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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, April 14, 2009</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><img height="195" id="_x0000_i1026" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/cK_ZI-on2sGJEAH-uoX_Eo1j-GAddf1dh_HYGJw7JqHSWd9u7U9DiLK5Bjnn99q2N5RAWXK3OZ4yipkJJwLHeudQu_A%3Ds0-d" width="170"><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;</span><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;</span><img height="195" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/0NaxQMP-4h9vE8IoN6_h1A9C-E7bJ4Vu9mpTBNm1oFBlGVxTJ8RB3egw3vnqjFIVoCSJiRWbtKtxQyHc-2mLAXY3F68mMabNVGxmxCaBHd0%3Ds0-d" width="152"></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8220;All conceptual writing is allegorical writing&#8221; argue Rob Fitterman &amp; <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Vanessa  Place</st1:address></st1:Street> in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/page-notes.html"><span style='color:black'>Notes on Conceptualisms</span></a>, </i>a fascinating little book with painfully small type<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>. </i>At the core of Cole Swensen&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11018.php"><span style='color:black'>Ours</span></a>, </i>published last year by the University of California Press, is the allegory of the garden, French gardens to be exact, and especially the work of André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), the &#8220;father,&#8221; to use Swensen&#8217;s term for it, &#8220;of the French formal garden.&#8221; Le <span class=SpellE>Nôtre&#8217;s</span> work most famously includes <a href="http://www.students.sbc.edu/gregg09/Versailles%20images/Versailles%203.jpg"><span style='color:black'>Versailles</span></a>, as well as <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Chateau_de_Chantilly_garden.jpg"><span style='color:black'>Chantilly</span></a>, <a href="http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/5836602/Domaine+National+de+SaintCloud+2366220.jpg"><span style='color:black'>Saint-Cloud</span></a>, <a href="http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php?id=2172625468/&amp;size=large"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Sceaux</span></span></a>, <a href="http://www.alovelyworld.com/webfranc/gimage/fra098.jpg"><span style='color:black'>Vaux-le-<span class=SpellE>Vicomte</span></span></a> &amp; the <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Jardins_des_Tuileries.JPG"><span style='color:black'>Tuileries</span></a>, where he himself was born, the son &amp; grandson of royal gardeners. Le Nôtre, of course, means <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>ours </i>in French, but this isn&#8217;t the most important dimension of the pun tucked into the book&#8217;s title. Rather it is the logic of the garden, or of a certain type of garden, &amp; the logic of the poem, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>our art. </i>Or of a certain type of poem, the sort that Cole Swensen might be called upon to write. And beyond that, possession (or at least possessiveness) of the earth itself, such as royalty might imagine to be their &#8220;divine right.&#8221; <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But if all conceptual writing is allegorical, does it then follow that the reverse is also true? If <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ours</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>represents a booklength allegory, does this mean that it is a form of conceptual writing? And is Cole Swensen a conceptual poet? As the co-editor of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>American Hybrid, </i>an anthology that seeks to define a middle path between post-avant &amp; quietist poetics, one might think Swensen exists outside of the flarf vs. conceptual debate, or that her work &amp; vision of poetry in some way precedes it. It&#8217;s difficult to imagine the precision of her writing alongside the loud (and knowing) nonsense of Kenneth Goldsmith typing up (or, more likely, scanning in) <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The New York Times</i>, or the Hugo Ball-meets-Daffy Duck aural pyrotechnics of Christian Bök&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Eunoia, </i>the thinking man&#8217;s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Blanc"><span style='color:black'>Mel Blanc</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Like Goldsmith&#8217;s work, which makes extraordinary use of facts even as it problematizes that category, Swensen&#8217;s poem is obsessed with external detail:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>The first orangerie in <st1:country-region w:st="on">France</st1:country-region> was built by <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Amboise</st1:place></st1:City> at the end of the 15<sup>th</sup> century,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>but</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'> the form reached its height in the 17<sup>th<o:p></o:p></sup></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>coinciding</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'> with what&#8217;s called &#8220;The Little Ice Age,&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>a</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;
color:black'> series of exceptionally cold winters<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;ont-family:Arial;color:black'>But where Goldsmith&#8217;s work &#8211; and to a lesser degree that of Bök &amp; the other poets who are normally (or normatively) implied by the rubric conceptual &#8211; strives to demonstrate form without ever being at all &#8220;literary,&#8221; Swensen is writerly as all get out. Its demonstration of &#8220;the literary&#8221; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>is </i>its claim to form. One could write a book about how Swensen uses the line in <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ours</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, </i>and of the balance between prose &amp; verse evident in so many of its sections. That book would be much larger than <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ours</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, </i>and would never be completely equal to its subject. Consider the second of these three lines: <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The circle of philosophers / in stone; riven by voices, they stand at crossroads; they incite fountains. The voices / grow louder whenever someone lives. </i>A line with not one but four hard stops &#8211; Swensen offers the most complex verse line since Olson, but never does so with the wheezing lunge that propels the bard of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Gloucester</st1:place></st1:City> forward like a lemur through a forest&#8217;s canopy. The essence of her line is balance, just as his is imbalance. Yet her line <span class=GramE>here,</span> not unlike so many of his, begins <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and ends </i>in the middle &#8211; there is nothing contained or complete. <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Allegorical writing is necessarily inconsistent, containing elaborations, recursions, sub-metaphors, fictive conceits, projections, and <span class=SpellE>guisings</span> that combine and recombine both to create the allegorical whole, and to discursively threaten this wholeness. In this sense, allegory implicates Gödel&#8217;s First Incompleteness Theorem: if it is consistent, it is incomplete; if complete, inconsistent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>At which moment Place &amp; Fitterman insert their claim that heads up this note. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>All of this is true &#8211; in spades &#8211; of Swensen&#8217;s <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ours</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>. </i>Is she therefore a conceptual poet? One might think so, and yet<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One might as well argue her role in the history of flarf on the grounds that, long ago &amp; far away, she was Nada Gordon&#8217;s junior high school teacher. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Flarf &amp; conceptual poetics have been treated as antitheticals, except where they&#8217;re not. In five years (or minutes) no one will remember that they were once imagined to be oppositional, rather than as flavors of a larger investigative poetics. Flarf will discover that conceptualism expands the terrain of writing by valuing the extra-(and anti-) literary, conceptualism will discover that flarf&#8217;s ruling framework &#8211; &#8220;badness&#8221; &#8211; is an inherently conceptual move. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Hybrid poetry, by definition, brings alternative paths together: Pound&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Mauberly </i>not perceived as satire. The first hybrid poet, almost by design, was Marianne Moore, old friend of Pound, advocate of Williams, but working a day job as editor of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Dial, </i>the magazine that invented &#8220;dull&#8221; long before <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Paris</i></st1:City></st1:place><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> Review, Granta </i>or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Narrative</i>. Yet there was nothing dull about <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Moore</st1:place></st1:City>, just as there is nothing dull about Swensen, C.D. Wright, Ann <span class=SpellE>Lauterbach</span>, Robert Hass, <span class=GramE>Donna</span> <span class=SpellE>Stonecipher</span>, Forrest Gander or any of the other poets one might today imagine as &#8220;hybrids.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>If allegory assumes context, conceptual writing assumes all context. (This may be in the form of an open invitation, such as <span class=SpellE>Dworkin&#8217;s</span> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781891190285/parse.aspx"><span style='color:black'>Parse</span></a>, </i>or a closed index, such as Goldsmith&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.geoffreyyoung.com/thefigures/day.html"><span style='color:black'>Day</span></a>, </i>or a baroque articulation, such as Place&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.lesfigues.com/lfp/28/dies-a-sentence"><span  style='color:black'>Dies</span></a>.</i>) Thus, unlike traditional allegorical writing, conceptual writing must be capable of including unintended pre- or post-textual associations. This abrogates allegory&#8217;s (false) simulation of mastery, while remaining faithful to allegory&#8217;s (profound) interruption of correspondences. Allegory breaks mimesis via its <span class=SpellE>constellatory</span> features &#8211; what scattershot this is. Conceptualism&#8217;s mimesis absorbs what Benjamin called &#8220;the adorable detail.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This suggests instead good vs. bad allegory. On the one side are a series of texts that might be called instances of mastery (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ours </i>would be a case in point), on the other a series of texts that approach (indeed seek) unreadability in the name of breaking mimesis. A literature of works that one might have no particular desire to read, not unlike the idea that not everyone will want a urinal in their living room, even if it is signed &#8220;R. Mutt.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Swensen reminds us that the old fashioned approach to extraneous (non-lyrical) data invading the text is called research. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ours</i> sits like an ice flow atop a surface beneath which lies all of her reading &amp; thinking on the subject of gardens. If, in fact, there are &#8220;adorable details,&#8221; they arrive via selection, precisely what the conceptualist counter-examples listed above <span class=GramE>seem</span> to call into question.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>What is the role of selection in poetry? <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>When I moved to <st1:State w:st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:State> in 1995, one of the local phenomena that I had not anticipated was the presence of numerous formal gardens open to the public: <a href="http://www.hosking.org/gallery/slideshow.php?set_albumName=Longwood-Gardens-2007"><span style='color:black'>Longwood Gardens</span></a>, <a href="http://www.chanticleergarden.org/index.html"><span style='color:black'>Chanticleer</span></a>, <a href="http://gardenblog.winterthur.org/page/2/"><span style='color:black'>Winterthur</span></a> down in <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Delaware</st1:place></st1:State>. The first &amp; last of these had been homes for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont"><span style='color:black'>DuPont</span></a> family, who very much sought to replicate the best of French noble living in the new world (the founder of the American business empire had in fact defended Louis XVI &amp; Marie Antoinette from a mob at the Tuileries in 1792, an act that led to the family&#8217;s move to North America). Gardens such as these remind one very much just how close culturally this part of the nation is<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span>to its European roots, a far cry from either the drought resistant gardens that are the rage these days in the American west <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>or </i>the consciously socialist landscape architecture of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted"><span style='color:black'>Fredrick Law Olmsted</span></a>. That Swensen would pick Le Nôtre, rather than Olmsted, as the source for her work is, as a poker player might put it, a fascinating <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tell"><span class=GramE><span style='color:black'>tell</span></span></a>. She is, after all, one of our leading translators of poetry from the French. But if the logic of Olmsted&#8217;s gardens, with their sensitivity to landscape &amp; imbalance, might lead one inexorably to the poetics, say, of a Charles Olson, the gardens of Le Nôtre seem obsessive in their symmetries. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>As an aesthetic dynamic, symmetry is inherently stable, even static. Asymmetry by definition is unstable, it tends to lurch about. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>La <span class=SpellE>Bayadère</span> </i>vs., say, Sally Silvers, Simone <span class=SpellE>Forti</span> or even Twyla Tharp. Symmetry is the driving principle of all closed works of art, indeed of closure itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One might argue that the conceptualist works figured above are themselves obsessively symmetrical &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>completeness </i>is a value in &amp; of itself (it&#8217;s not enough to do just a page of the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New York Times</i>). Just as one might argue that they are nothing but catalogs of adorable detail. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>And one might argue that Swensen is no less obsessive than, say, Goldsmith, in the projects she takes on &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ours </i>is not a poem about a garden, but a book, and one that leaves unspoken what is surely its largest single claim &#8211; that writing poetry is essentially (I mean this adverb literally) a process of gardening. From the forest of language to arrive at a garden of text, a poem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Is Cole Swensen a conceptualist or the disproof of conceptualism? Or is conceptualism the proof or disproof of Cole Swensen?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, March 19, 2009</span></h2>

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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial">Janet Holmes<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">A couple of the books that have come across my desk recently have gotten me thinking. One is Jared Hayes&#8217; <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">RecollecTed</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> / <span class="SpellE">CaGeD</span>, </i>printed in a limited special edition for the 101<sup>st</sup> reading of the Spare Room series in </span><st1:place><st1:city><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">Portland</span></st1:city><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">, </span><st1:state><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">Oregon</span></st1:state></st1:place><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">. (You can read the <span class="SpellE"><span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">CaGeD</i></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> </i>part of this book by downloading this <a href="http://www.dusie.org/caged.pdf"><span style="color:black">PDF file</span></a> from the folks at <span class="SpellE">Dusie</span>.) The other is by Janet Holmes &amp; published by <span class="SpellE">Shearsman</span>, one of the very best presses in all of the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">U.K.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">, entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><a href="http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2009/holmes.html"><span style="color:black">THE MS OF M Y KIN</span></a>, </i>or perhaps <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">THE <s>POE</s>MS OF <s>E</s>M<s>IL</s>Y <s>DIC</s>KIN<s>SON. <o:p></o:p></s></i></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, June 16, 2008</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>This is only going to get me into trouble, but&#8230;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I was thinking about the debate, to call it that, between flarf &amp; conceptual writing, and specifically thinking that such a debate was in many respects the healthiest single phenomenon I&#8217;ve seen regarding poetry in several decades, because it meant that there were two contending (contesting) approaches to the new, and that you can actually feel the discourse getting off the dime finally of what to do after langpo <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and just doing it</i>. And that feels so long overdue, frankly.&#185; <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Then I had the thought, what if this were the 1950s? There are some interesting parallels. Flarf &amp; conceptual writing appear literally decades after the last collective literary tendency, not unlike how the New Americans showed up 20 years after the rise of Objectivism. And there are already different voices &amp; formations, again as in the 1950s. So the question occurred to me: if these are the new 1950s, just <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>who </i>are flarf &amp; conceptualism. And then suddenly it was as clear as sunlight in spring:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.5in;line-height:150%'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'>Flarf is Projective Verse<br> 
Conceptual Poetry is the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'>  </span><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Flarf, precisely by its interest in &#8220;deliberately awful&#8221; writing, is amazingly writerly. Its first notable device, Google sculpting, is not unlike way Olson et al reconceived the use of the linebreak &amp; its relationship to speech so as to completely redefine how everyone (not just the Projectivists) would think about poetry. In this scenario, Michael Magee&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>My Angie Dickinson </i>is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>For Love </i>for its generation. K. Silem Mohammad&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Dear Head Nation </i>is what &#8211; the first <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Maximus</i>? I don&#8217;t want to carry this analogy too far &#8211; Nada Gordon &amp; Katie Degentesh don&#8217;t have to fight over who gets to be Denise Levertov (both are considerably more interesting in the long run, anyway). It would be valuable to note the differences between these formations as well &#8211; flarf is far more democratic, small d, for one. One doesn&#8217;t see Gary Sullivan pulling a &#8220;</span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Reading</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> at </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8221; number any time soon. And is Rod Smith the Duncan, the </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Blackburn</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, the Edward Dorn?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Conceptual Poetry, like the NY School, borrows importantly on concepts from the </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> visual arts world. Like <span class=SpellE>Personism</span>, it&#8217;s not about individual works of great art. It doesn&#8217;t overvalue personal creativity. It opts for fun. And it&#8217;s nostalgic for traditional forms &#8211; Kenny Goldsmith &amp; Christian Bök, to name two, are deeply retro in terms of the projects they choose. Their relationship to <span class=SpellE>fluxus</span> &amp; dada are as direct as Ashbery&#8217;s are to Stevens &amp; Auden. All they&#8217;ve done is to switch the nameplates. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>So where are the new Beats? Is that what slam or def jam poetics are about? I doubt it, actually, given just how completely the key early Beats were into form &amp; literary history, but the whole valorization of the street poet, especially by the <span class=GramE>numbskulls who confuse Bukowski for a beat, has</span> a deeply anti-intellectual strain one finds at a lot of slams. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>And what would be the new SF Renaissance? One senses that the New <span class=SpellE>Brutalist</span> phenomenon really has not borne a distinct literary sensibility (one doesn&#8217;t hear anyone speaking of the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New <span class=SpellE>Yipes</span> </i>series as the foundation for a new poetics, for example, tho maybe I&#8217;m just hard of hearing). Is there a distinct aesthetic perceptible in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Bay Poetics? </i>Or are Bay Poetics as much of a fiction as was the first SF Renaissance? Maybe what that scene needs is a Jack Spicer, but is there anyone just plain grumpy enough? <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>It will, I think, be obvious that such an analogy as this does a lot of violence to all those named, for which I apologize, sort of. Sort of, because I don&#8217;t think my gut feel here is wrong. What we are seeing is the resurrection of some very basic tendencies active within poetry for over half a century, seeing them coalescing once again into shapely coalitions we can actually name. From my perspective, old collectivist that I am, this can only be a good thing for moving poetry forward. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#185; From my perspective the great &#8220;tragedy&#8221; of langpo is that there were no other seriously contesting approaches to poetry. Actualism, which I&#8217;ve written about before, dissipated after the death-by-alcoholism of Darrell Gray, and the NY School, <span class=SpellE>gen</span> 3, was never interested in working out its relationship to other poetics, period. Everyone else was pursuing the isolato mode of individualism, still the most popular (and futile) option. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span class=SpellE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Laynie</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> Browne is conducting a survey about poetry for the forthcoming symposium on <a href="http://poetrycenter.arizona.edu/events/symposium.shtml"><span style='color:black'>Conceptual Poetry</span></a> in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Tucson</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. Here are my responses to her questions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>1.&nbsp;&nbsp;What is conceptual poetry?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I see it as a specific move within the larger possibility of the history of writing, one that requires (a) the pre-existence of conceptual art and (b) writers whose concept of an avant-garde <span style='color:black'>&#8211;</span> which they believe still exists and to which they feel committed <span style='color:black'>&#8211;</span> is predicated on the desanctification of the aesthetic object (a la <span class=SpellE>Duchamp&#8217;s</span> moves within sculpture nearly a century ago). It is thus an avant-garde that is widely accessible precisely because (a) it is retro &amp; nostalgic and everyone can recognize it, and (b) anyone [in theory] can do it. Its tell-tale sign is that it usually removes some or all of the normal tasks of reading &amp; interpretation from the process of consumption. The point isn&#8217;t to read the work so much as to &#8220;get it.&#8221; <span class=GramE>Having said that, some of its practitioners are exceptionally talented.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&nbsp;<b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>2.&nbsp;&nbsp;Can poetry be non-expressive?</b></span><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Yes, absolutely, but to be non-expressive is a series of specific moves within the possibilities of language and poetry. <span class=GramE>Which is also to say that there is more than one way to get there.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>3.&nbsp;&nbsp;Is there such a thing as a &#8220;direct presentation of language&#8221;?</span></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Yes, and for very much the same reasons that language can be non-expressive. It occurs as the result of specific moves within the creation of the poem. &nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>4.&nbsp;&nbsp;Intellect rather than emotion?&nbsp;</span></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I reject the either/or nature of this question. I am only interested in both/and, thank you. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>5.&nbsp;&nbsp;Dismantle this line-drawing</span></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in;text-align:center'><img border="0" height="297" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/0lb6hnYsOS7FrECc8LN-7xKvgd6R4IAny2mJwwEqMGGqDQMBVFFPqn7PjbuRgI-Un6kozzoepRjCOgId5-PQqHiVnGMZ%3Ds0-d" width="384"><br>
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Untitled, </span></i><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Eugene <span class=SpellE>Andolsek</span>, </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>American</span></st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Folk</span></st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Art Museum</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'><br>
from the show <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Obsessive Drawing<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&nbsp;<b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>6.&nbsp;&nbsp;What is the purpose of form and formlessness?</b></span><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>To differentiate themselves one from the other.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> To create foreground &amp; background &amp; a million effects such as shape. </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>7.&nbsp;&nbsp;Distinguish between procedural and conceptual</span></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One category of conceptual is procedural (think of Kenny Goldsmith&#8217;s works, such as <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Fidget</i>), but a lot of poetry is procedural without being conceptual. Shakespeare&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sonnets </i>are entirely procedural. So are Ted Berrigan&#8217;s.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>8.&nbsp;&nbsp;What formal restraints do you practice every day?</span></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The common ones of ablutions.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> The first thing I eat in the morning is a banana. I&#8217;m writing a poem in which each &#8220;sitting&#8221; is determined by how long it takes my six-year-old PC to boot up. I always go to sleep lying on my left side. </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>9.&nbsp;&nbsp;What is the responsibility of the writer?</span></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>To respond.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>10. &nbsp;Why are women virtually</span></b></span><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> excluded from the <a href="http://www.ubu.com/concept/"><span style='color:black'>UBU web anthology</span></a>? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>There are two answers to this question. The first is generational. The gender <span class=GramE>bias of the institutions of literature (as distinct from literature itself) have</span> only begun to seriously bend and open during my lifetime. In spite of the decisive role that certain women &#8211; Gertrude Stein, who is present in this anthology; Bernadette Mayer, who is not; Lucy Lippard, who is not; Hannah Weiner, who is not; Barbara Krueger &amp; Jenny Holzer, who are not; the Guerilla Girls, who are not<span style='color:black'>; Juliana Spahr & Jena Osman, who are not &#8211;</span> have played in making conceptual poetry possible, indeed inevitable, they have generally been underrepresented all along. To the degree that this short list (just 31 items) tries to represent a few key moments in the history &amp; pre-history of conceptualism, it invokes several periods when women did not make up half the world of writing, which is quite recent. One might likewise ask why <span class=GramE>are Dada and Russian Futurism</span> under-represented here. Indeed, where is Dmitri Prigov, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>who coined the phrase &#8220;conceptual poetry&#8221;</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The second answer is more concrete: you ought to ask Craig. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, January 27, 2007</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This week&#8217;s <a href="http://poetryfoundation.org/dispatches/journals/2007.01.22.html"><span style='color:black'>blog</span></a> at the <a href="http://poetryfoundation.org/"><span style='color:black'>Poetry  Foundation</span></a> has been <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/"><span style='color:black'>Kenny</span></a> <a href="http://www.wfmu.org/~kennyg/"><span style='color:black'>Goldsmith</span></a> on the virtues of <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/silliman_goldsmith.html"><span style='color:black'>uncreative</span></a> <a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~wh/webcasts/goldsmith.html"><span style='color:black'>writing</span></a>. While this sounds like coals to Newcastle, Goldsmith&#8217;s conceptual poetics &#8211; he offers lots of examples, especially with Friday&#8217;s  annotated reading list &#8211; is both well-considered &amp;, given its location, hysterically funny. The best thing <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>has done in years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, November 09, 2006</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It was the Russian Formalist critics who first noted that one of the historic roles of art &#8211; and one of art&#8217;s inexorable drivers toward incessant, ongoing change &#8211; is to incorporate new aspects of society into the art itself. Without which any genre would very quickly lose much of its connectedness with the life of the community from which it springs. Indeed, in poetry, the refusal of this function in favor of a defensive conventionality is perhaps the most serious weakness of the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, the fundamental absence, even a form of denial, right at the spot where a heart should beat. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One clear instance of poetry bringing in new language into the place of the poem was Ed Friedman&#8217;s 1979 project, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/tsfdr"><span style='color:black'>The Telephone Book</span></a>, </i>which presented, verbatim, a month and a half of transcribed telephone calls by the then-director of the Poetry Project at St. Marks Church. The culture of phone etiquette &#8211; this was before you could actually who was calling before they identified themselves &#8211; combined with the elements of Friedman&#8217;s life &#8211; not just poetry, but also his participation in the controversial do-it-yourself therapy movement called co-counseling &#8211; to yield a text that edged up against, say, Bernadette Mayer&#8217;s works of memory &amp; reconstruction on the one side, and social codes so banal that they were all but &#8220;invisible&#8221; because of being
&#8220;too boring to notice.&#8221; The result was a brave &amp; wonderful book &amp; consciously a challenge to read, at once formal &amp; painfully intimate.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>All of these same elements, save for the co-counseling, are invoked again in a new work, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Inbox (a reverse memoir), </i>by <a href="http://humanverb.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Noah Eli Gordon</span></a>, forthcoming from <a href="http://www.blazevox.org/"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>BlazeVOX</span></span></a> books. I&#8217;ve been asked if I&#8217;d blurb it, but I think this book is too important to let pass with just a few words for a rear cover. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Inbox </i>is exactly what its title suggests, a work of art that includes email received by the author, albeit written entirely by his correspondents, over a period of time. By way of introduction, Gordon uses his permission letter, which reads (in part): <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Dear Friends<span class=GramE>,</span><br> 
I recently completed a book project that includes<br>
some of your writing and wanted to both tell you<br>
about it and ask your permission to [attempt to]<br>
publish the work. I&#8217;m currently calling the manuscript<br>
INBOX, which should send up the requisite bells and<br>
whistles, 55 pages of uninterrupted prose that <br>
constitutes a kind of temporal autobiography, well<br>
conceptually anyway. I thought it would be interesting<br>
to see what would happen if I were to take the body-<br>
text of every email that was addressed specifically to<br>
me [nothing forwarded or from any listserv] currently<br>
in my inbox [over 200] and let all of the voices collide<br>
into one continuous text. The work is arranged in<br>
reverse chronology, mirroring the setup of my email<br>
program. I removed everyone&#8217;s name and any phrase<br>
with which they&#8217;d closed their email; additionally, I<br>
removed any specific address mentioned. I&#8217;m really<br>
pleased with the results, as it sculpts the space<br>
between the every detritus of dinner plans to<br>
discussions of fonts and notes from long lost friends.<br>
To be honest, as I&#8217;m a person pretty free of drama<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
the bulk of the work is boring, but intentionally so, in<br>
the generative, ambient way that Tan Lin writes<br>
about, well, one would hope anyhow. It&#8217;s the collision<br>
of voices that makes the work compelling, at least to<br>
me. The only thing is&#8230; I didn&#8217;t write any of it; you did!<br>
Of course there&#8217;s something awfully self-aggrandizing<br>
to a project like this, and I&#8217;m fully aware of it, which is<br>
why I&#8217;m thinking of it as an autobiography. I don&#8217;t think<br>
it would be right for me to show any of the<br>
manuscript to anyone until I&#8217;ve received everyone&#8217;s<br>
permission to share the work. Let me just say this<span class=GramE>:</span><br>
there&#8217;s not really anything all that incriminating in<br>
here, and most of the gossip is pretty bland. I still<br>
have many of the emails from which the text was<br>
created [although not all] so I&#8217;d be willing to send folks<br>
copies of whatever they&#8217;ve written that I do still have,<br>
if need be. Although, to be honest, I think the integrity<br>
of the project is kind of dependant on folks NOT being<br>
aware of the make up of their contribution, as the <br>
voices dissolves into one another without any <br>
transition. Also let me say that if I do end up doing<br>
anything with the text, it will not include anyone&#8217;s <br>
name, outside of those mentioned in the body text of<br>
messages; besides my name, there is no author<br>
attribution within the manuscript. Most of the text is<br>
dinky <span class=SpellE>pobiz</span> stuff, me hashing out the shape of<br>
chapbook manuscripts I&#8217;ve published, or will publish<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
directions to readings, etc. It is not at all my <span class=GramE>intension <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;</span></i></span><br>
to take advantage of or disrupt anyone&#8217;s confidence.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This is a remarkably accurate description of the book itself, tho, like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Telephone Book, inbox </i>somewhat <span class=SpellE>fetishizes</span> its source material by printing it pretty much verbatim from start to finish whereas I think you would get a truer picture of the actual language of email (or of phone conversation) precisely by breaking it apart &#8211; sentences seem an obvious point &#8211; and scrambling them, so that you look primarily (if not only) to the language &amp; not all these miniature narratives. Will Noah accept this invite? Will the proofs for that chapbook be adequate? Etc. I&#8217;m reminded that when Kathy Acker decided to focus on the juridical language of the courts system, she didn&#8217;t adopt the dramatized fictive canon of Perry Mason et al, but used the actual language of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>in re van <span class=SpellE>Geldern</span> </i>as her source material, while also substituting in the names of friends (and by that fact, characters from other sections of the same novel). Acker&#8217;s strategy is not unlike Harry <span class=SpellE>Partch&#8217;s</span> music composed on a scale of his making on instruments he invented from materials &amp; objects that already exist in the world. Friedman &amp; Gordon more or less give you the raw objects instead. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Sociologically, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Inbox </i>is fascinating. As reading, it&#8217;s a tougher go, and I think
one finds it possible almost primarily because of the &#8220;guess the writer&#8221; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>roman a clef </i>element in the work. Who wrote, for example, on the very second page of the <span class=GramE>work:</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>I&#8217;m writing to invite you to read in the Poetry Project 2004-2005 Monday Night Series at St. Mark&#8217;s Church in NY on </span><st1:date Year="2004" Day="24" Month="1"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>January 24, 2004</span></st1:date><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>, </span><st1:time Minute="0" Hour="20"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>8 p.m.</span></st1:time><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'> I know the </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'> audience is eager to see you here &#8211; and to course I&#8217;ve seen your work quite a bit, and admire your range (among other things). In short, I&#8217;d love to have you read! Details: You would be paid $50 for the reading itself, and unfortunately we can&#8217;t afford to cover travel costs (something we&#8217;re hoping to work on in the future), but I hope you can make it (it&#8217;s not too much from </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Amherst</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>, yeah?). Additionally, your reading time can run from approx. 20-40 minutes, up to you. Your reading partner will be Barbara Cole. If you&#8217;re not available for 1/24, let me know as soon as you can, and we&#8217;ll work something else out. I&#8217;ll also need a full address from you, so we can send a &#8220;contract&#8221; out. The Poetry Project&#8217;s archaic and long-winded way of welcoming. :) Thanks very much and hope to be in touch soon.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>My own sense is that the material works best to the degree it is most mysterious, most turned toward the language, most disjunct: <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:1.0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.0in;text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Have you worked as a DJ? What relationship do you see<span class=GramE>,</span> if any, between the worlds of publishing books &amp; putting out music? Silliman&#8217;s Blog tells me today that you just won the <span class=SpellE>Sawtooth</span> Poetry Prize. What manuscript is in the works on that front? Can you talk a bit about your
chapbook venture?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>That, I presume, is all one correspondent, but the jump-jump-jump between sentences gives it <span class=GramE>an urgency</span> the passage above lacks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>So my sense here is that the &#8220;more aesthetic&#8221; approach that, say, Linh Dinh takes toward the discourse of instant messaging in his most recent work, writing in that discourse rather than mere replicating of the always already written, ultimately makes more sense to me in terms of how best to bring a previous absent (albeit all-but-omnipresent) layer of language into writing. But this doesn&#8217;t cancel out the importance of Noah Eli Gordon&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Inbox. </i>It presents the highest order of conceptual poetics just by being itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, September 04, 2002</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>It is not simply the <span
class=SpellE>Oulipo</span>-derived games, impressive as they are, that makes
Christian Bök&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Eunoia </i>(Coach House, 2001)
so notable, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and, most wondrous, an
avant-garde title with 8,000 copies in print within its first year of
publication. (See a flash presentation of &#8220;Chapter e&#8221; here: <a
href="http://www.ubu.com/contemp/bok/eunoia_final.html">http://www.ubu.com/contemp/bok/eunoia_final.html</a>.)
Bök&#8217;s book&#8217;s driving pleasure lies in its author&#8217;s commitment to the oldest
authorial element there is: a great passion for rigor, particularly at the
level of craft. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Consider:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in;text-align:justify'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Relentless, the rebel peddles these
theses, even when vexed peers deem the new precepts &#8216;mere <span class=SpellE>dreck</span>&#8217;.
The plebes resent newer verse; nevertheless, the rebel perseveres, never
deterred, never dejected, heedless, even when hecklers heckle the vehement
speeches. We feel perplexed whenever we see these excerpted sentences. We sneer
when we detect the clever scheme &#8211; the emergent <span class=SpellE>repetend</span>:
the letter E. We jeer; we jest. We express resentment. We detest these
depthless pretenses &#8211; these present-tense verbs, expressed pell-mell. We prefer
genteel speech, where sense redeems senselessness. (32)<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>In addition to the evident
wit &amp; active sense of jest throughout, all winking meta-commentary, there
are just two small moments here (&#8220;hecklers heckle&#8221; and &#8220;sense redeems
senselessness&#8221;) in which a reiteration of root terms raises the possibility
that another line of attack might have been posed, e.g. &#8220;even when the hecklers&#8217;
specter severed speeches.&#8221; But this alternative (for example) adds one extra
character, and just might render the typesetting &#8211; every line in the title text
is justified so that no paragraph ends mid-line (this rule is adhered to also
in the Ubu.com version, which presents each paragraph in 10 lines as against
Bök&#8217;s book&#8217;s 13) &#8211; impossible. Add to this an awesome ear and, well, ease awes.
And it is precisely because Bök makes it all feel as natural as rain that makes
us swoon. Great stuff!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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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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