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<p class='description'><span>A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.</span></p>
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Showing posts with label <b>Frank Stanford</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Frank Stanford</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, December 14, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Like George Stanley&#8217;s
forthcoming selected poems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Tall,
Serious Girl,</i> Besmilr Brigham&#8217;s selected short poems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Run <span class="GramE">Through</span> Rock</i>, derives its title from
the final poem in the volume. The book has a spare, almost austere beauty to
its design. The front cover is a color photograph printed in landscape format
about two-thirds up the page, behind which runs a vertical band of gray that
holds (above the photo) the book&#8217;s title and (below the photo) subtitle, author
&amp; editorial information. You can just barely discern that this pattern
forms a cross. The photo itself is of a rock atop some exceptionally dry &amp;
tire gouged red clay earth &#8211; in the deep background, so soft focused as to be
open to interpretation, are either clouds or hills underneath the deep blues of
a storm sky. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The back cover presents the
same pattern &#8211; the photo is now a color negative &#8211; as the front. Underneath the
photo, printed in the grey column (that same subtle cross) are some lines from
one of Brigham&#8217;s poems. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Run <span class="GramE">Through</span> Rock </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">is a careful, professional project in book design &#8211;
its only flaws (&amp; you will see that I&#8217;m reaching to find any) a couple of lines
here &amp; there that are ambiguously leaded, making it not quite clear whether
or not a new stanza is upon us. As is equally evident with its 2000 reissue of
Frank Stanford&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Battlefield Where
the Moon Says I Love You, </i>Lost Roads has become one of the premier
publishers of American poetry. Every attention to the detail of the book is
taken &amp; the eye to presentation is exact. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The cover of </span><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Battle</span></i></st1:place></st1:city><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">field </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">uses black, white &amp; red very carefully to achieve
a message of visual power. An African-American male stares out from behind a
black foreground that is shaped with just enough of an angle to suggest a book
that has been opened (it may be a public monument of some sort). Atop this
monument or book, which takes up a little more than the bottom half of the cover,
just to the left (and to some degree in front of<span class="GramE">)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>of</span> the young man is a metallic ball,
just slightly smaller than a basketball &#8211; if you pay close attention, you will
see the photographer reflected in the ball, the background behind her &#8211; the
photographer being Lost Roads publisher C.D. Wright&#8217;s sometime collaborator,
Deborah Luster &#8211; suggesting a farm field. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Thrusting up from the bottom
of the front cover &#8211; I&#8217;m choosing my words carefully here &#8211; is the same sort of
column that appeared beneath the photo on the Brigham cover, with the author&#8217;s
name dropped out in white toward the bottom and the book&#8217;s title above it as
the column moves from black to a rich deep red. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The back cover has a small
square photo centered roughly three-quarters up the page: two toddlers,
Caucasian, playing with a slightly older African-American boy in some kind of </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">camp</span></st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">setti</span></st1:placename></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">ng &#8211; there is a tent in the background. The boy on
the left, it turns out, is the author. The photograph is very much a retro
snapshot, almost surreal in its fuzziness. It&#8217;s surrounded with a thick bright
red border against the otherwise black field of the cover. Below, as with the
Brigham volume, a few lines of poetry &amp;, at the very bottom in a different
type, the ISBN data.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As moving a graphic design as
the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battlefield </i>is, it may
be tame in comparison to the one printed on the 1977 first edition of the
volume, back when Lost Roads was the name of a magazine &#8211; </span><st1:city><st1:place><span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Battle</span></i></span></st1:place></st1:city><span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">fied</span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> was technically issues 7 through 12, all in one
volume &#8211; and the publisher was then called Mill Mountain. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The books aren&#8217;t even the
same size: the 1977 edition taking up 542 pages, the 2000 edition offering the
same number of lines in just 383 pages. While the two volumes are different
dimensions &#8211; the 1977 edition is <span class="GramE">more squat</span> &#8211; the
primary difference is that the earlier edition is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">typed</i></span> <span style="font-family: Arial;">&amp; not typeset. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If the interior of the 1977
edition looks rough, it&#8217;s nothing in comparison to its cover &#8211; the same color
ensemble as the 2000 edition, but used to radically different effect. The
background is white, not black, the typeface all in lower case red &#8211; another
way of emphasize the rawness of the book. <span class="GramE">And the photograph.</span>
Well, the photograph. Uncredited &amp; perhaps lifted from a newspaper, it
shows a stack of corpses half covered by a tarp, all </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Vietnam</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;">ese women &amp; children, their faces bloodied, eyes
open seeing nothing. Cowering in the upper right hand corner of the photograph
are two other women overcome with terror &amp; grief. At the upper left, a
single leg (foot pointed away from the bodies) to suggest a larger context &#8211;
someone is still paying attention to something else. The verso says only
&#8220;Photograph taken the last day of the war, </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tan</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">Son</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placename><span class="SpellE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Nhut</span></span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">Airport</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">, </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Saigon</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">, </span><st1:date day="29" month="4" year="1975"><span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">April</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> 29<sup>th</sup>, 1975</span></st1:date><span style="font-family: Arial;">.&#8221; Of the 4,000 volumes of avant &amp; post-avant
writing I have lying about the house, none &#8211; not even the Clay Fear collection
of Kathy Acker imitations with the blow job on the cover &#8211; comes close to this
one for its evocation of an involuntary visceral response. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Frank Stanford was still
alive when the first edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battlefield
</i>was issued &amp; it may even be his design &#8211; no credit is given. The cover
of this edition foregrounds the word &#8220;battlefield&#8221; in the title, where the 2000
edition is more ambiguous &amp; points to that ambiguity established by a noun
phrase that includes not only &#8220;battlefield&#8221; &amp; &#8220;love,&#8221; but also &#8220;moon&#8221; &amp;
the possibility of address. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There is something so
extreme about a 542 page book that is typed rather than typeset &#8211; its
characters equal in width, the page unadorned to the point of a stark ugly
beauty. The design of the first edition accentuates everything about the text
itself that can be called raw. This is worth noting for a couple of reasons.
One is that by 1977, when this book was coming out, Stanford had been in
college for several years &amp; was well on his way to writing pretty standard
MFA mill poetry. Committing to this &#8220;early&#8221; work was much more than playing on
his precociousness as a teenager, it meant admitting the legitimacy of this
completely <span class="GramE">Other</span> vision of what poetry could be. In
1977, there was nothing you could find even remotely close to what Stanford was
doing &#8211; the surrealist scene around Franklin Rosemont, for example, or the Beat
variant around Philip Lamantia, are both quite tame in comparison to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battlefield</i>. Further, in the age of the
internet, after Bill &amp; Hillary, &amp; after Lucinda Williams &amp; C.D.
Wright, it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine just exactly how removed
from mainstream literary culture </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Arkansas</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;"> was in the 1970s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The 1977 design of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battlefield</i> appears calculated to make
the book leap out at the reader from every possible angle. 25 years later, in
an era when college students in </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Western Massachusetts</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">
conduct daylong readings of the entire volume, the 2002 design may very well be
the right one to permit readers to pick up new threads &amp; possibilities in
this dense work. Each edition shows why it&#8217;s a wise book that understands its
cover. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, November 09, 2002</span></h2>

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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">First thought, best thought<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ve always been interested
in the poem&#8217;s relationship to the process of thinking &amp; often see poems as
documents of that process. From Kerouac&#8217;s speed-ridden prose scroll through
Olson&#8217;s sometimes stumbling forward, using enjambment<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>&amp; variable line length in his poems to
lurch towards an idea, to Ginsberg&#8217;s transcription of audio tapes in &#8220;Wichita
Vortex Sutra&#8221; or Duncan&#8217;s wrong-headed insistence that his final book appear
typed rather than typeset so as to capture best what the poet thought he was
doing at that instant, I&#8217;ve been drawn to works that often are written so as to
appear unfinished, in progress, the poetic equivalent I suppose of &#8220;distressed&#8221;
furniture or pre-faded jeans.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Not surprisingly, then, I
think of myself as somebody who doesn&#8217;t revise much in my own poetry. So I was
surprised this past <span class="GramE">Spring</span> doing a little tour of the
Southwest (Tucson &amp; San Diego) when a woman at one of the events insisted
that my own writing process appeared to be one of total revision. What I do in
practice &#8211; and this pretty much has been the process for the past few years &#8211;
is to gather individual sentences into a notebook (of late, into a Palm Pilot)
until I have a decent number of them, at least 100, sometimes as many as 150. I
then sit down with whatever notebook I&#8217;m using and with my trusty (if rusty)
old Waterman felt-tip pen that I bought at a stationer&#8217;s just down from <span class="SpellE">Zabar&#8217;s</span> on the Upper West Side of Manhattan back in 1981
and use those sentences to compose the next passage of whichever work is at
hand. Sometimes I&#8217;ll use just a few sentences, but other times it might be a
fair number. On rare occasions, I&#8217;ll insert some sentence that occurs to me
during this process, usually out of a sense that &#8220;this sentence belongs
right here.&#8221; Once the number of raw sentences &#8220;in the hopper&#8221; drops down to a
certain level, however, somewhere around 80, I seem to need to stop, there no
longer being enough raw material from which to select. From the Palm Pilot to
the notebook, I do make significant changes, even rewriting the basic sentence,
although this occurs maybe in no more than five percent of the sentences I
eventually use. &amp; it&#8217;s possible for a sentence to &#8220;hang out&#8221; in the Palm
Pilot (or the pocket notebooks &amp; Sharp Organizer that I used before that)
for perhaps two years or more before I decide that I really must not be
intending to use that sentence. One the notebook itself is &#8220;complete&#8221; (&amp; my
definition of what that means changes from project to project)<span class="GramE">,</span> I type the poem into the PC. At this level, I change well
under a single word per page &#8211; and this is what I&#8217;m thinking about when I say
that I don&#8217;t make much use of revision. From end to end, this process can
easily take years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The argument that this one
questioner put to me was that the revision was in the translation from Palm
Pilot into the notebook. I&#8217;ve been mulling that idea over for </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">mont</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">hs &amp; it still makes me furrow my brow. At some
level, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve committed to the sentence until I get it into the
notebook &#8211; I have no idea, even intuitively, where or how it might be used, <span class="GramE">the</span> context into which I will finally place it. So it
doesn&#8217;t feel to me that I&#8217;m actually writing poetry until I have my Waterman in
hand with a physical notebook.* How then could that be a process of revision?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">One of my favorite poets in
the universe, Rae Armantrout, however, has a radically different approach to
the question. Revision plays a strategic role in her writing process, perhaps
its most critical element. Armantrout tries out an almost infinite number of
possible combinations before committing to even the shortest passage. In
addition, Armantrout is one poet who uses what any marketer or product
development specialist would recognize as a focus group as part of her process.
She sends draft versions of poems to a handful of friends, <span class="GramE">myself</span>
among them, asking for our response, advice, possible revisions, etc. She used
to do this in person when we lived not so far from one another in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">San Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, then by mail for many years after she and her
family moved back to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">San
  Diego</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">. With
email, however, the process has accelerated. There have been instances in which
I&#8217;ve received four different versions of a single </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">tex</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">t within the space of one hour. And while I &amp; the
other members of the feedback team (or however Armantrout thinks of us) have
over the years learned to be fearless in the suggestions we can &amp; do make &#8211;
a less confident poet would be crushed by some of the things we say &#8211; my sense
is that Armantrout almost always does exactly what she herself intended to do
with the poem, using us as much as anything as a means of clarifying her own
thinking about the text. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">One side effect of this
process for me is that I often see so many versions of a single poem that I
have no clear idea in my mind which version Armantrout eventually settled on
until I see the work in print. Sometimes it&#8217;s a version that&#8217;s slightly
different from every version I&#8217;ve seen. No one is more surprised by
Armantrout&#8217;s poetry in a new volume than I am. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Today about dawn I was
reading a passage in Frank Stanford&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_09_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2381229839">The
Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You <span style="font-style: normal;">i</span></a></i>n
which the writing is, as often it is in this fabulous book, delightfully
over-the-top:<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: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
God has lost so
much blood now he can&#8217;t speak he had to go to giving</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">hand</span> signals like a deaf and dumb man</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">all</span> was silent as a winter pond silent and untrue like a
featherless arrow</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">like</span> a shaft of sleeping wine beneath a tree the rotting
teeth</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">and</span> the dreaming knife and my dreams still ricocheting so
close</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">and</span> so far apart like journeys into space like the fast
madness</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">of</span> butcherbirds like field mice and toads and grass snakes
all of them</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">with</span> holes in their head have you seen that bird beating the
<st1:state><st1:place>minn</st1:place></st1:state>ow</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">against</span> the branch he&#8217;s got him by the tail the eyes of the <st1:state><st1:place>minn</st1:place></st1:state>ow
like rubies</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">tin</span> lids with their duets under the creek in the moonlight</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">like</span> planetoids who <st1:state><st1:place>nev</st1:place></st1:state>er
make it weep for the children with their bellies</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">buzzing</span> like a hornets&#8217; nest full of <span class="SpellE">snakeskins</span>
made by the sparrow</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">the</span> pieces of stars passing my ship</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">so</span> slowly I can reach out and touch them if I could</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
I lay in
slumber charged with death</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">stuck</span> like a sword in a battleground giving its aria</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">like</span> a dancer coming to life</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">in</span> the solar ditch I ask the sailor of space touch one</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">finger</span> with the other like a symphony the blessed legend in
the void all over</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">again</span> o how we died</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">centuries</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">ago</span> we slept friends I tell you I heard the oboes that
belong to the wolf</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">the</span> opera two steps from the blues the light years boogie
all the </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">time</span> I heard the blind tiger guitar so that is how it goes
how my dreams</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">those</span> sad captains</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE">treat</span> me the <span class="SpellE">unkept</span> rendezvous
with the void which is black the pocketknives</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
I lose in
infinity those blades of grass that cut you in the dark</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;Those sad captains&#8221; stopped
me cold, although I&#8217;d already tripped over the reference to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Peter and the Wolf </i>three lines earlier.
Is Stanford here alluding to Marc <span class="SpellE">Antony</span>? <span class="GramE">To Thom Gunn?</span> <span class="GramE">To the sentimental story by
Sarah <span class="SpellE">Orne</span> Jewett?</span> Is it something that just
popped into his head from the overheard &amp; undigested language of everyday
life? If I had to guess, I&#8217;d wager Shakespeare, but, like the allusion to
Prokofiev, the intrusion of any sort of book learning is so curiously <span class="GramE">Other</span> in this text that it can only send shivers through the
poem, a <span class="SpellE">memento</span> <span class="SpellE">mori</span> to the
preliterate society Stanford is exploring. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">These lines are filled with
phrases that don&#8217;t bear too much probing &#8220;like planetoids who </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">nev</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">er make it,&#8221; &#8220;the blind tiger guitar,&#8221; &#8220;the sailor of
space,&#8221; etc., yet collectively work because they&#8217;re so consistently excessive. It&#8217;s
more that these gaudy phrases mark the speed of writing than they do any point
of reference within. When one does suddenly resonate with meaning, the impact
can be dazzling. For me, this whole passage is completely justified by giving
occasion to &#8220;like a sword in a battleground giving its aria.&#8221; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Without ever having seen the
original manuscript of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battlefield</i>, I
would suspect that it doesn&#8217;t show much in the way of revision &#8211; other than
possibly </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">del</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">etions &amp; insertions of entire sections. It&#8217;s not
the sort of poem that could ever be tidied up. Yet if what revision represents
is the function of critical thinking in the act of composition &#8211; which is what
I come up with, thinking of how radically differently I proceed through the
writing process compared with someone like Rae Armantrout &#8211; then revision in
this sense must already be present in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battlefield</i>.
There is something in Stanford&#8217;s imagination that told him when &amp; how to
bring in extraneous information, whether it&#8217;s oboes or Marc <span class="SpellE">Antony</span>,
and ultimately it doesn&#8217;t matter if Stanford &#8220;got it right&#8221; or not. In this
poetry, neatness doesn&#8217;t count. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* I&#8217;m
totally weird &amp; neurotic about notebooks as well, but that&#8217;s a topic for
another time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>But this does raise the question of
what I think I&#8217;m doing when I&#8217;m writing/collecting sentences into my Palm or a
pocket notebook. Research, perhaps. I don&#8217;t at that point in the process have
any commitment, emotional or otherwise, to the sentences collected. &amp; I&#8217;ve
gathered them under conditions that felt like the furthest thing from &#8220;writing
poetry&#8221; &#8211; in the middle of business meetings, while driving, twice while
undergoing eye surgery. Whereas &#8220;writing poetry&#8221; for me has an emotional feel
to it that is very little changed from the days as a kid when I would sit on my
bed in my room with a spiral-bound notebook in hand, writing away with some
kind of deep pleasure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Friday, September 06, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Two
books that surprise me with their similarity are Frank Stanford&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love
You</i> and Lyn Hejinian&#8217;s A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Border
Comedy. </i>On the surface, two more dissimilar poems could hardly exist.
Hejinian&#8217;s exegesis on the comic is such a compendium of her reading that each
section has its own bibliography. Stanford&#8217;s surreal memoir was written when he
was a teenager and barely admits to its literacy, let alone the encyclopedic
reading that one suspects lurks below the deep swamp facade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What
these two projects share, however, is their conception of the line. In each, the
line is highly flexible: basically long, but with great variety in length;
basically discursive, a monologue that readily admits other voices; close to
speech and yet not tied to it in the strict sense of the projectivist uses of
enjambment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Stanford:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">who</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> is that Sylvester<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">why</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> that&#8217;s my cousin McGillicutty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">what&#8217;s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> he doing with them boards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">he&#8217;s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> mending the fence son<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">why&#8217;s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> he doing that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">cause</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> I got him the job<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">what&#8217;s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> he doing with the bootlegger&#8217;s lumber<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">he&#8217;ll</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> never miss it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">what&#8217;s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> he making<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">that&#8217;s</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> his trade he has to make them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">McGillicutty you say why he&#8217;s the undertaker<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">like</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> I say somebody got to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I don&#8217;t care what he is you tell him to quit
hammering on that coffin <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Jesus was a carpenter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">he</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> wasn&#8217;t no undertaker and he didn&#8217;t build no caskets
though<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I say McGillicutty he said you spooking this boy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">how</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> bout fixing me that swinging board so I can get my
whiskey<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">will</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> do brother<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">McGillicutty limped over to where we were he said I
through anyway<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">who</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> passed Sylvester said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">boy</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> child drowned in the <span class="SpellE">barr</span>
pit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">what</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> your first name I said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="SpellE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Mulciber</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> he said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">what</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> happened to your leg<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">mule</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> fell on it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">don&#8217;t</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> you know no better than to be nailing coffins when
it&#8217;s dark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I like to work at night<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">take</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> your work someplace else then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="SpellE"><span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">yassuh</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">you</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> ain&#8217;t got to leave you can stay with us but the
casket give me the <span class="SpellE">heebie</span> <span class="SpellE">jeeies</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Sylvester said cousin you got the dimensions right<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">well</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> now I don&#8217;t know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I knew the two <span class="GramE">negroes</span> was
jiving me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">look</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> here at this boy reckon he&#8217;s about the right size<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="SpellE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Sadday</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> night if he ain&#8217;t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">they</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> got <span class="SpellE">ahold</span> of my arms and
legs like I was a dead man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">leave</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> me lone I said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">but</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> they dropped me in the coffin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">it</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> was shored up on two saw horses like a boat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">the</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> shavings of wood inside were like a nest of dead
wasps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">it</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> felt so good real tight like new clothes that fit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">like</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> a muscle man T-shirt <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Hejinian:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A comedian is a foreigner at border<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Or comedienne &#8211; antinomian<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Performing the comedy known as barbarism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">An encounter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">(Encounters, after all, are the </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">essen</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">ce of comedy)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With forge and link<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Which doppelgangers (perfect matchers) match<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With whistling in the left ear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And symptoms of melancholy &#8211; gloomy dreams,
twitching, jerking, itching, and swift changes of mood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With the capacity to transform an inaccessible object
into something we long voluptuously to embrace<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And <span class="GramE">ourselves</span> into an unquiet
subject &#8211; at last! Baffled!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">After all, it&#8217;s a rare miracle (called
&#8220;omnipresence&#8221;) when one can appear in many places at once<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Change, then, is the exemplary connection<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Between romance and improvement<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The press of the curling tree in the pink of the shadowy
snow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Out of nowhere &#8211; uncanny<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And falling under a squirrel&#8217;s frenzy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The color <span class="GramE">of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the</span> sky is cast in territory belonging
to &#8220;the public&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Under spell part globe, part departure of a vessel <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Passing speech through law<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Turning south<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Where we&#8217;re the oddballs and peppercorns<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Picking pace<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Like other comic poets<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I should point out here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">That tragic writers</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> have merely to let their characters announce who
they are for the audience instantly to know everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Whereas comic writers use original plots<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And start from scratch <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ve seen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battlefield</i> characterized as a novel, as
has Hejinian&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Life</i> &#8211; it is
evident that the 19<sup>th</sup> century <span class="GramE">novel, as well as
the great personal narratives of that era, continue</span> as influences on her
writing. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Border Comedy</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Battlefield</i> are both booklength poems
deeply involved with the telling of stories. The diversity of characters &#8211;
voices &#8211; that shows up in each is extraordinary (and accounts in part for the
richness one feels reading either work). Yet the differences between Stanford&#8217;s
backwoods </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;"> and Hejinian&#8217;s internationalized urban one could not
be more pronounced. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The fundamental neutrality
of the device has seldom been <span class="GramE">more clear</span>. The writer
who understands its potential can put any formal dimension to almost any
purpose imaginable. In each poem here, the line governs the reader&#8217;s
experience. Line breaks are almost always perceptible, but largely deadpan in
affect, not eroticized the way one finds in works of high enjambment (even as
the erotic enters into both poems). The variety in line length controls tempo
and can make the process of absorbing long passages far less difficult &#8211; though
Stanford at times stretches the line out for just the opposite effect. The
result is two irresolvable visions of </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;">n life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<li><a href='http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1544'>Academy of American Poets</a></li>
<li><a href='http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/silliman'>Electronic Poetry Center</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.facebook.com/ron.silliman'>Facebook</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.goodreads.com/search/search%3Fsearch_type%3Dbooks%26search%5Bquery%5D%3Dron%2Bsilliman'>GoodReads</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/silliman/silliman.htm'>Modern American Poetry</a></li>
<li><a href='http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Silliman.php'>PennSound</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.pcah.us/the-center/grants-awarded/grantees-1998-ron-silliman/'>Pew Fellowships in the Arts</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6323'>Poetry Foundation</a></li>
<li><a href='http://ronsillimanbibliography.blogspot.com/'>Silliman's Bibliography</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?AuthorName=Ron+Silliman'>Small Press Distribution</a></li>
<li><a href='http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/TOTTELS/'>Tottel's</a></li>
<li><a href='http://twitter.com/ronsilliman'>Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.ubu.com/contemp/silliman/index.html'>Ubuweb</a></li>
<li><a href='https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0075.html'>UC San Diego Archives</a></li>
<li><a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Silliman'>Wikipedia</a></li>
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<h2 class='title'>Ketjak</h2>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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