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Showing posts with label <b>Jack Spicer</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Jack Spicer</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
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          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, December 18, 2002</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Between the poem &amp; the
longpoem come several intermediate modes. One that interests me greatly,
because it&#8217;s one with which I have a lot of personal affinity, is the
booklength poem that might not (yet) be a longpoem in the true sense of taking
a decade or more to compose. It can be &#8211; although not always is &#8211; really the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">poem as book</i> (which, conversely, almost
always means the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">book as poem</i> also),
calling up that curious zone in which the transpersonal elements of a text
become deeply immersed with the qualities of embodiment that bookmaking
represents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Jack Spicer was a master at
this level. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">After Lorca, The Heads of the
Town Up to the Aether, Language </i>&amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book
of Magazine Verse</i> were all composed as much as books as they were poems.
Gilbert <span class="SpellE">Sorrentino&#8217;s</span> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The <span class="SpellE">Orangery</span></i> is another volume that comes
immediately to mind as an exemplar of this mode &#8211; as are Charles Alexander&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">arc of light / dark matter,</i> Ted
Berrigan&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sonnets</i>, John
Ashbery&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Three Poems, </i>Lyn Hejinian&#8217;s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Life</i>, Robert Creeley&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieces,</i> Barrett Watten&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Progress, </i>David Melnick&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pcoet, </i></span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Mandel</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prospect of
Release</i>, &amp; more than a few books each by both Bernadette Mayer &amp;
Clark Coolidge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">At the heart of the poem as
book is not just having a project that is sufficiently large enough to warrant
capturing as a whole between two covers, but rather one that understands itself
in precisely such terms, that takes its own free-standing nature as a given.
Book design, of course, allows for a lot of fudging &#8211; the 64-page volume that
was my own </span><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Paradise</span></i></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> was a 35-page manuscript. Whatever its integrity as
a poem or project might be, it was <span class="SpellE">Rosmarie</span> Waldrop
who had the formal sense to see that work as book. Thus, not every poem (or
poetic series) of size carries this sense of itself as a condition of the
writing. Of the volumes listed in the previous paragraph, the one I sometimes
wonder about in these terms is Berrigan&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sonnets.</i>
As wonderful as they are &#8211; and they hold up to rereading after rereading over
the decades, as rich &amp; glittering as ever &#8211; Berrigan was such a young
writer when he composed that sequence that it&#8217;s not clear to me that he was yet
even thinking in terms of books at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What calls this to mind is a
volume entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.apogeepress.com/books_bkhrs.html"><span class="SpellE">bk</span>
of (h<span class="GramE">)<span class="SpellE">rs</span></span></a></i> by Pattie
McCarthy. It&#8217;s a dense, rich, sometimes dark (&amp; sometimes playful) volume
clearly conceived &amp; written precisely as a book. For a relatively young
poet &#8211; I believe this is only her second volume &#8211; it&#8217;s a project of stunning
ambition &amp; self confidence. And, as readers of this blog will have figured
out by now, these are qualities in poetry that I completely endorse. The title
alone announces that this will not be an &#8220;easy&#8221; read &#8211; although, because this
work is so well written, there are constant &amp; continuing pleasures in doing
so, making <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bk</i></span>,
if not an &#8220;easy&#8221; read, at the very least a delightful one. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">McCarthy&#8217;s model of course
is the medieval book of hours, which between the 13<sup>th</sup> &amp; 15<sup>th</sup>
centuries was the most popular of all book forms, but which today is remembered
principally for the detailed illustrations that decorated these favored objects
of the rich. As her use of abbreviations makes evident (&amp; the Apogee Press
design reinforces, especially in the dense prose of the third section),
McCarthy is interested primarily in the intellectual / social / spiritual
elements of the form, not its role in a history of design. The first section of
the book does indeed follow the &#8220;hours&#8221; of medieval practice &#8211; matins, lauds,
prime, <span class="SpellE">terce</span>, <span class="SpellE">sext</span>, none,
vespers &amp; <span class="SpellE">compline</span> &#8211; actually set times of day
for traditional sets of prayer. The second section is, as one would expect in
this form, is called &#8220;(p<span class="GramE">)<span class="SpellE">salter</span></span>,&#8221;
&amp; while the psalms or songs that follow are less <span class="SpellE">polyvocalic</span>
that either the first or third sections of this book, one would be hard put to
characterize them as lyrical.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I suspect that a reader who
was more of a Christian than I would see more levels &amp; depths of reference
here than do </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">I.</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> It&#8217;s one thing for me to recognize the use of Julian
dating in &#8220;(p<span class="GramE">)<span class="SpellE">salter</span></span>,&#8221; but
quite another for me to understand quite what to do with it. At that level, I
have to ask myself just how much I trust where the author is going,
particularly one who, like McCarthy, actively invokes a broad a range of
reference, especially in the 21 prose paragraphs of the volume&#8217;s third &amp;
final section, where the sense of density is accentuated by McCarthy&#8217;s
resistance to upper case. Since at no point where I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can </i>follow does she ever once misstep, my gut feel is to trust
completely the places where I simply have to acknowledge my own limits as a
reader. A passage like the following demonstrates absolute ability in total
control:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">the</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
second letters of the original seven<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">antiphons</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
read backwards yield the acrostic :<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I
shall be with you tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">divinations</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> to undertake &#8211; times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">&amp; purposes to be determined regionally.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;m
not one for a public shrove.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">a</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> green
winter makes for a fat churchyard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">a</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> long
winter makes for a full ear. <span class="GramE">poke</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">holes</span> in
eggshells to keep<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span class="GramE">witches</span>
from going to sea. <span class="GramE">we</span> look down into it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">bk</span></i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> of (h)<span class="SpellE">rs</span></span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;"> will probably look like early work one day to
McCarthy, precisely because she demonstrates herself taking on such a range
&amp; such steep challenges that you can almost palpably feel her growth as an
artist in these pages &#8211; the literary equivalent of, say, a Beatles album like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rubber Soul</i>, where the <span class="SpellE">Fab</span> Four just start to make the move from best-in-class of
the genre they&#8217;ve inherited toward working on some whole other level that will
transform not merely their own work, but that of everyone else around them. I
don&#8217;t want to overstate the case here, but <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bk</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> of (h<span class="GramE">)<span class="SpellE">rs</span></span> </i>is a
fascinating view of an artist right at the inflection point of her career. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, November 19, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Of all the New American Poets,
just two proceed as though the language of poetry were primarily a process of
logic and not of speech: John Ashbery &amp; Jack Spicer. I literally had this
thought while taking a shower this morning, the cleanest thinking I&#8217;ve done on
the subject.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I never join Spicer in my
imagination to Ashbery. Their sense of what that logic might be or might mean
is so very different. In Spicer&#8217;s case, it&#8217;s a process of perpetual, even
compulsive, contradiction*, lines &amp; ideas constantly undercutting one
another until the final result cannot possibly be added up to a single idea,
but rather a pulsing, resonating core of contrasting impulses:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Get those words out of your mouth and into your
heart. If there isn&#8217;t <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A God don&#8217;t believe in Him. &#8220;Credo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="SpellE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Quia</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
absurdum,&#8221; creates wars and pointless loves and was even in Tertullian&#8217;s time a
heresy. I see him like a tortoise creeping through a vast desert of unbelief.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;The shadows of love are not the shadows of God.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This is the second heresy created by the first
Piltdown man in Plato&#8217;s cave. Either<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The fire casts a shadow or it doesn&#8217;t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Red balloons, orange balloons, purple balloons all
cast off together into a raining sky.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The sky where men weep for men.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> And above the sky a moon or an astronaut smiles on
television. Love<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">For God or man transformed to distance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This is the third heresy. Dante<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Was the first writer of science <span class="GramE">fiction.</span>
Beatrice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Shimmering in infinite space.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Joining war to love is a
typical Spicerian strategy. But look at the length of that third line or
Spicer&#8217;s use, here as well as elsewhere, of starting a sentence with a single
word on one line &#8211; the enjambment is felt, but for emphasis &#8211; with the
remainder on the next. Plus Spicer capitalizes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Him</i> precisely at the point where the poet suggests that He might
not exist<span class="GramE">.*</span>* <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ve suggested elsewhere
that Spicer&#8217;s formal training as a linguist is what inoculated him from the
mystifications of speech that accompanied the most extreme Projectivist
pronouncements. But virtually all of the New Americans bought into speech as a
model for directness in their poetry &#8211; you can see it in people as diverse as
Frank O&#8217;Hara, Paul Carroll or Lew Welch. &amp; some, like Paul Blackburn, went
to even greater lengths than Charles Olson to demonstrate how transcription
might be utilized to represent various aural aspects of the spoken.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It is one thing to note that
speech is not the model Ashbery relies on in the disruptive texts of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tennis Court Oath </i>such as &#8220;</span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Europe</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8221; or &#8220;Leaving the <span class="SpellE">Atocha</span> Station&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The arctic honey blabbed over the report causing
darkness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And pulling us out of there experiencing it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">he</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
meanwhile . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>And the fried bats they
sell there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">dropping</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
from sticks, so that the menace of your prayer folds . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Other people . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">fla</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">sh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">the</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
garden you are boning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">and</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">
defunct covering . . .***<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That first line is virtually
a linguist&#8217;s example of &#8220;impossible language.&#8221;+ But what about <span class="GramE">this text from that same volume, its famous title</span> also the
first line?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine <span class="GramE">sepulcher</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Of life, my great love? Do dolphins plunge <span class="GramE">bottomward</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">To find the light?</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Or is it rock<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That is searched? <span class="GramE">Unrelentingly?</span>
Huh. And if some day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Men with orange shovels come to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">brea</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">k open the rock<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Which encases me, what about the light that comes in
then?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What <span class="GramE">about<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>the</span> smell of light?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What about the moss?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In pilgrim times he wounded me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Since then I only lie<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">My bed of light is a furnace choking me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With hell (and sometimes I hear salt water dripping).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I mean it &#8211; because I&#8217;m one of the few<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">To have held my </span></span><st1:city><st1:place><span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">brea</span></span></st1:place></st1:city><span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">th under the house.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> I&#8217;ll trade<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">One red sucker for two blue ones.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> I&#8217;m<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Named Tom.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> The<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ll break here mid-sentence
just to note use of the first-word-at-line&#8217;s-end tactic deployed here pointedly
mocks the possibility of such positionality lending extra emphasis for the sake
of meaning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Because Spicer &amp; Ashbery
both use address &#8211; the language of the dramatic monolog &#8211; as the exoskeletal
structure of their poems, we generally do feel spoken to as we read them. But
neither ever uses line breaks to approximate any element of breathing, a la
Olson, Creeley or even Ginsberg. And while Spicer&#8217;s logic is one of constant
undercutting, Ashbery&#8217;s is more faceted. The next sentence is apt to take one
term of the previous one and take it into a different direction, the way <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">light</i> &amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rock</i> are used in the passage above. It is also apt to stop and go
into an entirely different mode of address &#8211; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Huh</i> &#8211; such as the metalanguage that stops mid-thought to suggest an
exchange of lollipops. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There are, of course, other
New American Poets who show disinterest in fetishizing speech through poetic
form &#8211; Jimmy Schuyler for one. But Schuyler is principally a poet of sublime
description. It is only in Spicer &amp; Ashbery that you find logic raised &#8211;
though hardly as one might find it in a philosophy or rhetoric program &#8211; to
function as the actual engine of verse. What amazes me is that, having read
each of them for some 35 years, I&#8217;ve only just now noticed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* The &#8220;Not
this. / <span class="GramE">What</span> then?&#8221; structure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tjanting </i>comes right out of my reading of Spicer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** Spicer&#8217;s
god might be terrible &amp; terrifying, but any <span class="GramE">other than<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>a</span> brand new reader of Spicer&#8217;s will
realize that this poet was deeply a believer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">***
Ellipses in the original. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">+ Although,
thanks to the parsimony principle, perfectly readable. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, November 07, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In a footnote on Halloween,
I <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002_10_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2383821220">wrote</a>
that &#8220;it seems unlikely&#8221; that Jack Spicer &#8220;would have heard of&#8221; the fictive
literary figure Ern Malley. This brought the following note from </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Kevin Killian</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Hi Ron, </div>
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I'm not sure this changes your point
much, but I know you'll be glad to know that further research indicates that
Jack Spicer was indeed aware of the Ern Malley/"Angry Penguins"
affair, and that indeed he came up with a plan to imitate the hoaxers in a
variety of US magazines some 20 years before the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book of Magazine Verse</i>. I don't want to blow all the surprises, but
the next issue of the new Bay Area magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">26</i>
will publish an article by me and Lew (Ellingham) which grows out of our recent
interview with Barbara Nicholls, a woman who now lives in <st1:city><st1:place>Eugene</st1:place></st1:city>
(<st1:state><st1:place>Oregon</st1:place></st1:state>) but who once was part of
the so-called "Berkeley Renaissance." She got in touch with us some
time after our biography was published and offered to fill in some of the gaps.
Last year she came to the Bay Area where we met her and got the entire scoop.
It's a pretty good article and well, to make a long story short, Spicer's post
Ern-Malley hoax involved an ambitious scheme to spoof New Critical practice by
elevating the works of Gene Stratton Porter to canonical status.* Largely forgotten
today, Gene Stratton Porter was a photographer, naturalist, novelist and
mini-mogul . . . her novels were romantic fantasies of mankind versus Mother
Nature and included <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Freckles</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Girl of the <span class="SpellE">Limberlost</span></i>.
She died in a tragic <span class="SpellE">Frida-Kahlo-like</span> trolley
accident in <st1:city><st1:place>Los Angeles</st1:place></st1:city> in the
1920s. Hope you find this of some use. <span class="GramE">xxx</span> </div>
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Kevin K.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Some Gene
Stratton Porter links:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://www.strattonporter.com/index.html">http://www.strattonporter.com/index.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://www.genestrattonporter.net/">http://www.genestrattonporter.net/</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/author?name=Stratton-Porter%2C%20Gene">http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/author?name=Stratton-Porter%2C%20Gene</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://www.ebookmall.com/alpha-authors/s-authors/Gene-Stratton-Porter.htm">http://www.ebookmall.com/alpha-authors/s-authors/Gene-Stratton-Porter.htm</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/stratton.htm">http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/stratton.htm</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, September 30, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
death of Darrell Gray ensured that Actualism could only meet a very different
fate than Objectivism. Death enters the equation as well with the disappearance
of another literary tendency of the past sixty years: the </span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="font-family: Arial;">Spicer Circle</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-family: Arial;">. If ever there was a phenomenon that cried out for a
large, well researched anthology, this is it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
</span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="font-family: Arial;">Spicer Circle</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-family: Arial;"> had a significant impact on poetry, both in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;"> and </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Canada</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;">, but characterizing or analyzing that impact is
difficult because so little is adequately understood about the phenomenon by
anybody other than those who were there. I wasn&#8217;t &#8211; I first heard of Spicer at
a memorial reading held at Shakespeare &amp; Company books (it may still have
called the <span class="SpellE">Rambam</span> in those days) in Berkeley that was
held, as best I can recall, around what must have been his birthday in early
1966. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Soon,
three key associates of Spicer&#8217;s &#8211; Robin Blaser, George Stanley &amp; Stan
Persky &#8211; would move to </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">British Columbia</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">. In the ten year hiatus between Spicer&#8217;s death and two events that were
to transform his place in literary history, the publication of his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected Books</i> by Black Sparrow press
and the special issue of Paul Mariah&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Manroot</i>
magazine that was to place Spicer alongside Whitman &amp; a handful of others
as a founder of a gay aesthetic, only Clayton Eshleman&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Caterpillar </i>12 was to focus in any serious fashion on the Spicer&#8217;s
work. While <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Caterpillar</i> published
over 150 pages of Spicer&#8217;s early poems, correspondence, a chapter from his
detective novel and the first Vancouver lecture, it also positioned Blaser&#8217;s
own poetry first, with the sole other contribution a four page essay on the
pair from the issue&#8217;s guest editor, Persky. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In
addition to that long silence &amp; Spicer&#8217;s own dogged reluctance to permit
his work and that of his friends out of the immediate physical confines of San
Francisco (refusing, for example, to send his short-lived magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">J</i> by mail), the period between 1965 and
&#8217;75 was one of extraordinary transformations in American culture and politics
could not help but to reverberate throughout poetry. Spicer, who wrote about
the war in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Vietnam</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;"> and the Beatles, was actually one of the first to
sense these changes. But others that were to come soon, from Stonewall to
Watergate, might have proven more difficult for him to digest and it is not
hard to envision a later Spicer in the sort of reactionary alcoholic stupor
that befuddled Kerouac before his death just a few years hence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">But
the Spicer Circle was something more than just the poetry of Jack Spicer &amp;
something other than a Mattachine Society of verse*. Poets as diverse as Joanne
Kyger, Larry Fagin and Jack Gilbert actively participated in events that were
central to the Spice <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kreis</i>. Poets who
were not primarily San Franciscan, including Steve Jonas &amp; John Wieners,
could also be said to have played roles as well. An anthology such as the one I
imagine would have to develop a serious &amp; critically defensible definition
of what the </span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="font-family: Arial;">Spicer
  Circle</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-family: Arial;"> actually
was before it could go about the task to tracking down and collecting the
poetry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Manroot</i> issue remains the only hint
of what such an anthology might look like**, containing as it does work by
Harold Dull, Lew Ellingham, James Herndon, Jonas, Persky, Stanley, Wieners
&amp; Spicer, as well as a collaboration by Spicer &amp; Stanley with Ronnie <span class="SpellE">Primack</span> and Bruce Boyd.*** <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Dull
is a good example of what we are missing in not having a far better sense of
the </span><st1:street><st1:address><span style="font-family: Arial;">Spicer
  Circle</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-family: Arial;">. He published
several small books in the 1950s and &#8216;60s, including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Star Year</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Door</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bird Poems</i>, and <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Wood Climb Down Out Of. </i>Then in 1975 he published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Selection of Poems for Jack Spicer on the
Tenth Anniversary of His Death</i>. Since then, Dull has only published texts
about <span class="SpellE">Watsu</span>, his aquatic bodywork practice that
evolved out of Zen shiatsu. Herndon, <span class="SpellE">Primack</span>, James
Alexander and Joe Dunn are other members of the Circle whose writing is even
more difficult to find. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In
1967, I heard Jack Gilbert introduce George Stanley as &#8220;the finest poet now
writing.&#8221; Today, their work seems worlds apart. A good anthology would in fact
demonstrate a world in which that contradiction might not occur. It would have
to sort through some infinitely thorny issues, including Robert Duncan&#8217;s
relationship to the circle (not to mention Blaser&#8217;s). I&#8217;m not the person to
mount that effort, although perhaps someone like Kevin Killian, who helped to
shape Lew Ellingham&#8217;s drafts into the masterful biography that is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poet Be Like God, </i>is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* The Mattachine Society was an early gay rights
organization, contemporary with Spicer &amp; likewise headquartered in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">San Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">***<a href="http://www.abebooks.com/">Abebooks</a>, the rare
books network, lists at least dozen copies of the Spicer issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Manroot</i> as well as a couple of complete
runs of the journal available for sale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">*** Boyd is himself noteworthy as the participant in the </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Don</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">ald Allen anthology, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New American Poetry,</i> who disappeared
from the scene completely. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, September 26, 2002</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Patrick Herron writes to ask
about my comment that &#8220;irresolvable conflict is the primary <span class="SpellE">Spicerian</span>
theme.&#8221; It seemed to me, as I wrote that comment a week ago, thumbing through
my dog-eared (indeed, nearly dissolving with use) copy of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected Books</i> obvious enough &#8211; it
hadn&#8217;t occurred to me that the observation might be in any way unusual. I had
been skimming through the baseball poems from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book of Magazine Verse</i>, especially the second one &#8211; they&#8217;re love
poems, of course, but love poems that presume the impossibility of any
successful relationship. It&#8217;s a position that Spicer held with remarkable
consistency throughout his life. About god: &#8220;If there isn&#8217;t / A God don&#8217;t
believe in Him.&#8221; About human relations: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">They
say &#8220;he need (present) enemy (plural)&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I
am not them. This is the first transformation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">About poetry: &#8220;No / <span class="GramE">One</span> listens to poetry.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Spicer is quintessentially a
poet of emotion precisely because that is the surfeit left unassimilated
whenever impossible forces meet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Not that Spicer is
necessarily all that different in this &#8211; think of the underlying bitterness and
anger implicit in so many of Creeley&#8217;s early love poems, as in The Warning:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">For
love &#8211; I would<br />
split open your head and put<br />
a candle in<br />
behind the eyes.<br />
<br />
Love is dead in us<br />
if we forget<br />
the virtues of an amulet<br />
and quick surprise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Indeed, one of the secrets
of Creeley&#8217;s early poems is the association it consistently makes between rhyme
and violence, as though rhyme itself were an expression of force.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Conflict is the fundamental
narrative engine &#8211; it is the element that insists, even in a still life, that
something will have to give &amp; that change is inevitable.* In his excellent
ethnography, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">&#8220;Peaks of Yemen I Summon&#8221;:
Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe </i>(University of
California, 1990), Steven Caton repeatedly notes how many ways in which poetry
functions among the al-<span class="SpellE">Yamāniyatēn</span> of <span class="SpellE">Khawlān</span> at-<span class="SpellE">Tiyāl</span> as a
ritualized surrogate for combat. Our own earliest texts, such as Beowulf, are
replete with blood and gore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I think about <span class="SpellE">Caton&#8217;s</span> book, which suggests without ever quite saying so
that poetry itself is a kind of blood sport, whenever one of the several poetry
listserv discussion groups dissolves into petty verbal warfare. If nothing
else, <span class="SpellE">Caton&#8217;s</span> thesis suggests the normalcy of the
problem. Indeed, it implies that if there were not combative &#8220;camps&#8221; in
contemporary poetry, we might be forced to invent them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This of course is not an
optimistic view of human behavior or <span class="GramE">its</span> potential.
Right now with the political situation being what it is &#8211; as an illegitimate
President crawfishes over from an unavoidable war against al-Qaeda into a
nebulous &#8220;war on terrorism,&#8221; a metaphor that can &amp; does extend outward in
all directions, enabling the Administration to simply sweep away Constitutional
protections of individual liberty, &amp; also to an unrelated threatened
assault on Iraq aimed at instilling a Pax Americana on the entire Middle East &#8211;
the question of conflict is in no way abstract. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">While it is not evident what
Spicer would have made of all this, it seems likely that he would not have been
surprised. I imagine that there might have been a serial poem about the
crusades. If ever we had a poet in touch with the infinite sense of hurt that accompanies
people who believe they are still suffering from battles waged hundreds or even
thousands of years ago, for whom the logic of Kosovo, Chechnya, Kurdistan and
the Left Bank exposes its lethal gears as if to a watchmaker, it was this
cantankerous alcoholic linguist who once identified himself as a member of the
&#8220;California Republican Army.&#8221; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Think of
Edward Hopper&#8217;s paintings, for example. This is why figurative paintings are
often characterized as narrative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, September 17, 2002</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Against the orgy of
unrelievably bad public poetry commemorating the first anniversary of the
September 11<sup>th</sup> attacks, I had the occasion to read Allen Curnow&#8217;s &#8220;A
Framed Photograph&#8221; from his 1972 serial poem <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trees, Effigies, Moving Objects</i>, in which the assassinations of the
brothers Kennedy is posed against the consequences of their own actions
elsewhere in the world, as in this stanza:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Act
one, scene one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">of
the bloody melodrama. Everyone listened<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">while
everyone read their poems. BANG! BANG!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">and
we cried all the way to My Lai.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Which in turn brought me
back to the poems concerning JFK&#8217;s assassination that were written by Jack
Spicer and Louis Zukofsky and beyond that, the anti-Vietnam War poems by Robert
Duncan and Allen Ginsberg. While none of these were explicitly written for
&#8220;command performance&#8221; occasions, all show the range of what might be possible
within this genre that I might characterize as shared public emotion &#8211; from the
most personal (Zukofsky&#8217;s &#8220;A&#8221;-23) to the most declamatory (Ginsberg&#8217;s &#8220;Wichita
Vortex Sutra, Part II&#8221; or Duncan&#8217;s &#8220;The Fire, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Passages </i>13&#8221;). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Spicer&#8217;s JFK poem appears in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Language</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Smoke signals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Like in the Eskimo villages on the coast where the
earthquake hit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Bang, snap, crack. They will never know what hit them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">On the coast of Alaska. They expect everybody to be
insane.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This is a poem about the death of John F. Kennedy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Spicer&#8217;s poem replicates the
process of grieving in the way that grief turns everything, no matter how
remote &#8211; here a description of the 1964 Alaskan earthquake &#8211; into a commentary
on its obsessive object. It&#8217;s no coincidence that two phrases &#8211; &#8220;Smoke signals&#8221;
and &#8220;Bang, snap, crack&#8221; &#8211; apply equally to the devastation in Anchorage &amp;
the shots ringing out over Elm Street in Dallas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Spicer&#8217;s ambivalence over
public language is on record. His very last poem, concluding <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book of Magazine Verse</i>, takes an unnamed
Ginsberg to task for allowing himself to be chosen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kraj Majales</i> in a Prague May Day celebration. One poem earlier,
Spicer makes the claim that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">They&#8217;ve (the leaders of our country) have become
involved in a network of lies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .75in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">We (the poets) have also become in network of lies by
opposing them.*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It&#8217;s a position that Spicer
knows is untenable. Indeed, irresolvable conflict is the primary Spicerian
theme. Spicer himself wrote obliquely about the Vietnam War earlier in that same
book. And the final poem to Ginsberg concedes that &#8220;we both know how shitty the
world is,&#8221; refusing to place Spicer above the very same behavior he is about to
criticize. Yet, while it is possible to argue that, at least in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Magazine Verse</i>, Spicer chooses
individual human relations over social ones (which thus would be the point of
his announced solidarity with the Prague police rather than the
counter-cultural demonstrators with whom Ginsberg was parading), the JFK poem
clearly places Spicer on the other side of that line. This is ambivalence in
the most literal sense. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">All of this harkens back to
Wordsworthian homilies concerning emotion recollected in tranquility when
tranquility is precisely what is lacking if the poem is to be taken as a
possible transcript of consciousness (as Wordsworth himself does in the
Crossing the Alps section of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Prelude</i>),
a category that is as inclusive of emotion as it is of thought. Add to this the
impulse to &#8220;even out&#8221; rough edges until the product shines with that glazed
state of crockery called the well-wrought urn** and you have a prescription for
literary disaster of titanic &#8211; and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Titanic</i>
&#8211; proportions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">*I have
always wondered whether to assign the &#8220;missing&#8221; words in that second line to
Spicer&#8217;s alcoholism, which would kill him only weeks after this was written, or
if in fact the absence of &#8220;involved&#8221; in particular signaled a deeper level of
meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** See my
comments for September 5.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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