamie Gaughran-Perez Rock Heals, a Narrow House Weekly www.rockheals.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:33:13 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Barry Schwabsky Subject: Re: Writers who were visual artists, etc In-Reply-To: <84142.27225.qm@web82609.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit A big topic (or pair of topics). My wife is an artist and we have certainly influenced each other profoundly over the years through our work. Over the past three years, she has been working on an ongoing artwork that takes the form of e-mail, several days a week, usually encompassing both a photographic image and text. What's curious is that while she undertook this work under the aegis of art, many people who have been following the work (including some pretty fine poets) have received it as poetry, rather than as art. And she has been willing to take that on board. Stephen Vincent wrote: While we are on this subject, another interesting angle is poets who are partnered with visual artists or curators and what may or may not be the impact of the partner's eye and use of the medium on the making of the poet's work. Additionally, one could also include, poets who write on the visual arts, when the art has formed a kind of 'marriage' with poetry making. I think this question is greater than keeping the focus on 'quality switch-hitters.' The dance of various kinds of partners (poets and the world of viz) - the way they inform each other can be equally rich. Thinking at the moment of Mei-Mei B and R. Tuttle - for example. Nor should anyone think that these partnerships magically lead to great painterly poems or, conversely rich literary art works. Hey doodle-do! Yeah, that, too! Stephen V http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ Stephen Vincent Barry Schwabsky wrote: Although best known as a sculptor, Carl Andre is an outstanding poet. In case anyone is interested, here is the text of a review I wrote of a 1994 exhibition of his poetry: ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:00:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Halvard Johnson Subject: Re: Writers who were visual artists, etc In-Reply-To: <165426.41657.qm@web86011.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v915) My wife also is an artist (painter, print-maker, Cooper Union-trained), whose art work has taken a back seat to her writing (yes, she writes too). We influence each other every day. Hal, husband to Lynda Schor "Experiments suggest that conscious choice is an illusion, but some experts choose to disagree." --NYT Halvard Johnson ================ halvard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html http://entropyandme.blogspot.com http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com http://www.hamiltonstone.org http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html On Jan 30, 2008, at 8:33 AM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > A big topic (or pair of topics). My wife is an artist and we have > certainly influenced each other profoundly over the years through > our work. Over the past three years, she has been working on an > ongoing artwork that takes the form of e-mail, several days a week, > usually encompassing both a photographic image and text. What's > curious is that while she undertook this work under the aegis of > art, many people who have been following the work (including some > pretty fine poets) have received it as poetry, rather than as art. > And she has been willing to take that on board. > > Stephen Vincent wrote: > While we are on this subject, another interesting angle is poets who > are partnered with visual artists or curators and what may or may > not be the impact of the partner's eye and use of the medium on the > making of the poet's work. > Additionally, one could also include, poets who write on the visual > arts, when the art has formed a kind of 'marriage' with poetry making. > I think this question is greater than keeping the focus on 'quality > switch-hitters.' The dance of various kinds of partners (poets and > the world of viz) - the way they inform each other can be equally > rich. Thinking at the moment of Mei-Mei B and R. Tuttle - for example. > Nor should anyone think that these partnerships magically lead to > great painterly poems or, conversely rich literary art works. Hey > doodle-do! Yeah, that, too! > > Stephen V > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > > Stephen Vincent > > > Barry Schwabsky wrote: > Although best known as a sculptor, Carl Andre is an outstanding poet. > > In case anyone is interested, here is the text of a review I wrote > of a 1994 exhibition of his poetry: ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:40:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kyle Schlesinger Subject: Dan Featherston and Catherine Taylor this Friday at Peace on A Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Peace On A=20 presents Dan Featherston & Catherine Taylor reading for the launch of Featherston=B9s *The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir* (more info below!) Friday, February 1st 2008 8PM BYOB & $5 donation=20 hosted by Thom Donovan with Cuneiform Press at: 166 Avenue A, Apartment #2 (btwn 10th and 11th) New York, NY 10009 about the readers: Dan Featherston is the author of several books of poetry, including *The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir* (Cuneiform Press, 2007), *United States* (Factory School , 2005), and *Into the Earth* (Quarry Press, 2005). His critical writings on American poetry and poetics have appeared in a number of publications, most recently Charles Olson: A Poet's Prose. While living in Tucson , he helped found POG, a poetry group that has hosted dozens of performances by poets and artists, and edited A.BACUS, a journal of experimental poetry and translation. Featherston is currently a visiting professor at Kutztown University. He lives in Philadelphia with Rachel McCrystal and their dog Fredo. Carceral Time =20 Forced to sleep with their hands exposed how will a tool take shape? =20 Dreams take the shapes of tools through which the body escapes itself. A wake. A spoon baked into a cake. =20 In the fist of memory time was folding inward. =20 (from *The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir*) Catherine Taylor teaches at Ohio University. Her essays, poetry, and review= s have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Typo, Xantippe, The Colorado Review, The Laurel Review, Jacket, and ActionNow. Taylor is a Founding Editor of Essay Press (www.essaypress.org), a small press dedicated to publishing book-length innovative essays. She is at work on a hybrid genre book about South Africa and a scholarly book about 20th-century documentary representations of political violence entitled */Documents of Despair/*. nobody, who are you? A fucking nation? Walcott I=B9m not. A roseate universe, subcutaneous nipple, prismatic cd playing cum and dust and Oum Kalsoum. National identity=B9s inevitable as sand, blood, a dark juggernaut MLK refused to accept despair as the only response to the ambiguities of history, but I can=B9t, today, so far from you, O Canada, who is asked to represent it. Which I=B9s slip the noose? Salim Halali=B9s heart may have been a foreign country, mine=B9= s a minefield for you, h=B9bibi, skip the stones, centrifugal archipelago, ruin Peace On A is an events series devoted to emergent work by writers, artists= , performers and scholars. Link Wild Horses of Fire weblog (whof.blogspot.com) for back advertisements, introductions, reading selections and pics. Cuneiform is pleased to announc= e the publication of: THE CLOCK MAKER'S MEMOIR by Dan Featherston=20 Advanced praise for The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir: Through a series of poised, meditative stanzas, The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir takes on the formidable topics of time and memory. What=B9s evident throughou= t this book is a careful craftsmanship leading to novel perspectives all around the clock.=20 =8B Lisa Jarnot=20 The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir registers the world=B9s variety in small catalogs of storms, shadows, dreams, memories, and rituals of childhood. In such forms, time returns each time with a difference. Likewise, the supple measure of these poems returns us to a rhythm or tone each time with a difference, sounding a subtle echo of slipped in sleep. As William Blake declares, =B3There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find / Nor can his Watch Fiends find it.=B2 Yet Dan Featherston finds it =8B through alert and resourceful art.=20 =8B Devin Johnston=20 With its precise music, The Clock Maker=B9s Memoir navigates the immeasurable distance between the clock=B9s face and the face worn by lived experiences. I= n these poems, memoir is not some static repository: it is a poesis of the present tense. Featherston=B9s craft and his unblinking commitment to particulars fashion a lyric search that one can trust to ask the questions, the necessary questions of time, space, and how we find one another amidst all this memory.=20 =8BRichard Deming=20 Available from Small Press Distribution (www.spdbooks.org) or direct from Cuneiform (www.cuneiformpress.com) and you'll receive FREE SHIPPING. Send a $12 check to: Cuneiform | 214 North Henry Street | Brooklyn, NY 11222 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:24:43 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anny Ballardini Subject: Re: E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-S-V-A-L-U-E-S: a new and final interview In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Indeed! And congratulations to Tom Beckett and Mark Young, best, Anny Ballardini On Jan 30, 2008 3:39 AM, Catherine Daly wrote: > > > > I'm proud of the work which has been done. > > > And we are grateful! > > > > -- > All best, > Catherine Daly > c.a.b.daly@gmail.com > -- Anny Ballardini http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/ http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:18:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: writers who were visual artists? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit wiliam faulkner did a book of pomes and his woodcuts On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:55:55 -0500 "steve d. dalachinsky" writes: > if we're expanding ted joans painted in the 50's ginsberg photos > charles henri ford collage etc gerd stern wallace berman and his > crew > DH Lawrence oops sorry he's not american but ha, he did live in > new > mexico where he painted alot > > if ya wanna go ouside america buson victor hugo > henri chopin breton > oh gysin too was english > but let's remember we were asked pre-1960 american so no gysin > and what about women ???? and non whites other than ted joans oh > baraka > sorta paints oops that's post 60s perhaps > again michaux not usa american > thoreau? oh wait what's his name shit i'm braindead now he wrote > the > congo ah got it vachel lindsay > he painted somewhat like birchfield > > again michael A not american and he was a painter who wrote > there's > millions of them like in america MARSDEN HARTLEY for one > > On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:14:40 -0500 Mark Weiss > > writes: > > Also William Carlos Williams. > > > > At 11:35 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote: > > >Robert Duncan made quite a bit of art, though I'm not sure he > would > > > > >have considered himself a visual artist > > > > > >Mairead Byrne wrote: Derek Walcott is a > > painter. > > >That's a start! > > >Mairead > > > > > > >>> "J.P. Craig" 01/26/08 1:46 PM >>> > > >Hello listafarians, > > >I'm asking this question for a friend who is an art historian. > She > > >inquires: > > > > > > > I'm looking for American writers (pre-1960) who were also > > visual > > > > artists. I can think of lots of artists who were writers, but > > > I'm > > > > looking for folks who were primarily novelists, poets, etc. > who > > also > > > > made visual art on occasion. > > > > > >I'm afraid I wasn't much help, so I offered to pass her question > > >along to this list. If you can help, drop her a note at > > >katy.floyd@gmail.com. > > > > > > > > >JP Craig > > >http://jpcraig.blogspot.com/ > > > > > > > > > > > >--------------------------------- > > >Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage. > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:45:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Writers who were visual artists, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit mine 's a painter poet On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:00:54 -0600 Halvard Johnson writes: > My wife also is an artist (painter, print-maker, Cooper > Union-trained), > whose art work has taken a back seat to her writing (yes, she > writes > too). We influence each other every day. > > Hal, husband to Lynda Schor > > "Experiments suggest that conscious > choice is an illusion, but some experts > choose to disagree." > --NYT > > Halvard Johnson > ================ > halvard@earthlink.net > http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html > http://entropyandme.blogspot.com > http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com > http://www.hamiltonstone.org > http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html > > > > > > On Jan 30, 2008, at 8:33 AM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > > > A big topic (or pair of topics). My wife is an artist and we have > > > certainly influenced each other profoundly over the years through > > > our work. Over the past three years, she has been working on an > > ongoing artwork that takes the form of e-mail, several days a > week, > > usually encompassing both a photographic image and text. What's > > curious is that while she undertook this work under the aegis of > > > art, many people who have been following the work (including some > > > pretty fine poets) have received it as poetry, rather than as art. > > > And she has been willing to take that on board. > > > > Stephen Vincent wrote: > > While we are on this subject, another interesting angle is poets > who > > are partnered with visual artists or curators and what may or may > > > not be the impact of the partner's eye and use of the medium on > the > > making of the poet's work. > > Additionally, one could also include, poets who write on the > visual > > arts, when the art has formed a kind of 'marriage' with poetry > making. > > I think this question is greater than keeping the focus on > 'quality > > switch-hitters.' The dance of various kinds of partners (poets and > > > the world of viz) - the way they inform each other can be equally > > > rich. Thinking at the moment of Mei-Mei B and R. Tuttle - for > example. > > Nor should anyone think that these partnerships magically lead to > > > great painterly poems or, conversely rich literary art works. Hey > > > doodle-do! Yeah, that, too! > > > > Stephen V > > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > > > > Stephen Vincent > > > > > > Barry Schwabsky wrote: > > Although best known as a sculptor, Carl Andre is an outstanding > poet. > > > > In case anyone is interested, here is the text of a review I wrote > > > of a 1994 exhibition of his poetry: > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:01:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: the kiss MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed the kiss the kiss the touch of life and death darling give me your last breath i'll place my lips against your skull and marrow swoons and all is null http://www.alansondheim.org/thekiss.mp4 and void against the gristeled grid your lips my bones construct a lid that turns self-slaughtered in the wind o emanents please let us in ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:30:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas savage Subject: Re: Writers who were visual artists, etc In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Some years ago, there was a show of visual art by poets at a gallery on Rivington St. called ABC No Rio. This show was organized by Bruce Weber, a poet who is also an art curator or who was at that time. I saw many wonderful things in it. I remember Steve Dalachinsky being in it. He has a great deal of experience with making visual art, usually collages. I, on the other hand, can't draw to save my life. I exhibited a poem from my next book, coming out this spring, with a beautiful abstract made to go with the poem by an accomplished artist named Brian Gormley. I admire and respect poets who have the gift of visual art as well, whether I have that gift or not, which it appears I do not. My extra-literary gifts appear to be musical rather than visual arts oriented. Anyway, someone with access to the list of works shown in that show would have a pretty good list of current poets in downtown NYC who are also visual artists. Regards, Tom Savage Halvard Johnson wrote: My wife also is an artist (painter, print-maker, Cooper Union-trained), whose art work has taken a back seat to her writing (yes, she writes too). We influence each other every day. Hal, husband to Lynda Schor "Experiments suggest that conscious choice is an illusion, but some experts choose to disagree." --NYT Halvard Johnson ================ halvard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html http://entropyandme.blogspot.com http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com http://www.hamiltonstone.org http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html On Jan 30, 2008, at 8:33 AM, Barry Schwabsky wrote: > A big topic (or pair of topics). My wife is an artist and we have > certainly influenced each other profoundly over the years through > our work. Over the past three years, she has been working on an > ongoing artwork that takes the form of e-mail, several days a week, > usually encompassing both a photographic image and text. What's > curious is that while she undertook this work under the aegis of > art, many people who have been following the work (including some > pretty fine poets) have received it as poetry, rather than as art. > And she has been willing to take that on board. > > Stephen Vincent wrote: > While we are on this subject, another interesting angle is poets who > are partnered with visual artists or curators and what may or may > not be the impact of the partner's eye and use of the medium on the > making of the poet's work. > Additionally, one could also include, poets who write on the visual > arts, when the art has formed a kind of 'marriage' with poetry making. > I think this question is greater than keeping the focus on 'quality > switch-hitters.' The dance of various kinds of partners (poets and > the world of viz) - the way they inform each other can be equally > rich. Thinking at the moment of Mei-Mei B and R. Tuttle - for example. > Nor should anyone think that these partnerships magically lead to > great painterly poems or, conversely rich literary art works. Hey > doodle-do! Yeah, that, too! > > Stephen V > http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > > Stephen Vincent > > > Barry Schwabsky wrote: > Although best known as a sculptor, Carl Andre is an outstanding poet. > > In case anyone is interested, here is the text of a review I wrote > of a 1994 exhibition of his poetry: --------------------------------- Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:23:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: lanny quarles Subject: Havmophunic Transolutions Comments: To: WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hey Kids! I've started a group blog for the practice and performance of Homophonic Translation called Havmophunic Transolutions. If'n ya wannbea member, just let me know and I'll send ye a invite, k? [You send email. I send invite.] :) We want them's poems, but also's thoughts on translation's, "alternative etymologies", anything's along those lines, 'translation and the uncanny'? Sure! Whatever. Many of your illustrious coil-leagues have already Juned to the bug, and jiggled to the bugle, so don't jitter, drive your critter on over to: Havmophunic Transolutions http://havmophunic.blogspot.com/ and hav a grylli goot thyme! love roots and ocean spray! Lanny Q. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:29:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Junction at AWP--Discount Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Junction Press will be at AWP, Americas Hall 2, table 495. Say POETICSLIST for a 20% discount. For a list of available books, check out www.junctionpress.com Mark ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:29:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Bob Callahan RIP MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Eileen Callahan has sent on the news that her husband, Bob Callahan, passed away last night. A San Francisco Bay Area presence since the seventies, during which he and Eileen were publishers of Turtle Island Books, initially he was deeply involved in literature and history of western, indigenous cultures. He and Eileen brought Jaime d'Angulo's work back into print including Indians in Coveralls, a beautiful letter press edition of 5 or 6 books. They were both involved in exploring Charles Olson's curriculum and its relationship to the geography and bio-regional cultures of the west. He also had a strong admiration and friendship with Ed Dorn in this context. Eventually, Bob, a native of Boston, turned much of his attention to the history of the Irish - writing and music - in America. In the last couple of decades he became absorbed in the publishing of graphic novels. The history is much larger, and my account here is probably meager in proportion. A terrifically intelligent, articulate and politically aware man, if he had not moved west and turned his ear to the practice of literature and publishing, he would have been a great local politician, a pro at working the Boston precincts for votes. In fact, he was a friend of the late, Senator Tip O'Neil. If the muses had not got his tail, he would have been great working at O'Neil's side. But what he added to the community in books, conversation, story and, probably, no little amount of blarney was plenty important and generous to many of us. Hearts out to Eileen and their son, David. Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:01:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Bob Callahan RIP In-Reply-To: <59163.73625.qm@web82608.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed He gave me the gift of Jaime de Angulo, for which I'm eternally grateful. And from Turtle Island's books it was a short hop to de Angulo's Indian Tales, one of the great American books. At 06:29 PM 1/30/2008, you wrote: >Eileen Callahan has sent on the news that her husband, Bob Callahan, >passed away last night. A San Francisco Bay Area presence since the >seventies, during which he and Eileen were publishers of Turtle >Island Books, initially he was deeply involved in literature and >history of western, indigenous cultures. He and Eileen brought Jaime >d'Angulo's work back into print including Indians in Coveralls, a >beautiful letter press edition of 5 or 6 books. They were both >involved in exploring Charles Olson's curriculum and its >relationship to the geography and bio-regional cultures of the west. >He also had a strong admiration and friendship with Ed Dorn in this context. > > Eventually, Bob, a native of Boston, turned much of his attention > to the history of the Irish - writing and music - in America. In > the last couple of decades he became absorbed in the publishing of > graphic novels. > > The history is much larger, and my account here is probably meager > in proportion. A terrifically intelligent, articulate and > politically aware man, if he had not moved west and turned his ear > to the practice of literature and publishing, he would have been a > great local politician, a pro at working the Boston precincts for > votes. In fact, he was a friend of the late, Senator Tip O'Neil. If > the muses had not got his tail, he would have been great working at > O'Neil's side. But what he added to the community in books, > conversation, story and, probably, no little amount of blarney was > plenty important and generous to many of us. > > Hearts out to Eileen and their son, David. > > Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:06:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: AWP / Walking Theory & Busy Dying!! Comments: cc: Charles Alexander , Jeff Clark , Mark Weiss , Hilton Obenzinger MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit At the risk of appearing entirely self-serving (!), for folks going to the AWP Book Fair, my book, WALKING THEORY can be found at Junction Press, Americas Hall 2, table 495. Joined by a number of other fine titles, as well. 20% discount, too. Chax Press will be sharing the same table. For a total knock out Jeff Clark design job, and a great Chax book, check out Hilton Obenzinger's brand new BUSY DYING - a novel that I had the pleasure of editing. What's it about? And why is it timely? Columbia 1968! Hilton, along with Paul Auster, David Schapiro and other still familiar folks took over and occupied the President's Office (Now already 40 years ago). (Yes, a reunion is going to happen on campus on the weekend of April 23rd.) Or as Bill Berkson lays it out the backcover blurb: No one tells the story of the Columbia University variation of Apocalypse 1968 -- its prelude and its up-to-date fallout (e.g., This Is Your Life) -- better than Poet-and-Communard-in-Residence of that and other histories, Hilton Obenzinger. When Politics meant something other than Brute Force, Obenzinger was there, observing and making it happen, like one breath in, another out. In deft, benign, deep and often hilarious prose, he has kept the faith. Enjoy the Fair. Stephen Vincent http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:19:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Simon DeDeo Subject: new on rhubarb is susan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Two new things up this week -- notes on videotext "The Fashions" (now up on Nicholas Manning's _Continental Review_), and an updated RSS file for poetry blog readers: http://rhubarbissusan.blogspot.com/2008/01/apostrophe-of-allan-bloom-to-willow.html http://rhubarbissusan.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-blogs-does-rhubarb-read.html Thanks for tuning in, Simon ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:15:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nico Vassilakis Subject: SubText Seattle = Hank Lazer and Leonard Schwartz MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subtext continues its monthly reading series with readings by Hank Lazer & = Leonard Schwartz at our new home at the Chapel Performance Space on 6 Febru= ary 2008. Donations for admission will be taken at the door on the evening = of the performance. The reading starts at 7:30pm. Hank Lazer has published = 12 books of poetry, most recently The New Spirit (Singing Horse, 2005), Ele= gies & Vacations (Salt, 2004), and Days (Lavender Ink, 2002). His poetry wa= s nominated for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and the 2004 Forward Prize. With Ch= arles Bernstein, he edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for th= e University of Alabama Press. He has a two-volume collection of essays, Op= posing Poetries (Northwestern University) and a forthcoming volume Lyric & = Spirit: Selected Essays, 1996-2006 (Omnidawn). Over the past few years, Laz= er has collaborated with jazz musicians and artists. He is currently workin= g with animation artist Janeann Dill on a poetry-video installation project= . Hank Lazer teaches at University of Alabama where he is also Associate Pr= ovost for Academic Affairs. http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/lazer/ http://= interviewsbychrismansel.blogspot.com/2006/04/interview-with-hank-lazer.html= http://www.artseverywhere.com/?app=3DeventDetail&id=3D3363 Leonard Schwart= z is the author of several collections of poetry, including Ear And Ethos (= Talisman House, 2005) The Tower of Diverse Shores (Talisman House, 2003), W= ords Before The Articulate: New and Selected Poems (Talisman House), Gnosti= c Blessing (Goats and Compasses), Meditation (Cloud House), Objects of Thou= ght, Attempts At Speech (Gnosis Press) and Exiles: Ends (Red Dust Press). H= e is also the author of a collection of essays A Flicker At The Edge Of Thi= ngs: Essays on Poetics 1987-1997 (Spuyten Duyvil). In 1997 he received a Na= tional Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. He teaches at Evergreen= State College, where he hosts Cross-Cultural Poetics on KAOS radio. http:/= /writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/XCP.html http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/= x/Schwartz.html http://jacketmagazine.com/19/sch1.html +++ The future Subte= xt schedule is: March 5, 2008 - Steve McCaffery (Toronto/Buffalo) & Interru= pture April 2, 2008 - Fred Wah (Vancouver, BC) & Lou Rowan +++ For info on = these & other Subtext events, see our website at http://subtextreadingserie= s.blogspot.com More info at Nonsequitur web site - http://nseq.blogspot.com= Details on the Chapel at: http://gschapel.blogspot.com SPECIAL THANKS to = NONSEQUITUR for co-sponsoring this event.= ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:26:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: the chest and groin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed the chest and groin among sites hidden nightly from one another are chest and groin, no matter what bother one sticks to, male or female blend, and chest and groin come to untimely end a hand moves, fingers, thrust and throb, then silence death hangs tattered on the scanner's fence gender falters in ungainly weather somewhere worlds collapse, one's metal mother http://www.alansondheim.org/chest1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/chest2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/chest3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/chest4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/chest5.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/chest6.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/groin1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/groin2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/groin3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/groin4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/groin5.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/groin6.jpg ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:32:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Ciccariello Subject: Open door as poetic object MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Open door as poetic object - Peter Ciccariello http://invisiblenotes.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:30:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sarah Rosenthal Subject: Two Readings, Two Coasts MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi, I'll be reading with Tracy K. Smith at the Poetry Project, Monday, 2/4 at 8pm: http://www.poetryproject.com/calendar.php The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church 131 E. 10th St. at 2nd Ave, NY, NY (212) 674-0910 $8, $7 students & seniors, $5 members I'll be reading with Eileen Myles for the S.F. State U. Poetry Center, Thursday, 2/7 at 7:30 pm: The Unitarian Center 1187 Franklin (at Geary), SF, CA $5 Thanks, Sarah ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:38:34 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jesse Glass Subject: Announcing A Special Issue of Inertia Magazine MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Guest edited by Richard Murphy, contributing editor Jesse Glass. This issue features Michael Heller, Eileen (Bean) Tabios, Sheila Murphy, Jane Nakagawa, Paul Hoover, Gloria Oden, Lou Rowan, Paul Muldoon, Judith Skillman, and many others skilled in the sweet science. Take a gander at: http://www.inertiamagazine.com/i4/ What's the word from the BIG ETC.? Ahadada ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:05:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Re: Junction at AWP--Discount MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit mark where is this awp thing being held On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:29:57 -0500 Mark Weiss writes: > Junction Press will be at AWP, Americas Hall 2, table 495. > > Say POETICSLIST for a 20% discount. > > For a list of available books, check out > > www.junctionpress.com > > Mark > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:49:09 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alexander Jorgensen Subject: East Coast - poetry readings, where? In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" MIME-Version: 1.0 Will be Stateside for two weeks, 8 March - 23 March, then back to PRC. Anyway, and I know it's late in the game, as they say, but any information on places to read will be welcomed. Am currently organizing readings and a few exhibitions of Vispo. For work online: http://www.alexanderjorgensen.com New work, part of "China Series," at Mark Young's major contribution: http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2007/12/alexander-jorgensen-from-china-series.html Alexander Jorgensen was born and raised of the most mixed and common stock. An incessant traveler, he has lived in the United States, the Czech Republic, the Galapagos Archipelago, India's Himachal Pradesh (in the lap of Himalaya), and the People's Republic of China (where he has divided his time since 2002). His work has most recently appeared in Big Bridge, Vibrant Gray, Shampoo, and Kabita Pakshik (translations into Bengali by poet and translator, Subhashis Gangopadhyay). "Letters to a Younger Poet," correspondences with the late Robert Creeley, appears in Jacket Magazine #31. Regards to all! -- Alexander Jorgensen bangdrum@fastmail.fm -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Email service worth paying for. Try it for free ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:55:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: chax press / AWP In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.1.20080130172855.065b9158@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v753) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Chax Press will also be at AWP at the table with Junction, Americas Hall 2, Table 495. Various discounts are available, more for multiple book orders. New books present include the novel Busy Dying, by Hilton Obenzinger, and Transducer, a book of poems by Jeanne Heuving. Recent books as well by Bruce Andrews, Tim Peterson, Charles Borkhuis, Linda Russo, Sarah Riggs, and many more. Plus just about all of our available books published in the last 18 years. And while our handmade letterpress books will not be present, they can be ordered at the fair discount prices. For information on the books & press, see http://chax.org thank you! charles alexander chax press chax@theriver.com 650 e. ninth st. tucson arizona 85705 520 620 1626 On Jan 30, 2008, at 3:29 PM, Mark Weiss wrote: > Junction Press will be at AWP, Americas Hall 2, table 495. > > Say POETICSLIST for a 20% discount. > > For a list of available books, check out > > www.junctionpress.com > > Mark > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:14:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: teersteeg Subject: ATOA Feb. bulletin-- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here's the latest bulletin from ATOA--Artists Talk on Art in NYC. http://www.atoa.ws/Spring2008/February.htm#02/01 regards, bruno ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:55:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Karmin Subject: STOP deportation for Flor Crisostomo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Three blocks from my apartment, Flor Crisostomo has taken refuge in the same Chicago store-front church where Elvira Arellano lived in protest for more than one year. Like Elvira, Flor Crisostomo is actively disobeying an order by the Department of Homeland Security to turn herself in for deportation. CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: Refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government The U.S. immigration system is broken (and health care and education and social security). And this is no surprise. Our government has never handed out change. People have had to demand change again and again: the right to vote, to unionize, to have an abortion. In all of these cases, individuals have stepped forward to test the system and create a historical record for change. IF YOU HAVE RESOURCES TO SHARE OR WANT TO GET INVOLVED, CONTACT THE CHURCH: Adalberto United Methodist Church 2716 W Division St, Chicago, IL (773) 523-8261 Onwards, Jennifer Karmin January 29, 2008 Illegal immigrant vows to stand ground HUMBOLDT PARK (Chicago, IL) Holed up in same church where Arellano held out BY KARA SPAK Staff Reporter, Chicago Sun Times Saying she hoped the fear of God would keep federal agents away, undocumented immigrant Flor Crisostomo on Monday vowed to stay in a Humboldt Park church indefinitely to keep Congress focused on immigration reform. Tears streaming down her cheeks, a defiant Crisostomo said she did not believe she was breaking U.S. law, nor did she see herself as hiding. Arrested in an immigration raid in April 2006, she was ordered to leave the country voluntarily by Jan. 28. Crisostomo sought "sanctuary" in the Adalberto United Methodist Church, the same church that housed undocumented immigrant Elvira Arellano and Arellano's U.S.-born son Saul, for more than a year. "I am taking a stand of civil disobedience to make America see what they are doing," Crisostomo said in a statement that was translated into English. Speaking in broken English, she said immigrants are not terrorists but hard-working people contributing to the economy. "The real problem is the color and the language," she said. U.S. immigration officials saw the issue differently, releasing a statement that said Crisostomo was given a voluntary departure order Oct. 12, 2006. After an appeal failed in December 2007, she was given 60 more days to leave the country on her own. "Ms. Crisostomo will be taken into custody at an appropriate time and place with consideration given to the safety of all involved," read the statement released by Gail Montenegro, spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Children back in Mexico Montenegro said that it is also illegal to "knowingly harbor an illegal alien," and those who do so can be subject to criminal prosecution. Unlike Arellano, who was living with her son, Saul, at the church, Crisostomo's three children, ages 14, 11 and 9, live with their grandmother in Mexico. Crisostomo, 28, left her children in Guerrero, Mexico, seven years ago to work illegally in the United States. She was arrested April 19, 2006, during an immigration raid at a pallet factory where she earned $300 a week. Arellano lived in the church for more than a year. She left in August 2007 to attend an immigration rally in California, where federal authorities arrested and deported her. Numerous portraits of Arellano hang inside the church, and she called the press conference from her Mexican home to wish Crisostomo luck. http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/764374,CST-NWS-refuge29.article ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:09:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Chirot Subject: Re: FW: About Poetry: Poetry Codes & Puzzles/Fun with Poetry Cartoon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline re the recent discussion on "code poetry"-- thought this might be of interest-- (and entertainment-- to paraphrase Horace somewhat--"instruct & delight"--) > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > > > ** > > *In the Spotlight <#117d13e62cd11b46_117d113af745b196_a>* | *More > > Topics <#117d13e62cd11b46_117d113af745b196_c>* | *<#117d13e62cd11b46_117d113af745b196_e> > > * > > from *Bob Holman & Margery Snyder* > > Rhyme, the shapes of letters and lines on the page, embedded patterns > > and codes, the rhythm of the spoken words.... all are ways in which poets > > imbue their poems with meaning, embedding layers of sound and significance > > in their word-constructions. Hidden codes came to the surface last week when > > a popular Burmese poet was arrested for publishing an ostensibly innocuous > > love poem that contained a coded insult to Burma's military chief. > > > > > > * > > * > > *Hidden meaning encoded in a poem sends the poet to jail > > * > > It seems quite natural that modern-day poets living under repressive > > regimes might turn to acrostic coding as a means of bypassing government > > censors. Now popular Burmese poet Saw Wai has been jailed for publishing a > > seemingly innocuous love poem that contained an acrostic complaint about > > Burma's military dictator.... read more > > > > * > > * > > > > - *Abecedarian Poems * > > A specialized form of acrostic > > - *"An ABC" by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1375) > > * > > Spelling out the Middle English alphabet > > - *"Learning Your ABC's," by Laura Polley > > * > > Contemporary ABC poem that won the IBPC > > - *"Hymn VII, To the Rose" by Sir John Davies (1599) > > * > > Addressed to his Queen, Elizabeth > > - *"London" by William Blake (1794) > > * > > Embellishes one stanza with an acrostic > > - *"An Acrostic" by Edgar Allan Poe (1829) > > * > > Addressed to his Elizabeth > > - *"A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky" by Lewis Carroll (1871) > > * > > An acrostic revealing Alice's real name > > > > *Acrostic Poems * > > Since ancient times, poets have used acrostics to embed "secret" > > messages in their poems (not so secret, actually -- an acrostic poem spells > > out its subject in the first letter of each line or stanza, and once you've > > seen the vertical message, it's impossible to ignore). Our Glossary of > > Poetic Forms explains acrostics and offers a number of examples. > > > > *Fun with Poetry Cartoons * > > We've been having fun with moving poetry pictures since the very > > beginning of this site, and we've just discovered a new variation: Beau > > Blue's Cruzio Cafe, where you'll find a large collection of video-poems > > featuring animated avatars of the poets paired with their recorded voices. > > Big fun!... read more > > > > > > *Sponsored Links* > > > > > > Advertisement > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:27:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "steve d. dalachinsky" Subject: Fw: Re: Leroy Jenkins ~ A Celebration on Feb. 9, 2008 and Thomas Chapin Celebrations Feb 13 and Feb 15 Comments: To: Acousticlv@aol.com, AdeenaKarasick@cs.com, AGosfield@aol.com, alonech@acedsl.com, Altjazz@aol.com, amirib@aol.com, Amramdavid@aol.com, anansi1@earthlink.net, AnselmBerrigan@aol.com, arlenej2@verizon.net, Barrywal23@aol.com, bdlilrbt@icqmail.com, butchershoppoet@hotmail.com, CarolynMcClairPR@aol.com, CaseyCyr@aol.com, CHASEMANHATTAN1@aol.com, Djmomo17@aol.com, Dsegnini1216@aol.com, Gfjacq@aol.com, Hooker99@aol.com, rakien@gmail.com, jeromerothenberg@hotmail.com, Jeromesala@aol.com, JillSR@aol.com, JoeLobell@cs.com, JohnLHagen@aol.com, kather8@katherinearnoldi.com, Kevtwi@aol.com, krkubert@hotmail.com, LakiVaz@aol.com, Lisevachon@aol.com, Nuyopoman@AOL.COM, Pedevski@aol.com, pom2@pompompress.com, Rabinart@aol.com, Rcmorgan12@aol.com, reggiedw@comcast.net, RichKostelanetz@aol.com, RnRBDN@aol.com, Smutmonke@aol.com, sprygypsy@yahoo.com, SHoltje@aol.com, Sumnirv@aol.com, tcumbie@nyc.rr.com, velasquez@nyc.com, VITORICCI@aol.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The Brecht Forum's Neues Kabarett music series, Meet the Composer, American Composers Orchestra and the Brooklyn Public Library present Leroy Jenkins: A Celebration A tribute to his life and work. Saturday ~ February 9, 2008, 7:00 pm Brooklyn Public Library Dr. S. Stevan Dweck Center for Contemporary Culture 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn Tickets: $10 ($7 for students and seniors) 212-868-4444 / http://www.smarttix.com 2/3 to Grand Army Plaza or Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum of Art station Q to 7th Avenue With performances by: Thomas Buckner (baritone), Stefani Starin (flute), Stephanie Griffin (viola); the FLUX Quartet;Myra Melford (piano) joined by Brandon Ross (guitar) and Stomu Takeishi (bass); and Wadada Leo Smith's Sevenwith Okkyung Lee (cello), John Lindberg (bass), Martin Obeng (drums), Marcus Rojas (tuba). "Jenkins continually reinvented his own language in music. His was an extraordinary bonding of a variety of sounds associated with the black music tradition, while simultaneously bridging with European styles... as one San Francisco Chronicle critic said, 'Jenkins is a master who cuts across all categories.'" ~ All About Jazz This program is made possible by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. LIFT OFF! REMEMBERING THOMAS CHAPIN – CONCERTS MARK DECADE SINCE THE PASSING OF AVANT JAZZ MASTER – New York, NY - Rarely in a musical movement has a player left an indelible mark on those with whom he collaborated and those listeners with whom he enthralled more than the late NYC avant jazz saxist, Thomas Chapin. To commemorate this gifted, multi-instrumentalist-composer and to mark the decade since his passing, two NYC concerts are planned by his widow, Terri Castillo-Chapin, with the help of Thomas' many friends and musical colleagues. Entitled LIFT OFF! REMEMBERING THOMAS CHAPIN, the concerts will take place in NYC on Wednesday, February 13 at St. Peter's Church at 6:30 pm (619 Lexigington Ave. at East 54th St. – admission free), and on Friday, February 15, 2008 at the Bowery Poetry Club at 8:00 pm (308 Bowery at Bleecker St. – admission $15). Since his untimely death from leukemia in 1998 at the otherwise emerging age of 40, the music and playing of Thomas Chapin continues to be a highly influential and inspirational force to those who knew him and to those who continue to know him through his music and example. Even a decade after his death, a newly awakened school of disciples and a newfound generation of jazz enthusiasts of his unique and emancipated musical expression grow. Renowned downtown-saxophonist John Zorn, who performed and recorded with Chapin in the 90's, recalls Chapin as "The real deal. A complete musician in every sense, he created work that was honest, imaginative, well crafted and cathartic. Putting himself into each and every note, he played with a rare and intense passion. His energy was absolutely astounding. He is sorely missed." The series title, LIFT OFF! REMEMBERING THOMAS CHAPIN, refers to what peers and critics said after Chapin passed all too quickly: that his brilliant career was taking off and he was just gaining altitude when he was "cut down." These concerts return to that moment and many of Chapin's core devotees will offer a musical salute. The February 13th concert, "THOMAS CHAPIN: HIGHER AND HIGHER" will feature Chapin's musical collaborators, including the original Thomas Chapin Trio members, bassist Mario Pavone and drummer Michael Sarin, performing with Frank Kimbrough, piano and Steven Bernstein, trumpet and slide trumpet. Soundpainter Walter Thompson traveling from Sweden, along with Paul Jeffrey, legendary tenor saxophonist and teacher-mentor of Chapin at Rutgers, will debut and direct The New Thomas Chapin Orchestra, a 15-piece big band featuring former members of the innovative, experimental ensemble The Walter Thompson Orchestra, of which Chapin was a member in the '90's. Performing on February 13th will be: Alan Chase, Michael Blake, Michael Attias and David CasT on saxophones, Frank London, Steven Bernstein, Herb Robertson, Ron Horton, Steve Swell and Bob Hovey on brass, Rolf Sturm, Tomas Ulrich, Joe Fonda and Pablo Aslan on strings, and Hollis Hedrich on percussion. Also on the program are Paul Jeffrey Ensemble with Mike Rabinowitz, bassoon, and John Colanni, piano; pianist Armen Donelian with Marc Mommaas, tenor sax; bassist Pablo Aslan's Avantango with Oscar Feldman, sax, and Emilio Solla, piano; and Spirits Rebellious Quartet with Arthur Kell, bass, Saul Rubin, guitar, and Art Baron, trombone, representing Chapin's Brazilian explorations; Dutch artists Ineke van Doorn, voice, and Marc Van Vugt, guitar; poet Steve Dalachinsky; and additional guests, plus films of Chapin. The February 15th concert, "THOMAS CHAPIN: HIGHER STILL" continues to celebrate Chapin's legacy with an interdisciplinary mix of poets, music ensembles, guest speakers and film clips of Thomas Chapin performances. Scheduled to appear is the Quartet of Mario Pavone and Michael Sarin, along with celebrated reedist Marty Ehrlich and trombonist Pete McEachern, playing some of Thomas Chapin's most acclaimed Trio pieces. The evening showcases another legend, James Spaulding, offering an original tune for solo flute, "Time to Go". Written for fallen heroes Dr. King and Malcolm X, Spaulding says, "Somehow the words remind me of Tom's leaving us at such a young and vibrant age. I believe, were Tom here, still amongst us, his musical achievements would parallel those of the most recognized of our peers." Others in the February 15th lineup include Paul Jeffrey, Walter Thompson and a reprise of the premiering New Thomas Chapin Orchestra; a poet-group with John Richey, Steve Dalachinsky, guitarist Robert Musso, Jair-Rohm Parker Wells and Josh Harris (former members with Chapin of Machine Gun); guiatrist Michael Musillami Trio with bassist Joe Fonda and drummer George Schuller; multi-reed tone scientist Elliot Levin; and next-generation saxophonist Brett Ryan, who never met Thomas but has been deeply influenced by him. Ryan will perform the concert's "Lift Off!" theme, a rocket-fueled 1991 original Chapin piece by the same name, fitting the events' celebratory, upward-trajectory spirit. Alto saxophonist and flautist, Thomas Chapin forged his name in music as a free expressionist. A versatile multi-instrumentalist, bandleader and composer in the 80s and 90s, Chapin led a trio performing his own music playing in New York City's downtown scene and at festivals and clubs around the world. He was also an outstanding composer for larger groups, and sometimes augmented the trio with strings and horn ensembles. Thomas Chapin left behind a legacy of recognized albums and performances. The New York Times called him "one of the more exuberant saxophonists and bandleaders in jazz" and "one of the few musicians to exist in both the worlds of the downtown, experimentalist scene and mainstream jazz." Proceeds from the events will benefit Akasha, Inc., a non-profit whose mission is to preserve the musical legacy of Thomas Chapin (donate at thomaschapin.com/akasha.php), and the Jazz Foundation of America, a national non-profit whose Musician's Emergency Fund provides financial assistance and support services for musicians facing illness or in crisis (jazzfoundation.org). These events are made possible in part by the generous support of Playscape Recordings, Downtown Music Gallery, AllAboutJazz.com and LiveWired NYC. ### LIFT OFF! REMEMBERING THOMAS CHAPIN Two Concerts on the Tenth Year of His Passing 1. "Thomas Chapin: Higher and Higher" St. Peter's Church, 619 Lexington Avenue at 53rd Street, New York, NY Wednesday, February 13, 2008 from 6:30 pm to 10:30 pm. Admission is free. (212) 935-2200 http://www.thomaschapin.com/ LIFT OFF! REMEMBERING THOMAS CHAPIN Two Concerts on the Tenth Year of His Passing 2. "Thomas Chapin: Higher Still" Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery at Bleecker St., New York, NY Friday, February 15, 2008 from 8:00 pm to 11: 30 pm. Admission is $15 at the door. (212) 614-0505 http://www.bowerypoetry.com/ -- -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:44:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ixnay press Subject: ixnay reader volume three MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Announcing volume three of *the ixnay reader*. Just over 100 pgs of new work by: Christophe Casamassima Stan Mir Susana Gardner Noah Eli Gordon Jules Boykoff Jen Hofer Mark Wallace Divya Victor Harold Abramowitz & Graham Foust To order a copy (available for $5), please email us at ixnaypress@gmail.com. Alternately, check out our website (www.ixnaypress.com) for a free pdf of the issue as well as pdfs of most of our past publications. Thank ye muchly, Chris McCreary / co-editor, ixnay press