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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Criticism</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>Saturday, August 24, 2013</span></h2>

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<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2013/08/blog-post_24.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2013-08-24T00:00:00-04:00'>Saturday, August 24, 2013</abbr></a>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, July 26, 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'>Yesterday&#8217;s link list included both a <a href="http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/07/poisoning-well.html"><span style='color:black'>defense</span></a> of literary criticism in newspapers and a link to a <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3a2md8"><span style='color:black'>New York Times </span><span style='color:black;font-style:normal'>review</span></a></i> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Longenbach"><span style='color:black'>James Longenbach</span></a> of four new volumes of verse. That juxtaposition is worth thinking about a little more closely. <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'>The defense is an extended version of a talk given by Lindsay Waters, an executive editor at Harvard University Press who sits on the board of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), where he is responsible for the press&#8217; humanities texts. As one might anticipate from somebody in his position, his argument is reasoned, well-crafted, a pleasure to read. Waters makes a defense for criticism <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>as such</i></span><span style='color:black'> </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>without sinking to the reactionary &#8220;gate keeper&#8221; mythology that a Hilton Kramer might use &#8211; that argument is simply that the masses won&#8217;t know what to think without being told how do so by the enlightened few, so that critics are all that protect us from such barbarians as Jack Kerouac or Ron Silliman. Waters, in sharp contrast, argues for the very best in criticism, that it is simply an intelligent person confronting new work for the first time &amp; reporting honestly about same. Waters&#8217; climax virtually requires orchestral crescendos to accompany his prose:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in;text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Criticism is Lester Bangs. It&#8217;s Frank Kermode, Elizabeth Bowen, Mary McCarthy, Thomas Merton, Virginia <span class=SpellE>Woolf</span>, George Eliot, <span class=GramE>Michael</span> <span class=SpellE>Dirda</span>. It is Lorenzo <span class=SpellE>Valla</span>, and it oozes from crack in the pavement in the other HUP book I brought to show you today (beyond our brand-new <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Donation of Constantine</i> </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8211;</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'> Howard <span class=SpellE>Hampton&#8217;s</span> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Born in Flames: Termite Dreams, Dialectical Fairy Tales, and Pop Apocalypses</i> (HUP, 2007). <span class=GramE>It&#8217;s</span> lists, of course, it&#8217;s lists. It&#8217;s judgment upon judgment. <span class=GramE>It&#8217;s</span> gut responses, and it&#8217;s argument. When we engage in the process of arguing about art, we devise new reasons, new ideas, <span class=GramE>new</span> forms of thought. This is a central human activity, one that leads to the creation of new brain cells. Killing the book reviews is </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8211;</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'> a phrase I&#8217;ve used elsewhere </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8211;</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'> </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Chernobyl</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'> for the Life of the Mind.</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><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'>I don&#8217;t think you have to love everybody on that list &#8211; I&#8217;m not fond of either Kermode or <span class=SpellE>Dirda</span> &#8211; to understand that Waters really wants you to connect to critical thinking at its best as his justification for its preservation.<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 I think he&#8217;s right, at least partly, when he claims that newspapers killing off their review sections constitutes a &#8220;fad&#8221; among tabloid executives trying very hard to save their publications in an emerging post-print universe. The great irony, as I see it, is that publishers &#8211; it&#8217;s seldom the editors &#8211; who slash their review sections are being penny wise &amp; pound foolish at a moment in history when that constitutes suicidal behavior. Their rationale is that the review sections no longer are profitable per se because fewer ads are bringing in revenue. That in turn has a lot to do with consolidation among the major trade publishers and the decline of independent booksellers. But immediate ad revenue is only one facet of the contribution a review section makes to a daily paper &#8211; driving sustainable readership is even more important. <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'>Regardless of how good or bad a particular review section might be &#8211; and some of them, like that of the San Francisco Chronicle, are almost shockingly bad &#8211; reviews are a phenomenon directed at a particular fraction of the newspaper audience: serious readers. Driving off that portion of your audience that is most committed to writing in print format would seem to be openly self-destructive behavior. If newspapers actually think that they can generate loyalty and circulation amongst, say, the fans of Lindsay <span class=SpellE>Lohan</span> by focusing more attention on celebrity <span class=SpellE>DUIs</span> than they can get by actually reaching out to readers who already have a commitment to print formats, well, do I even have to finish this sentence? It&#8217;s like trying to lose weight by cutting open an artery &#8211; it <span class=SpellE>sorta</span> works, but the collateral damage is severe. What this trend really shows is that publishers don&#8217;t understand their product <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>or </i>their audience. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=style2><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But poets getting all exercised about the demise of review sections is a little like poets getting all hot &amp; bothered about the collapse of independent bookstores that carry almost no poetry &amp; keep it hidden in the far back corner somewhere. This is where the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Times </i>review seems all too typical. <a href="http://www.rochester.edu/College/ENG/faculty/James_Longenbach.html"><span style='color:black'>Longenbach</span></a> reviews four books, two by Houghton Mifflin, one by Norton and one by Margie/Intuit House. Three of the authors are issuing their first books, with only Josephine Dickinson, a widow who still works a farm in the north of </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>England</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> &amp; has been deaf since birth, as the exception. <a href="http://www.nathanielbellows.com/"><span style='color:black'>Nathaniel Bellows</span></a> is a 35-year-old School of Quietude (SoQ) poet &amp; novelist (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>On This Day, </i>HarperCollins 2003) whose verse has appeared in <em><span style='font-family:Arial'>Grand Street, The Massachusetts Review, The New England Review, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Open City, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Western Humanities Review, Witness</span></em>, and <em><span style='font-family:Arial'>The Yale Review</span></em>. A look at the sample poems on his web site brings to mind words like &#8220;lifeless&#8221; &#8211; considering how rarely a poem gets into <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The New York Times, </i>the one published there is worth looking at. Longenbach doesn&#8217;t mention this <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Times </i>connection, nor does he mention that Matt Donovan, another poet with a first book at a major trade publisher, was a <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New York Times </i>Fellow in NYU&#8217;s MFA program. With the exception of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry</i> and <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Threepenny</span> Review, </i>tho, Donovan&#8217;s list of </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'> publications isn&#8217;t as glossy as Bellows. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=style2><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The more interesting ringer here is Troy Jollimore, the one poet reviewed with a book from a small press, but having won the National Book Critics Circle award. Jollimore has been pretty straightforward in interviews in characterizing <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tom Thompson in Purgatory </i>as imitation John Berryman, so the real question isn&#8217;t why a young poet might take on such a project, but rather what might possess Mr. Waters&#8217; organization to give their annual prize to something that is so obviously &#8220;smart student work&#8221; when dozens of major books were published last year. The very best I can come up with is that the form is recognizable, at least to a body whose typical member appears to be 50 years out of date on contemporary poetry. Or seventy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=style2><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Josephson&#8217;s book, which is a compilation of two of her British volumes, seems to me a reasonable project for a publisher like Houghton Mifflin. But Bellows &amp; Donovan demonstrate very clearly that trade presses do <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>not </i>represent a higher quality of writing, but rather are just another small press scene, one with better distribution and advertising budgets. Does it make any sense that their books should get more attention, say, than a Troy Jollimore? No, but if the NBCC hadn&#8217;t awarded him its prize that is exactly what would be happening. And there were <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>hundreds</i> of better books published by small presses last year, by Quietists &amp; post-avants alike. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=style2><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s in this sense that the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New York Times </i>is hardly better than the independent bookstore whose poetry section, all two shelves of it, stretches all the way from Yeats to Rilke, maybe with a little <span class=SpellE>Rumi</span> &amp; Billy Collins tossed in. And the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Times </i>is almost certainly the best daily in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> when it comes to book reviews. But if the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Times</i> is willing to review very minor books from trade publishers while ignoring major collections &#8211; think of the Kyger collected or the new John Wiener&#8217;s volume &#8211; from outside of that circle, and if it fails to acknowledge its connection to some of the poets whom it does choose to cover, would the loss of the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>NYTBR </i>actually be a real loss to poetry? Might it not in fact be just the opposite? The <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Times Book Review </i>is a major source of legitimation for a lot of bad writing. The baldness of some of the annual prizes that similarly go to nondescript Quietist poets year after year might be even more glaring if it occurred without this fig leaf of critical sanction. <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Keenhttp:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Keen"><span style='color:black'>Andrew</span></a> <a href="http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/"><span style='color:black'>Keen</span></a> is getting a lot of play these days for his book, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Cult of the Amateur</i>, which argues that <a href="http://tinyurl.com/38hegx"><span style='color:black'>the web has opened the floodgates</span></a> to &#8220;non-professional&#8221; critics who will run their various fields of inquiry into the ground because they lack the &#8220;standards&#8221; & discipline of, say, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>NYTBR</i> or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The New Criterion</i>. My own sense is that Keen is 100 percent wrong. Critical sites have grown on the web precisely because the institutional critical apparatus in this country is so sclerotic &amp; inept. This is true of not just of newspapers, but of many academic journals as well. Nothing breeds mediocrity faster than the &#8220;consensus building&#8221; process of any refereed journal. I may not agree with the likes and dislikes of SoQ bloggers like C. Dale Young or Joseph <span class=SpellE>Duemer</span>, but there is no question that their blogs have far more integrity as critical sites than, say, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The New York Times</i> or the NBCC in general. And I trust readers to be able to discern the difference. Which I think is just what Mr. Keen fears most. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, December 07, 2006</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 my 1491<sup>st</sup> comment on this blog since I started back in August 2002. Over very much the same period of time, <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/killian/"><span style='color:windowtext'>Kevin Killian</span></a> has posted something close to the same number of reviews on Amazon.Com. Given everything else Killian has been doing with regards to his own creative writing, his Spicer scholarship, his ongoing non-academic day job, his role, alongside Dodie Bellamy, in the most significant power-duo in the San Francisco poetics scene since the heyday of Robert Duncan &amp; Jack Spicer, the idea that Killian has found the time &amp; wherewithal to post <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>thousands </i>of reviews simply boggles this blog. Perhaps even more amazing is that Amazon, which counts everything, notes that there are 127 reviewers who have done <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>even more. </i>But unless Adorno &amp; Benjamin have started sending in pieces, I can&#8217;t imagine anyone doing them better than Kevin Killian. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I&#8217;ve been hearing about Kevin&#8217;s Amazon reviews now for years, but until Brent Cunningham edited <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.hookepress.com/kevin.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>Selected Amazon Reviews</span></a>, </i>out now from <a href="http://www.hookepress.com/"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:windowtext'>Hooke</span></span><span style='color:windowtext'> Press</span></a>, I&#8217;d seen very few. Cunningham&#8217;s selection makes clear why. The first review is of a biography of Rock Hudson by David Bret, the second is of &#8211; I swear &#8211; Gerber Tender Harvest 1<sup>st</sup> Foods Sweet Potatoes, Baby Food, of which, in part, Killian writes<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'>I first was introduced to Gerber as a wee <span class=SpellE>laddie</span>, when Mom never dreamed I&#8217;d ever graduate to anything but baby food, for I would sit in my high chair and refuse to eat anything but mashed-up Gerber&#8217;s vegetables. If Mom, Dad, or our extended family attempted sneak something else onto my tray, wham! It would hit the opposite kitchen wall. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Nowhere is there any mention of poet Dan Gerber, one-time editor of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sumac, </i>scion of the family that created this taste sensation, nor of Gerber&#8217;s 1994 &#8220;merger&#8221; with the conglomerate <a href="http://www.novartis.com/"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:windowtext'>Novartis</span></span></a>, of which it is now just one of many brands (including Gerber Life Insurance). <span class=GramE>Just an intimate, personable discussion of the product itself, right down to the labeling.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>This is followed with a review of a book listed as &#8220;currently unavailable&#8221; (as is the case, online at least, with the Rock Hudson bio): <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Alcatraz: The True End of the Line </i>by Darwin Coon. <span class=GramE>Followed in turn by <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://msupress.msu.edu/bookTemplate.php?bookID=2575"><span style='color:windowtext'>Poets Talk</span></a>, </i>a super anthology of interviews with Canadian poets edited by Pauline <span class=SpellE>Butling</span> and Susan Rudy.</span> Followed in turn by <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Stripper&#8217;s Guide to Looking Great Naked </i>by Jennifer <span class=SpellE>Axen</span> and Leigh Phillips:<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'>For example, say you&#8217;re one of those unfortunates who have they call &#8220;butt-thigh syndrome&#8221; &#8211; that&#8217;s what happens when onlookers can find &#8220;no real distinction between your ass and your thighs&#8221; &#8211; then what you do is apply bronzer underneath each cheek to give the illusion of some 3-D depth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Only one of the first five items here &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poets Talk </i>&#8211; is a product that I&#8217;m likely ever to seek out on the Amazon web or anywhere else (I have no idea what my butt looks like). This string of what I might characterize as unusual choices &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/y76bq5"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:windowtext'>StarPet</span></span><span style='color:windowtext'>: How to Make Your Pet a Star</span></a></i>&#185;<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>has a great reference to a baton &#8211; continues until we find a review of Giorgio <span class=SpellE>Agamben&#8217;s</span> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>State of </i></span><st1:State><st1:place><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Exception</span></i></st1:place></st1:State><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>. </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>At this point, this little chapbook is nearly half done. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The new historicism as a critical movement took the tools of traditional literary criticism and applied them to nonliterary documents of the past, so as to create a reading of the past itself in deeper &amp; presumably more meaningful terms. Killian&#8217;s strategy is not that different from this, save for the fact that he&#8217;s &#8220;reading&#8221; the present with a whimsical, but not inaccurate eye, and that his critical mode has as much of the gossip column as a literary model as it does the latest issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Representations. </i>Imagine<span class=GramE>,</span> if you will, Wellek &amp; Warren as read through Tonya Harding or a dialog that blends perfectly Roland Barthes and Melissa Rivers. Or, more accurately perhaps, what if John Waters understood that he was an urban ethnographer and took that role seriously. That&#8217;s exactly what Killian appears to be doing. It&#8217;s a bravura performance and a not insignificant reading of the world itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I should note that I&#8217;m not a fan of Amazon myself, although I sometimes use it. Mostly I use the site for data on the book involved and then go straight to the publisher or to SPD to actually order the volume &#8211; this not only puts more money in the press&#8217; hands, it usually gets the volume to me quicker. But what Killian has done, as I read it, is not necessarily endorse Amazon as a sales engine, so much as recognize its role as a unique repository of information. Even the most recalcitrant of independent bookstores now seem to utilize the site <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>before </i>they turn to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Books In Print. </i>And that&#8217;s the spirit that comes through best in this collection of just 35 pieces. You can and should buy this book. But you should also look up <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>all </i>of Kevin Killian&#8217;s reviews online, which can be found indexed <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ygaxk9"><span style='color:windowtext'>here</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'><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; The online version is missing the first four words of the third paragraph &#8211; &#8220;The author has done&#8230;&#8221; &#8211; which are happily supplied in the book. Maybe that beef jerky allusion caused a brain spasm in HTML itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, January 04, 2003</span></h2>

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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Christian Bök&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">String Variables</i> is one of those
initially deceptive projects in that you begin to read the two minuscule
chapbooks <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Off</i> that are gathered together (with a band of paper, not string,
alas) in this micropress project, a press run of 60 copies issued jointly as <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">openpalmseries</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>2.5 &amp; 2.6 and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">umlaut machine </i>nos. 6 &amp; 7, &amp; it is only when, starting the
second volume &#8211; I read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On</i> before I
did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Off, </i>although I would wager that
this effect will work just as well if the little volumes are read in the
opposite order &#8211; you begin to recognize the uncanny similarities. Here is the
first page of <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">errata</span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>tattoo<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>no tone<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>sombrero<br />
<br />
semantic or epic<br />
to graphic<br />
I <span class="SpellE">clemecy</span> sty<br />
<span class="SpellE">esperanto</span><br />
nympho nemesis<br />
terrible<br />
pro systematic<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>on icing<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>lot<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>talisman<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="SpellE">i</span>
fester<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>rat<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="SpellE">i</span>
corridor<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>chest<br />
<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>ration<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>so famous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And here is roughly the same
amount of </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">tex</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">t from the first page of <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Off</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">err</span> at<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">at</span> <span class="SpellE">at</span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>too not<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>one <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>somber<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
&lt;![if !supportLineBreakNewLine]&gt;<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
&lt;![endif]&gt;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">rose</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> <span class="SpellE">manticore</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">pictograph</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">icicle</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">man</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> cyst
yes per<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">antonym</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">
phoneme<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">sister</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">rib</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">
leprosy stem<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">at</span> iconic<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>in glottal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">is</span>
manifest<br />
<br />
erratic or rid<br />
orchestrations<br />
of a mouse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Letter by letter, these two
texts are all but identical, so much so that I will wager (this seems to be a
betting blog) that &#8220;<span class="SpellE">clemecy</span>&#8221; in <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On</i></span> is in fact a typo and should
read &#8220;<span class="SpellE">clemancy</span>,&#8221; even though the latter is itself a
misspelling. </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Reading</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> the two works together &#8211; I put a couple of hours
between each volume &#8211; is an almost eerie experience. There&#8217;s certainly no way
that I can tell whether <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On</i> was the
&#8220;master&#8221; text &amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Off</i> the &#8220;slave,&#8221;
the one forced to fit the primary draft of the other, or the other way &#8216;round.
Nor can I see any simple way for the imagination to derive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">systematic </i>out of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">leprosy
stem / at iconic</i> even though, looking closely, I can see that it&#8217;s there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_09_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2381133829">Eunoia</a>,
</i>Bök&#8217;s book of aggressive vowel constraints, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">String Variables </i>is both a written work that is fun to read aloud
&amp; the result of an almost unimaginably rigorous formal process &#8211; he is
clearly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the </i>master of post-Oulipo
poetics. Technically speaking, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">String
Variables</i> is a misnomer for the process by which this work must have been
composed. In programming, the little I understand of it, you have both
variables &amp; constants &#8211; no great theoretical problem there &#8211; either of
which might be composed of numeric data or of &#8220;strings,&#8221; in which numeric data
can be joined with alphabetic and other symbols. So we have strings here
alright, but it is only the spaces &amp; linebreaks that vary. (Thus the
paradigm <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On/Off</i> refers to the states
of electrical current that are then translated into a binary system to generate
all such information.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Works like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eunoia </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">String Variables</i> envision a model of language that no
traditionally-educated linguist would recognize &#8211; they wouldn&#8217;t recognize <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Finnegans</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Wake</i> either &#8211; a model in which letters,
not phonemes, organize language. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">String
Variables</i> almost looks as if one could simply take a great block of type
and divide it into clusters and &#8211; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Voila! </i>&#8211;
<span class="GramE">words</span> &amp; phrases would just &#8220;naturally&#8221; appear. The
reality of course is infinitely more complex &amp; part of Bök&#8217;s genius lies
precisely in making it look so deceptively easy. While Bök&#8217;s work fits into the
larger context of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Toronto</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8217;s grammatologically-inflected post-avant poetry
scene, the broader framework of Oulipo and its international heritage, &amp;
relates at some level to the work of Americans such as Jackson Mac Low, Bök
brings a unique flavor to it all &#8211; exactly that combination of inconceivable
rigor &amp; utter simplicity. I&#8217;ve never read a substantial work of his that I
didn&#8217;t </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">wis</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">h I&#8217;d written myself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, November 21, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Carl Boon&#8217;s sixth question
feels more complex to me and, as it also addresses the question of blogging per
se, I&#8217;m going to just focus on this inquiry for today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">6.&nbsp; Your recent project is a web log, or "blog," that
chronicles daily and in great, tedious detail the goings-on of the avant-garde
writing community in and around </i><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philadelphia</i></st1:place></st1:city><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. Your daily entries, often a thousand words or more, are filled with
analysis, links, schedules for readings in the community, and miscellaneous
poetry talk. Can you talk about this project? How do you see its role, its
importance? Does it fill some need in the poetry community? How long will you
maintain it? <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ve been thinking
critically &#8211; even obsessively &#8211; about poetry since I was a kid. After <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Sentence, </i>I continued writing
criticism pretty regularly until our twins were born in 1992. That first year
or two with twins is pretty intense &amp; there was hardly a moment in which
one might have a complete thought, let alone have the time to write it down. My
goal was to not stop writing poetry and I felt successful just to have
accomplished that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But, as my kids have grown
older, I&#8217;ve gotten back to thinking about writing &amp; publishing critically.
First, it&#8217;s excellent discipline. The process forces you to read more
intelligently. Second, all critical writing is a form of organizing, even when
the writer doesn&#8217;t realize that. My problem was/is that I saw few contexts that
struck me as useful in sharing this writing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There has been a real
falling off in critical thinking since the 1970s when various talk series in
particular got a lot of people up and speaking intelligently about writing,
their own &amp; that of others. Part of it no doubt is the fault of writers in
my own age cohort, me included. The poetry wars of the late 1970s were hardly
an attractive proposition for younger poets, but in part that is precisely why
the various provocateurs started them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And part of the problem of
course is the continuing near-monopoly on critical writing by institutions in &amp;
around the academy. To be of any value at all, critical thinking about poetry
needs to be directed to poets. In the academy, poets are at best eavesdroppers.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But there has also been a
depoliticization of younger people generally &amp; that has impacted poets.
Some of it has to do with the lack of tangible alternatives to unfettered
capital following the collapse of the old Stalinist bloc &#8211; although for decades
it has been difficult to find any western Marxist who would defend the
so-called &#8220;actually existing socialist countries,&#8221; in large part because state
control over capital is not socialism. In the West, there has been no primary
shared point of agreement as to the goals of the left since the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;"> exited </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Vietnam</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;"> in 1974. That&#8217;s a long time for groups to go without
much sense of cohesion. The antiglobalism movement is not one thing, but many,
&amp; many of them contradictory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;
</span>Identarian tendencies were a logical extension of the civil rights
movements of the 1950s &amp; early &#8216;60s, but they have inescapably fed into
this demobilization by isolating the very people they seek to empower. You see
the long-term result in a lot of writing these days that is simultaneously
politically correct <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i>
depoliticized, a politics really of cynicism and disgust. So this also becomes
an incentive not to organize, not to write critically. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">On top of all this, I had a
personal reason for thinking about starting my blog. Since this past spring, my
wife has been struggling with a chronic disease called Reflex Sympathetic
Dystrophy, a neurological syndrome that is both painful &amp; nasty. The
condition has been hard on her and put an enormous strain on everyone in the
family. It was in that context that I felt my sitting around thinking about
poetry, but not actively <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doing anything
about it</i> beyond the simple production of my own poem, was really lazy &amp;
inexcusable.* <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So I decided to try a
process in which I would just write something critically pretty much daily and find
some means of putting it out there where poets might see it. It&#8217;s really as
simple as that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Because my nephew Daniel has
had a <a href="http://danielsilliman.blogspot.com/">blog</a> for some time, as
now do both his mother &amp; sister, I had some familiarity with the form and <span class="GramE">its</span> potential. So while my family was having something of a
disastrous vacation this summer on an island off </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Nova Scotia</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;"> &#8211; not a good place to be if your meds aren&#8217;t working
&#8211; I mulled over the idea of how I might start a blog that simply focused on one
thing: poetry as I experience it. I began it three days after our return to </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Pennsylvania</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ve been pleased with the
response it has gotten so far &#8211; I&#8217;m getting an average of over 60 hits per day,
over 100 three or four times each week &#8211; and the response, with a few notable
exceptions, has been positive. Right now, it is sort of the flavor of the month
with a certain strain of younger writer, but that will certainly pass. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Marjorie Perloff pointed out
to me, right at the beginning of the blog, that a major limitation of the form
is its scale. These are really short notes, mostly sketched out early in the
morning, then fiddled with over the remainder of the day before being launched.
In this sense, the blog is closer to, say, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L=A=N=U=A=G=E
</i>as a project than, say, either <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics
Journal </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chain. </i>Though I guess
it&#8217;s worth noting that it has added up to more than 150 pages in less than
three </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">mont</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">hs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">As to how the blog will
develop or how long I may maintain the site is really something I can&#8217;t tell.
I&#8217;m learning as I go along &amp; it&#8217;s still fun, not a sense of obligation at
all. I don&#8217;t see it continuing on indefinitely any more than I would a poem. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">But what would in fact be
even better would be to see a number of other blogs on the same general subject
that would take off &amp; do their own thing and carry the conversation ever so
much further out into the universe. Right now the ones I read most constantly
&amp; closely are those of <a href="http://jonathanmayhew.blogspot.com/">Jonathan
Mayhew</a>, <a href="http://www.arras.net/weblog/">Brian Kim Stefans</a> &amp; <a href="http://www.laurable.com/log/index.html">Laurable</a>. May a thousand
blogs bloom!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* My wife
has noted that I began writing as a ten year old because of the difficulties of
growing up in a dysfunctional household. That the stress of her illness should
lead to my blogging strikes her as profoundly parallel behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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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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<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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_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_ImageView', new _WidgetInfo('Image1', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Image1'), {'resize': false}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextView', new _WidgetInfo('Text2', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Text2'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
</script>
</body>
</html>