<!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://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Journals' 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://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Journals' 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: Journals</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>Journals</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>Journals</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>Tuesday, May 20, 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.conjunctions.com/images/cover.gif' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='6454635935639556252' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='6454635935639556252'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-6454635935639556252' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><img height="320" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/gihsPaYpKB-Zh25kS2w4Czx4hMJKJNx-5qGgUUAZ2U5M_SET3HBJyHFkh42WPO2r1cqWJ0zNt98SzqGqniZADw%3Ds0-d" width="209">&nbsp; <img height="212" id="_x0000_i1026" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/4tGwdx04hGh29rlsKZQ3oE6z_vXgQedOl7A2TGfPQsKR_oPs78ktzHmMhnihbxiz8h3AR0iEK0R3NXBtjf0g1vmxLvxRwkLVr8GBxE68aCXqKtH8XC6GBKoZSmjoWyQ%3Ds0-d" width="348"></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I&#8217;ve been struck this week by the value of different models of journal. Sitting on my desk are two that I&#8217;ve going through &#8211; one is the impressive 50<sup>th</sup> issue of Brad Morrow&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.conjunctions.com/"><span style='color:black'>Conjunctions</span></a>, </i>which not coincidentally entitles this issue &#8220;Fifty Contemporary Writers.&#8221; At 500 pages with advertising, that comes maybe to nine pages per contributor, a substantial amount. There are no four-line or one-paragraph knock-offs just to get an auspicious name on the cover. Further, there are many writers here whose work I absolutely love: Peter Gizzi, Cole Swensen, Charles Bernstein, Lyn Hejinian, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Rae Armantrout, Martine <span class=SpellE>Bellen</span>, Joan Retallack, Robert Kelly, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, John Ashbery, <span class=GramE>Ann</span> Lauterbach. And there are others every bit as well known and accomplished in their own way: Edwidge Danticat, Joyce Carole Oates, Sandra Cisneros, Reginald Shepherd, Rick Moody, Christopher Sorrentino, Carole <span class=SpellE>Maso</span>, William H. <span class=SpellE>Gass</span>, editor Morrow himself, Andrew <span class=SpellE>Mossin</span>, Donald Revell, <span class=SpellE>Thalia</span> Field, <span class=GramE>Robert</span> <span class=SpellE>Coover</span>. And the diligent among you will know already that there are still 25 <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>other </i>authors I haven&#8217;t even named yet, up-&amp;-comers, hidden delights or maybe just people to whom I&#8217;ve not yet paid enough attention. <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'>Next to this I have the single-signature, saddle stapled winter issue (no. 2) of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://modelhomepage.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Model Homes</span></a>, </i>which advertises itself as <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry / Futures / Blueprints. </i>It&#8217;s just 64 pages, divided among 12 contributors, 13 if you consider that one is <span class=GramE>a collaboration</span> So roughly five pages per contributor, a briefer presentation. It&#8217;s edited out of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Detroit</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> by Marie Buck &amp; Brad Flis. (Yes, two journals edited by a Brad &#8211; there&#8217;s a lot of <span class=SpellE>Bradness</span> going on these days.) It&#8217;s worth noting that, of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes&#8217;</i> 13 contributors, I actually know &amp; like the work of 11: Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Tan Lin, Judith Goldman, Kit Robison, Robert Fitterman, Carla Harryman, Jennifer Scappettone, Tao Lin, Louis Cabri, the late Nancy Shaw &amp; Catriona Strang. There are just two writers here who are new to me: Lawrence Griffin &amp; Seth <span class=SpellE>Landman</span>. <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'>Guess which journal I find myself spending more time with, and frankly enjoying more? <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'>It&#8217;s not that the quality of writing differs radically from one journal to the next &#8211; Robinson, Fitterman &amp; Harryman could all just as easily turn up in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>as in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes. </i>More could, actually, if Morrow had kept one eye turned to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Canada</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. Many of the authors in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>&#8211; particularly from that first cluster of names above &#8211; could fit in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes </i>as well. Swapping Kit Robinson &amp; Carla Harryman for, say, Lyn Hejinian &amp; Rae Armantrout would hardly constitute a major change of direction for either publication. <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'>Nor is size the major differentiator between the two journals, tho it&#8217;s true that one uses a 64-page magazine quite differently than one does a publication that weighs in at 500 pages. For what it&#8217;s trying to accomplish, each is well designed.<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 difference between the two &#8211; the reason why <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>is a nice-to-have publication while <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes </i>is a must &#8211; is that <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes </i>has a much sharper point-of-view. This isn&#8217;t to say that <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>doesn&#8217;t have any focus &#8211; regular readers will be able to tell you what Brad Morrow&#8217;s likes &amp; dislikes (or perhaps interests &amp; disinterests) in contemporary poetry happen to be. For example, there is a bias toward complexity, which explains why the post-New American traditions he seems most to be interested in are (a) a post-projectivist thread (Robert Kelly would be an example), (b) the uptown visual-art conscious side of the New York school, (c) language poetry &#8211; tho not all of it &#8211; and (d) so-called Third Way poetics (Berssenbrugge, Lauterbach &amp; Swensen in the current issue). There&#8217;s no visual poetry, nothing with a Beat flourish, no hint (at least in this issue) of Naropa. The closest one gets to the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> might be Reginald Shepherd, but he&#8217;d be one of the best arguments for itself the School o&#8217; Q. could make. <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'>Morrow&#8217;s take on prose is quite similar &#8211; the writers included all exude intelligence but I don&#8217;t sense an aesthetic center &#8211; Joyce Carol Oates writes a romance series under a pen name. She writes quickly &amp; one imagines she writes constantly as well. That&#8217;s not an aesthetic I associate with William <span class=SpellE>Gass</span> or Edwidge Danticat. A substantial number of the prose writers, tho only one or two of the poets, publish with the </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> trade presses.  <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 short, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>tends toward good writing, smart writing, <span class=GramE>all</span> kinds. But one doesn&#8217;t necessarily experience an affinity between writer A &amp; writer B here. A look at the table of contents gives one the sense that Morrow alternated writers for the sake of maximum contrast, an approach that evens out any argument the gathering might have made.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Model Homes, </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>on the other hand, is very much interested in connecting the generation of poets that came of age in the 1970s with the present. It&#8217;s as militant as any issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Roof </i>or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Temblor </i>ever <span class=GramE>were</span>. The issue has <a href="http://www.ubu.com/contemp/lin/index.html"><span style='color:black'>Tan Lin</span></a>, who was in grad school in 1983 &amp; is part of the larger circle associated with uncreative writing &amp; vispo, as well as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_lin"><span style='color:black'>Tao Lin</span></a>, born that same year. I can&#8217;t imagine Joyce Carol Oates or Robert <span class=SpellE>Coover</span> in this journal. That&#8217;s an understatement &#8211; and it&#8217;s to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes&#8217; </i>advantage. <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'>Where this really pays off for a reader is with the writers one has never heard of before. There are just two in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes </i>whereas <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>has quite a few more<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, </i>but <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes </i>offers a far firmer sense of context in which to examine these <span class=SpellE>newbies</span>-to-me:Lawrence <span class=SpellE>Giffin</span> &amp; Seth <span class=SpellE>Landman</span>. The reality is, I quickly realize if I search a little on the web, that I&#8217;ve read <span class=SpellE>Giffin</span> before &#8211; he did the fascinating (if problematic) piece on &#8220;<a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/35/a-smith-by-giffin.shtml"><span style='color:black'>Political Topology in Contemporary North American Poetry</span></a>,&#8221; using Rod Smith&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Deed</i> as evidence, in the current issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Jacket.</i> His two poems here, &#8220;The Plaything of My Thought&#8221; and &#8220;Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,&#8221; make great use of found &amp; other language to create statements that sound normative but really aren&#8217;t:<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'>What do you call a daughter<br> 
without ever having seen one<br>
before? Padding it&#8217;s trench-wear<br>
with the destiny of eugenics<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
you don&#8217;t. You just push off into<br>
the ensuing catastrophe unequal<br>
to itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Or<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'>In the highly developed organisms<br>
the receptive cortical layer<br>
has long been withdrawn into<br>
the depths of the interior of the body<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
though portions of it have been left behind<br>
on the surface, immediately beneath<br>
the general shield set up against stimuli.<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'>Both poems skirt the topic of incest in ways that are quite unlike anything I&#8217;ve read before, like a cooler, more aestheticized Kathy Acker, but not tending toward prose (in the usual sense) nor porn (in the usual sense). It&#8217;s the closest thing to a discursive Jeff Koons move I&#8217;ve read, flirting at once with being both sweet &amp; icky. <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'>Seth <span class=SpellE>Landman&#8217;s</span> poetry is &#8220;more lyrical,&#8221; if by that you mean that it relies less visibly on found linguistic source material. The thing that jumps out at me of his work in this issue is a poem called &#8220;Sign You Were Mistaken,&#8221; which has a terrific stanzaic structure:<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'>Ocean arrived poking a star, that insurrection<br>
of blood you<br>
<br>
fear and gather<br>
<br>
this could have been<br>
painting with nails&#8217; rust<br>
<br>
hammering something up, &#8220;what are you up to,&#8221;<br>
<br>
just another symbol for biennial or derived<br>
from a gun wheel &#8220;did you find it&#8221; hacked<br>
<br>
or frozen the scared sacred, the surviving child<br>
<br>
&#8221;getting so big&#8221; as the intellect in action and apart<br>
from family life there is friendship and apart<br>
<br>
from the abstract is the city, the city upside down,<br>
<br>
poison in the pilgrimage, why<br>
&#8221;is difficult to explain,&#8221; but pouring over the diaries<br>
<br>
you begin to notice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This is, you might say, all one sentence. Or, more accurately, it retains its <span class=SpellE>sentenciness</span>, that sense of syntactic possibility, throughout even tho a wise person would be hard put to parse what goes on. This is a plausible next step in the logic, say, of an Ashbery poem, tho with most of the bric-a-brac removed, its only possible weak point perhaps that first <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and, </i>a hinge word that is a dead give-away for the devices that follow. It&#8217;s one of three poems <span class=SpellE>Landman</span> has in the issue (albeit not starting on the page listed in the table of contents), and they do exactly what work in a magazine should &#8211; they make you hungry to read more. <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>All of these poets &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes </i>editors Buck &amp; Flis, <span class=SpellE>Giffin</span> &amp; <span class=SpellE>Landman</span> &#8211; have some connection to the Amherst area, even if it&#8217;s only historical. <a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&amp;friendid=5530895"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Landman</span></span></a> makes his living it seems <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/keyword/search%3FsearchString%3Dseth_landman"><span style='color:black'>writing for ESPN</span></a>. <span class=SpellE>Giffin</span> edits <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://physicalpoetry.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Physical Poetry</span></a> </i>as part of the amorphous <span class=SpellE>L&#8217;il</span> Norton gang, one publication of which is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes. </i>I can recall that Noah Eli Gordon was prevented from participating in an antiwar reading somewhere around </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Amherst</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> circa 2003 on the grounds that his poetry wasn&#8217;t &#8220;clear&#8221; (in the sense of having more than one idea per poem). Now this area seems to be a hotbed of nuance, polyvalence &amp; meta-meta. One wonders exactly how to account for this, tho we note the tell-tale presence in the vicinity of Peter Gizzi &amp;, to the south, Elizabeth Willis, and recall that their presence at Santa Cruz &amp; Mills a decade or so back coincided with the sudden rise of New Brutalism, reputedly responsible for rejuvenating the scene throughout the Bay Area. <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'>Whatever &#8211; I&#8217;m learning to trust anything that has the mark of <span class=SpellE>L&#8217;il</span> Norton about it, which makes <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Model Homes </i>one of the most exciting magazines I&#8217;ve seen all year. These folks, editors &amp; contributors alike, have a real sense of what they want to do in poetry. And the result is a knock-your-sox-off argument for some new ways of looking at the poem. <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/2008/05/ive-been-struck-this-week-by-value-of.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2008/05/ive-been-struck-this-week-by-value-of.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2008-05-20T07:54:00-04:00'>Tuesday, May 20, 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=6454635935639556252' 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/Journals' rel='tag'>Journals</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, March 11, 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.counterpathpress.org/images/shepherdcomp1.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='8224921107684745058' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='8224921107684745058'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-8224921107684745058' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><img height="168" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/k1d8KlgB_bDjzLcfo19EmJxVPSCBwu8CENYugxHNwrZRVU5C2NvRMLmos14ytWH5fj8jevqqKkr5BJ1ubtj6SNC4TtKJ3iStgqP-wA%3Ds0-d" width="103"><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span><img height="168" id="_x0000_i1026" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Sg7xGxeu-48GL5DQQrMQGoQg4WI5oA-7qmvNjmE2bERevRMa_1H4emul-nv4jpPc5Pk2kWhtIyFrCb4-rX6saHl1d831tYYx69gmoKUDk6M6Rls%3Ds0-d" width="126"><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span><img height="168" id="_x0000_i1027" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/yy8k_5EG_g1A-oH-iLhtTO5_Shfr92jtTFRpVPve2D2YDIo10YnNFur8YhNWb0VD8etoyaFXSWKFJpNM8Z123x1Id0CE6me_c3RI4RxFinyTnqU%3Ds0-d" width="108"></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Back when mastodons roamed the earth &amp; all television was in black-&amp;-white, I could mosey up to Cody&#8217;s Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley &amp; find, as part of its poetry section, the current edition of a publication known as the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New Directions Annual (NDA).</i> But even more significantly, at least from my perspective this morning, was the fact that I could also find last year&#8217;s edition as  well, and maybe the year before that. These rather largish collections &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>NDA </i>ran between 400 &amp; 500 pages &#8211; did not disappear the way magazines tend to, the instant the next issue arrived. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>In one sense, the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New Directions Annual </i>was a remarkable publication. The 1951 issue, to pick one example, included Tennessee Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Harold Norse, George <span class=SpellE>Seferis</span> &amp; May Swenson. At that moment, Rexroth would have been the only one with any significant name recognition. The 1942 edition &#8211; a bit before my time &#8211; advertises Pound &amp; Williams &amp; Kafka as well as Christopher Morley &amp; Katherine Anne Porter. The 1937 edition offers <span style='color:black'>Cocteau, Stein, Williams, Cummings, Henry Miller, and William Saroyan. The 1952 edition: Edward Dahlberg, Ginsberg, Cummings, Kafka, Ashbery. Again: well before the publication of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl </i>or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Some Trees. </i><u><o:p></o:p></u></span></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>By the time I arrived on the scene in the mid-1960s, James Laughlin was getting on in years &amp; his unerring interest in &#8220;what&#8217;s next&#8221; was gradually being eroded by writing that was just an extension of the landmark advances he&#8217;d captured in his pages decades before. It&#8217;s worth noting that among the thousands of books I own, including the &#8220;San Francisco Scene&#8221; issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Evergreen Review </i>&amp; all the double-issues of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>from the 1960s, I don&#8217;t today have a single copy of any <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New Directions Annual. </i>The contributors above are what can be found out from various rare book dealers on the web. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New Directions </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8211; the full title was <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New Directions in Prose and Poetry: An Annual Exhibition Gallery of New and Divergent Trends in Literature </i>&#8211; came to mind this week because it was cited as evidence by one of two sets of folks who&#8217;ve complained lately that I&#8217;ve misallocated their publications in my &#8220;recently received&#8221; lists &#8211; putting both <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.zolandpoetry.com/"><span style='color:black'>Zoland  Poetry</span></a> </i>and <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Sing Economy </i>down as journals, when each is an annual anthology. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Sing Economy </i>is a publication of <a href="http://www.flimforum.com/catalog.html"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>flim</span></span><span style='color:black'> forum</span></a>, which tries to accentuate the non-journal nature of its annuals by giving each a new name. Last year it was <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Oh One Arrow. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>My first reaction was that, if it were still being published today, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New Directions Annual </i>would end up on my journals list as well. It came out periodically &#8211; you could set your calendar by it, if not your clock &#8211; consisted of almost all new work or new translations, and there was no general principle of editing that you could identify other than an aversion to the School of Quietude. That describes, even to this day, a majority of the journals of poetry in the English language. And <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>NDA </i>wasn&#8217;t even restricted to poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>If I look at, by way of contrast, a volume like Reginald Shepherd&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.counterpathpress.org/aupgs/shepherd/shepherd.htmlhttp:/www.counterpathpress.org/aupgs/shepherd/shepherd.html"><span style='color:black'>Lyric Postmodernisms: An <br> Anthology of Contemporary Innovative Poetics</span></a>, </i>just out from Counterpath, it&#8217;s immediately clear that this is an anthology. It&#8217;s not a periodical, tho in fact Shepherd has edited more than one anthology (and I believe is currently editing another), and if he offered them on a regular basis from the same press, perhaps he could make an annual or biannual out of these projects. It&#8217;s immediately clear what the editing principle is. It includes work that has appeared elsewhere previously &#8211; the acknowledgements page is a dead give-away &#8211; which reinforces both Shepherd&#8217;s editing principles <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and </i>the argument that it&#8217;s not a periodical. Indeed, Shepherd reinforces all of this by offering a statement on poetics from each of his contributors. <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'>On any of these counts, <span class=GramE>neither <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Zoland Poetry </i>or</span> the different one-shots from <span class=SpellE>flim</span> forum pass muster. This doesn&#8217;t make them any less interesting, but it does make them less anthologies. So far as I can tell, the sole grounds on which they would be called such is from a desire to survive on a bookstore shelf longer than a journal, and presumably over by the poetry rather than next to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Playboy </i>or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Popular Mechanics. </i>Those are not ignoble desires, but they have more to do with the incompetence of bookstore stocking trends than they do the genres these journals would mimic. <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'>A more complicated case might be <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.tommandel.com/gp/"><span style='color:black'>The Grand Piano</span></a>, </i>the series of books being produced on a roughly quarterly basis by a collective of poets, yours truly included, documenting the history of Bay Area language writing in the 1970s. If I use my same criteria &#8211; does it appear predictably, does it have a clear editing principle, does it feature work that has appeared before &#8211; I get a different skew on the answers. It does appear predictably &amp; in that regard is like a journal, but it has a strong editing principle &#8211; each issue has the same ten contributors, each time in a different order &#8211; and the work is being written precisely for the book at hand. In this sense, I wouldn&#8217;t call any volume of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Grand Piano </i>a journal <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>or </i>an anthology, tho it partakes of some elements of each.<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 like manner, there have been journals <span class=GramE>-- <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Chain</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>was one, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetics Journal </i>another &#8211; that have focused each issue around a theme. Tho the editors of neither proposed their publications as anthologies, both come closer than either <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Zoland Poetry </i>or the <span class=SpellE>flim</span> forum one-shots. Their publications demonstrate a strong editing principle above &amp; beyond &#8220;what&#8217;s new.&#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'>Does this really matter? I think it does in terms of how poetry gets organized on shelves, and also in our heads, and in how (and what) things get preserved. An anthology is always an argument and the book is better the stronger the argument happens to be. I think Shepherd&#8217;s volume, for example, is an excellent argument for what I would call Third-Way Poetics in contemporary America, but I also know that Reginald wants to argue against the notion that there is any such thing as third-way poetics &#8211; he has a completely different argument, and I think that&#8217;s a much more complicated discussion (which I hope to get to before too long). I can&#8217;t tell you what the arguments for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Sing Economy </i>or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Zoland Poetry </i>are, though there is good work in each publication. What this almost inevitably means, though, is that, if I happen to be around in another 30 years, I almost certainly will still have <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Lyric Postmodernisms </i>on my shelves, but these annuals will have moved &#8211; as journals almost always do for me &#8211; into some cartons in the attic. <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/2008/03/back-when-mastodons-roamed-earth-all.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2008/03/back-when-mastodons-roamed-earth-all.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2008-03-11T06:35:00-04:00'>Tuesday, March 11, 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=8224921107684745058' 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/Journals' rel='tag'>Journals</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, January 04, 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://farm3.static.flickr.com/2208/2160537085_91c16099be.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='6475730121830903561' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='6475730121830903561'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-6475730121830903561' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><img height="299" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/xtDwMUR2hYFoMmeCa905CpaGh-ZXhPiEIhbVs0Ga1xPoMfUyF5f9ktDEkJzZ0b9ozR8gMeI62sGVi4yAhrddb3kumY41fc9Jzqvk49ts6Y3i%3Ds0-d" width="450"></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Remembering <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2b993r"><span style='color:black'>Sylvester <span class=SpellE>Pollet</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080107/nationnote"><span style='color:black'>new poetry editor</span></a> of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation<br>
</i>is Peter Gizzi<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>42 years after Denise Levertov rejected<br>
Jack <span class=GramE>Spicer&#8217;s </span><br>
&#8221;<a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080121/spicer"><span style='color:black'>Two Poems for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation</i></span></a><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>&#8221;</i><br>
they finally appear<br>
in its pages<br>
</span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>[subscription required]<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>&#8220;The most important <br>
American love poet in living memory, <br>
and certainly one of the most important <br>
American poets <i>tout court</i>&#8221; &#8211;<br>
Susan Stewart on <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080121/stewart"><span style='color:black'>Robert Creeley</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Leslie Scalapino&#8217;s <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/blog/#01-04-08"><span style='color:black'>introduction</span></a> to<br>
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Susan Bee, Emma Bee Bernstein &amp; Charles Bernstein<br>
reading from <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/blog/#01-01-07"><span style='color:black'>Hannah Weiner&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Clairvoyant Journal</i></span></a><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Sardinian poet <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2233981,00.html"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Peppino</span></span><span style='color:black'> <span class=SpellE>Marroto</span></span></a> killed<br>
in 50-year-old vendetta<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span   class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Boog</span></i></span></st1:PlaceName><i  style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span></i><st1:PlaceType><i  style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>City</span></i></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>47<br>
is an anthology <br>
of </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> <span class=GramE>poets</span><br>
(<a href="http://welcometoboogcity.com/boogpdfs/bc47.pdf"><span style='color:black'>PDF</span></a>)<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>AWP </i>convention is<br>
<b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><a href="http://edwardbyrne.blogspot.com/2008/01/sold-out-awp-creative-writing-and.html"><span style='color:black'>sold out</span></a>!</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Becoming fluent in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/theater/02shaw.html"><span style='color:black'>Beckett</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20080103_Whats_the_word_.html"><span style='color:black'>Word</span></a>!<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php"><span style='color:black'>Word not</span></a>!<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>In </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New Orleans</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, one newspaper<br>
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/2xpdfc"><span style='color:black'>expands</span></a> </i>its book coverage<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vandals trash <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080101/ap_en_ot/robert_frost_site_vandals"><span style='color:black'>Frost home</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>A boost to <a href="http://www.dalityapi.com/2007/12/boost-to-pangasinan-literature.html"><span style='color:black'>Pangasinan literature</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Talking with <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2vcwb5"><span style='color:black'>Kaiser <span class=SpellE>Haq</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>A profile of <a href="http://tinyurl.com/36rwst"><span style='color:black'>Jessica Purdy</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yrtwgk"><span style='color:black'>Print-on-demand</span></a>  is expanding<br>
the number of titles published<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yqtr37"><span style='color:black'>Poetry by the Mersey</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2v8dta"><span style='color:black'>gloomiest</span></a> poet in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Britain</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 align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3bstxm"><span style='color:black'>Young <span class=SpellE>rhymer</span></span></a> inspired by Dylan<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Are <a href="http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/03/ebooks"><span style='color:black'>e-textbooks</span></a> any closer to reality?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>World lit comes to <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&amp;sid=a_N.h1yCGPOs&amp;refer=muse"><span style='color:black'>Abu Dhabi</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8220;It has not been <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/01/noughties_so_far_the_book.html"><span style='color:black'>a good decade</span></a> for poetry&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/books/03wolfe.html"><span style='color:black'>Tom Wolfe</span></a> leaves FSG<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The importance of knowing <br>
<a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2232830,00.html"><span style='color:black'>what you haven&#8217;t read</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2008/01/2008010401c/careers.html"><span style='color:black'>Academic librarians &amp; rank</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Do <a href="http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/03/history"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>IRBs</span></span></a> keep oral moral?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Why <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ynsh6z"><span style='color:black'>travel writing</span></a> sucks<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Talking with <a href="http://insidehighered.com/views/2008/01/02/mclemee"><span style='color:black'>Roger Conover</span></a><br>
about MIT Press<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s not how long you live<br>
so much as it is<br>
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/39mf75"><span style='color:black'>how you live, as such</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071231/ap_en_ot/obit_robinson"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Weepin</span></span><span style='color:black'>&#8217; Willie Robinson</span></a> has died<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2008/01/02/lascaux-caves.html?ref=rss"><span style='color:black'>Fungus threatens <span class=SpellE>Lascaux</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/arts/design/03frie.html"><span style='color:black'>Lee Friedlander</span></a><span class=GramE>,</span><br>
walking through Olmstead&#8217;s world<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a href="http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/article/?id=89"><span style='color:black'>Art vs. art history</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8220;<a href="http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/01/04/history"><span style='color:black'>Polis is this</span></a>&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Tech &amp; the humanities <a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/conference/index.php?id=1280/"><span style='color:black'>muddle along</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>A bio of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/books/02grimes.html"><span style='color:black'>Alfred <span class=SpellE>Kazin</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Morris Dickstein on the memoirs of <a href="http://www.nysun.com/article/68566"><span style='color:black'>Geoffrey Hartman</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>What Have You <a href="http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html"><span style='color:black'>Changed  Your Mind</span></a> About?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#167;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>There goes the <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110011068"><span style='color:black'>West Side</span></a><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/2008/01/remembering-sylvester-pollet-new-poetry.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2008/01/remembering-sylvester-pollet-new-poetry.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2008-01-04T05:52:00-05:00'>Friday, January 04, 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=6475730121830903561' 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/Journals' rel='tag'>Journals</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/links' rel='tag'>links</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/passing' rel='tag'>passing</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 27, 2007</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.lulu.com/items/volume_62/1388000/1388882/2/preview/320_1388882.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='3243375309787387157' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='3243375309787387157'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-3243375309787387157' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:black'><img height="320" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/jD5nQyOa48IkwEYBSyb7u-8dwUsE-ddKszuVEEDCiQhEkW62WeCnbodgA4TlJ0zYxmpTwxpRILrEr6waMtEPBlG4ISLEIUfGC3YhCXFTe8a2IeW0Cpl71yU_Sbq4vxR_kQ%3Ds0-d" width="212"><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One reason that it seems clear  to me that language poetry needs to be understood as a moment, rather than a movement, is that for many years now there has been nothing even remotely approximating a language poetry journal. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tottel&#8217;s, This, Roof, Hills, Temblor, Big Deal, A Hundred Posters, <span class=SpellE>Doones</span>, Oculist Witnesses, Streets and Roads, <span class=SpellE>miam</span>, <span class=SpellE>Qu</span>, The Difficulties, </i>even <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetics Journal </i>are all long gone<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>. </i>The last of these to go, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetics Journal </i>published its tenth &amp; final issue in 1998, but that was after a seven year hiatus &#8211; the ninth &amp; eighth issues themselves arriving on a two-year schedule, a marked decline from the first seven issues, which took just six years to come out. In reality, I think it&#8217;s difficult if not downright fanciful, to characterize anything as language poetry after 1985, and particularly the Vancouver Poetry Festival of that year. Still, as that roster of mags above suggests, that was a lot of energy to be concentrated into just 15 years or so, which also meant that there was a substantial vacancy to be filled going forward. In spite of some spirited attempts &#8211; the New Coast festival in  Buffalo &amp; the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Apex of the M </i>push circa 1990 were the most visible, memorable to many for a Mike <span class=SpellE>Huckabee</span> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>avant-la-<span class=SpellE>lettre</span></i> agenda &#8211; what has emerged instead is far more decentralized &amp; pluralistic, a poetics suitable to a globalizing planet, multicultural &amp; increasingly transnational. Some of the most important sites for American poetry, for example, now take place in </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'>, in the Nordic countries &amp; on the </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Canary Islands</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. Even more significantly, this doesn&#8217;t seem strange in the slightest. Just try to imagine what &#8220;American poetry&#8221; will suggest twenty years hence. <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 may suggest why I felt such a jolt coming upon <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.lulu.com/content/1388882"><span style='color:black'>Ocho </span><span style='color:black;font-style:normal'>no. 14</span></a></i>, the latest of the many ventures produced by <span class=SpellE>Didi</span> Menendez. Available in print &amp; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00113FV4A"><span style='color:black'>online</span></a> versions &#8211; specifically one just for Amazon&#8217;s new Kindle &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ocho </i>14 is guest edited by Nick Piombino, the poet, critic &amp; analyst. Nick is one of the original contributors to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>In the American Tree, </i>my anthology of language poetry first published in 1986 (tho edited for the most part four &amp; five years before). Of its 40 contributors, Nick was one of just two &#8211; Jackson Mac Low being the other &#8211; who <span class=GramE>appear</span> only in its critical section. That&#8217;s because, when the collection was being edited, Nick was still known primarily for his critical writing, a circumstance that has happily changed over the years. And now that he&#8217;s retired from a long career as a psychological counselor in the </span><st1:State><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> public school system, he has the time &amp; energy to embark on a project like putting together <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ocho </i>14. <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 jolt I felt was as tho I had a new issue of a language poetry journal in my hands for the first time in years. It was like a huge rush of adrenalin as I looked at its table of contents &amp; began to dive right in. It&#8217;s a terrific issue, with nothing but good work from cover to cover. After reading it, tho, I realized that my jolt, or at least my sense of this as the latest thing in langpo, was something I brought to the occasion. For as good as <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ocho </i>14 is, it really is something else.<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'>For one thing, only three of its fifteen contributors are traditionally identified as language poets &#8211; Charles Bernstein, Alan Davies &amp; Ray DiPalma. Piombino does make a point of putting them first, in that order, which I think must have triggered my response.&#185; In fact, 13 of the 15 live somewhere within the confines of New York City, so somebody else might come across this same issue &amp; see it as the current generation of the New York School, tho only five<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>of the contributors &#8211; Elaine Equi, Mitch Highfill, Brenda Iijima, Kimberly Lyons &amp; Jerome Sala &#8211; have ever been even loosely associated with that side of New York&#8217;s writing scene (and in each instance with some considerable qualification). Two are former </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>San Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> poets who famously met over the internet after each had moved to a far distant locale (Japan &amp; Minneapolis). I think of Tim Peterson as Tucson-Boston, tho he&#8217;s been more recently hosting the Segue reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club. Sharon <span class=SpellE>Mesmer</span> &amp; Corrine Robins are two poets who have around </span><st1:State><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> quite a bit longer than Tim, but I&#8217;ve never associated either with a specific scene or aesthetic program. And Mark Young (</span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New Zealand</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> / </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'>) &amp; Nico Vassilakis (</span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Seattle</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>) strike me as part of that global thing I just mentioned. Vassilakis is also well known for his visual poetry, which makes his stark, simple quatrains here all the more noteworthy.<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'>Piombino himself stresses the regional focus, enough to make me wonder if Nico or Mark ever lodged time in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Manhattan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> or environs. But it&#8217;s putting Bernstein, Davies &amp; DiPalma right up front, the first 53 of the issue&#8217;s 180 pages, that really gives it the old langpo air. If anything, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ocho <span class=SpellE>catorce</span> </i>feels like an updated version of James Sherry&#8217;s mag, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Roof, </i>situating langpo within a larger range of writing in which </span><st1:State><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> was very much the horizon. <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'>Of the trio of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tree </i>vets, Bernstein has the simplest &amp; shortest contribution, a seemingly tossed off text (in fact, if he used a spread sheet or, worse, Word, it must have been excruciating to produce), a catalog of the 428 most commonly used words in his work, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Girly  Man, </i>in descending order. This is cute for a few seconds but no one, least of all Bernstein, actually expects you to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>read it. </i>It has a different relationship to the page than that and on that level is the most radical work in the issue. <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'>Davies, on the other hand, offers a wide range of works, including some (textually) discrete poems, a long critical work that organizes itself as an a review of Anne Waldman&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Outrider, </i>then a series of excerpts from a longer text &#8211; it seems too limiting to call it a poem &#8211; entitled <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This is Thinking. </i>Davies hasn&#8217;t been publishing a lot in recent years &amp; to see this much work at once, this much first-rate work, is completely bracing. He hasn&#8217;t lost a step &amp; is every bit as uncompromising as ever. This actually can make Davies a difficult read at times, but it never is complexity just for the sake of showing off. He continues to be the Diogenes of the </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> langpo scene. At the same time, Davies always comes across as sweet, vulnerable, friendly, somebody you&#8217;d love to know. I&#8217;d say that Davies&#8217; contribution is worth the price of the issue alone, but I&#8217;d say that of well about Gordon, Vassilakis, <span class=SpellE>Mesmer</span> &amp; several other of the contributors.<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'>There&#8217;s a reason for this. In spite of the fact that it has many more contributors than, say, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>President&#8217;s Choice, Ocho </i>has a lot more pages, 180 to 64, which means that Piombino is able to give roughly a dozen to each contributor &#8211; every single selection is substantial. It would take 15 chapbooks to get this much writing from this many contributors otherwise &#8211; making the hard copy price an absolute steal, the Kindle contribution a virtual potlatch. <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'>After Davies&#8217; raw philosophical investigations, Ray <span class=SpellE>DiPalma&#8217;s</span> suave sense of verse form comes across instantly. Although they&#8217;ve lived in the same town &amp; known one another for decades, Davies &amp; DiPalma almost represent polar extremes of what langpo might mean. For Davies, form is always provisional &amp; the quest for truth the obsessive center of any activity. For DiPalma, form is entirely sensual, his poems are elegant much in the same way good sex is, everything fits together just right. His books are always master classes in how to write &amp; there&#8217;s a wit in his generally serious tone that comes over as inclusive &amp; generous. I remember in my graduate seminar at SF State in 1981, the one that served as a first draft for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>In the American Tree, </i>that <span class=SpellE>DiPalma&#8217;s</span> work &#8211; we read <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Planh</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>&#8211; was the only one of the 16 writers we read who was enthusiastically liked by every single class member. At the time, that surprised me, but I think my class &#8211; which included Cole Swensen &amp; Jerry Estrin among others &#8211; were ahead of me in seeing this side of <span class=SpellE>DiPalma&#8217;s</span> poetry. Over the years, he&#8217;s proven them right.<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'>Elaine Equi follows DiPalma and, as has often the case for me with her poetry, she catches me off-guard &amp; surprises me. The first poem, &#8220;Daily Doubles,&#8221; dedicated to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Harry Crosby, </i>appears to be couplets composed entirely of the names of race horses &#8211;<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'>Inside Info<br>
Runaway Banjo<br>
<br>
Silver Knockers<br>
Too Much Zip<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s where she actually got these names, but a search of Google does indeed turn up a horse named <a href="http://ww2.equineline.com/portcust/darley/lifetime_starts.asp?ref=7152567"><span style='color:black'>Runaway Banjo</span></a>. As a poem, it works, is lively &amp; fun, tho not to the degree of the sequence that immediately follows, &#8220;At the Cinema Tarot,&#8221; nine short works predicated on the random drawing of cards, not from a tarot deck, but rather postcards of movies from the mid-century. Hence<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'>#<span class=GramE>4<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>The</span> Girl Can&#8217;t Help It</span></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
</span></b><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>(Jayne Mansfield unbuttons her blouse)</span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br> <br>
Marilyn Monroe wasn&#8217;t Jean Harlow.<br>
Jayne Mansfield wasn&#8217;t Marilyn Monroe.<br>
Anna Nicole Smith wasn&#8217;t Jayne Mansfield.<br>
Thankfully, there is only one Britney Spears.<br>
<br>
But know, whoever you are<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
whatever your gender, hair color, physique,<br>
within you there does reside an unhappy blonde<br>
archetype with enormous breasts.<br>
<br>
It is her you need to contact.<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 films included range from this b-movie bon-bon to a film classic like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Black Orpheus. </i>This pop-art deployment of media culture icons is a </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> staple, of course, tho by now every poet must how to do it, at least a little. It turns up again in the very next poet, Nada Gordon, who chooses to intersperse a hypothetical discourse between Whitehead, <span class=SpellE>Husserl</span> &amp; Heidegger with that peculiarly American philosopher, Julie Andrews. <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'>Gordon often deploys known elements like this, but what&#8217;s really interesting in her poetry is the way in which poems transgress, that instant when they go willfully (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>deliberately </i>seems too contained a word) out of control, off track, over the line. A poem beginning with Marianne Moore&#8217;s pseudo-dismissal of poetry &#8211; &#8220;I, too, dislike it&#8221; &#8211; turns very quickly into a litany  of other worse things one could dislike:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>I dislike that Elvis never bought ME a Cadillac<br> 
<br>
I dislike using &#8220;upscale&#8221; to describe something because it is a lazy way of describing something, even this upscale poem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This move toward the transgressive goes quite a bit further, up to<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>a nuthatch <span class=GramE>perhaps, that has perched inside one&#8217;s urethra, like<br>
<br>
elephants pushing into<br>
a weak vulva or<br>
<br>
a wild horse learning<br>
how</span> to sing.<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 irony of ending a list like that with a simple period is clearly intentional. <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 play between control &#8211; Gordon is deft craftsperson &#8211; and the over-the-top impulse is a continual see-saw in these works. Her longer piece, &#8220;Feminists Like To Blow Things Up / (And Then Cry As The Pieces Rain Down),&#8221; both extends this dynamic while <span class=SpellE>ironizing</span> her own self-knowledge of her impulses as a writer. Overall, Gordon&#8217;s selection is one of those powerful moments when, if you&#8217;d never read her work before (which might be the case, say, if you&#8217;re reading this in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Scotland</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> or </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Norway</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>), you&#8217;d be inclined to rush out &amp; buy everything she&#8217;s ever written. That&#8217;s not a bad impulse. You won&#8217;t be disappointed. <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 there is a problem in Gordon&#8217;s text, it&#8217;s really Mitch <span class=SpellE>Highfill&#8217;s</span>, who comes next. He&#8217;s an inherently quieter poet &amp; turning to his first page is like going from Green Day to Erik Satie &#8211; not everyone&#8217;s going to manage that transition. If they do, tho, there&#8217;s much to like. Actually, Satie is too strong a contrast. If Mei-mei Berssenbrugge were to be Satie, Highfill is closer to Rufus Wainwright. Highfill is not without his own hijinx here:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>I have seen the future and the future is flarf. The streets are filled with regret. Is that a watermark or a stain? <span class=GramE>Prophecy a function of memory.</span> I want to see my stunt double. I want a copy of the scrub list. The tea leaves settle where the broken hearts stay. <span class=GramE>In search of the <span class=SpellE>heaviside</span> function.</span> <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 even here, the palette is subdued compared with Gordon&#8217;s. Highfill in a way strikes me as <span class=GramE>raising</span> what I think is one of the primary &#8211; if usually unspoken &#8211; questions confronting contemporary poetry in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> How, in a realm of 10,000 publishing poets, does a good but not necessarily flashy poet get the audience he or she truly deserves? I think that&#8217;s an enormous problem confronting more than a few good poets right now. In <span class=SpellE>Highfill&#8217;s</span> case, he&#8217;s been fortunate in that he&#8217;s part of one of the most robust metropolitan scenes in the planet. But what if he were writing these poems in western </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Kansas</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>? As it is, Highfill is long overdue for the robust, 200-page book that would make everybody recognize what a solid writer he&#8217;s been now for decades. The ample selection here makes me long for that book.<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'>Many of the other poets in <i  style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ocho </i>are contending with this same question. Brenda Iijima, a little like Gordon, has the capacity to move from the flashy to the more deeply contemplative, a range that stands her well. </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Lyons</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> tho is very much facing the same problem as Highfill &#8211; first-rate writing, but of a subtle kind that doesn&#8217;t leap out and tap dance on your forehead to make you notice. Also like Highfill, her solution has been to live at the center of things in </span><st1:State><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. Sharon <span class=SpellE>Mesmer&#8217;s</span> strategy is humor &#8211; there are a lot of laugh-out-loud lines in her work. Tim Peterson has used that strategy himself in times past. Not so much here, tho, just enough of the first person in drag to give you a sense that it&#8217;s Tim. <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'>Of the later works in the issue, the one that jumps out at me &#8211; see <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>tapdance</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> on forehead </i>metaphor in paragraph above &#8211; is Nico Vassilakis&#8217; 15-page poem, &#8220;Lowered &amp; Illuminated.&#8221; Vassilakis is somebody whom I know primarily as a visual poet, one of the best in the country. This however is pure text, quatrains separated by more than a little space from one to the next. They work beautifully, each quatrain not quite a work in and of itself, their lines often making the reader wonder if they are to be read singly &#8211; as four distinct entries &#8211; or in conjunction, running on:<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'>This becomes involuntary finally<br> 
Eschewing some combinations otherwise<br>
Dormant thrust into quasars<br>
Detached and tungsten its sole benefactor<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One&#8217;s mind&#8217;s eye goes back &amp; forth here, trying to decide where the hinges in this text might fit. It&#8217;s possible, I suppose, for an unsubtle mind to just plow through, but what a loss that would entail. An awful lot of the music of this stanza is predicated entirely on the number of syllables involved in each word, the longer, noisier terms of the first two lines giving way to the <span class=GramE>stanza&#8217;s</span> last half in which only the very final term has more than two. Like a lot of abstract work in poetry, this looks casual at first until you start close reading, which then begets an experience not unlike vertigo as you start to recognize just how many other dimensions come into play. <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 sum, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ocho </i>14 is a great read, the liveliest number in this series&#8217; exceptionally diverse &amp; risk-taking issues to date. It&#8217;s worth noting that <span class=SpellE>Didi</span> Menendez is quite willing &#8211; actively trying, I suspect &#8211; to pick guest editors no one else would think of to put into the same sequence. The result is that each number is an exceptionally strong argument for a different aesthetic. And <span class=SpellE>Piombino&#8217;s</span> is the strongest argument to date. <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'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#185; The reality is that this issue is strictly alphabetical, but I wonder if Nick picked his contributor&#8217;s with a sense of how that would play into the narrative of reading, front to back. The last two contributors are also the two Auslanders in this otherwise New York City-centric collection. Can that be pure chance?<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/2007/12/one-reason-that-it-seems-clear-to-me.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/12/one-reason-that-it-seems-clear-to-me.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2007-12-27T01:16:00-05:00'>Thursday, December 27, 2007</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=3243375309787387157' 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/Journals' rel='tag'>Journals</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>Monday, December 17, 2007</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://farm3.static.flickr.com/2226/2074677031_7635dbe4bc.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='5478076319120549040' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='5478076319120549040'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-5478076319120549040' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><img height="294" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/QgWNZwW8OIc0qXgCwpWZSAPW9Ug6BBj-n_KQXqT99R7gOWgnp6dDJH-fMk46IFmKMpd7AlD6Jp5VGevqUsgOLYnCi9E1zqddQutk8qoxChkC%3Ds0-d" width="196"></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>One model for the magazine that I like a lot is the journal that contains only a limited number of contributors, each of whom is afforded an ample amount of space in which to work. Two recent journals that employ this strategy are <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>President&#8217;s Choice </i>and <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>6x6. </i>The former has seven contributors and runs to 63 pages, the latter, as you might imagine, offers six poets over an expanse of 56 unnumbered pages &#8211; so each generally gives its participants nine pages, enough to make a seriously good impression if the poet has any chops. <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'>Several of the poets in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>President&#8217;s Choice </i>1 are poets who have been around for some time &#8211; Rodrigo Toscano, Craig Dworkin, Laura <span class=SpellE>Elrick</span> &amp; Robert Fitterman, all fine writers. My immediate instinct, opening this issue, was not only that sense of endorphins releasing at the idea of reading new work by this quartet of folks, but also a sense that I&#8217;d probably come away liking the work of the three writers here whose names I didn&#8217;t immediately recognize, just because somebody (editor Steven <span class=SpellE>Zultanski</span>) thought to put them together. These turn out to be Marie Buck, <span class=SpellE>Bhanu</span> <span class=SpellE>Kapil</span> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Rad"><span style='color:black'>Paper</span></a> <a href="http://www.paperrad.org/"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Rad</span></span></a>. And it&#8217;s true &#8211; I really like the work of all three.<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'>Except that, when I decided I had to find out where I could get more work by Marie Buck &amp; googled her name, leading me to her <a href="http://www.beardofbees.com/buck.html"><span style='color:black'>Beard of Bees e-chapbook</span></a>, I immediately recognized the <a href="http://www.beardofbees.com/img/buck-portrait.jpg"><span style='color:black'>photograph</span></a> as being one of two almost intimidatingly brilliant young poets who picked me up at the airport in Detroit all of maybe eight weeks ago. Maybe I&#8217;d even received my copy of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>President&#8217;s Choice </i>from one of them. I realized I couldn&#8217;t remember. Buck leads off the issue and one of the first things you notice is that while her poems are not all in the same mode, they&#8217;re all very good. My favorites here are excerpts from a larger sequence entitled <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Whole Foods</i>. Here&#8217;s the shortest:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Authenticity</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br> <br>
Cutting and exposure to the air darkens the flesh. We stood in unheated squats having tooth and not being limp. We were more art than science. We gently rubbed our skin in a circular motion.<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 take the title here to allude to the first person plural that starts the final three sentences &#8211; you can bind a lot of material together if you just claim the same subject, especially if you claim it as yourself. In a not dissimilar way, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>skin </i>in the last sentence harkens to, snags really, the term <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>flesh </i>from the first. This is a poem as formal as any <span class=GramE>written,</span> even tho it claims for itself the realism of confession. This strikes me as an awful lot to do in such a short space.<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 download the Bird of Bees book, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Life And Style, </i>where Buck deploys language appropriated from <span class=SpellE>MySpace</span> &#8211; a gesture very close to Linh Dinh&#8217;s instant messaging poetics &#8211; that this degree of layering &amp; density of affect is something Buck accomplishes routinely. She makes it look so simple when in fact it is anything but.<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 had very much the same reaction here to the work of <span class=SpellE>Bhanu</span> <span class=SpellE>Kapil</span> &#8211; and I reacted in a parallel fashion by buying both of the books available at SPD by her (one of which is listed as having been written by <span class=SpellE>Bhanu</span> <span class=SpellE>Kapil</span> Rider). <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Humanimal</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, </i>which is excerpted in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>President&#8217;s Choice, </i>consists of numbered paragraphs, not all in the same font size, many of which function as contained narratives &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>25<span class=GramE>.ii</span>. Of the sixteen children who were born, only seven &#8211; six boys and a girl &#8211; survived into childhood proper. One of the boys pushed the girl off the roof and then there were six. My father was the second oldest and through I am not sure if the image &#8211; my aunt <span class=SpellE>Subudhra</span> falling upside down to her death, a kite&#8217;s slim rope still bound to her wrist and wrapped twice around her knuckles &#8211; is relevant to the story I am telling, it accompanies it. In the quick, black take of a body&#8217;s flight, a body&#8217;s eviction or sudden loss of place, the memory of descent functions as a subliminal flash.<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'>Only one word &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>take </i>&#8211; suggests the broader topic of film making, of which this section is actually one part. <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'>Again, the larger effect here is of layering &#8211; there is <span class=GramE>a richness</span> to <span class=SpellE>Kapil&#8217;s</span> work here that is completely wonderful. Each paragraph might be compared with an image of film in the process of montage, not so much the &#8220;new sentence&#8221; as the &#8220;new paragraph,&#8221; but the sequencing has the disjoint feel of an Abigail Child film, where image-image-image-image, each of them &#8220;real,&#8221; has a larger, broader, even more abstract impact that is nonetheless devastatingly  powerful.<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'><a href="http://www.paperrad.org/"><span style='color:black'>Paper <span class=SpellE>Rad</span></span></a> turns out to be a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Rad"><span style='color:black'>three-person art collective</span></a> based both in </span><st1:place><st1:City><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Pittsburgh</span></st1:City><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, </span><st1:State><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>PA</span></st1:State></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, and </span><st1:place><st1:City><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Northampton</span></st1:City><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, </span><st1:State><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>MA</span></st1:State></st1:place><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>..</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> They&#8217;re a lot livelier than the poetry one traditionally associates with either of those Quietist locales. The poems here feel like late <span class=SpellE>gen</span> NY school with a lot of call-and-response, one way to form a <span class=SpellE>collab</span>. It&#8217;s only because of the high level of work in this issue overall that I find them less than completely compelling. Rodrigo Toscano&#8217;s plays are terrific and his manifesto &#8220;What is &#8216;Poetics Theater&#8217;?&#8221; is something I expect to see reprinted a lot before long; Rob Fitterman&#8217;s excerpts from <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sprawl </i>make one anxious to see the whole (my <span class=SpellE>fave</span> is &#8220;Bisquickmarck, an afterward&#8221; which combines the history of <span class=SpellE>Bisquick</span> with that of Bismarck); Laura <span class=SpellE>Elrick&#8217;s</span> work combines her deep sense of form &#8211; here most often the line &#8211; with an even deeper sense of the danger of the contemporary political, even to the level of house pets &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Diagram of the muscles of the face.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br> <br>
<span class=GramE>Diagram of the muscles of the face.</span><br>
<br>
<span class=GramE>Small dog watching cat on the table.</span><br>
<span class=GramE>Dog approaching another dog with hostile intentions.</span><br>
<span class=GramE>Dog &#8211; in a humble and affectionate frame of mind.</span><br>
<br>
<br>
<span class=GramE>Half-bred shepherd dog baring teeth.</span><br>
Dog &#8211; caressing his master.<br>
Diagram of the muscles of the<br>
Cat, savage and prepared to fight.<br>
<span class=GramE>Cat &#8211; in an affectionate frame of mind.</span><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'>A little like Paper <span class=SpellE>Rad</span>, I found Craig Dworkin problematic here only by contrast with everything else. Dworkin&#8217;s work here is entirely conceptual, tho the concept leads to dense <span class=SpellE>dense</span> texts &#8211; his pieces here &#8220;describe&#8221; a text, doing so entirely by virtual of grammatical construction. The entire project is titled &#8220;Noun Compound Roman Numeral period,&#8221; the first section of which is called &#8220;Definite Article Adjective Noun period,&#8221; the second &#8220;Definite Article Noun genitive preposition definite article Noun period.&#8221; You can probably guess how the texts themselves read, each being three pages long. This reminds me of an idea I&#8217;ve long had of &#8220;reorganizing&#8221; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Waste Land </i>so that you get <span class=GramE>all of its</span> letters in alphabetical order. It would still be <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Waste Land, </i>right? If not, why not? For some reason I&#8217;ve never actually been bored enough to execute this project. But it pleases me to see just how close a project like Dworkin's comes to this same conceptual space.<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 have a more muted different reaction to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>6x6, </i>some of which has nothing to do with the writing. <span class=GramE>The journal&#8217;s formal premise of cutting one corner off its page to produce a five-sided page and its idea of using rubber bands as binding strike me as off-<span class=SpellE>puttingly</span> over-cute.</span> Unlike the clean roman font used by <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>President&#8217;s Choice, </i>the smaller font used by <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>6x6 </i>looks like somebody working with a letter press for the very first time. That this is the 14<sup>th</sup> issue and somebody hasn&#8217;t bought a saddle stapler is not amusing. Twenty years from now, when those rubber bands are stiff and disintegrating, the editor is going to live to regret these decisions. So are the contributors. <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'>Perhaps it&#8217;s not surprising that I find the work in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>6x6 </i>less compelling than <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>President&#8217;s Choice </i>as well.
Interestingly, tho, it&#8217;s the two poets whose work I do already know &#8211; Douglas Rothschild &amp; <span class=SpellE>Corina</span> <span class=SpellE>Copp</span> &#8211; whose writing really jumps out at me. In fact, I&#8217;ll go further. This is the best selection of Rothschild&#8217;s work I ever recall reading, totally a delight, well formed &amp; thoroughly tinged with the same acerbic wit the man is known for in person. It&#8217;s really the </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'> of the issue. <span class=SpellE>Copp&#8217;s</span> excerpt from &#8220;Office Killer&#8221; would look interesting alongside Toscano&#8217;s theater pieces &#8211; both are doing new things with <span class=SpellE>perfomance</span> as a mode that raise (once again) the potential in poets&#8217; theater in general, and in new, intriguing ways. <span class=SpellE>Copp</span> keeps her </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Lower Manhattan</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> / </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Brooklyn</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> cred by naming one of her characters Petunia!<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 other works here &#8211; by <span class=SpellE>Prabhakar</span> <span class=SpellE>Vasan</span>, Lori Shine, Randall Leigh Kaplan and Fred <span class=SpellE>Schmalz</span> &#8211; are all interesting enough. But none of them sufficiently overcomes the poor choice in type face to make me want to rush out and get anything else they may have in print, unlike Buck and <span class=SpellE>Kapil</span> in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>President&#8217;s Choice</i>. It&#8217;s hard for me to get a sense of whether this is because the work isn&#8217;t as brilliant &#8211; that the decisions in design reflect decisions in editing also &#8211; or if it is just that the format here doesn&#8217;t present the writing to good advantage. I&#8217;m hoping it&#8217;s the latter. <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/2007/12/one-model-for-magazine-that-i-like-lot.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/12/one-model-for-magazine-that-i-like-lot.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2007-12-17T05:12:00-05:00'>Monday, December 17, 2007</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=5478076319120549040' 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/Journals' rel='tag'>Journals</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 17, 2007</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.poetrymagazine.org/images/history.9.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='3888891895679475015' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='3888891895679475015'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-3888891895679475015' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:right'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'><img height="258" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/r82lHD1ru3Zzx_5JiHIBmvxGQMX8j9KlhIkPngWgM7zMWhkK5imSHvoTNn4WZcsAM2EreBWfjvAUnr6U_Jv5UZX_bNNYDg%3Ds0-d" width="435"><br>
Henry Rago (second from right) with the editorial staff of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry, </i>1956<br>
L-R: Robert Mueller, Margaret Danner, Elizabeth Wright, Rago, Frederick Bock<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'>Because I wanted to reread &#8211; for a third time &#8211; Roberto González <span class=SpellE>Echevaría&#8217;s</span> review of Clayton Eshleman&#8217;s translation of <span class=SpellE>César</span> Vallejo&#8217;s<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> The Complete Poetry, </i>I held onto the May 21<sup>st</sup> edition of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation</i>. </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vallejo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, for me, is both fascinating &amp; <span class=GramE>problematic,</span> terms that I might choose to describe Eshleman as well. More than any other poet, Vallejo is the one who challenges whatever received simplicities I might still carry about in my head as to how modernism spread in the 20<sup>th</sup> century &amp; the moment at which one had (has) to acknowledge that there is far more to world literature than the Europeans &amp; a few classic texts from Asia. Yet just how &#8220;non-European&#8221; is </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vallejo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>? Half of this deceptively fat volume (with facing Spanish, there are roughly 300 pages of poetry) was written during </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vallejo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8217;s eleven years in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>France</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> &amp; </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Spain</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. Vallejo is full of questions like that &#8211; how much Spanish, how much Indian influence, how much French, the language lurches &amp; veers to a degree that I think I, at least, still find unsettling. Eshleman, one of the strongest personalities in poetry over the past few generations, has made a lifework of this project &amp; done so faithfully, even brilliantly. Yet there is always that question in translation, especially when, as here, or as in Pierre <span class=SpellE>Joris</span>&#8217; Celan, the translator is himself a major poet, how much Vallejo, how much Eshleman? I&#8217;m persuaded that Clayton  lets as much </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vallejo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> through as is humanly possible, which makes it more of a question for Walter Benjamin: how much is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>that? <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span class=SpellE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Echevaria&#8217;s</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> review isn&#8217;t that illuminating on the questions of translation &#8211; he <span class=GramE>nitpicks</span> a few <span class=SpellE>gotchas</span> mostly &amp; reminds us that, as a young scholar, he turned to Eshleman for help reading Wallace Stevens, assistance for which he is obviously grateful. But the bulk of his piece is a decent history of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vallejo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, which is what I actually was after. This time, tho, it was <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation </i>as a whole that caught my eye. For the May 21<sup>st</sup> issue also contained the 2007 Discovery / <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation </i>prizewinners, the thirty-third annual selection of a &#8220;new poets&#8217;&#8221; award that has, with a couple of exceptions, been the kiss of death for many a School of Quietude poet over the past three decades. And, completely separate from this year&#8217;s Discovery poets, there is a poem in the same issue by one of my favorite writers, Graham Foust:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Poem Windy and Continued</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br> <br>
very cold.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'> My small<br>
and panicked last<br>
kiss was like making<br>
a noise to make sure<br>
I was there.<br>
<br>
Your quiet<br>
mouth was only<br>
space &#8211; a kiss<br>
reversed and kept<br>
inside to bite.<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 off-kilter lyric &#8211; something Foust does as well as any living poet &#8211; actually appears on the corner of a page (the third of four) of <span class=SpellE>Echevaría&#8217;s</span> piece, as if insinuating that some of the spirit of Vallejo has sipped into American poetry. This  is quite an amazing leap for a journal like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation, </i>a well-intended, but culturally plodding, progressive publication whose curiously bellicose title reminds readers to this day that it was first started to support the northern cause during the Civil War. If you count Calvin <span class=SpellE>Trillin&#8217;s</span> regular feature as &#8220;deadline poet&#8221; among the op-ed pieces at the issue&#8217;s front (I seldom do, but this is one of <span class=SpellE>Trillan&#8217;s</span> better efforts), the May 21<sup>st</sup> issue has not one, but four <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>different </i>items related to poetry in a single edition. I&#8217;ve been reading <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation </i>since 1963 &amp; I can&#8217;t even remember a solstice books issue that did that before.<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 consider <span class=SpellE>Trillan&#8217;s</span> immortal lines, which begin<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'>So who ever <span class=SpellE>thunk</span><br> 
That Tenet&#8217;s &#8220;slam dunk&#8221;<br>
Was really the chunk<br>
Of intelligence junk<br>
That got our boys sunk<br>
In quagmire gunk?<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 turn to the hapless works by this year&#8217;s Discovery winners, Paula <span class=SpellE>Bohince</span>, <span class=SpellE>Darcie</span> <span class=SpellE>Dennigan</span>, Joseph <span class=SpellE>Heithaus</span> and Melissa Range, chosen by Mark <span class=SpellE>Jarman</span>, Brigit <span class=SpellE>Pegeen</span> Kelly and <span class=SpellE>Phillis</span> Levin (which &#8220;associate coordinator Ellen <span class=SpellE>Paschen</span> helped to screen&#8221;). Here are the opening lines of &#8220;Green&#8221;:<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'>The child affixes one of her little pictures to my refrigerator.<br>
She asks<span class=GramE>,</span> Can you detect the radiation?<br>
<br>
There is a house, one tree, and grass in dark slashes. <span class=GramE>A sun<br>
shining.</span> Beneath, in her child letters, she has written </span><st1:City><st1:place><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Chernobyl</span></i></st1:place></st1:City><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>.</span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
<br>
At kindergarten they must be having nuclear energy week.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This is one of those &#8220;excuse me&#8221; moments in literature, in which writing so padded that it suffocates thought: &#8220;little pictures,&#8221; &#8220;child letters,&#8221; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>really</i>? One can only imagine how the losers of this competition must write if something like this leaked through. At least in the first line of the second stanza there is that string of single syllable words leading up to the two-syllable <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>shining </i>to suggest that something is occurring cognitively. But what we have here is the start of a <span class=SpellE>dumbed</span>-down allegorical narrative that mostly reveals the poet not to be a serious thinker about radiation, about children, or about poetry. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>At least <span class=SpellE>Darcie</span> <span class=SpellE>Dennigan</span> spares us the tub-thumping metrics offered by </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Melissa</span></st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Range</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><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:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>His every hair and shred<br>
sheds two uses, or more, for our daily bread.<br>
<br>
Good sidekick, stock stand-by<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
he helps us tear the ground and haul the rye.<br>
<br>
Too much <span class=SpellE>sweetgrass</span> made him lame<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
or we did; to much bridle made him tame,<br>
<br>
which we did. Nails in the foot<br>
mean he&#8217;s not good-for-naught<span class=GramE>;</span><br>
<br>
disease in the hoof, he&#8217;s a no-shoe<br>
no-show on the field. It&#8217;s a no-go<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
<br>
when he founders on the clock:<br>
he&#8217;ll go free, barefooted, to the block.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>And so on for another eight sterling couplets. <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'>Paula <span class=SpellE>Bohince</span> at least appears to be writing after the birth of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vallejo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> (1892) with her &#8220;Hide Out,&#8221; which begins<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'>Stiff as a fish<br>
in a boat, I lie in the grove<br>
of crabapples,<br>
inhaling dirt&#8217;s pepper, my cheek<br>
wet against stubble,<br>
eye to mineral eye,<br>
<br>
tracing the bodies of fish<br>
onto wood&#8217;s floor &#8211; infinity in mud,<br>
curves of hourglass<br>
repeating &#8211;<br>
<br>
until I cannot hear<br>
my breathing&#8230;.<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 poet re-enacting her childhood: here&#8217;s a cliché that really needs to be revisited. At least she has some idea of line that is not stiff as a fish in a boat. <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'>Alongside a discussion of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vallejo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> or the poetry of Graham Foust, these are not just comically bad expressions of a brain-death aesthetic, they&#8217;re bad writing alongside Calvin <span class=SpellE>Trillan</span>. At least Joseph <span class=SpellE>Heithaus</span> offers some of the density &amp; linguistic acrobatics that raise, say, Geoffrey Hill or Paul Muldoon above this sort of swamp. <span class=SpellE>Heithaus</span> merely asks that you believe he talks to sheep. With </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> poets, I&#8217;m ready to believe almost anything.<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'>Green False Hellebore<br>
<span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Veratrum</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> <span class=SpellE>Woodii</span><br>
</i></span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br> We must warn the good sheep: Dear pregnant ewes<span class=GramE>,</span><br> 
stay away from the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>stout, erect, <span class=SpellE>unbranched</span><br>
stems, pleated leaves, flowers B inconspicuous<br>
clusters, green or greenish white. </i>I blanched<br>
<br>
at what they do to you, your little lamb.<br>
If you eat false hellebore on the fourteenth<br>
day of gestation, expect your new ram<br>
to be <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>monkey-faced, <span  class=SpellE>cycloptic</span>, </i>come a month<br>
<br>
early or die. Really, aside from weakness<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
trembling, the stomach ache you&#8217;ll feel, you&#8217;ll give<br>
birth to truth, small brained, defected, helpless,<br>
just for taking what you thought sheep might live<br>
<br>
on. This is nature&#8217;s justice, something cruel<br>
to chew: we&#8217;re empty headed beasts, poison&#8217;s fool.<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'>Just wait till he starts writing as tho he <span class=GramE>were</span> born after 1892. This at least is worth reading, tho frankly there&#8217;s less to think about than meets the ear. It&#8217;s ultimately a set piece intended to display the verbal dexterity of the poet. That there is some to display is its saving grace. <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'>Between these four selections, we have an interesting phenomenon, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation </i>displaying the very different directions of contemporary poetry, from something completely new (Foust) &amp; groundbreaking work of the 20<sup>th</sup> century (Vallejo), to poetry that imagines that, by simple denial, it can erase the writing of the last 150 years, first as tragedy (the Discovery four), then as farce (<span class=SpellE>Trillan</span>). I&#8217;m reminded that John <span class=SpellE>Palattella</span> recently replaced Grace <span class=SpellE>Shulman</span> as poetry editor of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation, </i>and it&#8217;s his presence that I credit for the Foust, maybe even <span class=SpellE>Echevaría&#8217;s</span> review of the </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Vallejo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. But obviously the Discovery prize still <span class=GramE>lays</span> in the hands of the old regime. <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 the years before I became the executive editor of the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Socialist Review (SR), </i>I used to marvel at the breadth of that publication, which had been started in the very early 1970s under the name of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Socialist Revolution </i>to be a place where the veteran on-campus organizers of the 1960s might discuss the theoretical implications of their post-school work &#8220;in the real world.&#8221; There could be a discussion of class in the sugar industry in the </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Caribbean</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> followed, literally, by Donna <span class=SpellE>Haraway&#8217;s</span> &#8220;Manifesto for Cyborgs.&#8221; It wasn&#8217;t until I actually joined the Bay Area editorial collective that it fully dawned on me that this was the result of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>SR </i>having not one, but two editorial collectives &#8211; there was very briefly a third, albeit before my time &#8211; and that the Boston collective was predictably the origin of economic materialist analysis, some of quite good, but much of it old school Stalinist Marxism at its most reified. What had happened was the journal began with a single collective in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>San Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> &#8211; the funding for the journal came at first from Jimmy Weinstein, a veteran of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Studies on the Left</i>, the 1960s antecedent to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>SR, </i>and later the founder of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>In These Times. </i>Most of the first collective were off-campus organizers, but as the 1970s wore on, a number headed back to grad school and the collective became closely identified with the grad students in the UC sociology department &#8211; at least those who were not part of the number-crunching faction. When the first generation of these graduated and some got jobs with colleges in Boston, they started the second collective, which now was a phenomenon of junior (and later senior) faculty at a number of schools, people whose evolution in their careers led them in different directions than the Bay Area collective, which remained constantly evolving and continued its focus around graduate Soc students (the longest term member, Carol Hatch, was a departmental secretary, something that could never have occurred in the Boston collective which increasingly got involved in tenure disputes at the different schools there). By the time I arrived in 1986, just a year after the &#8220;Manifesto for Cyborgs&#8221; publication, the two collectives were barely speaking to one another. Indeed, the bitterness over publishing Haraway &#8211; seen as pure heresy by the </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Boston</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> collective &#8211; kept the SF collective from later having the courage to run Samuel R. Delaney&#8217;s even more highly metaphoric analysis of it, which had lost out on publication by a single vote shortly before I arrived (and which, two years later, lost again when I tried to revisit that decision). Within three months of joining the collective &amp; immediately making a journey to Boston to meet the collective there (which was not pleased in the slightest that a poet with few academic credentials was now executive editor), I was able to go back, literally, for years, pointing out which article had been accepted for publication by which collective. The great eclecticism of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>SR, </i>really its strength throughout most of its history, was in fact a construct, the result of ongoing &#8211; and often internally quite hostile &#8211; conflict between two editorial groups with radically different ideas about what the left was, and the role a journal might play in that. <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 what I see in this really peculiar single issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation </i>is something not that terribly different. I don&#8217;t think John <span class=SpellE>Palattella</span> is necessarily a post-avant type personally, my sense is that he&#8217;s trying to be broader than that, but he is somebody who reads, intelligently so (based on the reviews I&#8217;ve seen), the likes of Ted Berrigan &amp; Allen Ginsberg, something that a poetry editor at <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation </i>hasn&#8217;t done since the days when Denise Levertov was there in the 1960s. And the result may be that we are going to get, at least for a time, this sort of quirky, uneven coverage as the journal presents a wider view simply because different editors think very differently. <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&#8217;m reminded that the one brief renaissance in the history of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>magazine came not during the years when Ezra Pound was periodically breaking through the deadened crust of work Harriet Monroe preferred, but rather the latter half of Henry <span class=SpellE>Rago&#8217;s</span> tenure in the 1960s. During the first several years of his editorship, Rago was the same sort of predictable </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> type that the journal had grown moldy with in the post-Monroe years. But then, around 1962, Rago came to some sort of epiphany that the magazine ought to represent all of American poetry, and for the next seven years it did (until a heart attack killed Rago on his sabbatical, leaving the publication in the worst of hands, Daryl <span class=SpellE>Hine</span>, who made it even more a repository for reaction than had Monroe). I still keep the three double-issues that punctuated the early years of <span class=SpellE>Rago&#8217;s</span> renewed vision by my desk. The fiftieth anniversary issue, October-November, 1962, has just a glimmer of what was to come, presenting its poets in alphabetic order and including, among others, Conrad Aiken, Ben <span class=SpellE>Belitt</span>, John Berryman, Louise <span class=SpellE>Bogan</span>, Hayden Carruth, John <span class=SpellE>Ciardi</span>, Robert Creeley, <span class=SpellE>e.e</span>. <span class=SpellE>cummings</span>, James Dickey, Alan Dugan, Robert Duncan, Robert Frost, Robert Graves, Thom Gunn, Anthony Hecht, Randall Jarrell, Kenneth Koch, Stanley Kunitz, Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, Hugh Mac <span class=SpellE>Diarmid</span>, James Merrill, W.S. Merwin, Howard <span class=SpellE>Nemerov</span>, Charles Olson, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Muriel Rukeyser, Delmore Schwartz, Anne Sexton, Karl Shapiro, Stephen Spender, Charles Tomlinson, Richard Wilbur, William Carlos Williams, James Wright &amp; Louis Zukofsky. <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 simple presence of Creeley, Duncan, Levertov, Koch, Mac <span class=SpellE>Diarmid</span>, Olson, <span class=GramE>Rexroth</span> &amp; Zukofsky in this list was revolutionary in 1962. But it merely was the piercing of the veil of benign neglect with which the Pound-Williams tradition had previously been treated, and it was, frankly, tokenistic. Thirty months later, the April-May 1965 double issue devoted to works-in-progress, long poems &amp; sequences actually reflected the world more as it was. Its contributors included, again in alphabetical order (and this is the complete list), Wendell Berry, Carruth, Creeley, Duncan, Ronald Johnson, Galway Kinnell, Koch, Levertov, Olson, David Posner, Adrienne Rich, Ernest <span class=SpellE>Sandeen</span>, Sexton, Gary Snyder, Tomlinson, Gael Turnbull, Theodore Weiss &amp; Philip Whalen. The issue feels as tho its 20 &#8211; maybe 50 &#8211; years more contemporary than the one less than three years earlier. Indeed, more contemporary than any issues of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry</i> that have been published in the past 20 years.<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'>Since the Poetry Foundation got its boatload of cash from a sheltered pharmaceutical heir a few years back, the organization has gone through some convulsions that suggest that it too is having some of the same sorts of pressures straining on it that we may be seeing in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation. </i>The website for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>is already much more interesting than the journal, but there have been some token attempts even in the publication not to seem completely out of it. This is all to the good, regardless of how incomplete &amp; conflicted these little moments might be. <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&#8217;m reminded of Gerald Graff&#8217;s refrain to &#8220;teach the conflicts,&#8221; which I&#8217;ve always thought made sense in terms of curriculum, albeit unless one is team teaching with somebody quite opposite one&#8217;s own inclinations, one always teaches these conflicts from a particular point of view. There is, after all, a scenario in which the post-avants represent the barbarians at the gates that are disrupting the idylls of quietude &amp; therefore must be repelled. And it&#8217;s not like I don&#8217;t have a pony, if not a sheep, in this race. So barring the emergence of saintly editors a la the later Rago, perhaps the very most we can hope for in our more public literary institutions is what we find in the May 21<sup>st</sup> issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation, </i>that the rag will actually embody those very conflicts, all sides. <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'>To readers who don&#8217;t pay much attention to poetry, this may feel incoherent. There is almost no way to connect the dots between <span class=SpellE>Trillan</span> &amp; Vallejo, Foust &amp; the Discovery 4, that is going to be readily accessible to anyone not immersed in contemporary poetics. That in itself is probably a good thing, since it shows <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation </i>demonstrating what anthologies like those by Garrison <span class=SpellE>Keillor</span> do not, that it&#8217;s not all one thing, but many, diverse, conflicting ones. That Vallejo&#8217;s own conflicts over his own poetry &amp; its relation to language, nation, politics, aesthetics are no less tortured than those of any thinking person today. <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><br style='mso-special-character:line-break'> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style='mso-special-character:line-break'> <!--[endif]--></i><o:p></o:p></b></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/2007/07/henry-rago-second-from-right-with.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2007/07/henry-rago-second-from-right-with.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2007-07-17T02:32:00-04:00'>Tuesday, July 17, 2007</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=3888891895679475015' 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/Journals' rel='tag'>Journals</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>
<div class='blog-pager' id='blog-pager'>
<span id='blog-pager-older-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-older-link' href='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Journals?updated-max=2007-07-17T02:32:00-04:00&amp;max-results=20&amp;start=6&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'] = 'AOuZoY5rdx0jFSl265WFp-vi6T1Va5XXOg:1574358835671';_WidgetManager._Init('//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID\x3d3738579','//ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Journals','3738579');
_WidgetManager._SetDataContext([{'name': 'blog', 'data': {'blogId': '3738579', 'title': 'Silliman\x27s Blog', 'url': 'https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Journals', 'canonicalUrl': 'https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Journals', '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': 'Journals', 'pageName': 'Journals', 'pageTitle': 'Silliman\x27s Blog: Journals'}}, {'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://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Journals', 'type': 'feed', 'isSingleItem': false, 'isMultipleItems': true, 'isError': false, 'isPage': false, 'isPost': false, 'isHomepage': false, 'isArchive': false, 'isSearch': true, 'isLabelSearch': true, 'search': {'label': 'Journals', 'resultsMessage': 'Showing posts with the label Journals', 'resultsMessageHtml': 'Showing posts with the label \x3cspan class\x3d\x27search-label\x27\x3eJournals\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\x3eJournals\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>