Poetry Ordinary and Extraordinary: The Pataque(e)rics of Everyday Life

Charles Bernstein
PRINCETON
Bain-Swiggett Seminar
ENG 563
Tuesdays, 1:30-4:20pm
Poetry Ordinary and Extraordinary: The Pataquerics of Everyday Life

"We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even, is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are. A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.' – Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrrimack Rivers.

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle

–Williams

The extraordinary is never more than an extension of the ordinary. The seminar will extend the field of investigation from my Spring 2011 Penn seminar, “Unsettling the Word: Attack of the Difficult Poems (The Aversive Poetics of Estrangement, Disturbance, Expropriation, Abnormality, and the Pataquerical),” please see syllabus , taking up the intertwined discourses of the quotidian, the critique of everyday life, and poetic invention, with specific focus on the conflict between the ordinary and the normal. A set of exemplary philosophical and poetic readings will considered to complicate and contradict the ongoing discussion.

The relation of sound to the ordinary will be one focus, with special reference to the recordings at PennSound.

Readings will make use of extensive web resources at the Electronic Poetry Center and otherwise. There will be some books assigned, but a great dead of the reading will be web-based.

I will fill in details of specific readings over the summer. Here is provide a map with a few selected readings. Contact me for more details on any auhtor or if you have a suggestion.

A possible introduction: "The Art and Practice of the Ordinary" from Attack of the Difficult Poems (via Poetry Daily). A 1994 version of this syllabus is here.

Books required at Labyrinth:
•William Carlos Williams, Spring and All (Facsimile Edition), from New Directions
ISBN-10: 0811218910 ISBN-13: 978-0811218917
•Louis Zukofsky, Selected Poems, ed. Charles Bernstein (Library of America)
ISBN-10: 9781931082952 ISBN-13: 978-1931082952
•Rae Armantrout, Money Shot (Wesleyan)
ISBN-10: 081957130X ISBN-13: 978-0819571304
•Lyn Hejinian: My Life (Green Integer)
ISBN-10: 9781931243339 ISBN-13: 978-1931243339
•Caroline Bergvall, Meddle English (Nightboat) ISBN-10: 0982264585 ISBN-13: 978-0982264584

Web purchase/acquisition:
Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp by Pierre Cabanne, tr. Ron Padgett (Da Capo Press): you can get this in a variety of ways via on-line markets.

For posts and discussion, I am trying out a Course Kit: you can get the sign in code by writing to me. Some of the readings will require a password: write to me to get this password.

2. (Oct. 4) William Carlos Williams

required book: Spring & All
Respondent: Ella on Poe––Emerson––Eliot
Melissa on Hawthorne's "Wakefield"
Respondent: Dixon on Poe and Baudelaire
Respondent: Sarah: WCW
•Additional poems: "The Young Housewife," "Pastoral " "Between Walls" (above) [does the place you read this make a difference? is something I want to discuss]
•Audio at PennSound (please listen to a few of the poems and reflect on the difference to reading them and also the relecance to the seminar frame)
See also James Clifford on "To Elsie" & the Penn symposium on "For Elsie".
>For discussion: Peter Quatermain, "Canonical Strategies And The Question Of Authority: Eliot And Williams" (ms, pdf)
background: Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (part of "The Sacred Wood"); alternate pdf file of essay
Optional: PoemTalk: Al Filreis leads a discussion of "Between Walls"
Note: LION has Collected WCW.

Freely Espousing; audio
Buried at Springs
Hymn to Life: audio
The Crystal Lithium audio

on disability:
intros to new disability poetry anthology
by Michael Davidson:
"Missing Larry: The Poetics of Disability in Larry Eigner" (rff file) and web
"Universal Design: The Work of Disability in an Age of Globalization"(rff file)

Extensions:
Jordan Scott from Blurt
about the book (includes and excerpt)

from North of Intention (Penn), 2011, Presentation by Jordan Scott, introduced by Laura Neuman (on stuttering and violence in films)

"My viewpoint in the video is that of an autistic person. But the message is far broader than autistic people. It is about what kinds of communication and language and people we consider real and which ones we do not. It applies to people with severe cognitive or physical disabilities, autistic people, signing deaf people, the kid in school who finds she is not taken seriously as a student because she does not know a lot of English, and even the cat who gets treated like a living stuffed animal and not a creature with her own thoughts to communicate. It applies to anybody who gets written off because their communication is too unusual." (from Amanda Baggs Wiki page)
see also Wired interview
watch this one below with the SOUND OFF!

I will be reading with Tan Lin 4:30pm, Nov. 22 in McCosh 60, followed by a reception in the Thorp Library in McCosh

12. FRIDAY, Dec. 16: same location as always!
Last class: discussion of papers and projects; recap.

from North of Intention (Penn), 2011, Presentation by Jordan Scott, introduced by Laura Neuman (on stuttering and violence in films)