Thurdsay, Nov. 18 & Tuesday, Nov. 23 - introduction to the "language poetry" movement

Ron Silliman

• audio: Al Filreis and Shawn Walker on aspects of "language poetry" and contemporary avant-garde writing
• Jerome McGann, "Contemporary Poetry, Alternate Routes" - an essay introducing the "language writing" movement
• Lyn Hejinian on the concept of the personal
• George Hartley, "Textual Politics and the Language Poets"
• Susan Howe, "My Emily Dickinson"
• Lee Ann Brown, "Multiplicity Sisters"
• William Butler Yeats' "The Second Coming" + 7, compiled by Lauryl Hicks
• Frost's "Mending Wall" + 7 by Sara Rabold
• ideas for poetry experiments compiled by Charles Bernstein from Bernadette Mayer & workshop's Experiments list, and various other sources
• Steve McCaffrey in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine, in 1979: "The fight for language is a political fight." Read more: 1, 2.
• Charles Bernstein, "In Particular" (performed at the Writers House, September 25, 2003)
• Charles Bernstein, "1-100" (1969)
• Charles Bernstein, "In a Restless World Like This Is"
• A 25-minute discussion of "In a Restless World Like This Is" with Marcella Durand, Eli Goldblatt & Hank Lazer, hosted by Al Filreis: mp3
• Charles Bernstein, biography
• Charles Bernstein, "Veil" - visual writing
• Charles Bernstein, "These Horses Do Not Move Up and Down"
• Charles Bernstein, commentary on All Things Considered about National Poetry Month
• Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews on reference
• Ron Silliman bibliography
• Ron Silliman on William Carlos Williams (another take on this)
• Robert Grenier, "But" (1986)
• Robert Grenier on Stein
• audio: on the dismissal of "voice" and the rejection of ego psychology in Language poetics" (the opening paragraph of Marjorie Perloff's essay, "Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject," read by Shawn Walker): RealAudio | mp3
• Lyn Hejinian, My Life
• paper option #14A For this paper, read Hejinian's My Life and read and listen to Silliman's "Albany" and think about what the two poems have in common in terms of their attitude toward autobiographical writing. What specifically do they have in common? Be sure to consider, at least briefly in your paper, the way that a poet like Frank O'Hara handled describing a life in his poems. Do the life-writings of Silliman and Hejinian flow out of some or all of O'Hara's ideas?
• Stanley Fish, "Just Published: Minutiae Without Meaning," a critique of biography and biographical narrative (1999)
• Ron Silliman, "Albany"
• Ron Silliman, "Albany" (audio recording)
• Marjorie Perloff on Silliman's "Albany"
• Ron Silliman, BART
• Tina Darragh, "ludicrous stick" from the Paris Review "Language Sampler"
• audio: Bob Perelman on why Williams' "unsuccessful" poems are relevant to contemporary poetics (mp3)
• Bob Perelman, "Chronic Meanings"
• Bob Perelman, commentary on "Chronic Meanings"
• Bob Perelman reads "Chronic Meanings" (January 29, 2004)
• Perelman, more on "Chronic Meanings"
• Bob Perelman talks about "Chronic Meanings"
• Bob Perelman, "Must Works of Art Reflect Only Marketplace Values?" (1995)
• Bob Perelman, Is there a poetry renaissance now?
• Joan Retallack, reading her own poetry through the influence of Gertrude Stein, John Cage, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (October 2000 at the Writers House)
• Joan Retallack, from Errata 5uite
• Joan Retallack - a reading from her poetry and a discussion of relations between innovative poetry and experimental teaching - recording of a program webcast Wednesday, February 28, 2001, at the Kelly Writers House
  supplemental/optional readings:
• recording of a webcast symposium on contemporary poetry, presented from the Writers House on December 7, 1999, featuring Ron Silliman, Jena Osman, Bob Perelman, Brian Kim Stefans, hosted & moderated by Al Filreis with assistance from Shawn Walker and Heather Starr ()
• Barrett Watten and Rachel Blau DuPlessis read from their works and discuss contemporary poetry, especially in relation to the period in which the "language poetry" and other "new poetries" formed in the 1970s. This program was a PhillyTalks session at the Kelly Writers House, November 15, 1999. Click here for a fuller description of the program and a link to the webcast recording.
• Bob Perelman on Bruce Andrews's politically radical language poetry
• Kevin Davies on the poltiics of avant-garde poetry
• Bob Perelman, brief bio
• Bernadette Mayer, "Synesthetes at the Writers House"
• Lee Ann Brown reviewed by Robert Hass
• Lee Ann Brown, "Valentines"

Tues., Nov. 30 & Thurs., Dec. 2 - non-intentional writing - chance and procedure

John Cage in performance. Cage arranges his "mesostics," vertical lines of capital letters (spelling out various names or words) with horizontal lines of varying lengths extending in both directions from each letter and incorporating the letters into new words. The horizontal lines are drawn from various "source texts," such as Ginsberg's "Howl," broken down by chance procedures (computer - aided "I Ching") and then further refined by Cage.

• Marjorie Perloff, "cage: chance: change" (a chapter from her book Radical Artifice)
• John Cage, "A Man Inspired by Chance"
• John Cage, a selection of unaxiomatic axioms
• John Cage, brief excerpt from "Writing through Howl"
• Marjorie Perloff on Cage's "Writing through Howl" (1984): link to text
• paper option #14B Attempt in this paper to connect John Cage's "Writing through Howl" to Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" as a way of explaining postmodern poetry. What is Cage trying to say about Ginsberg -- and about poetry generally -- by appropriating "Howl" in just such a way?
• audio: John Cage on "Empty Words" and the demilitarization of language, in a radio interview, August 8, 1974
• audio: from Cage's "Themes & Variations" read by Al Filreis, Shawn Walker, and George Blaustein
• more Cageisms
• Joan Retallack, "Not a Cage" [link to text and audio]
• Jackson Mac Low, brief biography
• Mac Low interviewed by Gil Ott, 1979
• "Jackson Mac Low: Poetry as Art," by Charles Bernstein
• Jackson Mac Low, "Poetry and Pleasure" - a talk in which he describes his nonintentional and/or deterministic and/or chance procedures, including his "diastic reading-through text-selection method"
• Jackson Mac Low, selected stanzas from "Antic Quatrains"
• Jackson Mac Low, explanation of "Antic Quatrains" from the preface to Bloomsday (1984)
• audio: Jackson Mac Low, "A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore" (performed 1975)
• on Mac Low's scored piece for Peter Innisfree Moore
• an article about Peter Innisfree Moore (2004)
• on the newspaper obit
• "Performance Instructions preceded by Description and Compositional Method for A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore" (1974-75)
• "A Vocabulary for Jackson Mac Low" (performed on December 9, 2004 by students & teachers of English 88)
• an English 88 class session on "Vocabulary" (December 2008) (mp3)
• Jessica Smith, "The Page Is Not a Neutral Surface" (with reference to "A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore")
• audio: Jackson Mac Low, "Phoneme Dance In Memoriam John Cage" (1993)
• Jackson Mac Low's rewriting of Gertrude Stein's "A Long Gay Book": link to both Stein's and Mac Low's text, plus commentary
• Charles Alexander reading "Near or Random Acts" (October 25, 2001) at the Kelly Writers House (an MP3 file)
• Charles Bernstein, (a 60-second lecture)
• Richard Schechner, Dionysus 1969 (1969)
• Jena Osman, "Dropping Leaflets"
• Dick Higgins, "New Song in an Old Style" (1967)
• Ken Friedman, "Renter's Orchestra" (1991)
• Ken Friedman, "Card Trace" (1958)
• Wallace Stevens' "The Idea of Order at Key West", sound recording arranged by Jim Andrews of vispo.com (with this shockwave piece, you can listen to the poem cut-up or normally)
• Ray Kurzweil's cybernetic poet
• paper option #15 If you think Jackson Maclow's poem-performance based on 960 words and letters formed from the name of his deceased friend, "A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore," is both beautiful and intellectually legitimate and interesting, take the occasion of writing this paper to argue that position. Be sure to link this to your own defense of "chance" poetry in general.
• Brian Kim Stefans, on using computer programs to create poems
• An English 88 student tries her hand at an experiment on Charles Bernstein's list
• word count
• Mike Magee, "Pledge" from Morning Constitutional (1999) [Note: click on "Handwritten Press," then choose "primary texts" at far right, then choose "Morning Constitutional" in Adobe Acrobat format. A brief excerpt from "Pledge" is here.
• Nick Montfort, "Top Row Retort" (2000)
• Tony Green's "accumulations": (1) his accumulations; (2) his piece, "Sliding Accumulation" (photo from collection of Al Filreis)
  supplemental/optional readings:
• Jackson Mac Low wins prize
• Ken Friedman, "Thirty Events and Objects" (1959-1994) - a sampling
• Jackson Mac Low, fluxus works
• Dick Higgins, "a portrait of john cage" (1994) (Dick Higgins was one of the founders and major participants in the Fluxus movement.)
• Dick Higgins, "metadramas"
• much more on Marjorie Perloff

Tues., December 7 - the poem is text of the world

Jena Osman - now assisant professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia. The poem we hear, "A Real Life Drama," was (says Osman) "constructed--meaning that I didn't write a single word of it, but I culled the language from an internet newsgroup which consists of transcripts of recent Supreme Court cases."

• Jena Osman, "A Real Life Drama"
• Jena Osman, commentary on her interest in court transcripts
• Jena Osman, further comment on her interest in court transcripts
• Jena Osman, on Dickinson's "Step lightly on / This narrow spot" from An Essay in Asterisks (Roof Books, 2994) [PDF file]
• Erica Baum: her photographic art captures alphabetically related terms and puts them into new context.
• Dennis Lee, author of Un, explains how and I why he wrote that book-length poem (here's another version)
• Kenneth Goldsmith, Soliloquy
• article about Goldsmith in Artforum (March 2008)
• Kenneth Goldsmith, biographical profile
• Kenny Goldsmith, English version of introduction in Icelandic
• mp3 audio recording of the above
• a conversation with Jena Osman and Kenneth Goldsmith, conducted by the English 88'ers of fall 2004, at the Kelly Writers House, December 9, 2004

Thursday, December 9 - (non)final words