<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir='ltr' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'>
<head>
<link href='https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/widgets/2549344219-widget_css_bundle.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>
<meta content='text/html; charset=UTF-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/>
<meta content='blogger' name='generator'/>
<link href='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/favicon.ico' rel='icon' type='image/x-icon'/>
<link href='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews?updated-max=2011-10-11T21:01:00-07:00&amp;max-results=20&amp;start=181&amp;by-date=false' rel='canonical'/>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Silliman&#39;s Blog - Atom" href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Silliman&#39;s Blog - RSS" href="https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss" />
<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml" title="Silliman&#39;s Blog - Atom" href="https://www.blogger.com/feeds/3738579/posts/default" />
<!--Can't find substitution for tag [blog.ieCssRetrofitLinks]-->
<meta content='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews?updated-max=2011-10-11T21:01:00-07:00&amp;max-results=20&amp;start=181&amp;by-date=false' property='og:url'/>
<meta content='Silliman&#39;s Blog' property='og:title'/>
<meta content='A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.' property='og:description'/>
<!--[if IE]> <script> (function() { var html5 = ("abbr,article,aside,audio,canvas,datalist,details," + "figure,footer,header,hgroup,mark,menu,meter,nav,output," + "progress,section,time,video").split(','); for (var i = 0; i < html5.length; i++) { document.createElement(html5[i]); } try { document.execCommand('BackgroundImageCache', false, true); } catch(e) {} })(); </script> <![endif]-->
<title>Silliman's Blog: Interviews</title>
<style id='page-skin-1' type='text/css'><!--
/*
* Blogger Template Style
*
* Sand Dollar
* by Jason Sutter
* Updated by Blogger Team
*/
/* Variable definitions
====================
<Variable name="textcolor" description="Text Color"
type="color" default="#000">
<Variable name="bgcolor" description="Page Background Color"
type="color" default="#f6f6f6">
<Variable name="pagetitlecolor" description="Blog Title Color"
type="color" default="#F5DEB3">
<Variable name="pagetitlebgcolor" description="Blog Title Background Color"
type="color" default="#DE7008">
<Variable name="descriptionColor" description="Blog Description Color"
type="color" default="#9E5205" />
<Variable name="descbgcolor" description="Description Background Color"
type="color" default="#F5E39e">
<Variable name="titlecolor" description="Post Title Color"
type="color" default="#9E5205">
<Variable name="datecolor" description="Date Header Color"
type="color" default="#777777">
<Variable name="footercolor" description="Post Footer Color"
type="color" default="#444444">
<Variable name="linkcolor" description="Link Color"
type="color" default="#DE7008">
<Variable name="footerlinkcolor" description="Post Footer Link Color"
type="color" default="#968a0a">
<Variable name="visitedlinkcolor" description="Visited Link Color"
type="color" default="#DE7008">
<Variable name="sidebarcolor" description="Sidebar Title Color"
type="color" default="#B8A80D">
<Variable name="sidebarlinkcolor" description="Sidebar Link Color"
type="color" default="#999999">
<Variable name="bordercolor" description="Border Color"
type="color" default="#e0ad12">
<Variable name="bodyfont" description="Text Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 100% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-Serif">
<Variable name="headerfont" description="Sidebar Title Font"
type="font"
default="normal bold 150% Verdana,Sans-serif">
<Variable name="dateHeaderFont" description="Date Header Font"
type="font"
default="normal bold 105% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-serif">
<Variable name="pagetitlefont" description="Blog Title Font"
type="font" default="normal bold 300% Verdana,Sans-Serif">
<Variable name="titlefont" description="Post Title Font"
type="font" default="normal bold 160% Verdana,Sans-Serif">
<Variable name="startSide" description="Start side in blog language"
type="automatic" default="left">
<Variable name="endSide" description="End side in blog language"
type="automatic" default="right">
*/
body {
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
background:#ffffff;
color:#000000;
font-size: small;
}
#outer-wrapper {
font:normal normal 12px Arial, sans-serif;
}
a {
color:#666666;
}
a:hover {
color:#9E5205;
}
a img {
border-width: 0;
}
#content-wrapper {
padding-top: 0;
padding-right: 1em;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-left: 1em;
}
@media all  {
div#main {
float:right;
width:66%;
padding-top:30px;
padding-right:0;
padding-bottom:10px;
padding-left:1em;
border-left:dotted 1px #e0ad12;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden;     /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
div#sidebar {
margin-top:20px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0;
padding:0px;
text-align:left;
float: left;
width: 31%;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden;     /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
}
@media handheld  {
div#main {
float:none;
width:90%;
}
div#sidebar {
padding-top:30px;
padding-right:7%;
padding-bottom:10px;
padding-left:3%;
}
}
#header {
padding-top:0px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-bottom:0px;
padding-left:0px;
margin-top:0px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0px;
border-bottom:dotted 1px #e0ad12;
background:#000000;
}
h1 a:link  {
text-decoration:none;
color:#ffffff
}
h1 a:visited  {
text-decoration:none;
color:#ffffff
}
h1,h2,h3 {
margin: 0;
}
h1 {
padding-top:25px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-bottom:10px;
padding-left:5%;
color:#ffffff;
background:#940f04;
font:normal bold 80px Verdana,Sans-Serif;
letter-spacing:-2px;
}
h3.post-title {
color:#9E5205;
font:normal bold 150% Arial, sans-serif;
letter-spacing:-1px;
}
h3.post-title a,
h3.post-title a:visited {
color: #9E5205;
}
h2.date-header  {
margin-top:10px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0px;
color:#ffffff;
font: normal bold 104% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-serif;
}
h4 {
color:#aa0033;
}
#sidebar h2 {
color:#cc0000;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
font:normal bold 120% Arial, sans-serif;
}
#sidebar .widget {
margin-top:0px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:33px;
margin-left:0px;
padding-top:0px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-bottom:0px;
padding-left:0px;
font-size:120%;
}
#sidebar ul {
list-style-type:none;
padding-left: 0;
margin-top: 0;
}
#sidebar li {
margin-top:0px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0px;
padding-top:0px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-bottom:0px;
padding-left:0px;
list-style-type:none;
font-size:95%;
}
.description {
padding:0px;
margin-top:7px;
margin-right:12%;
margin-bottom:7px;
margin-left:5%;
color:#cc0000;
background:transparent;
font:bold 100% Verdana,Sans-Serif;
}
.post {
margin-top:0px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:30px;
margin-left:0px;
}
.post strong {
color:#000000;
font-weight:bold;
}
pre,code {
color:#000000;
}
strike {
color:#000000;
}
.post-footer  {
padding:0px;
margin:0px;
color:#ffffff;
font-size:80%;
}
.post-footer a {
border:none;
color:#968a0a;
text-decoration:none;
}
.post-footer a:hover {
text-decoration:underline;
}
#comments {
padding:0px;
font-size:110%;
font-weight:bold;
}
.comment-author {
margin-top: 10px;
}
.comment-body {
font-size:100%;
font-weight:normal;
color:black;
}
.comment-footer {
padding-bottom:20px;
color:#ffffff;
font-size:80%;
font-weight:normal;
display:inline;
margin-right:10px
}
.deleted-comment  {
font-style:italic;
color:gray;
}
.comment-link  {
margin-left:.6em;
}
.profile-textblock {
clear: both;
margin-left: 0;
}
.profile-img {
float: left;
margin-top: 0;
margin-right: 5px;
margin-bottom: 5px;
margin-left: 0;
border: 2px solid #940f04;
}
#sidebar a:link  {
color:#000000;
text-decoration:none;
}
#sidebar a:active  {
color:#ff0000;
text-decoration:none;
}
#sidebar a:visited  {
color:sidebarlinkcolor;
text-decoration:none;
}
#sidebar a:hover {
color:#cc0000;
text-decoration:none;
}
.feed-links {
clear: both;
line-height: 2.5em;
}
#blog-pager-newer-link {
float: left;
}
#blog-pager-older-link {
float: right;
}
#blog-pager {
text-align: center;
}
.clear {
clear: both;
}
.widget-content {
margin-top: 0.5em;
}
/** Tweaks for layout editor preview */
body#layout #outer-wrapper {
margin-top: 0;
}
body#layout #main,
body#layout #sidebar {
margin-top: 10px;
padding-top: 0;
}

--></style>
<link href='https://www.blogger.com/dyn-css/authorization.css?targetBlogID=3738579&amp;zx=a1164a5b-94f7-434c-afab-b49aa5a29e3f' media='none' onload='if(media!=&#39;all&#39;)media=&#39;all&#39;' rel='stylesheet'/><noscript><link href='https://www.blogger.com/dyn-css/authorization.css?targetBlogID=3738579&amp;zx=a1164a5b-94f7-434c-afab-b49aa5a29e3f' rel='stylesheet'/></noscript>

</head>
<body>
<div class='navbar section' id='navbar'><div class='widget Navbar' data-version='1' id='Navbar1'><script type="text/javascript">
    function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) {
      if(window.addEventListener) {
        window.addEventListener('load',
          function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false);
      } else {
        window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; });
      }
    }
  </script>
<div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
      gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() {
        if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) {
          gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({
              url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID\x3d3738579\x26blogName\x3dSilliman\x27s+Blog\x26publishMode\x3dPUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT\x26navbarType\x3dBLUE\x26layoutType\x3dLAYOUTS\x26searchRoot\x3dhttps://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search\x26blogLocale\x3den\x26v\x3d2\x26homepageUrl\x3dhttps://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/\x26vt\x3d-6983219020609693114',
              where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"),
              id: "navbar-iframe"
          });
        }
      });
    </script><script type="text/javascript">
(function() {
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.type = 'text/javascript';
script.src = '//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/google_top_exp.js';
var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
if (head) {
head.appendChild(script);
}})();
</script>
</div></div>
<div id='outer-wrapper'><div id='wrap2'>
<!-- skip links for text browsers -->
<span id='skiplinks' style='display:none;'>
<a href='#main'>skip to main </a> |
      <a href='#sidebar'>skip to sidebar</a>
</span>
<div id='header-wrapper'>
<div class='header section' id='header'><div class='widget Header' data-version='1' id='Header1'>
<div id='header-inner'>
<div class='titlewrapper'>
<h1 class='title'>
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/'>
Silliman's Blog
</a>
</h1>
</div>
<div class='descriptionwrapper'>
<p class='description'><span>A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.</span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div id='content-wrapper'>
<div id='crosscol-wrapper' style='text-align:center'>
<div class='crosscol no-items section' id='crosscol'></div>
</div>
<div id='main-wrapper'>
<div class='main section' id='main'><div class='widget Blog' data-version='1' id='Blog1'>
<div class='blog-posts hfeed'>
<div class='status-msg-wrap'>
<div class='status-msg-body'>
Showing posts with label <b>Interviews</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
</div>
<div class='status-msg-border'>
<div class='status-msg-bg'>
<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Interviews</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Friday, September 23, 2011</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='4571754069223277299' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='4571754069223277299'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-4571754069223277299' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='margin-bottom:10.0pt;text-align:center'><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/28548517?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="640" height="480" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:150%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1; mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Richard Young&#8217;s<br> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.ubu.com/film/miller_dinner.html"><span style='color:#0D0D0D; mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Dinner with <span class=GramE>Henry</span></span></a><br> </i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:8.0pt; line-height:150%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242; mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>(from <a href="http://www.ubu.com/"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Ubuweb</span></span></a>)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:150%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1; mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>An i<a href="http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/miller_henry/interviews/folkways/Miller-Henry_Folkways-Interview_Side-A.mp3"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>nterview</span></a> with <a href="http://www.doctorhugo.org/henry/miller.html"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Henry</span></a> <a href="http://www.henrymiller.info/"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor: text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Miller</span></a><br> in <a href="http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/miller_henry/interviews/folkways/Miller-Henry_Folkways-Interview_Side-B.mp3"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>two parts</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height: 150%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>The <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4597/the-art-of-fiction-no-28-henry-miller"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Paris Review</span></a> </span></i><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:150%; color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>interview<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2011/09/richard-youngs-dinner-with-henry-from.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2011/09/richard-youngs-dinner-with-henry-from.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2011-09-23T00:01:00-04:00'>Friday, September 23, 2011</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=4571754069223277299' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Henry%2520Miller' rel='tag'>Henry Miller</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Talks' rel='tag'>Talks</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, July 12, 2011</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jrwIbjwbT0o/hqdefault.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='8742574186833752499' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='8742574186833752499'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-8742574186833752499' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1; mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'><a href="http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/pound.htm"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Ezra Pound</span></a>, <br> interviewed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasolini"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Pier Paolo Pasolini</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='margin-bottom:10.0pt;text-align:center'><iframe width="480" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jrwIbjwbT0o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1; mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>The funeral of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Pound"><span style='color:#0D0D0D; mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Ezra Pound</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText align=center style='margin-bottom:10.0pt;text-align:center'><iframe width="480" height="390" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/tvMe1zmJBrc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2011/07/ezra-pound-interviewed-by-pier-paolo.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2011/07/ezra-pound-interviewed-by-pier-paolo.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2011-07-12T00:01:00-04:00'>Tuesday, July 12, 2011</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=8742574186833752499' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Ezra%2520Pound' rel='tag'>Ezra Pound</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Sunday, January 02, 2011</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/12/01/finney-webrescreditdavidflores.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='7317997826246162114' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='7317997826246162114'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-7317997826246162114' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><a href="http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/12/01/finney-webrescreditdavidflores.jpg"><span style='color:black;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-no-proof:yes;text-decoration:none; text-underline:none'><img border="0" height="386" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/ZSod2MEiwePQCJDRyHHM2WDQzcpX6Bz093iqpXJLC40WA9bUhrv1o_3_r_t6_peOPkvULVS61MjxMiJ0_FxqDDArcOceqhz0kTaetz-LRQPP9P4bSRLV-RONcoN8y03CNw%3Ds0-d" width="514"></span></a><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'><br> </span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:8.0pt; line-height:115%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242; mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>(<span class=GramE>photo</span> by David Flores)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;line-height:150%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1; mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/nikky-finney"><span style='color: #0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Nikky</span></a> <a href="http://nikkyfinney.net/"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor: text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Finney</span></a><br> on <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/12/01/143009811/award-winner-nikky-finney-on-life-as-a-poet"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Talk of the Nation</span></a><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2011/01/photo-by-david-flores-nikky-finney-on.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2011/01/photo-by-david-flores-nikky-finney-on.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2011-01-02T00:01:00-05:00'>Sunday, January 02, 2011</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=7317997826246162114' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Nikky%2520Finney' rel='tag'>Nikky Finney</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, May 04, 2010</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/Resources/titles/15647100098560/Images/15647100098560L.gif' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='6374238428827507197' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='6374238428827507197'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-6374238428827507197' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal><a href="http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?GCOI=15647100098560"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;text-decoration: none;text-underline:none'><img border="0" height="475" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/KfecdeTkN2KgjPIpUCVmaqBW0QAKEhFzmbbeOBD1N_CDpSfKRZtF8NBbFXnJOdLlHCkT0ksETgZ4LnxBiXQ8f8tlmOApQH3cmFLNt7jCj-3cgR36wnukqIbsaIteG004kwjUWPBrvaDT5zg%3Ds0-d" width="326"></span></a><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint: 242'>One value of Sarah Rosenthal&#8217;s sumptuous collection of interviews, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?GCOI=15647100098560"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242'>A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Bay Area Authors</span></a>, </i>just out from Dalkey Archive, is Rosenthal&#8217;s introduction to the collection, which offers a solid history of Bay Area poetry. Like the interviews themselves &#8211; a dozen in all, averaging maybe 25 pages in length &#8211; Rosenthal&#8217;s intro shows a depth of homework on her part that may come as a sobering reminder to the Facebook generation that this is how it&#8217;s done when executed properly. The book contains discussions with Michael Palmer, Nathaniel Mackey, Leslie Scalapino, Brenda Hillman, Kathleen Fraser, Stephen Ratclife, Robert Glück, Barbara Guest, Truong Tran, Camille Roy, Juliana Spahr &amp; Elizabeth Robinson.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal>Not that the introduction is perfect. Whether it&#8217;s an emphasis here&#185;, or a detail there&#178;, one could argue the minutiae because the larger structures are basically right on. Rosenthal is careful to document her sources &amp; qualify her approach, noting that Stephanie Young&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Bay Poetics </i>includes 110 poets, dozens of whom could just as easily have been interviewed here. Personally I hope Rosenthal continues her work here. Future volumes beckon. Some writers I would love to see Rosenthal devote this same attention to would include Judy Grahn, Lyn Hejinian, Al Young, Kit Robinson, Etel Adnan, Bob Grenier, Bill Berkson, Bev Dahlen, Dodie Bellamy, Mark Linenthal, Norma Cole, Joanne Kyger, Kevin Killian, Barbara Jane Reyes, Aaron Shurin, Robert Hass, Pat Nolan, Alice Jones, Stephen Vincent, Eileen Tabios, Bill Luoma, Laura Moriarty, Alli Warren, Stephanie Young, Jack Hirschman, Curtis Faville, Diane di Prima, David Melnick, Michael McClure, Norman Fischer, Adam Cornford, Mark Linenthal, Jack Marshall &amp; Jack Foley. That&#8217;s just off the top of my head. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;m forgetting as many others just as worthy.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal>The one thread I don&#8217;t feel Rosenthal&#8217;s introduction does sufficient justice toward is the relationship between post-avant writing &amp; literary traditions that consciously understood themselves as working class &amp;/or even lumpen in their orientation. One is that post-Beat aspect of street poetics that has roots in the New American Poetry, from the late Bob Kaufman to Jack Hirschman to many of the poets particularly around North Beach. A second is a similar approach to LGBT poetries. Paul Mariah &amp; Steve Abbott are gone, as are Pat Parker &amp; Paula Gunn Allen, but it would be really useful to note how the interactions of these writers informed &amp; impacted much that is covered here. Mariah, for example, was as instrumental in keeping Jack Spicer&#8217;s memory &amp; work alive in the first ten years after his death as anyone. I was surprised to see Claudia Rankine note the Left/Write Unity Conference spearheaded by Abbott &amp; Bruce Boone in her blurb on the book&#8217;s back cover, but not to see it mentioned in the introduction. The important role Actualism &#8211; explicitly a Bay Area literary movement &#8211; played in the poetries of the 1970s (especially in the &#8220;poetry wars&#8221;) is entirely invisible here. Given Rosenthal&#8217;s own engaged approach to poetics, these little blindspots seem surprising.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal>All of which is to say that Rosenthal&#8217;s introductory history is superb, tho the reality was still a dimension or two more complex than even a first-rate telling can suggest. </p>

<p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>&#185; Barbara Guest, to my reading, didn&#8217;t just continue &#8220;to produce important work&#8221; once she moved to Berkeley in her seventies, she really blossomed, becoming one of the most influential poets of the past 30 years &amp; offering a model for &#8220;late work&#8221; that may yet prove transformational for poetry going forward.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;line-height:115%'>&#178; e.g., &#8220;Spicer &#8230; spent much of his adult life moving within a few blocks in San Francisco&#8217;s North Beach&#8221; ignores Spicer&#8217;s soujourns to Minneapolis &amp; Boston, his day jobs &#8211; when he had them &#8211; in Berkeley, and the simple fact that his home at Polk &amp; Sutter, an address made famous for poetry by John Wiener&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Hotel Wentley Poems, </i>is a considerable distance from North Beach. The same holds true for Spicer&#8217;s favored afternoon hangout of Aquatic Park.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2010/05/one-value-of-sarah-rosenthals-sumptuous.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2010/05/one-value-of-sarah-rosenthals-sumptuous.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2010-05-04T00:01:00-04:00'>Tuesday, May 04, 2010</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=6374238428827507197' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/anthologies' rel='tag'>anthologies</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/history' rel='tag'>history</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%2520of%2520poetry' rel='tag'>Schools of poetry</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, January 13, 2009</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3528/3191573422_d5cb22089b.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='5116680721024688559' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='5116680721024688559'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-5116680721024688559' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:right'><img height="267" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/5nD6TofO1SP9Sc8Rgx-EcP7JwVzGk4E4X88YsyzuTM8QfdkEUgpVV-wFl1SDXhdK2NeUvqGyfaQ2xVdVtHAFkl_wlMEowRrHpEYa0AzWVel3%3Ds0-d" width="356"><br>
<span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Lance Phillips</span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>In 1953, when <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Paris Review </i>published its first issue and included an interview with E.M. Forster (<a href="http://www.parisreview.com/media/5219_FORSTER4.pdf"><span style='color:black'>PDF</span></a>), the journal made its largest &#8211; and one might say only &#8211; contribution to literary culture in popularizing what would become a new mode of literary discourse, one perfectly suited to the postwar years of the early 1950s. <span class=SpellE>Kulchur</span>, as Pound or <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/archival/collections/ldpd_4078552/index.html"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Lita</span></span><span style='color:black'> <span class=SpellE>Hornick</span></span></a> might have <span class=SpellE>spellt</span> it, was no longer merely the plaything <span class=GramE>of an</span> educated elite. Just as television, that newfangled <span class=GramE>thing,</span> was giving images to the radio plays &amp; vaudeville variety shows of old radio &amp; bringing into the home original drama and &#8211; especially through the auspices of one Walter Disney &#8211; cinema, one no longer needed to head out for an evening of the performing arts. One might even watch <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korla_Pandit"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Korla</span></span><span style='color:black'> <span class=SpellE>Pandit</span></span></a>, the African-American organist born John Roland <span class=SpellE>Redd</span> who used a mock-Indian identity to become the first true <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>daytime </i>music star of the new medium. <span class=GramE>All this occurring in the vast economic expansion that followed the end of World War 2, when the GI Bill suddenly made college accessible to a rapidly expanding middle class.</span> (Thank you, UAW.). Everything from youth culture to rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll was in the offing.<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 interview was the perfect critical medium for this period because it permitted insight into the author as a person, a new kind of celebrity that many of the old modernists had shunned &#8211; Picasso was an exception &amp; had she lived a little longer Stein would have been another. It was visibly modeled on the personal interviews that had become commonplace accoutrements of the </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Hollywood</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> studio system. And, for a variety of criticism, it wasn&#8217;t all that critical. This was not Clement Greenberg on the Mount, <span class=GramE>nor</span> the stern retro pieties of New Criticism. It did not pretend to be the <span class=SpellE>litcrit</span> equivalent of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000024/"><span style='color:black'>John <span class=SpellE>Gielgud</span></span></a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sal_Mineo"><span style='color:black'>Sal <span class=SpellE>Mineo</span></span></a> would do just fine.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But if you read those early <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.parisreview.com/literature.php"><span style='color:black'>Paris Review </span><span style='color:black;font-style:normal'>interviews</span></a></i>, many of which are now online &amp; downloadable, you will notice something very distinct about them, which is the preparation accorded each by the interviewer (often, for poetry, a young Donald Hall in those early years). The interviewer shows up at the interviewee&#8217;s door fully informed as to what the author has written, what the author has read, whom the author knows, whom the author has slept with &amp; what the author has said in public &amp; often enough in private also. This affords even a casual reader an enormous amount of intimacy in those pieces &#8211; you can tell right away that Robert Graves is a mean-spirited bully, and, frankly, he&#8217;s not alone among the greats of that era. <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'>With the notable exception of Tom Beckett, I&#8217;ve never had an interviewer as well prepared as seems to have been the norm for the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Paris Review </i>in the 1950s, and I&#8217;m used now to the post-interview drill of going through a draft transcript closely because I can&#8217;t presume that an interviewer will know that there is no &#8220;e&#8221; in Olson, that Ginsberg&#8217;s first name is not Alan, that there is no &#8220;u&#8221; in his surname, or that Zukofsky has an &#8220;f&#8221; and no &#8220;v.&#8221; <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>So my sense of the form is that it&#8217;s one that is easily debased. As I know I&#8217;ve recounted here before, my template for the ill-prepped interview is one that I by chance happened to sit in on between a newspaper reporter in Bangor, Maine &amp; Omar Pound, son of Ezra &amp; a poet &amp; translator in his own right. The reporter, a one-time high-school English teacher gone to seed, leaned forward in the midst of this session, held in the cafeteria at the University of Maine campus circa 1984, and half-whispered in a conspiratorial tone to Pound, &#8220;So what kind of communist was your father?&#8221; Omar blanched, simply looked at me and asked, &#8220;How would <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>you</i> answer that?&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Hey, at least the guy knew that Pound had been in trouble for extreme political views. And in 1984, those were the only views he could imagine as excessive. Maybe he was foreseeing the day when Bill O&#8217;Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan &amp; Donald <span class=SpellE>Rumsfeld</span> made fascism mainstream once again, albeit this time with the happy-face logo of </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'> &amp; apple pie. <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'>In recent years, however, the form of the interview has undergone not one, but two fundamental transformations. The first is email &amp; the written interview. This is really an electronic extension of an already existing form &#8211; the mail interview, which can be found even fairly early in the pages of </span><st1:City><st1:place><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Paris</span></i></st1:place></st1:City><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> Review. </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s how Beckett interviewed me for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Difficulties</i>. There are advantages to this approach: the interviewer isn&#8217;t likely to go for the &#8220;gotcha&#8221; type question, that carryover of the old </span><st1:place><span style='font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Hollywood</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> interview &amp; legal cross-examination (&amp;, in Raymond Burr&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Perry Mason </i>episodes, a bit of both); and you can ensure from the get-go that names like Zukofsky get treated properly. But there&#8217;s a complication &#8211; what is lost when you stretch out the time of exchange in this manner is spontaneity. Might I have said something different if I had been <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>asked </i>the same question aloud, perhaps over tall glasses of ice tea with a tape recorder whirring nearby? <span class=GramE>Almost certainly.</span> However, this expansion also gives the interviewee time not just to answer (or to seem to answer) the question, but, in doing so carefully, also to direct where the next question might go. If the loss of spontaneity is the downside of the written interview, collaboration between interviewer &amp; interviewee can rise substantially, which from my perspective is a plus.<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'>Most recently, there has been a spate of interviews that in many ways aren&#8217;t interviews at all &#8211; they&#8217;re surveys. Preparation for the individual interviewee is unnecessary because you are asking the same questions of everyone. These are interesting to the degree that the questions are thought provoking &#8211; I declined one recently that wanted to know about my theory of washing dishes &#8211; and the people solicited are themselves interesting &amp; willing to offer substantive comments.<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 first of these surveys that I&#8217;m aware of is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Here Comes Everybody</span></a>, </i>which Lance Phillips started in June 2004 &amp; kept up thru January 2007, over 130 interviews in all. Phillips figured out that he was onto something pretty quickly &#8211; I don&#8217;t think he envisioned that many responses when he began. The questions he asked might be asked of any Anglo-American poet (and with the change of a single phrase in question 4, of any English-speaking writer in the world, from </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Australia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> to </span><st1:country-region> <st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Nigeria</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>India</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>). <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>2. What <span class=GramE>is</span> something / someone non-&#8220;literary&#8221; you read which may surprise your peers / colleagues? Why do you read it /</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> them?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>6. What is something which your peers / colleagues may assume you&#8217;ve read but haven&#8217;t? Why haven&#8217;t you?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>7. How would you explain what a poem is to a seven year old?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest):<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.5in'><span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>Lemon :</span></i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span><br>
Chiseled : <br>
I : <br>
Of : <br>
Form : </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>That they might be asked of any poet is both the strength &amp; weakness of the survey form. There were never any follow-up questions. If you have a poet who has a particularly complex relationship to one of the questions, there&#8217;s no way to probe more deeply. The late <span class=SpellE>kari</span> <span class=SpellE>edwards</span> worked very hard to avoid being identified as either man or woman, having lived for periods as both &#8211; <span class=SpellE>kari</span> once made a point of thanking me when I wrote a review that avoided using any pronouns at all. Here is <span class=SpellE><span class=GramE>edwards</span></span>&#8217; response to that last question:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>all</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> I have on this earth is this body, everything else is just things and other bodies doing things. <span class=GramE>if</span> I do not place myself in the core of my body I can not even attempt to connect to reality and end up in the grand illusion. My body is what allows me to feel others and the universe. <span class=GramE>if</span> I want to speak of the possible I have to be in touch with the present <span class=SpellE>present</span> in the body that is in my body.<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 can&#8217;t imagine an active interviewer <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>not </i>following that with a question about gender itself &amp; its place in <span class=SpellE><span class=GramE>edwards</span></span>&#8217; work. Instead, this is the actual end of the interview, a silence that feels even more tragic now that <span class=SpellE><span class=GramE>edwards</span></span> is gone.<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'>Phillips at one point tried to transform these surveys from a blog to an anthology, only to meet with resistance on the part of several participants. Happily, he&#8217;s left the blog itself up, and I&#8217;ve continued to link to it among the &#8220;collective blogs.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Now, as a couple of people have shown already (<a href="http://rikfiles.blogspot.com/2008/12/without-invitation-rik-answers-some.html"><span style='color:black'>here</span></a> and <a href="http://aaronapps.blogspot.com/2008/12/questionnaire.html"><span style='color:black'>here</span></a>), with a survey, you don&#8217;t need even to be asked to participate. It&#8217;s conceivable, of course, that all 1,700 of my daily visitors could respond to the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Here Comes Everybody </i>survey and Phillips would then (a) have more than enough for an anthology and (b) we&#8217;d have something like a census of poetry, or at least we&#8217;d have some idea how everyone responds to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>lemon chiseled I of form, </i>which strikes my ear as a decent first line for something. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But I for one miss the old-school in-depth kind of questioning that occurs far too seldom today. What if somebody actually prepared for an interview? Knew the work, the bio, <span class=GramE>the</span> social networks? Possibly, regardless of the person being interrogated, just possibly we might learn something.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2009/01/lance-phillips-in-1953-when-paris.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2009/01/lance-phillips-in-1953-when-paris.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2009-01-13T01:45:00-05:00'>Tuesday, January 13, 2009</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=5116680721024688559' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, December 24, 2008</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='http://a642.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/78/m_54de605fda188b320d2469f7b38ecaa9.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='3009603235443276646' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='3009603235443276646'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-3009603235443276646' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal><img height="226" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/EuW5trd9OXAB398hJhV-wlqRmPwLU_7XxSs-g_d87521eawf2LE3VUEWYlNUIClaK4-0vHdPHWdPigef3TMm7ma4owW3bKasH7SETlJOGlsojI9KRDM6B8lQnlhmp9CiBBizs7-jaUCG3uw%3Ds0-d" width="170"></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'>Responding to Harvey <span class=SpellE>Hix</span>&#8217; 20 questions got me to finally sit down and address a set of questions that had been posed to me by <a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&amp;friendID=113251631"><span style='color:black'>David F. Hoenigman</span></a> for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.wordriot.org/template_2.php?ID=1755"><span style='color:black'>Word Riot</span></a>. </i>It was a piece that took longer, especially in what I&#8217;d characterize as the ruminating stage, precisely because its questions were more <span class=SpellE>writerly</span>, i.e., about the personal process of writing &amp; its place in my life. I wonder if, as an interview, this project might not seem less interesting to a lot of readers precisely because it&#8217;s more personal. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>What projects are you currently working on?&nbsp; <u1:p></u1:p></span> </b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:black'>I&#8217;m at work on a half dozen sections of <i>Universe, </i>which is the next major part of my long project, <i>Ketjak. <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.html"><span style='color:black'>The Age of Huts</span></a>, <a href="http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smc/1876857196.htm"><span style='color:black'>Tjanting</span></a>, </i>and <i><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/NewSearch2.cfm?id=134017"><span style='color:black'>The Alphabet</span></a> </i>were the first three stages of this project, and <i>Universe </i>is the next. &#8220;Ketjak&#8221; is also the title of the opening poem in <i>The Age of Huts, </i>and continues in <i>The Alphabet. </i>It&#8217;s the Balinese word for &#8220;monkey&#8221; and is the title of a <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/37229110@N00/2446757585"><span style='color:black'>ritual performance</span></a> the Balinese do for tourists based on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana"><span style='color:black'>Ramayana</span></a> epic. It was actually cobbled together by Western folklorists to give the Balinese a means of extracting some cash from the <span class=SpellE>auslanders</span> above &amp; beyond gamelan. So it&#8217;s an allusion back to the tale itself, to the powerful <a href="http://tinyurl.com/6res4g"><span style='color:black'>cumulative sound</span></a> of the ritual, and to the process of globalization, where everything is brought into the circle, but on the worst commercial terms.<u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>When and why did you begin writing?<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:black'>I began in fifth grade. My teacher that year, Vance Teague, had us write for an hour each week, every Wednesday morning. There were no rules, no genre limitations, just write. It very quickly became my favorite time at school. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>When did you first consider yourself a writer?<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>When I was a teenager, about a couple of years before I seriously started to try to do the real stuff, as distinct from the kid writing projects I did in school. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>What inspired you to write your first book?<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Crow, </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>which was published by Ithaca House in 1971, was written very much under the influence of William Carlos Williams &amp; especially of <i>Spring &amp; All, </i>which Frontier Press had brought out in 1970, after having been out of print for over 45 years. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Who or what has influenced your writing?<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>When you get to be in your sixties, that list becomes too impossibly long. Williams was certainly the first &amp; in many ways deepest influence, but Spicer &amp; Zukofsky &amp; Creeley cannot be denied, all of my language poetry cohorts &#8211; Rae Armantrout &amp; Barrett Watten in particular. Most recently, I&#8217;ve been influenced by the Flarf Collective, tho I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;ve written anything that would qualify even remotely as such. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>How has your environment/upbringing colored your writing?<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/sml/1844710513.htm"><span style='color:black'>Under Albany</span></a>, </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>which is as much a memoir of growing up as it is an explication of the first poem in <i>The Alphabet, </i>goes into this in painful detail. My work with the <i><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/"><span style='color:black'>Grand Piano</span></a></i> collective has more. Suffice it to say, I write to know who I am. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Do you have a specific writing style?<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I&#8217;m a straightforward realist. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
color:black'>What genre are you most comfortable writing?<u1:p></u1:p></span> </b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Poetry.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> <span class=GramE>Criticism.</span> <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Is there a message in your work that you want readers to grasp?<u1:p> </u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It sounds silly to say &#8220;Be Here Now,&#8221; but I think that&#8217;s the message of all good writing. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>What book are you reading now?<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Last night I was reading Thomas Pynchon&#8217;s <i>Against the Day </i>&amp; this morning I spent awhile reading around in <i>My Vocabulary Did This <span class=GramE>To</span> Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer. </i>P. Inman&#8217;s <i>Ad <span class=SpellE>Finitum</span> </i>is to the left of my desk here &amp; I will be poking around in it again later today. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>There&#8217;s the Flarf Collective again. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>What is the most misunderstood aspect of your work?&nbsp;<u1:p></u1:p></span></b><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The presumption that I&#8217;m a &#8220;difficult poet.&#8221;</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> I was pleased the other day when <a href="http://www.andrewervin.com/"><span style='color:black'>Andrew Ervin</span></a> reviewed <i>The Alphabet </i>for <i><a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/35214729.html"><span style='color:black'>The Philadelphia Inquirer</span></a> </i>and said reading my work was no more difficult than looking out of the window of a SEPTA train here in Philly. It&#8217;s a trope that Ervin borrowed (sans attribution I would note) from Barrett <span class=SpellE>Watten&#8217;s</span> original introduction to <i>Tjanting </i>in 1981, when Watten argued that a &#8220;bus ride is better than most art.&#8221; It&#8217;s good to see that some people are getting it, that you can just read what&#8217;s there and that will tell you everything you need to know about my work. <u1:p></u1:p></span><span style='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'>Ervin dropped me a note when this appeared on the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Word Riot </i>site to say that he had not seen the 1981 edition of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tjanting </i>&amp; had come upon the transit trope independently. Given how long that edition was out of print before <a href="http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smc/1876857196.htm"><span style='color:black'>Salt reissued the book in 2002</span></a> (with a different Watten introduction taken from the early drafts of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Grand Piano</i>), Ervin&#8217;s correction makes sense. I am intrigued &#8211; and pleased &#8211; by the parallel, given that they&#8217;re descriptions of different books more than a quarter century apart. Hopefully one could say of both, as Watten concluded his first intro to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tjanting, </i>&#8220;It is possible, in fact, to read this book on the bus.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2008/12/responding-to-harvey-hix-20-questions.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2008/12/responding-to-harvey-hix-20-questions.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2008-12-24T01:20:00-05:00'>Wednesday, December 24, 2008</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=3009603235443276646' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, December 18, 2008</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='http://www.wcupa.edu/_ACADEMICS/SCH_CAS/POETRY/images/conference/picturesfortenthannual/HarveyHix.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='390555387422162032' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='390555387422162032'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-390555387422162032' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><img height="356" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/bxhEtyZwDiG-dl9z9Ahqfr7chnyK1jvfmE7MA2dnnS825FmdLY5A7fUFKvECRm28MmkjumSh8-_IwY-ZXIikTrazwmztIqGad8ajnivzlWEq7Yda0MPBOVo3bkpQMtDvNVAvKMvik2D4mlGuCz6cxR7cHinGjKQY9g%3Ds0-d" width="237"><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>When I linked to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hix"><span style='color:black'>H.L. <span class=SpellE>Hix</span>&#8217;</span></a> &#8220;20 Questions&#8221; project on the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/665e4s"><span style='color:black'>Best American Poetry</span></a> </i>blog the other day, <a href="http://wiki.wyomingauthors.org/HL%20Hix"><span  style='color:black'>Harvey</span></a> sent me his questionnaire &amp;, rather impulsively, I responded straight away, answering 18 of the 20 questions. My answers may sound flip, but they&#8217;re not. That last question, for example, is completely serious. I&#8217;ve been in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>BAP </i>&amp; had volumes co-edited by people I completely respect, but year after year it&#8217;s almost as depressing a reading experience as the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pushcart Prize. </i><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>1. <span class=GramE>What</span> poet should be in <span class=SpellE>Obama's</span> cabinet, and in what role?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.uta.edu/english/tim/poetry/so/ortizmain.htm"><span style='color:black'>Simon Ortiz</span></a>, chair of Truth &amp; Reconciliation Commission on the Subject of the Genocide of Native Peoples (a new position) <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>2. If you could send Obama one poem or book of poems (not your own), what would it be and why?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>William Carlos Williams' <i><a href="http://tinyurl.com/6j85px"><span style='color:black'>Spring &amp; All</span></a>, </i>in the 1970 Frontier Press edition.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>3. What other poetry-related blog or website should I check out?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>There are so many. But let's point to <a href="http://annandaledreamgazetteonline.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>The Annandale Dream Gazette</span></a>, the only site I know of devoted to the unconscious of poets<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>4. Who is the most exciting young/new poet I've never heard of, but whose work I ought to find and read?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This will vary greatly by person now, won't it? How about <a href="http://www.apogeepress.com/authors_dhompa.html"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Tsering</span></span><span style='color:black'> <span class=SpellE>Wangmo</span> <span class=SpellE>Dhompa</span></span></a>?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>5. What's the funniest poem you've read lately?&nbsp; What was the last poem that made you cry?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I tend to resist poems that go for only one emotion or the other - what feeling do you get from Louis Zukofsky's <i>&quot;A&quot;?</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>6. William or Dorothy?&nbsp; <span class=GramE>Robert or Elizabeth Barrett?</span>&nbsp; <span class=GramE>Moore or Bishop?</span>&nbsp;<span class=GramE>Dunbar or Cullen?</span>&nbsp; &quot;Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully&quot; or &quot;No ideas but in things&quot;?&nbsp; <span class=GramE><i>Autobiography of Alice B. <span class=SpellE>Toklas</span></i> or <i>Tender Buttons</i>?</span>&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Both / and, both / and, both / and, both / and, &quot;No ideas but in things,&quot; <i>Tender Buttons.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>7. Robert Lowell wrote a poem called &quot;Falling <span class=GramE>Asleep</span> Over the <span class=SpellE><i>Aeneid</i></span>.&quot; What supposedly immortal poem puts you to sleep?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The Four Quartets </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>does it best, since it makes dreaming impossible. But most anything by Lowell will do just fine unless I've had tea after 9 PM.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>8. Even for poetry books, the contract has a provision for movie rights.&nbsp; What poetry book should they make into a movie?&nbsp; Who should direct it, and why?&nbsp; Who should star in it?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I've only seen that clause in Yale Younger Poets contracts &amp;, as I recall, Jack Gilbert told me he got an advance from a studio for <i>Views of Jeopardy </i>way back when.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But let's go with <i>The Cantos, </i>starring Brad Pitt. <span class=GramE>Woody Allen, because it would interesting to watch him negotiate the <span class=SpellE><i>Pisan</i> </span><i> Cantos.</i></span><i> </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>9. What lines from a poem you first read years ago still haunt you now?&nbsp; &nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Helot for what time there is <br>
in the <span class=SpellE>baptist</span> hegemony of death.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Jack Gilbert, from &quot;Singing in My Difficult Mountains,&quot; in <i>Genesis West</i>, no. 1, 1962.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>10. What poem do you love, love, love, but don't understand?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Hart Crane, <span class=GramE><i>The</i></span><i> Bridge. </i><span class=GramE>Or (which I love less, but also understand less) John Berryman's <i>Dream Songs.</i></span><i> </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>11. <span class=GramE>If</span> the official organ of the AWP were not the <i>Chronicle</i> but were the <i>Enquirer</i>, what would some of the headlines be?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I will leave those for Kent Johnson &amp; Kenny Goldsmith to invent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>12. If you were making a scandal rag for poetry in the grocery store checkout stands, what fictitious poetry love triangle would you make up to outsell that tired Hollywood story of Angelina and Brad and Jen?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I wouldn't. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>13. This is the <i>Best American Poetry</i> blog.&nbsp; What's the best <i>non</i>-American poetry you've read lately?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span class=SpellE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:black'>Aleksandr</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> <span class=SpellE>Skidan's</span> <i><a href="http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/page-redshifting.html"><span style='color:black'>Red Shifting</span></a>, </i>translated from the Russian by <span class=SpellE>Genya</span> <span class=SpellE>Turovskaya</span> &amp; others, published by Ugly Duckling <span class=SpellE>Presse</span>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>14. We read poems in journals and books, we hear them in readings and on audio files.&nbsp; Sometimes we get them in unusual ways: on buses or in subway cars.&nbsp; How would you like to encounter your next poem? <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>In my dreams tonight, so that I can write it down when I wake.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>15. What poem would you like to hear the main character bust out singing in a <span class=SpellE>Bollywood</span> film?&nbsp; What would be the name of the movie?&nbsp; What would be the scene in which it was sung?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>16. Do you have a (clean) joke involving poetry you'd like to share?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>17. Tell the truth: is it a poetry book you keep in the <span class=GramE>john,</span> or some other genre (john-re)?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>In one bathroom, the one I spend the most time in, I have several books of poetry including Shakespeare's <i>Sonnets. </i>In the other, I have magazines, including <i>The Nation, <span class=GramE>The</span> Poetry Project Newsletter, Poets &amp; Writers, <span class=SpellE>ComputerWeek</span>, Information Week, <span class=SpellE>ComputerWorld</span> </i>and <i>CFO. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>18. Can you name every teacher you had in elementary school?&nbsp; Did any of them make you memorize a poem?&nbsp; What poem(s)?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>No, thank heavens. I can't memorize haiku. But Vance Teague in fifth grade made us write for an hour every Wednesday and never told us what genre. He made me a writer as much as anyone. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>19. If you got to choose the next U.S. Poet Laureate, who (excluding of course the obvious candidates, you and me) would <span class=GramE>it</span> be?&nbsp; Of former U.S. Poet Laureates, who did such a great job that he/she should get a second term?&nbsp; Next election cycle, what poet should run for President?&nbsp; Why her or him?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>PLOTUS (as Donald Hall called it): <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Dinh.html"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Linh</span></span><span style='color:black'> <span class=SpellE>Dinh</span></span></a>, because he hears the &quot;American&quot; voice better than anyone I know.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
color:black'>President?</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> Barrett Watten or Rae Armantrout &#8211; the ideal president would be a combination of the two.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>20. Insert your own question here.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Why is <i>The Best American Poetry </i>so mediocre year after year, editor after editor?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2008/12/when-i-linked-to-h.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2008/12/when-i-linked-to-h.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2008-12-18T01:16:00-05:00'>Thursday, December 18, 2008</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=390555387422162032' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, August 19, 2006</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='115598766097518276' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='115598766097518276'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-115598766097518276' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;line-height:150%'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial;color:black'>An <a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/81206.html"><span style='color:black'>interview</span></a> with <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue02/poems/wolf1.htm"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Allyssa</span></span></a> <a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/30/leon-wolf.html"><span style='color:black'>Wolf</span></a> is just the 24<sup>th </sup>in a series all about the impact of first books. Others interviews in the series include<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:1.5in;line-height:150%'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/42806.html"><span style='color:black'>Andrea Baker</span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/51406.html"><span style='color:black'>Jen <span class=SpellE>Benka</span></span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/70106.html"><span style='color:black'>Simmons B. Buntin</span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/61306.html"><span style='color:black'>Victoria Chang</span></a> <br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/42606.html"><span style='color:black'>Shanna Compton</span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/6706.html"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>CAConrad</span></span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/71906.html"><span style='color:black'>Brenda <span class=SpellE>Coultas</span></span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/52806.html"><span style='color:black'>Brent Cunningham </span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/80406.html"><span style='color:black'>Lara <span class=SpellE>Glenum</span></span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/53006.html"><span style='color:black'>Geraldine Kim</span></a> <br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/52006.html"><span style='color:black'>Amy King</span></a> <br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/71106.html"><span style='color:black'>Aaron Kunin</span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/72106.html"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Frannie</span></span><span style='color:black'> Lindsay</span></a><br> 
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/80206.html"><span style='color:black'>Rebecca Loudon</span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/70706.html"><span style='color:black'>Raymond McDaniel</span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/62906.html"><span style='color:black'>Juliet Patterson</span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/6506.html"><span style='color:black'>Laura Sims</span></a> <br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/5406.html"><span style='color:black'>Stacy Szymaszek</span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/51206.html"><span style='color:black'>Brian <span class=SpellE>Teare</span></span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/52206.html"><span style='color:black'>Matthew Thorburn</span></a> <br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/5606.html"><span style='color:black'>Tony <span class=SpellE>Tost</span></span></a><br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/80606.html"><span style='color:black'>Jen <span class=SpellE>Tynes</span></span></a> <br>
<a href="http://www.kickingwind.com/80806.html"><span style='color:black'>Stephanie Young</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>If you&#8217;ve never published a book &amp; are about to or just want to, this is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>must read</i> stuff. Kate <span class=SpellE>Greenstreet</span> deserves a big round of applause. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This isn&#8217;t the only good series of interviews of poets, particularly younger ones who have not yet been given  nearly as much attention as they deserve, that has been popping up on the web of late. Tom Beckett&#8217;s blog, <a href="http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e v-a-l-u-e-s</span></a>, has ten interviews, including a second one with Shanna Compton, and one of Geof Huth co-conducted by Crag Hill &amp; yours truly. <a href="http://www.herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Here Comes Everybody</span></a> finally stopped after it had something like 130 interviews, including some folks on <span class=SpellE>Greenstreet&#8217;s</span> list (plus Kate herself) and some, like Mike Farrell, on Beckett&#8217;s. Ray Bianchi&#8217;s <a href="http://chicagopostmodernpoetry.com/Profpg.html"><span style='color:black'>Chicago Postmodern Poetry</span></a> site also has over 100 interviews, adding two a month or so two its <span class=GramE>list</span>.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>One of these was given by <a href="http://chicagopostmodernpoetry.com/Creeley.htm"><span style='color:black'>Robert Creeley</span></a> just one month before he died. John Tranter&#8217;s e-journal, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/rev/interviews.shtml"><span style='color:black'>Jacket</span></a>, </i>has published some 70. Another e-zine, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Interviews%20index.htm"><span style='color:black'>The <span class=SpellE>Argoist</span></span></a>, </i>has  published 17, including a conversation between <a href="http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Joanne%20Kyger%20interview.htm"><span style='color:black'>Joanne Kyger &amp; Simon Pettet</span></a>. And, of course, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.parisreview.com/literature.php"><span style='color:black'>The Paris Review</span></a>, </i>the hardcopy journal that can claim to have invented the modern literary interview format before the journal lost its soul a few decades back, is attempting to bring as many of its interviews online in PDF formats as they can obtain permissions for, a prickly problem with so many of their eminences having now gone where even email cannot reach. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/08/interview-with-allyssa-wolf-is-just.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/08/interview-with-allyssa-wolf-is-just.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2006-08-19T07:36:00-04:00'>Saturday, August 19, 2006</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=115598766097518276' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, August 17, 2006</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/38/5e/0ac7124128a0d56e8957a010.L.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='115581460548347353' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='115581460548347353'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-115581460548347353' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><img height="300" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/xTuFbMlxm3oAvhMBIGmY2DDIDk3PHVR2-gR5cvA-sc7EwTVW_BZCU7VrBLwxnrFHLZaJYtz9hGVYSLdf3AseVv__fFO4qDutDs5YkijgDbVZzqBEGTliBMc1Tt240omhlbpE%3Ds0-d" width="200"><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>All this week I&#8217;ve been writing about projects that seem to withhold something &#8211; as Jessica Smith does her reins over reader response, or as the anonymous collection does it unveiling of authorial <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>anything</i>, or the way Thomas Pynchon withholds his own biography. In contrast, Craig Allen Conrad &#8211; CAConrad to his friends (all one word) &#8211; is someone who wants to get it all in. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Deviant Propulsion, </i>just out from Soft Skull Press, is Conrad&#8217;s long awaited first full-length book, beating out his other equally long-awaited <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Frank Poems, </i>due some fine day from Jonathan Williams&#8217; fabled Jargon Press. <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'>Conrad is a fearless combination of the out front &amp; tenderness, subtlety in the literary equivalent of outrageous drag. For example:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8220;vacant land&#8221;<br>
means no<br>
people<br>
<br>
&#8221;nothing but a few<br>
prairie dogs&#8221;<br>
means no<br>
people<br>
<br>
&#8221;we swerved, hit<br>
a cat, but no one<br>
was hurt&#8221; <br>
means no<br>
people<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This poem, which when you let it settle in &amp; think about it for a minute, is remarkably Buddhist in its relationship to its content, carries the title &#8220;Severed Leg Pirouette.&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t take much to push the simple parallels of this text into an infinitely gaudier display. Or, consider this:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s True I Tell <span class=SpellE>Ya</span><br>
My Father Is a 50&#162;<br>
Party Balloon<br>
<br>
</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>my father paper thin<br>
lost on the basement floor<br>
<br>
but who will put their lips<br>
to his stiff old hard-on?<br>
who will blow him up?<br>
who will want this<br>
man floating<br>
stupid<br>
stuck in<br>
a tree again?<b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Or this consideration of parenting as well (literally on the facing page):<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>A World without Condoms</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br> <br>
she swears it was the cucumber<br>
<br>
nine months later<br>
a son with<br>
her eyes and<br>
cheekbones<br>
but the seeded spine and<br>
leafy complexion are all Dad&#8217;s<br>
<br>
the nurse rubs a little Creamy Italian<br>
on his bright green belly<br>
they coo at one another<br>
blow bubbles at one another<br>
&#8221;this won&#8217;t hurt a bit&#8221; she says<br>
and tucks the napkin<br>
under her chin<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'>You sense that, had he wanted to be, Conrad could easily have been a Cid Corman to the new generation &#8211; the distance between these satires &amp; the gentle ear isn&#8217;t all that terribly far &#8211; but that CA has another agenda in mind.<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'>Then there is the seriously outrageous stuff, including a revenge fantasy against vaginas that wouldn&#8217;t go down well on the WOM-PO list. Part of what makes Conrad&#8217;s poetry work &#8211; which it almost always does for me &#8211; is that he himself is a mélange of so many different &amp; unusual influences &#8211; southern &amp; rural, urban &amp; very definitely out of the closet. He also is a fulltime employee at one of the big chain bookstores in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Philadelphia</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> and, since the death of Gil <span class=SpellE>Ott</span> three plus years ago, visibly the greatest cohesive force the local poetry scene here has &#8211; he&#8217;s the one poet who knows <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>everyone. </i>Here is yet another poem involving the relationship with one&#8217;s parent, tilted this time on a completely different axis:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>My Mother after<br>
Knee Surgery<br>
</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
she calls it her<br>
new knee it&#8217;s in<br>
<span class=GramE>everything<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>she</span><br>
says her<br>
new knee<br>
<br>
hide my book of <br>
poems tired of<br>
explaining<br>
<br>
she distracts herself<br>
with television<br>
I watch to<br>
share her<br>
concentration <br>
into<br>
<span class=SpellE>dis</span>&#8212;<span class=SpellE>sss</span>&#8212;stance<br>
<br>
when it&#8217;s boring<br>
she makes herself<br>
a drink<br>
pours<br>
me one<br>
<br>
drink gets<br>
television<br>
interesting<br>
<br>
&#8221;hey, remember when <span class=SpellE>i</span> was<br>
a kid <span class=SpellE>i</span> asked why humans<br>
aren&#8217;t extinct, and you said<br>
it&#8217;s because we&#8217;re afraid<br>
of the dark?&#8221;<br>
<br>
&#8221;bullshit, hey, c&#8217;mon now<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
<span class=SpellE>i&#8217;m</span> trying to relax my<br>
new knee <span class=SpellE>dammit</span>!&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Conrad&#8217;s best known work, &#8220;<a href="http://seenoffstage.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Celebrities I&#8217;ve Seen Offstage</span></a>,&#8221; inevitably is the book&#8217;s </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>high  point</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, although I don&#8217;t think, really, it&#8217;s his best writing. First published in the Fall 2003 issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.lodestarquarterly.com/work/154/"><span  style='color:black'>Lodestar</span></a>, </i>the work is a not-so-distant cousin of Joe <span class=SpellE>Brainard&#8217;s</span> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>I Remember </i>or perhaps some of Michael <span class=SpellE>Lally&#8217;s</span> more agitprop pieces:<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;color:black'>Timothy Leary at <span class=SpellE>Starwood</span> having lunch with the Reverend Velveteen Sly a couple of naked pagans asked if they could get their pictures taken on his lap he twitched his gray brow with a big smile happy to oblige <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;color:black'>Annie Sprinkle was dating my friend Marie they came over for a tarot reading we spent most of the time talking about herbs to cure AIDS I don't remember if the tarot answered anyone that night <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;color:black'>Henry Winkler on </span><st1:Street><st1:address><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Benjamin Franklin Parkway</span></st1:address></st1:Street><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'> annoyed me to think of jerking off as a kid &quot;Oh <span class=SpellE>Fonzie</span>, cum on my FACE! SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!&quot; what was my deal back then? <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;color:black'>The Frugal Gourmet shooting a segment of his cooking show in the Reading Terminal Market telling someone what a moron his cameraman was then <span class=SpellE>oooing</span> and <span class=SpellE>aaahing</span> over the pastries for the camera moments later <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>As much fun as this work is, &amp; fun is inescapably the point here, Conrad is almost <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>too</i> sweet &amp; gentle, a little too much <a href="http://www.carsonkressley.com/"><span style='color:black'>Carson Kressley</span></a>, not sufficiently <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_(Glen_Milstead)"><span style='color:black'>Devine</span></a>. So what I come back to are the quieter poems &#8211; like the following one, whose Pepsi moment is literally right out of the biography of Rimbaud:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>I Still Have Keys to the Apartment<br>
</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> let myself in<br>
the new boyfriend<br>
asleep with your arm<br>
wrapped around his waist<br>
looks like we did<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> take my clothes off<br>
to slide between you<br>
but the cats fill my arms<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> miss the cats because<br>
they smell of you<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> want to lick the hairs<br>
on your chest flat<br>
while the new boyfriend sleeps<br>
but sniff the cats instead<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> could feed my sperm<br>
to your plants so part of me<br>
would always be around<br>
but you&#8217;ve swallowed<br>
enough of me to feed<br>
your bones and eyes that<br>
you&#8217;re not going<br>
anywhere without me<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> walk into the kitchen<br>
careful to eat just one,<br>
two grapes from the bunch<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> hold back tears<br>
see you still have<br>
the smiling soccer ball<br>
refrigerator magnets <span class=SpellE>i</span> gave you<br>
the new boyfriend <br>
doesn&#8217;t know <span class=SpellE>i</span> bought them<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> open the refrigerator<br>
a little at a time<br>
try to talk myself out of it<br>
but open it anyway<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> pee in the Pepsi<br>
feel a little better<br>
and grab my clothes<br>
<span class=SpellE>i</span> want to leave the keys behind<br>
but know <span class=SpellE>i&#8217;ll</span> want<br>
back in tomorrow<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/08/all-this-week-ive-been-writing-about.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/08/all-this-week-ive-been-writing-about.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2006-08-17T07:31:00-04:00'>Thursday, August 17, 2006</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=115581460548347353' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Friday, December 06, 2002</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='85587660' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='85587660'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-85587660' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Carl Boon, in his very first
question during <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_11_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2384811259">the
interview</a> that ran here a few weeks back, asked me to position my work towards
what he calls</span> <span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;the &#8216;clash zone,&#8217; the
space where technology meets nature,&#8221; to which I responded:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
Now for reasons that
are much more social than natural, I&#8217;m somewhat obsessed with documenting &#8220;the
invisible&#8221; in our lives. If there&#8217;s an enduring theme in my work, that&#8217;s it.
And in urban environment especially, nature is one of those dimensions that
recedes. One tends to forget that sparrows are great urban foragers, or how
weeds fit into the ecological chain, but they&#8217;re there. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This
response provoked another question for Carl, as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Why
is it so important to document &#8220;the invisible in our lives&#8221;? Do you have some sense
that sparrows and weeds are vanishing in our increasingly urbanized, &#8220;parking-lot&#8221;
landscape?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This goes right back to the
motivation for writing in the first place, or at least my motivation. When one
is raised, as I was, in a household in which one of the adults has repeated,
lengthy &amp; fairly severe psychotic episodes &#8211; the apotheosis for me was
being chased around a table at knifepoint &#8211; and no one in the family is able to
speak the words &#8220;mental illness,&#8221; the question of the invisible comes up front
&amp; center. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Not that I would have
articulated it as such. From the perspective of me at the age of ten, I had simply
found a way &#8211; creative writing &#8211; that I discovered would cause most of my
teachers to let me replace any major homework assignment that I found
difficult, boring or otherwise repellant: I would offer to write a story or
report on the general subject. Writing also gave me a safe place to be, and an
acceptable reason for not interacting with that same adult, my grandmother, if
I wanted some space, literally, for myself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Although I didn&#8217;t recognize
at the time, writing was also giving me a series of tools that were of
exceptional value in terms of organizing the world as I was experiencing it &#8211;
beginning by dealing with such obvious questions as why my family life seemed
so different from that of so many (though not all) of the kids around me. I
didn&#8217;t deal with those questions directly, at least not as a kid &amp; really
in many ways not until I got to the age at which my own father had died &#8211; 38. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Somewhere in the process,
though, I got the idea that there was an awful lot of the contemporary world
that was hidden from many, perhaps most, of the people around me. When I was a
kid, I would have articulated that in terms of civil rights, and the individual
rights of people &#8211; especially artists &#8211; struggling in </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Eastern Europe</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> against the censorship of the state. If Jonathan
Mayhew thinks I&#8217;m <a href="http://jonathanmayhew.blogspot.com/2002_11_01_jonathanmayhew_archive.html#84584024">earnest</a>
now, he should have seen me at the age of 15 or thereabouts. I&#8217;m sure that I
was insufferable.* <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That equation &#8211; that the
civil rights marchers had much in common with the Hungarian rebels in 1956 and
that Eugene &#8220;Bull&#8221; Connor had even more in common with the heirs of Stalin &#8211;
stuck with me &amp; proved essential in not only giving me an orientation
toward such basic terms as justice, but also gave me the ability &amp;
willingness to be the only member of my high school graduating class to file
immediately for conscientious objector&#8217;s status, which I did within 48 hours of
my 18<sup>th</sup> birthday. Whenever I look at the Vietnam memorial wall in
Washington &amp; see the names of people I grew up with like Ray Nora and Chris
Martinez etched into that marble, it reminds me that writing might very well
have saved my life on more than one occasion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So while I&#8217;m less concerned
with weeds &amp; sparrows, I am always conscious of how the invisible manifests
itself, again &amp; again in life. Certainly any man of my generation will
recall just how radically differently the relations between genders were back
in the early 1960s. It was exactly the &#8220;obviousness&#8221; of sexist patterns that
seemed invisible to men back then, just as many people today have no clue of
all the homophobic systems we have in place throughout our lives, the ways in
which &#8220;daily life&#8221; could seem an active campaign for heterosexuality,
especially to anyone who doesn&#8217;t share in that common myth. So I would
articulate my interest in the invisible in terms of the social, more than the
natural &#8211; especially since I think &#8220;nature&#8221; is a cultural category, rather like
&#8220;God,&#8221; something we impose on the universe as we live in it &#8211; but I often feel
that the commitments I felt when I was ten years old are an awful good test of
not only my writing, but my life, &amp; bringing the unseen into the foreground
is central to those commitments.<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">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Memo to
self: write a piece someday on the importance of insufferable people.
Insufferability is deeply underappreciated, just because it&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">déjà toujours</i> so obnoxious. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/12/carl-boon-in-his-very-first-question.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/12/carl-boon-in-his-very-first-question.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2002-12-06T07:03:00-05:00'>Friday, December 06, 2002</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=85587660' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/the%2520invisible' rel='tag'>the invisible</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, December 05, 2002</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='85531272' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='85531272'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-85531272' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">My allusion, in the <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_11_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2384919343">interview
with Carl Boon</a>, to &#8220;getting a complete version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Age of Huts </i>ready&#8221; generated a number of email questions. Carl
himself may have raised the issue most succinctly:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">There are three works in </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The
Age of Huts</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">: </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Sunset Debris</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The Chinese Notebook</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, and </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">2197</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">. What changes
will appear in the complete version? <span class="GramE">Revisions of these works
or additional new works?</span> <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;">The Age of Huts </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">originally contained a fourth work, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ketjak,</i>
the first in the cycle of the four poems. When Barrett Watten offered to
publish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ketjak</i> as a separate book &#8211;
an event that changed my life &#8211; I had not yet completed the other three works,
which I worked on more or less simultaneously during the 1975-78 time frame. In
addition there are two other poems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sitting
Up, Standing, Taking Steps</i> &amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BART,
</i>written during the same time frame that have what I would characterize as
an adjunct relationship to the cycle of four 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;">Ketjak </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">proved
to be the hinge work in my life. Once it appeared in 1978, four years after I&#8217;d
actually written the poem, I was able to publish pretty much whatever I wanted,
at least in journals, a process that forced me to be much more careful about
what I consider &#8220;complete&#8221; or ready to publish. The 800 copies of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ketjak </i>printed by This Press, however,
were already largely out of print when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Age of Huts</i> was published<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>by Roof
in 1986. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tjanting, </i>written after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Age of Huts &#8211; </i>it&#8217;s the bridge work
between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Huts </i>&amp; <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Alphabet</i> &#8211; was published in 1981 literally within a couple of
months of its completion. So the narrative of publication has not been the same
as that of composition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ve tried at times to
articulate the relationship between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ketjak
</i>&amp; the rest of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Huts, </i>going so
far in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quarry West </i>issue devoted
to my work to publish a chart.* Now, of course, with both books out of print,
the question of order is truly academic. But Salt is about to reissue <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tjanting</i> and I hope to complete <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Alphabet </i>by the end of 2003. Once
that is done, I will turn to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Age of
Huts </i>and deal with that in more detail. I&#8217;ve had a number of conversations with
Charles Alexander about it as a project for Chax Press, so my hope would be
that it ends up there &#8211; but I doubt this would be anything that will get done
until later in the decade. Then, after that, I&#8217;ll start to think more seriously
about one or two books of critical writing. That is the plan. <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">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Albeit
one that I think must be confusing to anyone who doesn&#8217;t realize that I use the
name <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ketjak</i> not just to refer to that
original text, but also to the larger writing project I am in the middle of, containing
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Huts, <span class="GramE">The</span>
Alphabet</i> &amp; the poem I have yet to begin. The chart also fails to deal
with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BART </i>&amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sitting Up </i>adequately. I may be the poet most apt to use charts in
critical writing, but that doesn&#8217;t mean I always use them well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/12/my-allusion-in-interview-with-carl.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/12/my-allusion-in-interview-with-carl.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2002-12-05T05:41:00-05:00'>Thursday, December 05, 2002</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=85531272' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Ketjak' rel='tag'>Ketjak</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/The%2520Age%2520of%2520Huts' rel='tag'>The Age of Huts</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Friday, November 22, 2002</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='84919343' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='84919343'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-84919343' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Here is the third &amp;
final installment of Carl Boon&#8217;s questions:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>7.&nbsp; &quot;Disappearance of the Word, Appearance of the World&quot;
is your major contribution to the debate over reference in poetry. Some critics
see the question of reference as the major theoretical battleground in the wide
debate between &quot;Language poets&quot; and the group Charles Bernstein calls
&quot;workshop poets.&quot; Do you think the question of reference continues to
be an important, relevant one? How have your ideas about reference changed,
say, since the publication of &quot;Disappearance of the Word&quot; or <span
style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>The Chinese Notebook</span>?&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>&#8220;Disappearance&#8221; was really
the first serious piece of theoretical writing I ever attempted, so I&#8217;m both
very fond of it while simultaneously a little appalled at the impact it seems
to have had over the 27 or so years since David <span class=SpellE>Highsmith</span>
and Carl <span class=SpellE>Loeffler</span> talked me into writing it. I
basically just sat down, banged out what I&#8217;d been thinking, sent one copy to
their publication, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Art Contemporary, </i>with
a second copy to Alan Davies,\ for his photocopied newsletter, <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Hundred Posters. </i>Since then, it&#8217;s been
in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The New Sentence</i>, been reprinted
three times in anthologies &#8211; one in a collection of pieces on Baudrillard that
features a debate he &amp; I had at the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>University</span></st1:PlaceType><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>Montana</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> of all places &#8211; and translated into Croatian, German and Dutch. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I do think that
referentiality continues to be important, not because I privilege the opaque
signifier as such, but because I think it reveals a range of phenomena both in
writing and in the world that become invisible the instant that language is
presumed to be transparent. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Whenever I think of
Jakobson&#8217;s model of the six functions of language, I tend to group them into
three pairs or axes: contact &amp; code; addresser &amp; addressee; signifier
&amp; signified. I envision the model in my head as a six-sided
three-dimensional figure, not unlike a die, although in practice I don&#8217;t think
it really works like one. Non-referentiality focuses on the signifier,
de-emphasizes the signified, tends to ignore addresser &amp; addressee and
generally privileges the contact (e.g., the physicality of sound) over code
(including, though not limited to, syntax). In practice, individual texts tend
to be very complex &amp; interesting when looked at in terms of their relation
to these six aspects of the linguistic experience, and the idea that one would
want to fixate simply on one of them seems to me inherently narrow &amp;
limiting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>8.&nbsp; A related question. In his essay &quot;Poetry as Explanation,
Poetry as Praxis,&quot; Bruce Andrews engages a roundtable discussion of poets
and theorists on the question of reference. (Andrews, as you well know, has
written extensively on the question-especially in &quot;Total Equals <span
class=GramE>What</span>&quot; and &quot;Constitution / Writing, Politics,
Language, The Body.&quot;) But in that roundtable, Jackson Mac Low, </i><st1:PersonName><i
 style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Barrett Watten</i></st1:PersonName><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, Nick Lawrence, </i><st1:PersonName><i
 style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Andrew Levy</i></st1:PersonName><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, and others discuss the political
ramifications (and risks) of &quot;obliterating&quot; reference. In other
words, if reference is obliterated (or even &quot;diminished&quot;), political
change becomes harder because, in theory, fewer people can be reached. More
people can be reached, perhaps, if the language remains transparent. You
address this question specifically in </i><span style='mso-bidi-font-style:
italic'>The Chinese Notebook</span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> when
you write:<o:p></o:p></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:justify'><span
style='font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:justify'><span
style='font-family:Arial'>192. A friend, a member of the Old Left, challenges
my aesthetic. How, he asks, can one write so as not to &quot;communicate&quot;?
I, in turn, challenge his definitions. It is a more crucial lesson, I argue, to
learn how to experience language directly, to tune one's senses to it, than to
use it as a mere means to an end. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>If you would expand on that answer, just how do we &quot;experience
language directly&quot;? Twenty years later, does your answer to your friend
remain the same? Has history altered your answer? Does the current political
situation (a conservative </i><st1:PersonName><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
 normal'>admin</i></st1:PersonName><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>istration
intent on dominating the world for economic interests) impact it? How would you
frame the question today?</i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>We experience language
directly whenever we sense its presence as embodied, whether it is as a &#8220;pure&#8221;
signifier or just as the embodiment of whatever message might be associated
with it. Often, in practice, this is felt as a form of alienation. We hear
someone&#8217;s accent as &#8220;difficult,&#8221; recognize a verb phrase as &#8220;non-standard,&#8221; or
are irritated that a comment is sexist, racist or ageist. If the message is
transmitted electronically, there may literally be static. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>There are multiple elements
in play with any statement. All six functions come into play and there are many
times in which something other than the signified is the most significant. This
is most evident in forms of advertising, as when a <span class=GramE>Mc</span></span><st1:PersonName><span
 class=GramE><span style='font-family:Arial'>Don</span></span></st1:PersonName><span
class=GramE><span style='font-family:Arial'>alds</span></span><span
style='font-family:Arial'> campaign introduced breakfast menus with the tag
line &#8220;Dawn Good Foods,&#8221; the mind literally flipping that &#8220;w&#8221; upside down, for
example, or political ads use omission and innuendo to make their points. But
such phenomena present everywhere and at all times. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>As your question suggests,
we&#8217;re at an especially dangerous time in human history, but the ability to
actually hear &amp; read are skills that are always useful. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>9.&nbsp; Another related question. Your aesthetic, at least in many
volumes of </i><span style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>The Alphabet</span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, is considerably more traditional (in terms
of reference) than the work of Watten or Andrews. I see this as a departure
from, say, </i><span style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>Tjanting</span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, which goes further in challenging our
perceptions of words and grammatical construction. I think </i><span
style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>Tjanting</span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'> is more playful with language than many of </i><span style='mso-bidi-font-style:
italic'>The Alphabet</span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> volumes. Am I
all <span class=GramE>wrong,</span> or does this perhaps indicate a discord
between your theories on reference and your poetic practice?&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>This goes back to the
question of reference you asked in connection with &#8220;Disappearance of the Word,
Appearance of the World.&#8221; Referentiality is not a toggle switch of avant
attitude, or even of playfulness. The idea of maximum non-referentiality is
every bit as boring as the idea of maximum referentiality. Rather, there is a
range, really a series of registers, which move both closer to and further from
any idea of unproblematic depiction through language. I have no interest
whatsoever in being at either extreme. What does interest me is a full
exploration of the range &amp; all the various points along the way. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>One of the things I wanted
to accomplish with <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Alphabet </i>was
to explore as many different aspects of my poetry as possible. Almost by
definition, that desire moved me into a variety of different pursuits. Simply
repeating what I had done before would have been the least interesting of
possible alternatives. Thus, to pick a pointed example, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Ketjak2: Caravan of Affect</i> continues the poem <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Ketjak</i></span> <span style='font-family:Arial'>per se, but does so
without the repetition that was its original organizing device. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>On the question of
playfulness, I hardly know how to gauge that. Jonathan Mayhew&#8217;s blog commented
the other day on the &#8220;earnestness&#8221; of my blog as though that were some kind of
fault. But there has always been a divergence here between my critical prose
and my poetry. Even in the poems, however, I&#8217;ve never been that attracted to
the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> mode of humor &#8211; from my perspective, it has always been a distraction
to the many interesting things I find in their work. Anyone around in the 1970s
&amp; &#8216;80s got to see what the poet-as-standup-comic looked like, just as
audiences at poetry slams get to see it today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>10.&nbsp; Here is a quote from Gregory Jay's </i><span
style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>American Literature and the Culture Wars</span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> (1997), a book that captures (from the
standpoint of pedagogy) the firestorm and subsequent debate E.D. Hirsch stirred
up with his theory of &quot;cultural literacy.&quot; Jay's book explores what's
often sensationalized by the popular media in headlines such as &quot;</i><st1:City><st1:place><i
  style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Berkeley</i></st1:place></st1:City><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>'s not teaching Shakespeare anymore&quot; or
&quot;Yale doesn't require English majors to read </i><st1:City><st1:place><i
  style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Milton</i></st1:place></st1:City><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> anymore.&quot; It's a book about the
politics of the syllabus.<o:p></o:p></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>&quot;What is the aim of teaching 'American' literature?&quot; Is it
the appreciation of artistry or the socialization of the reader? <span
class=GramE>The achievement of cultural literacy or training in critical
thinking?</span> Can it be all these things without contradicting itself (or
hopelessly confusing the student)? (5)<o:p></o:p></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>I have argued that your work is a better teaching tool than, say,
&quot;Sailing to </i><st1:City><st1:place><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Byzantium</i></st1:place></st1:City><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>&quot; owing to its greater capacity to
&quot;socialize&quot; students. In demanding students (especially those new to
literature) to be active, inventive, and always thinking critically, <span
style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>Hidden</span>, for example, engages students
on more levels than &quot;Sailing to Byzantium,&quot; which demands, most of
all, understanding. I have had great success teaching your work.<o:p></o:p></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>What do you think the aim of teaching American literature should be? Is
there such a thing as the perfect syllabus? Should &quot;classic,&quot;
canonized works be taught at all? What would be the point of doing so?<o:p></o:p></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>There is a presumption here
that this has something to do with writing. But the reality is rather the other
way around. The question has to do with how <span class=GramE>poetry<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span>might</span> be utilized for other social
purposes that are not really connected to the writing. That famed Martian
sociologist might find it strange indeed that historically the basis for what
once was the standard educational program, especially at the college level,
consisted in good part of the systematic study of works that were produced
entirely for other purposes &amp; uses. The poet&#8217;s game becomes the student&#8217;s
midterm.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I&#8217;m not qualified to
pontificate about the broader issues of curricular theory any more than I am to
prescribe medications for high blood pressure or provide a recipe for
cheesecake. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Having said that, I do think
that there is a difference between a canon and a classic. Every individual
carries around within himself or herself an intuited view as to the works that
matter &#8211; that is an inescapable part of being human. This intuited map might be
characterized as a personal canon, but it is the adjective that matters rather
than the noun in that phrase. Further, groups of individuals might share some
of the same enthusiasms, such as the ones that have rescued the work of both
Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky in the past half century, ensuring that their
works stayed more or less in print, or which got Lorine Niedecker really into
print in the first place. That is a social canon, and there are literally
thousands of them co-existing at any given moment in time. Again, the adjective
is more important than the noun. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>It is when you superimpose
one fixed structure over all of the possible ensembles of personal and social
canons that you get a &#8220;classic,&#8221; which is </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>essen</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>tially a canon with power. And that&#8217;s not about
writing or literature or literary value. That&#8217;s about power, pure and simple:
the power canon. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Before the 19<sup>th</sup>
century, the amount of actual writing in English was little enough so that
there really isn&#8217;t that much difficulty reading key figures from the various
centuries. But with the extension of the English speaking world, fissures
seriously do begin to develop &amp; by the start of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century, they are already pretty deep. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>11.&nbsp; You have chosen not to pursue a teaching career in the academy,
yet professors and graduate students have written about your work extensively.
At last count, there have been nine doctoral dissertations about your work and
dozens of critical articles and books. Do you find this ironic? Do you find it
disheartening that what you have taken a political stand against (the academy)
seems to latch onto your work?--that is, at least a few of us.<o:p></o:p></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Actually, I think it&#8217;s more
like two people have written dissertations on my work while another half dozen
or so have found it to be a useful terrain for examining whatever issues their
dissertations directly addressed. My work hasn&#8217;t been so much an object of
study as an example. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Use in any critical writing
targeted toward the academy is always something about which I&#8217;ve been
ambivalent, partly because that is not where I myself would direct my own
energies but also because the actual quality seems so random. Some of the most
very positive articles about my poetry have struck me as being the crudest
readings imaginable. And I think that one result of that is to reinforce some
of the stereotypes of language writing or of my poetry, even when the article
was intended in a helpful way. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span class=GramE><span style='font-family:Arial'>Having
said that, though, I&#8217;m hardly an absolutist in opposition to the academy or to
teaching.</span></span><span style='font-family:Arial'> I&#8217;ve taught at </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>San Francisco</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>State</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>,
UC San Diego, </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:Arial'>New</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>College</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> &amp; the Naropa Institute over the years and enjoyed it every time.
There is a genuine value to spending one&#8217;s time talking intensely about
something you love with people who share that interest. But I am very sensitive
to the proclivity of the academy toward abusive relationships, both of faculty
and students. And while I&#8217;ve declined tenure track appointments, I&#8217;ve </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>nev</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>er been offered an academic position that did not
propose to cut my earnings by at least 40 per cent per year.<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>But if a school were
seriously interested in having me teach, I wouldn&#8217;t be shocked to find myself
doing more of it in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>12.&nbsp; In her new book, </i><span style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>21st-Century
Modernism</span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, Marjorie Perloff
claims, as other critics have previously, that Language poetry (she looks
especially at the work of </i><st1:PersonName><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
 normal'>Steve McCaffery</i></st1:PersonName><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>, Lyn Hejinian, and Charles Bernstein) should be considered &quot;a
carrying-on, in somewhat diluted form, of the avant-garde project that had been
at the very heart of early modernism&quot; (3). By &quot;early modernism,&quot;
she means especially Stein and the early Eliot. Do you think <span
class=SpellE>Perloff's</span> is a fair assessment? Would you like to elaborate
on her position?<o:p></o:p></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>A year or so ago, somebody
posed something very close to the question to P. Inman at Kelly Writers House
and several of the students in the audience seemed surprised at his
announcement &#8220;for&#8221; modernism. That is where that sort of stereotyping by one&#8217;s
advocates comes in, joining language poetry to postmodernism simply because that
latter term has, for a period, a certain cachet. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>But this attraction to the
modernist project has been a thread you can find in many, perhaps most, of the
contributors to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>In the American Tree. </i>I&#8217;ve
never thought of langpo as being post-modern or post-structural, but rather
much more in line with Habermas&#8217; argument that we need to return to the
modernist project and see how it might be done without the internal
contradictions history imposed &#8211; totalitarianism chief among them.<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;&#160; </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>13.&nbsp; What do you see beyond </i><span style='mso-bidi-font-style:
italic'>The Alphabet</span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>? Are there
any new long-term, long creative projects on the horizon?</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I think I&#8217;m finally ready to
tackle a long poem. I have some ideas about a project that I found literally on
p. 61 of Anselm Hollo&#8217;s book <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Corvus</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>where he writes
&#8220;alphabet ends<span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&#160;&#160;&#160; </span>universe begins&#8221; and I
thought, <span class=GramE>Aha</span>! So I&#8217;ve been making notes, looking a lot
at Stephen Wolfram&#8217;s book, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A New Kind of
Science</i>. But I&#8217;m a year away from completing <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>The Alphabet </i>&#8211; if I&#8217;m lucky &#8211; and I feel that I&#8217;m learning so very
much right now that it would foolhardy to get ahead of myself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>14.&nbsp; I think </i><span style='mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>The New
Sentence</span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> was one of the best books
of literary criticism to come along in a while. Do you envision putting
together any new books of criticism in the future? <o:p></o:p></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I&#8217;ve had the makings of a
new volume more or less ready for some time, but don&#8217;t really plan to do the
work I need to package it up qua book until I get <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>The Alphabet </i>complete and make more firm arrangements for getting a
complete version of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Age of Huts</i>
ready. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>15.<span class=GramE>&nbsp; And</span> finally, recently you wrote to
me that Bob Dylan is one of the few artists from (near) your generation still
doing &quot;relevant new work.&quot; I am including a chapter on Dylan in my
project, arguing that his songs and liner notes from the mid-1960s constitute a
kind of &quot;Language poetry,&quot; that he indeed is one of the originators
of the school. How would you respond to that? Additionally, why do you think
Dylan's new work is &quot;relevant&quot;?<o:p></o:p></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Well, as you might imagine
from my previous responses, I don&#8217;t agree with the premises of your argument.
Dylan as a musician has had a serious influence on poets, not just because of
the extraordinary concision and use of metaphor in his lyrics, but also because
he has been such an example of a person consciously shaping &amp; changing an
art form in response to his times. But his liner notes &amp; the novel <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tarantula</i> are really imitative Beat
fare, sort of adolescent Ferlinghetti as swirled through a blender that would
include William Burroughs, Jacques <span class=SpellE>Prevert</span> &amp; the
surrealists. At that level, I would pay more heed to Ray <span class=SpellE>Bremser</span>
or Charlie <span class=SpellE>Plymell</span>. &amp; I would pose the question
of what your argument has to do with either Dylan&#8217;s music or the writing to
which you might yoke it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>In one narrow sense, though,
you might be right. Burroughs is certainly the not-so-secret source of much of
the imagery one finds in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Highway 61
Revisited </i>and <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Blonde on Blonde</i>
and, in the <span class=GramE>process,</span> Dylan does demonstrate how such
elements might be brought into play in the radically different form that is
song. As such, he does demonstrate how any genre incorporates material from
beyond its traditional borders, a process that Shklovsky argued was </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>essen</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>tial to the vitality of any art.** In showing just
how far a mainstream medium such as rock &amp; roll can go in terms of its
exploration of meaning, he did set a bar, sort of a level of minimum
acceptability, for any self-respecting poet, not in terms of style so much as
in just how much the writer will require from him- or herself as a functioning
artist. One could make the exact same argument &#8211; and I have, basically &#8211; about
the early novels of Kathy Acker. If you aren&#8217;t willing to accept this level of
risk, why would you expect anyone to want to listen to you?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Further, Dylan&#8217;s sense of
what his style was or means has changed constantly, even restlessly, over the
years. When I last heard him live just about a year ago, he was singing &#8220;<span
class=SpellE>Blowin</span>&#8217; in the Wind&#8221; in a style that was on the hard edge
of Nashville-type country, closer in tone to the Southern rock group </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Alabama</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'> than to either his earlier versions or, say, Peter,
Paul &amp; Mary. And the songs on his last two albums show him as somebody
still responding actively <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and formally </i>to
his environment. At a time when most of the other members of his own generation
have turned into historical <span class=SpellE>recreators</span> of their own
younger selves &#8211; viz., the Stones &#8211; Dylan &amp; Neil Young (inventor of that
neglected genre, folk-metal) seem to be the among the few still pushing
themselves <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>as artists</i>. But Roger <span
class=SpellE>McGuinn&#8217;s</span> decision to resurrect the archive of the cowboy
song, which has been the focus of his recent work, out of a concern that the
current phenomenon of the singer-songwriter means that traditional songs per se
are endangered is itself such a noteworthy project, so it really isn&#8217;t about the
lyrics in that sense. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Similarly, the artist who
may be closest in cultural impact to the young Dylan in how he pushes <span
class=GramE>peoples</span> buttons, <span class=SpellE>Eminem</span>, also
demonstrates precisely how a form can expand &amp; redefine itself. A song such
as &#8220;Cleaning <span class=GramE>Out</span> My Closet&#8221; could be examined in the
terms that one sets for the analysis of any Dylan song (&amp; its video adds
layers Dylan has never achieved) or for the highest order poetry. But that
doesn&#8217;t make it poetry any more than his extraordinary talent makes Marshall <span
class=SpellE>Mathers</span> a nice guy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>** The
absence of which is also the death of a genre, which is precisely what is wrong
with the school of quietude.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span></span><span
style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/11/here-is-third-absence-of-which-is-also.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/11/here-is-third-absence-of-which-is-also.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2002-11-22T07:02:00-05:00'>Friday, November 22, 2002</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=84919343' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews' rel='tag'>Interviews</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

        </div></div>
      
</div>
<div class='blog-pager' id='blog-pager'>
<span id='blog-pager-newer-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-newer-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews%3Fmax-results%3D20' id='Blog1_blog-pager-newer-link' title='Newer Posts'>Newer Posts</a>
</span>
<span id='blog-pager-older-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-older-link' href='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews?updated-max=2002-11-22T07:02:00-05:00&amp;max-results=20&amp;start=193&amp;by-date=false' id='Blog1_blog-pager-older-link' title='Older Posts'>Older Posts</a>
</span>
<a class='home-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/'>Home</a>
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<div class='blog-feeds'>
<div class='feed-links'>
Subscribe to:
<a class='feed-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default' target='_blank' type='application/atom+xml'>Posts (Atom)</a>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div id='sidebar-wrapper'>
<div class='sidebar section' id='sidebar'><div class='widget Text' data-version='1' id='Text4'>
<h2 class='title'>Upcoming</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<b>October</b><br /><br />Madrid<br />with Charles Bernstein & Susan Bee<br /><br />Barcelona<br /><div><br /><br />Saragossa?<br /><br /><b>November</b><br /><br />Rome?<div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Text&widgetId=Text4&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Text4"));' rel='nofollow' target='configText4' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div><div class='widget TextList' data-version='1' id='TextList1'>
<h2>Email</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<ul>
<li>silliman AT gmail DOT com</li>
</ul>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=TextList&widgetId=TextList1&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("TextList1"));' rel='nofollow' target='configTextList1' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div>
</div><div class='widget LinkList' data-version='1' id='LinkList1'>
<h2>Silliman Sites</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<ul>
<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>
</ul>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=LinkList&widgetId=LinkList1&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("LinkList1"));' rel='nofollow' target='configLinkList1' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div>
</div><div class='widget Text' data-version='1' id='Text1'>
<h2 class='title'>Ketjak</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<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>
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Text&widgetId=Text1&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Text1"));' rel='nofollow' target='configText1' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div><div class='widget Text' data-version='1' id='Text3'>
<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<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 />
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Text&widgetId=Text3&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Text3"));' rel='nofollow' target='configText3' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div><div class='widget Image' data-version='1' id='Image1'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<img alt='' height='163' id='Image1_img' src='//3.bp.blogspot.com/_TEBx9oYcXio/S9oGYEaetqI/AAAAAAAABDs/UI7l5u8GwcA/S230/redron.jpg' width='230'/>
<br/>
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Image&widgetId=Image1&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Image1"));' rel='nofollow' target='configImage1' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div><div class='widget Text' data-version='1' id='Text2'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<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.
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Text&widgetId=Text2&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Text2"));' rel='nofollow' target='configText2' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<!-- spacer for skins that want sidebar and main to be the same height-->
<div class='clear'>&#160;</div>
</div>
<!-- end content-wrapper -->
</div></div>
<!-- end outer-wrapper -->

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/widgets/1068551213-widgets.js"></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
window['__wavt'] = 'AOuZoY5slGY3vJz8LlB_A1nxthW-CIKY7A:1574416845924';_WidgetManager._Init('//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID\x3d3738579','//ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews?updated-max\x3d2011-10-11T21:01:00-07:00\x26max-results\x3d20\x26start\x3d181\x26by-date\x3dfalse','3738579');
_WidgetManager._SetDataContext([{'name': 'blog', 'data': {'blogId': '3738579', 'title': 'Silliman\x27s Blog', 'url': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews?updated-max\x3d2011-10-11T21:01:00-07:00\x26max-results\x3d20\x26start\x3d181\x26by-date\x3dfalse', 'canonicalUrl': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews?updated-max\x3d2011-10-11T21:01:00-07:00\x26max-results\x3d20\x26start\x3d181\x26by-date\x3dfalse', 'homepageUrl': 'https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/', 'searchUrl': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search', 'canonicalHomepageUrl': 'https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/', 'blogspotFaviconUrl': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/favicon.ico', 'bloggerUrl': 'https://www.blogger.com', 'hasCustomDomain': false, 'httpsEnabled': true, 'enabledCommentProfileImages': true, 'gPlusViewType': 'FILTERED_POSTMOD', 'adultContent': false, 'analyticsAccountNumber': '', 'encoding': 'UTF-8', 'locale': 'en', 'localeUnderscoreDelimited': 'en', 'languageDirection': 'ltr', 'isPrivate': false, 'isMobile': false, 'isMobileRequest': false, 'mobileClass': '', 'isPrivateBlog': false, 'feedLinks': '\x3clink rel\x3d\x22alternate\x22 type\x3d\x22application/atom+xml\x22 title\x3d\x22Silliman\x26#39;s Blog - Atom\x22 href\x3d\x22https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default\x22 /\x3e\n\x3clink rel\x3d\x22alternate\x22 type\x3d\x22application/rss+xml\x22 title\x3d\x22Silliman\x26#39;s Blog - RSS\x22 href\x3d\x22https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt\x3drss\x22 /\x3e\n\x3clink rel\x3d\x22service.post\x22 type\x3d\x22application/atom+xml\x22 title\x3d\x22Silliman\x26#39;s Blog - Atom\x22 href\x3d\x22https://www.blogger.com/feeds/3738579/posts/default\x22 /\x3e\n', 'meTag': '', 'adsenseHostId': 'ca-host-pub-1556223355139109', 'adsenseHasAds': false, 'view': '', 'dynamicViewsCommentsSrc': '//www.blogblog.com/dynamicviews/4224c15c4e7c9321/js/comments.js', 'dynamicViewsScriptSrc': '//www.blogblog.com/dynamicviews/ac414222f14fdfa1', 'plusOneApiSrc': 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js', 'disableGComments': true, 'sharing': {'platforms': [{'name': 'Get link', 'key': 'link', 'shareMessage': 'Get link', 'target': ''}, {'name': 'Facebook', 'key': 'facebook', 'shareMessage': 'Share to Facebook', 'target': 'facebook'}, {'name': 'BlogThis!', 'key': 'blogThis', 'shareMessage': 'BlogThis!', 'target': 'blog'}, {'name': 'Twitter', 'key': 'twitter', 'shareMessage': 'Share to Twitter', 'target': 'twitter'}, {'name': 'Pinterest', 'key': 'pinterest', 'shareMessage': 'Share to Pinterest', 'target': 'pinterest'}, {'name': 'Email', 'key': 'email', 'shareMessage': 'Email', 'target': 'email'}], 'disableGooglePlus': true, 'googlePlusShareButtonWidth': 300, 'googlePlusBootstrap': '\x3cscript type\x3d\x22text/javascript\x22\x3ewindow.___gcfg \x3d {\x27lang\x27: \x27en\x27};\x3c/script\x3e'}, 'hasCustomJumpLinkMessage': false, 'jumpLinkMessage': 'Read more', 'pageType': 'index', 'searchLabel': 'Interviews', 'pageName': 'Interviews', 'pageTitle': 'Silliman\x27s Blog: Interviews'}}, {'name': 'features', 'data': {'sharing_get_link_dialog': 'true', 'sharing_native': 'false'}}, {'name': 'messages', 'data': {'edit': 'Edit', 'linkCopiedToClipboard': 'Link copied to clipboard!', 'ok': 'Ok', 'postLink': 'Post Link'}}, {'name': 'template', 'data': {'name': 'custom', 'localizedName': 'Custom', 'isResponsive': false, 'isAlternateRendering': false, 'isCustom': true}}, {'name': 'view', 'data': {'classic': {'name': 'classic', 'url': '?view\x3dclassic'}, 'flipcard': {'name': 'flipcard', 'url': '?view\x3dflipcard'}, 'magazine': {'name': 'magazine', 'url': '?view\x3dmagazine'}, 'mosaic': {'name': 'mosaic', 'url': '?view\x3dmosaic'}, 'sidebar': {'name': 'sidebar', 'url': '?view\x3dsidebar'}, 'snapshot': {'name': 'snapshot', 'url': '?view\x3dsnapshot'}, 'timeslide': {'name': 'timeslide', 'url': '?view\x3dtimeslide'}, 'isMobile': false, 'title': 'Silliman\x27s Blog', 'description': 'A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.', 'url': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Interviews?updated-max\x3d2011-10-11T21:01:00-07:00\x26max-results\x3d20\x26start\x3d181\x26by-date\x3dfalse', 'type': 'feed', 'isSingleItem': false, 'isMultipleItems': true, 'isError': false, 'isPage': false, 'isPost': false, 'isHomepage': false, 'isArchive': false, 'isSearch': true, 'isLabelSearch': true, 'search': {'label': 'Interviews', 'resultsMessage': 'Showing posts with the label Interviews', 'resultsMessageHtml': 'Showing posts with the label \x3cspan class\x3d\x27search-label\x27\x3eInterviews\x3c/span\x3e'}}}]);
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_NavbarView', new _WidgetInfo('Navbar1', 'navbar', document.getElementById('Navbar1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_HeaderView', new _WidgetInfo('Header1', 'header', document.getElementById('Header1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_BlogView', new _WidgetInfo('Blog1', 'main', document.getElementById('Blog1'), {'cmtInteractionsEnabled': false, 'navMessage': 'Showing posts with label \x3cb\x3eInterviews\x3c/b\x3e. \x3ca href\x3d\x22https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/\x22\x3eShow all posts\x3c/a\x3e', 'lightboxEnabled': true, 'lightboxModuleUrl': 'https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/jsbin/4152225668-lbx.js', 'lightboxCssUrl': 'https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/v-css/368954415-lightbox_bundle.css'}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextView', new _WidgetInfo('Text4', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Text4'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextListView', new _WidgetInfo('TextList1', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('TextList1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_LinkListView', new _WidgetInfo('LinkList1', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('LinkList1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextView', new _WidgetInfo('Text1', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Text1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextView', new _WidgetInfo('Text3', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Text3'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_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>