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<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/'>
Silliman's Blog
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<p class='description'><span>A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.</span></p>
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Showing posts with label <b>Chain Magazine</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Chain Magazine</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, October 21, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I have mentioned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.temple.edu/chain/home.htm">Chain</a> </i>on several occasions
on this blog, for good reason &#8211; it is the premier hard copy poetry journal of
the day. My first <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_09_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2381448405">piece</a>
on September 11 touched a nerve in a way that hopefully has been productive.
Co-founder Juliana Spahr <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_09_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2381591973">responded</a>
to it on the 14<sup>th </sup>of September. Jena Osman, the other co-founder,
used the occasion of the First Festival of Literary Magazines in </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">New York</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;"> to respond to these issues. Here is her talk:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
As a poet I have
long been interested in chance occurrences, in unpredictable sense created by
different languages meeting inside of a page-bound framework.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>My work has been informed by theater, in the
way that language performs in various contexts, in the relation of spectator to
stage and reader to page. I experiment with the collision of narrative and
anti-narrative strategies and take notice of the various registers of attention
that we bring to what&#8217;s before us.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
I met Juliana while
I was a grad student at SUNY Buffalo. Some other younger poets in town when I
arrived included Peter Gizzi, Lew Daly, Pam Rehm and Liz Willis. We all had
quite various concerns, and I was interested in finding a way to create a
conversation through our work. At the end of my first year, I organized an
experiment called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lab Book</i> where
eight of us wrote poems and then each of us wrote responses to the poems
written by the other seven. The book that resulted began with a poem, followed
by the seven responses, then another poem, followed by seven responses, etc. I
was interested in the idea of writing as reading and reading as writing in
perpetual exchange.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
Such forms of
exchange and investigation are crucial to my process as a writer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
A couple of years
later (in 1993), Juliana and I decided to start a magazine. I don&#8217;t remember
the exact moment when we made this decision, but we knew it was possible, there
was a beautifully simple access to funds, and we went ahead with it. For me,
the idea behind the first issue was something of an outgrowth of the
conversation begun in the lab-book experiment in that the structure allowed for
a diversity of content. As we said in the introduction to the first issue, we
weren&#8217;t interested in making a journal where the editor was &#8220;objective talent
scout&#8221; controlling the content; instead, we were interested in providing a
forum for conversation, where we couldn&#8217;t predict what would happen when the
various pieces were placed side by side.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
Such uses of
procedural form are important to my process as a writer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
In the introduction
to the first issue of <i>Chain</i> we said &#8220;It is ironic that in order for
dialogue to take place, conversational limits must be set.&#8221; And so for each
issue there is a limit&#8212;a special topic&#8212;around which a large number of writers
and artists gather. Sometimes the gathering is cacophonous, sometimes eerily
synchronous. In my opinion, it&#8217;s often a source of delight and surprise. No
matter how much time I spend with the contents&#8212;reading, selecting, typesetting,
proofreading&#8212;I never have a real sense of what the issue is until it arrives
from the printer, bound between its covers. And even then I can never know it
completely because it changes every time I sit down to read it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
This is often the
way I feel about my poems.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
Each of the
limits/special topics of the magazine come out of concerns that Juliana and I
are thoroughly engaged with in our own work: documentary poetics, hybrid
genres, procedural writing, visual poetics, different languages,
subverting/converting memoir form, performative forms, etc. Because we both
actively investigate the relation of forms of life (aesthetic, biological,
cultural) to forms of writing, these organizing structures make sense to us.
The work we publish feeds us, further informs us about these areas we&#8217;re
already in. In many ways the journal is an investigation into what we want to
know, an attempt to find some answers to questions we have.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
There are certain
pieces that we&#8217;ve published that continue to haunt my own writing. Looking back
at past issues, I&#8217;m amazed at how many have crept into my aesthetic
consciousness and stayed there. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
In a recent web-log
entry, Ron Silliman critiqued <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i>
for its policy of organizing authors alphabetically, rather than structuring
the book as a kind of narrative that could properly honor its writers. He
suggests that because of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain&#8217;s</i>
inclusivity, it lacks influence on the literary landscape&#8212;the birth of future
poets&#8212;and that the overall effect of the journal is one of muteness rather than
speech. He suggests that accident caused by alphabetic chance is perhaps of
less value than the deliberate and &#8220;heroic&#8221; arguments of past journals, and
that unlike <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Origin</i> (which was
responsible for making Blackburn and Zukofsky major figures on the literary
landscape), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Mountain Review</i>
(responsible for Creeley and Duncan), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Caterpillar</i>
(which brought Antin, Rothenberg, Mac Low, Kelly, Joris, Palmer and Bernstein
onto the scene), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> can not claim
such strong parenting skills because, well, who can name its progeny? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
My interest in
hybrid genres is due in part to a disinterest in the perpetuation of linear
heritage. Combinations, interruptions, complex conversations and crossings
over, provide much more appeal than following respectful and respected maps of
canon-building. Conversation is not for canonical heroes. Can you really
converse with an <span class="SpellE">unproblematized</span> construct? Or can
you only listen?</div>
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<br /></div>
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I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;m not the
only one who noticed in Silliman&#8217;s list of heroic editorial gestures the lack
of women&#8217;s names (although he did make a weak attempt to remedy it by claiming
that the magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">However</i> was
responsible for bringing Lorine Niedecker back into the world (but why was she
ever gone? and is that really what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">However</i>
is known for?).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
Silliman is part of
the Language Poetry movement that informs much of what I do as a writer. And
what I take very seriously from the writings of the Language Poets is that
there is a value to reader activism, to not simply consuming, but creating
through the act of reading. And I bring this idea with me to the forms that I
use when writing poetry or when editing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain.
Chain</i> is not about &#8220;making&#8221; writers by publishing them in its pages
(although its tables of contents list many writers&#8212;established and emerging&#8212;<span class="GramE">whom</span> I believe to be of great significance). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> is about providing a place for a
reader to engage with an idea&#8212;to think, to argue, to write in response. In
other words, it is putting the theory that informs my own writing as a poet
into practice in an editorial forum. Rather than what Silliman has called
&#8220;editorial muteness,&#8221; I believe that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i>
invites an animated conversation between reader and text that is generative in
its necessary unpredictability.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="GramE">Which
is also an invitation I hope my own poems deliver.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
In closing I&#8217;ll
quote once more from the introduction to the first issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i>, where it all began: &#8220;any printed
text is a gesture toward conversation; it&#8217;s a presentation that invites
response. We&#8217;re trying to create a forum that takes that invitation seriously,
that is not just going through the motions of what it means to instigate
response; it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">requires</i> continuation.&#8221;</div>
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at
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<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/10/i-have-mentioned-chain-on-several.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2002-10-21T06:35:00-04:00'>Monday, October 21, 2002</abbr></a>
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<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Chain%2520Magazine' rel='tag'>Chain Magazine</a>,
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<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Juliana%2520Spahr' rel='tag'>Juliana Spahr</a>,
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          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Sunday, October 06, 2002</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
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<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-82593295' itemprop='description articleBody'>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The reduction or narrowing
of discourse that is a fundamental dynamic of the thematic exists for publications
as it does for poems. One project in which I once participated, chronicling the
first hundred days of the Jimmy Carter </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">admin</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">istration, was almost luridly obsolete before the ink dried. The present
spate of literary publications &#8220;in response&#8221; to 911 are themselves doomed to
the same sad fate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Two journals have shown that
the ability to concentrate can be expansive and inclusive rather than
restrictive. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.temple.edu/chain/home.htm">Chain</a></i> demonstrates how to
avoid this impoverishment largely by focusing on programmatic themes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Gender and
editing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Documentary<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Hybrid genres
&amp; mixed media<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Processes &amp;
procedures<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Different
languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Letters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Memoir/Anti-memoir<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Comics<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Dialogue<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Chain</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">
characterizes these not as themes but as topics. Each, in the description posed
on the journal&#8217;s website, is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span class="GramE">a</span>
yearly issue of writing and art gathered loosely around a topic. The topic
serves as an editorial limit and changes the question asked of each piece
submitted from "is this a great piece of art" to "does this
piece of art say something about the topic that is not already known."
This makes <i>Chain </i>a little rougher around the edges, a little less
aesthetically predictable.<span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Only the initial 1993 issue
on &#8220;gender and editing&#8221; can be said to completely focus on a topic as such, in
the sense of content. The others can be more accurately characterized as
identifying a genre or strategies of writing, without specifying </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">furth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">er where any given project might choose to focus. One
might say anything in a dialogue, write anything in a letter, remember (or
anti-remember) anything, draw a comic on any subject whatsoever. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain&#8217;s </i>strategy maximizes its
contributors&#8217; degree of freedom, one reason that it has become, as previously
noted here, &#8220;the premier American literary journal.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">An interesting comparison
might be made to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics Journal</i>, the
publication edited by Barrett Watten &amp; Lyn Hejinian between 1982 and 1998.
With its commitment to serious in-depth critical discussion, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics Journal </i>is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain&#8217;s </i>most direct ancestor. From its second issue onward, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PJ</i> also organized each issue around a
theme:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Close reading<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Poetry &amp;
philosophy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Women &amp;
language<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Non/narrative<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Marginality:
public &amp; private language<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Postmodern?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Elsewhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">The Person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 1.0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">Knowledge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With the exception of
&#8220;non/narrative,&#8221; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics Journal&#8217;s</i>
topics were more thematic than formal.* But the topics were so global &#8211; the
last three could be read as primary ontological categories &#8211; that any sense of
limitation was minimal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The two issues that come
closest to one another are &#8220;Woman &amp; Language,&#8221; the fourth issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics Journal, </i>and &#8220;Gender &amp;
Editing,&#8221; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain&#8217;s </i>focus in its first
issue. The proportional scale that each theme proposes &#8211; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> conjoins a broader first term to a narrower second one &#8211;
seems completely accurate to the editorial inclinations of that journal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Both publications show what
can be accomplished via an organized, topic-driven strategy to editing. My own
hesitation toward this approach is not fully resolved, however, simply because
two exceptional teams of editors demonstrate that it can be done right. Because
mostly in the world of little magazines (and big), it&#8217;s not done very well at
all. To some degree, my own sense reverses the questions staked out in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain&#8217;s </i>website: Would this text have
been written without the artificial stimulus of pre-assured publication? Is the
work, on its own terms, necessary? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain </i>&amp;
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics Journal</i> exemplify what can
achieve when only the highest standards of writing &amp; thinking are accepted.
Would that more journals were like this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* &#8220;Close
reading&#8221; could be characterized as formal, but on the side of the reader rather
than the writer. Given its appropriation &amp; reframing of the major
methodological device of the New Critics, one could argue that this was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics Journal&#8217;s</i> most radical
intervention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, September 14, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">A thoughtful response to my
comments on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> from Juliana Spahr:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
i like to think of magazines not as
arguments but just as conversations or as possibilities. i think the job of the
editor is to put forward and stand back at the same time. and i think this is
the big difference between what you say and what i think. we started chain b/c
there were too many arguments being made. we started it in the climate of apex
and o-blek. there were arguments already and we needed other sorts of
conversations to happen. this felt crucial to us. we needed to make a place for
us to think about things in our way--a more sideways way or a less declaratory
way. now, perhaps, we/poetry community need arguments again. it is sad that
apex and o-blek are gone and really haven't been replaced. and somehow for some
reason that i'm not sure i know yet, we keep doing chain. but i'm not the person
to do this sort of editing. i'm just not interested in doing it (although i
always like to read apex and o-blek).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
i think this is not a thwarting of
political efficacy. i just think it might be something different than you are
used to seeing. similarly, with the "writers a journal brings
forward" issue. i think there are writers to which chain as been
especially committed. or writers that i really feel are important and worked
hard to make sure they got into the journal, bugged them a lot, etc. but i've
always hated that idea that editors "make" writers. i would feel
weird making a claim on any we've published.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
i do think that the one argument
that chain is making loudly is that poetry has a lot of various uses and
positions and a lot of connections that are often overlooked. i've been editing
from the middle of the pacific for six years now. and i've thought a lot about
the sort of work chain can do/attempts to do from this place because it isn't
all that evident everyday here (susan schultz is our only regular subscriber in
the Pacific). one thing chain does for me here is it keeps me reading writing
from over there (continent). which is good for me but that isn't enough
finally. from here, however, it has felt crucial to include more international
work (which we have done to the best of our abilities), to be more devoted to
cross talk among things that don't cross everyday, to more clearly address
poetry's cultural role, to support poetry as a genre of subcultures with ties
to various locals/locales, to put writing in both idiolects and in dialects
together in the hope that a larger and more complicated critique of standard
English would happen in both sorts of poetry, to make room for work about
identity and nationalism (those things the avant garde seems to spend too much
time seeing as reductive) and yet not to sacrifice the work that gets done in
more avant garde forms at the same time, to support both works written from the
local and works written against the global, etc.</div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, September 11, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The new issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> is out and continues the
magazine&#8217;s run as the premier American literary journal. No other publication
in the past decade has envisioned the breadth of American literature (defined here
as more than just U.S. writing) with the reach, complexity, completeness and
nuance of this publication co-edited originally by </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Juliana Spahr</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> and Jena Osman, now with the assistance of Thalia
Field and Cecilia Vicuña. For a reader of my generation, the experience of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> harkens back to the heroic period
of postmodern literary publications &#8211; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Origin,
Coyote&#8217;s Journal, Yugen,</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black
Mountain Review, Caterpillar, Sulfur, This, Hills, Temblor, Roof, Poetics
Journal, </i>the original<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> HOW(ever)</i>
&amp; their peers. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> is the one
print publication right now that can be said to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">change</i> writing as it publishes it, in the sense that a reader comes
away with a sense both of what is possible and what is necessary that is wider
and deeper than before. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So why am I unable to look
at an issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> without thinking
about a question that Jena Osman put to me several years ago at a Writers House
event? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I had mentioned the
disproportionate hoopla that had greeted a little journal called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex of the M</i>, edited by Lew Daley, Alan
Gilbert, Kristin Prevallet &amp; Pam Rehm*. To oversimplify only slightly, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex</i> took a confrontational view of
literature, arguing that the language poets had largely been a rationalist
movement, excluding mysticism in general and especially Gnostic views of
Christianity. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary (such as the poetry of
Susan Howe, one of the journal&#8217;s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>advisory
editors), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex</i> presented a range of
American postmodernist work that could be read as an inconsistent critique of
langpo &#8211; John Taggart, Will Alexander, Elizabeth Robinson, Ed Dorn and Gustaf
Sobin were among the contributors in its first two issues. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Identifying the boundaries
of langpo, as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex</i> seems rather
effectively to have done, is not the same as identifying an alternative, let
alone an anti- (or post-) langpo movement, particularly given the famously
isolative nature of several of the writers listed above. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex</i> came and went rather quickly in the larger scheme of things,
but continued to be discussed for several years after. &#8220;So why is it,&#8221; Jena
asked (I&#8217;m paraphrasing here from a mediocre memory), &#8220;that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i>, which was begun at the same time
in the same city, which has a much broader and more democratic view of the
possibilities of literature, receives so much less attention?&#8221; [It is worth
noting, of course, that in the long run, this is certainly not the case. If it
were a contest of which publication best manifested lasting literary value, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> won hands down. But the question
as I understood it had more to do with the proportionality of response.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Part of the answer, of
course, was that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> lacks <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex&#8217;s</i> hyperactive &amp; self-important presentation.
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex </i>led off its issues with fiery
editorials proclaiming its revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary, depending
on your perspective here) world view. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex</i>
offered the charm of the quixotic. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i>,
on the other hand, was from the beginning inherently inclusive and its impulses
democratic. Language poetry was presented as though it were only one of several
sources every young writer would want to think about. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex</i> by contrast put langpo on a pedestal only in order to take
better aim as it attempted to knock it off. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But having said all this,
there was &#8211; and still is &#8211; an inherent muting within <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain&#8217;s</i> editorial position, one that has limited its impact and
runs oddly contrary to the extraordinary intellectual ambition that otherwise
informs every issue. And that is its use of alphabetical order to present
content.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I obviously am not one to
speak ill of the alphabet as an organizing principle, but in writing my own
poem of that name, I know that I&#8217;ve had to take special to deal with the
narrative needs of the poem. Narrative in this sense means literally the
unfolding of meaning over time. This isn&#8217;t possible when the elements of the
ordering are the surnames of authors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I have never been fond of
the use of themes to organize literary journals &#8211; it feels to me far more
stifling than generative, causing many publications to include second-rate work
that &#8220;fits&#8221; while ignoring far better writing that doesn&#8217;t. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i>, which has used themes from its
initial issue, has avoided, or perhaps transcended, the usual limitations of
the thematic by envisioning each of them so broadly, and so creatively. There
is a sequence in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> 8, on comics,
that moves from Leslie Scalapino (whose conception of genre is itself worthy of
a doctoral dissertation), through Lytle Shaw to Sally Silvers, that is worth
the price of the 300-page journal<span class="GramE">.*</span>*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But such moments are
fortuitous and accidental. What if Lytle Shaw had been named Bruce Andrews or
Al Young? The problem is that, editorially, magazines are always arguments:
their mode is exposition. What comes first and who goes where matters. Nobody
understood this better than Clayton Eshleman with his journals <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Caterpillar</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sulfur.</i> Eshleman&#8217;s issues were composed almost musically. Thus, for
example, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sulfur 3</i>, published in 1982,
begins with one of Robert Duncan&#8217;s last <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Passages</i>
and closes its literature section (Eshleman&#8217;s journals followed the editorial
mode set by Harriet Monroe with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetry,</i>
placing reviews at the &#8220;back of the book&#8221;) with selections from the
correspondence between Charles Olson and Edward Dahlberg. In between, works
were positioned primarily for the sake of contrast. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">[Following </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Duncan</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> in that issue was a prose poem of mine &#8211; one of the
first sections of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Alphabet</i> to
appear in print &amp; something that at the time must have appeared
antithetical to Duncan&#8217;s poetry &#8211; followed by a young British poet with more
overt &#8220;New American&#8221; tendencies, Allen Fisher, and then a young East Coast
writer still working under the visible influence of George Oppen, Rachel Blau
DuPlessis. That Eshleman intuited correspondences between my work, Allen&#8217;s and
Rachel&#8217;s I can only imagine. In 2002, it seems immediately apparent in ways
that still appear unfathomable to me if I look at these texts of two decades
ago.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex</i>, Eshleman&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sulfur&#8217;s</i>
influence among writers, especially in its early years, far outstripped its
distribution. But each issue was always making an argument about value in
writing. It is precisely that argumentation by editorial placement that
disappears into the arbitrariness of alphabeticism in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain.</i> At best, one can intuit one by the range of inclusion, but
this is a second order of editorial exposition. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Clearly, the use of the
alphabet corresponds to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain&#8217;s</i>
democratic impulses. Nobody gets to go first but by the accident of their
father&#8217;s last name. But argued thus &#8211; or perhaps not argued thus &#8211; it&#8217;s a
bureaucratic democracy at best, and one that carries within it the not so dim
echoes of patriarchy in the use of surnames. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In one sense, this editorial
muteness may make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> an even truer
representative of contemporary literary culture, which in the past 15 years has
tended to be both progressive and yet firmly committed to thwarting its own
political efficacy***. It&#8217;s a curious position, ultimately, and one that seems
very much at odds with the journal&#8217;s own <span class="GramE">ambition,</span> as
though it were ambition itself with which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain
</i>might be at odds. In the long view of history, the test of a journal is
best gauged by the writers whom it brings forward to broader audiences. Thus,
in addition to their editors, one associates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Origin</i> with Olson, </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Blackburn</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> and Zukofsky, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black
Mountain Review </i>with Creeley, Duncan and again Olson. One associates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Caterpillar </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sulfur</i> with David Antin, Jerome Rothenberg, Jackson Mac Low, Robert
Kelly, Pierre Joris, Michael Palmer and Charles Bernstein. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">HOW(ever)</i> proved decisive in the renaissance of interest in Lorine
Niedecker. But after nine issues, one associates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> only with its editors. And that I think is the answer to the
question that </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Jena</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Osman posed. <span class="GramE">Though it has taken
me years to respond.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">*This was
the order as presented in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apex&#8217;s</i>
masthead, very much a &#8220;boys first&#8221; vision of literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** At $12
for issues that typically weigh in at over 300 pages, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain</i> is also one of the great bargains in literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">***Not
unlike the way the Green Party helped to put George W., Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft into their current positions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<li>silliman AT gmail DOT com</li>
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<h2>Silliman Sites</h2>
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<li><a href='http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1544'>Academy of American Poets</a></li>
<li><a href='http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/silliman'>Electronic Poetry Center</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.facebook.com/ron.silliman'>Facebook</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.goodreads.com/search/search%3Fsearch_type%3Dbooks%26search%5Bquery%5D%3Dron%2Bsilliman'>GoodReads</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/silliman/silliman.htm'>Modern American Poetry</a></li>
<li><a href='http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Silliman.php'>PennSound</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.pcah.us/the-center/grants-awarded/grantees-1998-ron-silliman/'>Pew Fellowships in the Arts</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6323'>Poetry Foundation</a></li>
<li><a href='http://ronsillimanbibliography.blogspot.com/'>Silliman's Bibliography</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?AuthorName=Ron+Silliman'>Small Press Distribution</a></li>
<li><a href='http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/TOTTELS/'>Tottel's</a></li>
<li><a href='http://twitter.com/ronsilliman'>Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.ubu.com/contemp/silliman/index.html'>Ubuweb</a></li>
<li><a href='https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0075.html'>UC San Diego Archives</a></li>
<li><a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Silliman'>Wikipedia</a></li>
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<h2 class='title'>Ketjak</h2>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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