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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, July 12, 2005</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Writing about ezines <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Jacket </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>How2 </i>last Thursday, I ended with this question:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Where is the journal that <span class=GramE><span class=grame>steps</span></span> up to looking at the world with such rigor, but from the framework of poets age 35 &amp; under?<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 possible answer to that question, certainly, lies in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Poker, </i><a href="http://tinyurl.com/7csp4"><span style='color:black'>Dan Bouchard&#8217;s</span></a> journal out of Cambridge, MA, settling now into its own adolescence of sorts with issue number 6 just out. Like the five issues that have preceded it, numero six is impeccably edited, combining work by newer poets (Nancy <span class=SpellE>Kuhl</span> &amp; Deborah Meadows, both of whom are new to me), lots of well-known mid-career writers (Joe Elliot, Rodrigo Toscano, Lee Ann Brown, Bouchard himself, Bill <span class=SpellE>Luoma</span>, John <span class=SpellE>Latta</span>, Jennifer Moxley, Mitch <span class=SpellE>Highfill</span>), some American masters (Jackson Mac Low, Rae Armantrout, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Keith Waldrop), plus a serious swath of critical writing (34 pages of essays, roughly a third of the journal, none of which could be called a book review, tho Steve Evans&#8217; &#8220;Field Notes&#8221; does include a little omnibus blog review of sorts &amp; touches on recent books as well). <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'>Bouchard clearly understands that an editor&#8217;s first function is to offer context &#8211; Evans&#8217; notes are deservedly legendary for the work they do in this regard, critically, for example. Here, in addition to Evans, Bouchard includes Ben Friedlander&#8217;s selection a poem by <span class=SpellE>Fitz</span>-Greene <span class=SpellE>Halleck</span>, a neglected 19<sup>th</sup> century American poet associated with the Knickerbockers, the major </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'> (SoQ) group prior to the Civil War, who has not had a volume published since 1869. Friedlander&#8217;s introductory essay makes a decent case for this conservative poet &#8211; something the current SoQ is notoriously poor at doing.&#185; Similarly, Jackson Mac Low&#8217;s poem, &#8220;Feeling Down, <span class=SpellE>Clementi</span> Felt Imposed Upon From Every Direction,&#8221; a late piece from last year, is followed by a brief appreciation of Jackson by Mitch <span class=SpellE>Highfill</span>, an appropriate commemoration of Mac Low&#8217;s importance to American poetry over the past half century. Waldrop&#8217;s contribution to the issue consists of translations from Baudelaire&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Les fleurs <span class=SpellE>du</span> mal, </i>one of the first great texts of what would turn out to be the avant-garde tradition.<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'>Print journals have a materiality that an ezine can never match, of course. You can put it in your backpack &amp; read it at convenient moments all day long as you travel about the city. On the other hand, there are limits to any print journal&#8217;s distribution, and print lacks the potential for readily accessible archives that ezines have (tho not all e-journals take advantage of this, to my constant &amp; utter dismay). Bouchard&#8217;s commitment to print extends to his refusal to look at manuscripts sent electronically, a little <span class=SpellE>Luddite</span> touch that <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Poker </i>might just be the last journal to employ.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>With the Mac Low, a new <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Drafts </i>by DuPlessis &amp; what may be the title poem of Armantrout&#8217;s next book all included here, it&#8217;s really worth noting just how much important verse Bouchard is able to get for a publication that includes just 65 or so pages of poetry, including both Baudelaire &amp; <span class=SpellE>Halleck</span>. It is apparent that many poets now act as tho <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Poker </i>might just be the closest thing we have to a poetry journal of record in these </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>United States</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. Given the comically bathetic narrowness of, say, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry, </i>which has not performed this function since Henry <span class=SpellE>Rago</span> died while on sabbatical in 1969, it would be an interesting project for a sociologically minded critic &#8211; Alan <span class=SpellE>Golding</span>? <span class=GramE>&#8211; to trace just where poets have turned in the years since in the absence of such a journal.</span> In 2005, however, it would seem clearly to be <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Poker </i>that takes on this responsibility. <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'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#185; Since to do so would require confronting a literary history about which they are mostly in denial. <span class=GramE>So much better to pen another appreciation of Rilke than to investigate their own tradition&#8217;s roots &amp; by-ways.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, December 01, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The new <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>No </i>is now. Which is to say that the
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journal has arrived. As with its first issue, <span class=GramE>there are
several features that</span> entirely warrant the $12 cover price. Three that immediately
come to mind are:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;
color:blue'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#183;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>In </span></i><st1:country-region><st1:place><i
  style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
  Arial'>Denmark</span></i></st1:place></st1:country-region><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Arial'>: Poems 1973-1974</span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Arial'>, by Kenneth Irby &#8211; a 66-page book (bound on gray matte pages to
distinguish it from the glossy white of the main <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>No</i>), by the writer whom <span class=GramE>I&#8217;ve</span> argued in these
pages before may have the best ear of any American poet of my time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;
color:blue'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#183;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>An American Primitive in Paris</span></i><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, a sizeable portfolio of the
paintings of Enrique Chagoya, whose artwork used to grace the page of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Socialist Review </i>back when I had the
fortune to be its editor. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol;
color:blue'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#183;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The American Rhythm, </span></i><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>by <a
href="http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap7/austin.html">Mary Austin</a>,
with an intro by C.D. Wright, returning to print this 1930 document** arguing
for an American poetic measure predicated upon what </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Austin</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> calls Amerindian languages. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>On top of
which there is a piece by Marjorie Perloff attempting to prove William Butler
Yeats to be </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
 Arial'>Steve McCaffery</span></st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> before Steve was. <span class=GramE>And</span> very healthy
selections of poets well-known (Palmer, Will Alexander, Barbara Guest, Cole
Swenson, Peter Gizzi, Elizabeth Robinson) and new at least to me (Molly
Dorozenski, H.L. Hix, Kristin P. Bradshaw among them). <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>What is
most interesting to me about </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Austin</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s piece is not necessarily her
argument per se, which depends on a racial fantasy of Native Americans, but
rather its underlying premise, that the measure &#8211; I mean this in the metrical
sense &#8211; of American writing, simply by virtue of not being European, would be
different. <span class=GramE>It&#8217;s</span> the same argument that has bedeviled
American letters from the break between the Young Americans &amp; the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> in the 1840s right up to today. <span
class=GramE>One can, of course, mount a pseudo-linguistic argument &#8211; it&#8217;s been
done more than once &#8211; claiming that iambic in particular is implicit in the
English language, though to do so is simply to ignore the vast range of
regional variations that occur even now after some 50 years of the influence of
television and job mobility has tended to </span></span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>fla</span></span></st1:place></st1:State><span
class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>tten out local
differences.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>In some
ways, </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
  Arial'>Austin</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s sense of the prairie in the measure anticipates Olson&#8217;s
own sense of space (or, as Olson puts it, SPACE). Implicit in both is a sense
that elements other than language impinge up on it, speak through it, <span
class=GramE>are</span> in some sense themselves articulate. Olson of course
returns measure to the body, literally, of the poet &#8211; meter becomes a kind of
pulse, as if one&#8217;s blood pumped differently according to <span class=GramE>who</span>
&amp; where we might be. <span class=GramE>Within 20 years of Olson&#8217;s essay on
Projective Verse we find a poetics that in practice emphasizes enjambment
centered in </span></span><st1:place><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:
 10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>New England</span></span></st1:place><span
class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> (Olson, Creeley),
one that favors the long flat lines of the prairie (Paul Carroll most clearly,
tho Lew Welch played with this possibility as well) &amp; a verse mode that
tends to be more relaxed and open, generally associated with the American West
(Whalen, Snyder, Kyger, etc.).</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> It&#8217;s this poetic atlas that Spicer appears to scoff at
&amp; what, one wonders, were we to make of the likes of Kenneth Irby &amp;
Ronald Johnson, both of whom spent substantial parts of their lives in </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Kansas</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, both of whom pay extraordinary
attention to the ear, neither of whom remotely approach the aural aesthetics of
the other?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Langpo to
some degree sidestepped the issue in good part by turning to prose, but the
issue lingers on even more acutely I think for younger poets. The failure to
create an adequate response is partly to blame for the resurrection of
patterned poetics in the guise of a New Formalism (that was &#8211; &amp; for the
most part still is &#8211; terrified of form), always already guilty premodernists
that they are. <span class=GramE>And</span> it&#8217;s what enables Thomas Fink to
call me on my analysis of <a
href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%23106941747411345093">Brenda
Iijima&#8217;s &#8220;Georgic&#8221;</a>: I have, in his view, identified all the ways she is not
like X, Y, or Z, without really being able to describe what, in fact, her line
break is about. What motivates it? What is the positive principle that
determines that broken word <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>stam</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>- / <span
class=SpellE>pede</span></i>? But as I confessed then, <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>this</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> is
what most mystifies me &#8211; because given those words, I just couldn&#8217;t do it on my
own.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>And I&#8217;m not
aware of anyone who has stepped up to attempt such a project, either with
regards to this </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
  font-family:Arial'>tex</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>t of Iijima&#8217;s, or for that matter any other
contemporary younger poet. <span class=GramE>And I sense, as I think Tom Fink
must also, my own frustration here, that we find ourselves at the end of 2003
with so few choices available as to the line &#8211; either the metrically closed
verse of premodernism, ranging from the hokey to the merely embarrassing, or
the untheorized (&amp; too often too slack, tho not certainly in Iijima&#8217;s work)
&#8220;free verse&#8221; marriage of convenience, with maybe theories along the line of
Austin&#8217;s or Olson&#8217;s to haunt us with their inadequate alternatives.*** Indeed,
the absence of a good answer here sometimes has been used by critics to argue
that poetry is, if not, certainly on the wane as a medium.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I do <span
class=GramE>intuit</span> at some level that the assumption that underwrites
both Austin &amp; Olson &#8211; that the measures of verse are contextually dependent
&#8211; makes sense. <span class=GramE>But</span> I don&#8217;t, even after writing &amp;
thinking about poetry for 40 years, feel anywhere near ready to say why or how.
I would love to hear what readers of this blog think.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* The only
excuse for starting the first piece, an elegy by </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Michael Palmer</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'> for the novelist W.G. Sebald, on the
left-hand page is lack of space in the issue . . . yet there are blank pages at
the end. <span class=GramE>And</span> there is no excuse for the muddle that is
the table of contents qua contributors&#8217; notes pages. If these are attempts to
innovate or protest conventional design elements, they succeed only in
confirming the superiority of the convention.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>** A second
edition <span class=GramE>was published</span> posthumously in 1970. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>*** So I
read Irby&#8217;s work in this issue, written nearly 30 years ago, right at the height
of the &#8220;my linebreak / my <span class=SpellE>zipcode</span>&#8221; fever, yet written
in a wholly different context, having moved at that point to Denmark. <span
class=GramE>And</span> these are curiously the flattest lines of his that I
know, as if that </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:
 Arial'>Scandinavia</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:
Arial'>n sound were bleeding into the English. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, November 11, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>There
is a new <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poker </i>out, <span
class=SpellE>numero</span> 3, &amp; the darned thing just keeps getting better.
There is some terrific new poetry, including major contributions from Fanny
Howe, </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:
 "Times New Roman"'>Dale Smith</span></st1:PersonName><span style='font-family:
Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'> &amp; Alan Davies, any one of
which is worth the price of admission, &amp; an interview of </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Kevin Davies</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'> by Marcella
Durand that is more of a conversation, sweet &amp; funny &amp; insightful, but
the real jaw dropper this time is the publication of an essay by William Carlos
Williams, more accurately the text of a talk (or notes for one) the doctor gave
at Harvard in the spring of 1941, possibly as an extended introduction to a
reading. As I understand Richard Deming's preface to the piece (which I read <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>after</i> reading Williams' text, a
procedure I recommend), there were/are multiple draft typescripts for this talk
among Williams' papers in Buffalo (where else?), so that the text we are given
here consists principally of what appears to be the final typescript <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>plus </i>typed comments from three appended
cards. Reading the resultant document, one notices it flows but there clearly
is a rhetorical shift right at the point when the cards come in. I wish that
somebody at Harvard had thought to tape the darn thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>The
main body of the talk, &quot;The Basis of Poetic Form,&quot; consists of seven numbered
principles or assertions about poetry, four of which have extended notes that
follow. At the end of the seventh note begins the section derived from the
cards, which opens the entire discussion up for an extended consideration of
poetry as ethics or at least ethos. Deming in his preface alludes to
Wittgenstein in arguing that ethics &amp; aesthetics are one, a point he sees
Williams having in common with the philosopher (whom he admits having no
evidence Williams ever read). Reading the piece itself, the connection occurred
to me as well, not for that tie-in (which is largely the product of Deming's
decision to include the cards), but rather because Williams' seven assertions
is not dissimilar from Wittgenstein's initial attempt to encapsulate all logic
into the seven master sentences of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>The
first of Williams' assertions reads as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-family:Verdana'>There
are many ways of looking at a poem -- all of them misleading unless founded
upon structure. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>A
sentence like the one above reminds me of just how much of a modernist (or <span
class=SpellE>neomodernist</span>) I really am. If there is anything inaccurate
about this statement, I can't see it. Yet I note how Williams couches this
assertion of structure's primacy -- it's very indirect. It also (inescapably, to
my mind) invokes Wallace Stevens. I'm wondering here about questions of
occasion &amp; audience -- did Williams see Harvard '41 as Stevens' turf in
some <span class=GramE>fashion?</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Williams'
second assertion invokes associations as well, but in a very different
direction, one WCW could not have anticipated -- Roland Barthes &amp; his <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Writing Degree Zero</i> (composed just 13
years later &amp; with Rene Char as its literary horizon): <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-family:Verdana'>A
poem is a use of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>words </i>(as emphasized
by Gertrude Stein) to raise the mind to a level of the imagination beyond that
attainable by prose. It is prose <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>plus. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>And
in a note that follows, Williams poses Jabberwocky's relation to <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Alice in Wonderland </i>as an example. It is
worth underscoring Williams' invocation of Stein here -- by 1941 Stein is
famous (something she was not 15 years prior), but already being treated by the
American media as an instance of avant-<span class=SpellE>gardiste</span> as
jokester &amp; joke (a role it will later assign to Andy Warhol, say). But that
is not how Williams is using her here, &amp; obviously not how he expects this
audience to understand the reference. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>It
is, 62 years later, easy enough to recite all the ways in which the idea of
&quot;prose <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>plus</i>&quot; can be
problematized, even to cite Williams' own earlier works (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Kora in Hell, </i>certainly, but possibly also the critical prose in <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Spring &amp; All</i>) as instances
(alongside Stein's <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tender<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span>Buttons</i></span>) of the vibrant
possibilities for poetry in prose in English -- no need to turn here to <span
class=SpellE>Perse</span> or Ponge or Jacob. Yet what strikes me more deeply in
this statement is the absence of the word <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>machine</i>:
Williams does not call the poem a <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>machine
made of words</i>. Is it the audience? Is it the changing nature of the machine
itself as a social phenomenon, with </span><st1:place><span style='font-family:
 Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Europe</span></st1:place><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'> already
sunken deep into the Second World War?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>The
third assertion brings together the elements of the first two -- structure
&amp; words -- in a way that I don't think I've seen done elsewhere:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-family:Verdana'>And
thus poetic form comprises the words and its structural uses -- that character
which the structure <span class=SpellE>superadds</span> to the words their
literal meanings. But the form thus achieved becomes by that itself a
&quot;word,&quot; the most significant of all, that dominates every other word
in the poem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Williams
is drawing a distinction here between structure &amp; form. Form is the
structure of the poem <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and </i>what the
words themselves bring to the occasion. But note that, back in that first
assertion, the term structure itself has never been defined. Now, however, the
third term in this equation (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>structure +
words = form</i>) is given a very curious definition: it is not structural <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>per se* </i>but rather a kind of word, a
word in quotes, a word as hegemon to the poem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>One
could write a dissertation I suspect unpacking those two sentences -- they are
clearly the most important in this talk -- and after a (for this talk) lengthy
note in which Williams dismisses first Imagism (&quot;as a form it completely
lacked structural necessity&quot;) <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and </i>then
Objectivism (&quot;there were few successes -- or have been few, so far&quot;),
both of which miss the mark due to an allegiance, Williams thinks, to the
image, WCW himself starts to enumerate the implications of this three-part
equation:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-family:Verdana'>The
structural approach has two phases, the first the selection of forms from poems
already achieved, to <span class=SpellE>restuff</span> them with metaphysical
and other matter, and the second, to parallel the inventive impetus of other
times with structural concepts derived from our own day. The first is <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>weak, </i>the other <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>strong. </i><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Here
is my </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-family:Arial;
  mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span
 style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Quietude/Post-Avant</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'> distinction
in a nutshell. Do you think that </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span
 style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'> poets would
object if I just followed Williams from now on &amp; called them weak poets?
Even more than the invocation of Stevens earlier, Williams here seems rather to
be picking a fight. The ascendancy of New Criticism (with its explicitly
metaphysical agenda &amp; distinct fondness for &quot;<span class=SpellE>restuffing</span>&quot;
poems from other eras) is by 1941 more or less complete. Even more telling,
though, is the fact that Williams in the first of these two sentences reverses
the power relations implicit in his own formula -- it is the structural that
now dominates, which is characterized as strategic, while form is devalued as
instrumental, tactical. A poem will have form, but it is the structure that
will govern its fate. This sleight of hand can be interpreted in several
different ways, at least one of which would collapse the two terms <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>form </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>structure </i>into a synonymic whole (as did the Projectivists).<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>The
degree to which Williams is provoking his audience is inescapable in Williams'
fifth assertion:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-family:Verdana'>The weak
approach to the understanding of poetic form is typified by the teaching
attitude. Teaching -- that is, the academy -- is predominantly weak. It can't
be otherwise and this, in fact, is its strength. It rests on precedent. But
because of this it tends to arrogate to itself honors and prerogatives which,
sometimes, it does not deserve.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Harsh
words coming from a man who doesn't know the difference between <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>that</i> &amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>which</i>. Williams' argument, that weakness is teaching's strength,
sounds like something out of Sun Tzu's <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Art
of War. </i>It is worth noting here the tacit distinction Williams is making
between &quot;the academy&quot; and invention, particularly given the
relationship of science to both institutions (a relationship that, in 1941, is
soon to change with the advent of the nuclear era). Scientists draw conclusions
from nature, the evidence, <span class=GramE>facts</span>. Inventors use such
data as inputs into their creative process, one that recasts the world as they
produce new technologies, tools, processes. &quot;The academy,&quot;
specifically literary studies, only has what Williams has called &quot;poems
already achieved&quot; for its raw data, but given that humans are social &amp;
must live within historical time, this forces the academy into an ever
backwards looking role. Implicit in Williams' model -- and keep in mind that as
a physician, he has by now decades of experience as a consumer of science &amp;
user of inventions, not a scientist himself but rather a practitioner of its
effects -- is that poets are to the academy as inventors are to science. Williams
doesn't outright say this -- this assertion is one of the three unaugmented by
any note -- but I think it is unavoidable in looking at the system being
proposed here. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Predictably
the sixth &amp; penultimate numbered assertion here focuses instead on what
Williams would call strong poetry. But what is less predictable is the claim
(or concession) that he makes at the end of this paragraph:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-family:Verdana'>The
strong approach -- made through the vernacular by attention to its modulated
character, inventing from that ground to parallel the successes of the other
eras -- is relegated too often to the service of outlaws. Over long periods the
weak approach tends to culminate in the strong, establishing the peaks of
literature.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Relegated to
the service of outlaws </span></i><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman"'>-- who precisely does Williams mean by this? Whitman?
Rimbaud? <span class=GramE>Pound?</span> Blake? <span class=GramE>Futurism
&amp; dada?</span> And what precisely does he mean by <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>outlaw? </i>Is it simply a designation of outsider status, so that
Melville &amp; Dickinson might be included? Or is he suggesting something more
completely antisocial, narrowing the term down to the African arms trader &amp;
the Nazi propagandist? Again the paragraph carries no supplemental note that
might unpack these not inconsequential distinctions for us. Further, what does
Williams mean when he claims that <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>the
weak approach tends to culminate in the strong?</i> Does Williams mean, as I
think maybe he does, that a period dominated socially or institutionally by
weak poetry leads inevitably to a reaction in which strong poetry overturns the
apple cart? If so, then he is speaking in 1941 right at the outset of what will
be the most compelling period of evidence for his theory, as the Second World
War broke the connection with European modernism and allowed the American
academy to become heavily dominated by the &quot;weak&quot; poetry of New
Criticism, overthrown in the mid-'50s by the resurgence of a New American
poetry. If so, it is the moments of disruption that Williams is identifying her
as the &quot;peaks of literature.&quot; Yet the language he chooses doesn't
sound like the rhythmic alteration we associate with volcanoes -- long periods
of settling &amp; sediment punctuated by eruptions, entailing heat &amp; light.
Rather it sounds additive. That when the strong arrives (or is let in) to
supplement the weak is when such peaks occur. Although I think Williams is
clear enough elsewhere that what he thinks generally is the former, this
particular wording is ambiguous enough that it might be heard either way. &amp;
given this audience, this might represent Williams' sense of a &quot;concession,&quot;
an inclusionary gesture, however faint.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>At
this point in William's talk, his structure of presentation has been very
clear. The number paragraphs (as distinct from the supplementary notes) follow
an identifiable structure.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-family:Arial;
mso-fareast-font-family:Arial'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>1.<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>General
premise<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:6.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-family:Arial;
mso-fareast-font-family:Arial'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>2.<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Assertion: implication<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:6.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-family:Arial;
mso-fareast-font-family:Arial'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>3.<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Assertion:
implication<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:6.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.75in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-family:Arial;
mso-fareast-font-family:Arial'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>4.<span
style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Assertion:
implication, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Each
numbered paragraph after the first has two sentences exactly. The seventh &amp;
final numbered paragraph must, however, complete the arc of Williams' argument,
drawing the circle if not shut, at least to conclusion:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-family:Verdana'>New
concepts will always call for new forms and new forms demand new structures.
The basis of new poetic forms and structures will always be that age which
demands of them its fullest <span class=GramE>expression, that</span> will be
impatient of traditional limitations which conceal in their rigidities our
destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>On
one level, this is the longstanding political case against the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span
 style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Quietude<span
  class=GramE>.</span></span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span class=GramE><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>*</span></span><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>* On another,
we note that Williams has again drawn a line between form &amp; structure. On a
third, Williams here introduces a new term to the equation, <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>concepts, </i>without saying much of
anything about what a concept is in the narrow sense he is giving it here. In a
way, I think that all of the notes that follow in this talk (which, including
the three cards that accompany the typescript, is very nearly half the text)
might be read as an extension or supplement to this assertion, drawing out
specifically Williams' sense that measure is the term or dimension through
which he personally attempted to address the demand for new structures, new
forms. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>New concepts.</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman"'> </span></i><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman"'>Not, it is worth underlining here, new conditions in the
social world. Rather, it is the ideas in men &amp; women that are generated as
they confront this new raw data that Williams identifies here as the generative
force, the source of continual, unceasing change that lies at the heart of
literature. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Always call. </i>Change not
for the sake of change but rather inescapably because the world itself changes
constantly. <span class=GramE>Because the world itself <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>is change.</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>Thus
the &quot;basis of new poetic forms&quot; -- the phrase differs from Williams'
title only insofar as <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>forms </i>has
become plural &amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>new </i>is new -- is
precisely time. Social, historical time: &quot;that age <span class=GramE>which
demands of them its fullest expression.</span>&quot;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>But
in pluralizing <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>form </i>&amp; adding <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>new, </i>Williams is making a second
argument here as well. The basis of &quot;<span class=SpellE>restuffed</span>&quot;
forms, the traditional, lies exactly in a wish against the age. It's too simple
to merely call this nostalgia. Rather, it is a denial, for example, of all the
horrors of the modern, from the genocide of the Armenians at the hands of the
Turks*** to the immiseration of the Depression, the rise of the Gulag, the
advent of Hitler. On a more general or symbolic level, the traditional may even
be read as a denial of death, not in the sense of protest or
&quot;overcoming&quot; through good works, but through avoidance &amp;
pretense. Like my mother-in-law who would not allow her husband to go through
the front doors of the oncology clinic because of the word <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Cancer </i>emblazoned there. The traditional in this sense is the
&quot;hear no evil, speak no evil&quot; school of poetry, even when &amp; as it
writes of rape, murder, genocide, abuse. The pathology of this <span
class=GramE>world view</span> cannot be understated+, but Williams chooses to
do exactly that now that he is speaking at the very heart of its institutional
expression, Harvard. His conclusion is politic, even as it is unavoidable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>&quot;The
Basis of Poetic Form&quot; is not without its problems, although in my reading
these have mostly to do with Williams' failure to fully articulate a definition
of structure &amp; its relationship to form as he uses that word. I'm not
convinced that the ethics of Williams' address rises or falls on his inability
to completely untangle those two terms, but disentangling the two threads, one
of form, one of structure, could not help but throw new light not just on all
the poetries of Williams' own time, from Imagism to the cusp of the New
American poetry, but on the poetry of our time as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>* Whereas in the
famous Projectivist formula -- form is nothing more than an extension of
content -- <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>form</i> is treated as a
synonym for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>structure</i>, at least as
Williams is using the latter word here, a condition (it is worth noting) that
affords form less force than Williams assigns it in his equation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>** And why, for
example, I don't hesitate to characterize Post-Avant poetics as progressive, as
when I deploy that word to characterize the Philly poetry calendar I run on
Sundays. No matter politically to the left a poet such as Marilyn Hacker or
Carolyn Forché might be, if she chooses in her writing the &quot;traditional
limitations which conceal in their rigidities our destruction,&quot; then she
cannot be characterized as in any manner progressive, merely conflicted or
self-destructive.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>*** Why is it, after
all, that both the Kurds &amp; Iraqis oppose the presence of Turkish forces in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
  mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>Iraq</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:
"Times New Roman"'>?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>+ Indeed, it is the
very same dynamic that enables many Democratic politicians to call <span
class=GramE>themselves</span> liberal as they compromise the well-being of
their constituents &amp; health of the planet, in the pursuit of a self-deluded
realpolitik. It is the process that has given us Clintons &amp; <span
class=SpellE>Blairs</span> alike. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, June 17, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><st1:PersonName><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Van</span></i></st1:PersonName><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'> Gogh&#8217;s Ear (VGE) </span></i><span
style='font-family:Arial'>is one of those strange journals that <span
class=GramE>focuses</span> almost exclusively on the writing of poets and
authors who possess major name recognition. Indeed, a poet has a better chance to
getting into print here dead &#8211; Quentin Crisp, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Whalen, even
Marilyn Monroe &#8211; than young. It&#8217;s not that there are no younger writers here,
but for the most part those who do show up amongst the 86 contributors to <span
class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>VGE&#8217;s</i></span> second
issue are poets who have already established themselves with audiences &#8211; Anselm
Berrigan, </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-family:Arial'>Lee Ann Brown</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, Jena Osman, Edwin Torres &#8211; or who are now taking
off like rockets, such as </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-family:Arial'>kari
 edwards</span></st1:PersonName><span style='font-family:Arial'> &amp; </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Linh Dinh</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Although the journal&#8217;s
tagline is &#8220;Poetry for the New Millennium,&#8221; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>VGE
2</i> includes eight contributors whose work appeared in the Allen anthology 43
years ago: Ashbery, Blaser, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, McClure, Orlovsky, <span
class=GramE>Snyder</span> &amp; Whalen. Second generation New Americans turn up
(Berkson, Malanga, DiPrima, <span class=GramE>Notley</span>) as do a few
langpos (Bernstein, Hejinian, Perelman, moi) as well as others who fall
generally into this same post-avant territory, such as </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Tom Raworth</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, Bob Holman, Sparrow, Eileen Myles &amp; Paul
Auster. Editor </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-family:Arial'>Ian Ayres</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'>&#8217; view of American poetry is basically European,
which in practice means that the school of quietude is accorded only token
representation. I wonder what W.D. Snodgrass must think about finding his &#8220;<span
class=SpellE>Gringolandia</span>&#8221; &#8211; it&#8217;s even worse than the title sounds &#8211;
sandwiched between the writing of yours truly &amp; Gary Snyder. John Updike&#8217;s
&#8220;Trees&#8221; follows similarly on the heels of Edwin Torres&#8217; &#8220;The Theorist has no
Samba!&#8221; <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>One poem in particular first
caught my eye because I recognized the handwriting, literally, as it&#8217;s
presented on the right-hand page in holographic reproduction, the identical
text printed on the left. The poem is by<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>Allen
Ginsberg, but it doesn&#8217;t look anything like your typical Ginsberg work &amp;
indeed acknowledges its source by its title, &#8220;Lines for Creeley&#8217;s Ear&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>The whole<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>weight</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> of<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>everything</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>too</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> much<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>my</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> heart
in<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>the</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> subway<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>pounding</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>subtly</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>headache</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>from</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>
smoking<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>dizzy</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>a</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> moment<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>riding</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>uptown</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> to see<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Karmapa<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Buddha
tonite.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;
mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>One can hear what Ginsberg
is finding in Creeley&#8217;s line &#8211; <span class=GramE>that</span> almost gamelan
precision as the mind steps through the syllables, something Creeley gets not
from the Projectivists but from Zukofsky. The parameters of the project are
simple enough: quatrains with no more than four syllables &#8211; the first three
stanzas each have ten syllables, the last one 13. If you track the quatrains
even closer by syllable count*, you see that Ginsberg has done an admirable job
in creating not only a sense of variety but of aural development, starting with
two of the shortest lines, ending with three of the longest. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Ginsberg plays with some of
Creeley&#8217;s famed enjambments in the first two stanzas, but it&#8217;s interesting that
the third &#8211; when the impact of smoking is being described &#8211; seems almost the
most flat-footed. It&#8217;s an inspired, counterintuitive way to mimic tobacco&#8217;s
impact on blood pressure. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>The one line for me that
doesn&#8217;t work is the second one of the last stanza. No other line in the entire
poem contains what is so clearly two distinct aural units &amp; I suspect that Creeley,
faced with the same set of choices, might well instead have run them as two
lines &amp; to have ended with <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Buddha
tonite </i>as its own separate one-line stanza. It&#8217;s conceivable that Ginsberg
heard it as taking a longer breath before the final sweep of the last two
lines, but to end of the first word on <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>n<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span></i>&amp;</span> start the
next with <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>t </i>breaks that movement for
my ear. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Ginsberg seems to have been
similarly bothered by that final stanza. The poem appears in what I take to be
a revised form in Ginsberg&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Collected
Poems</i>. In the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Collected<span
class=GramE>, <span style='font-style:normal'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;</span>it</span></span></i> is titled simply &#8220;For
Creeley&#8217;s Ear<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>.</i>&#8221;<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'> Buddha </i>has been moved up to the third line alongside <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Karmapa, </i>with <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>tonight </i>&#8211; now spelled the traditional manner &#8211; alone on the fourth
line. The problem of the second line now tends to dissolve &#8211; it becomes a step
toward the only five syllable line in the work, with the two-syllable last line
functioning almost as a coda or bell to signal the poem&#8217;s end. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>That&#8217;s an interesting
revision, in that it does solve the problem that nagged at me from my first
reading, yet overall I think the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Collected
Poems </i>version is weaker for it. The revised version puts the climax of the
poem on the penultimate line, almost to the point where the final line seems
added on in order to avoid violating the form. In the </span><st1:PersonName><i
 style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>Van</span></i></st1:PersonName><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'> Gogh&#8217;s Ear</span></i><span
style='font-family:Arial'> variant, the weight falls on the final line &amp;
the equation of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Karmapa**</i> with <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Buddha</i> is offset by the acknowledgement
of the marketing of a public event, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>tonite</i>
being sort of the apotheosis of the spelling associated with billboard-speak.
The <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>VGE </i>version thus has layers of
meaning &amp; humor that are lost when one moves one word up a line and alters
the spelling of another. It&#8217;s a great argument for the care of the poem, for
recognizing that every character has a role. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>My sense is that neither
version quite works as well as it might, that the stumbling block of the second
line of the final stanza can&#8217;t really be addressed anywhere but in the second
line itself. It&#8217;s intriguing to watch Ginsberg make the attempt, but it&#8217;s a
mistake to have tried to resolve the issue elsewhere in the stanza. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>That Ginsberg in 1976 is
still writing what is clearly a &#8220;Creeley study&#8221; is, I think, a sign of how
little affected by his celebrity Ginsberg at least sought to be. These lines
may be <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>for</i> Creeley&#8217;s ear, but the
work itself is clearly for Ginsberg&#8217;s benefit. That we benefit also is just
part of its charm. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

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

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

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.5in'><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* Thus the syllable count of the
lines for each quatrain<span class=GramE>:</span><br>
2 &#8211; 2 &#8211; 4 &#8211; 2<br>
3 &#8211; 3 &#8211; 2 &#8211; 2<br>
2 &#8211; 3 &#8211; 2 &#8211; 3<br>
2 &#8211; 4 &#8211; 3 &#8211; 4 <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.5in'><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>** This
would have been <a href="http://www.kagyuoffice.org/kagyulineage.karmapa16.html"><span
class=SpellE>Rangjung</span> <span class=SpellE>Rigpe</span> <span
class=SpellE>Dorje</span></a>, the 16<sup>th</sup> <span class=SpellE>Gyalwang</span>
Karmapa, who traveled to the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'> in 1976.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, April 21, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.hotelamerika.net/">Hotel Amerika</a></span></i><span
style='font-family:Arial'> is the strangest new magazine I&#8217;ve come across in
some time. Published out of the English Department at Ohio University, Athens,
the first issue &#8211; dated Fall 2002 but only recently turning up in my mailbox &#8211;
has a cover image by <a
href="http://www.ppowgallery.com/artists/DavidWojnarowicz/">David Wojnarowicz</a>,
part of the late artist&#8217;s Rimbaud-in-NY series. It is not, however, the famous
image of a junky shooting up while wearing a mask of Rimbaud, but a far safer
scene, man in a Rimbaud mask standing at the edge of a body of water, a fishing
trawler foggily silhouetted against the horizon. As it turns out, this dynamic
between edgy, innovative artist and famous name-safe scene is a drama that is
enacted throughout the entire issue. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial'>Hotel Amerika </span></i><span style='font-family:
Arial'>appears expensively produced, but the visual decisions have a
quantitative feel to them, as though more were always better. The logo has a
professional design look to it, but is a little busy for a work employing just
12 letters &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Hotel </i>is san serif, the
larger, lower <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Amerika</i> is not &#8211; the <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>k </i>always is shown in a second color, for
example as gray when reproduced in black-&amp;-white. The same impulse to
excess applies to interior page design as well. Outside of work titles, the
logo is always the largest type on the 8&#189; by 11 page. Even more disconcerting,
however, is the presence of the author&#8217;s name vertically down the outside
margin in lower case italics:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>n</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>a</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>t</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>h</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>a</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>n</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=SpellE><span
class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:
Arial'>i</span></i></span></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>e</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>l</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>m</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>a</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>c</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>k</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>e</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'><span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>y</span></i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>This distracting &amp;
difficult to decipher device is skipped on the title page for each work, where
the author&#8217;s name appears above a gray bar in which the title is set in
drop-out type. If nothing else, the design should be an incentive for future
contributors to submit their most concise pieces. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>The contributors to the
first issue are no less overdone. <span class=GramE>Poetry from John Hollander
&amp; Charles Wright, but also from Nate Mackey &amp; Rachel Blau DuPlessis.</span>
As well as Diane Wakoski, John Ashbery, Susan Griffin, Hugh Seidman, Jean
Valentine &amp; Colette Inez. <span class=GramE>Fiction from Guy Davenport
&amp; <span class=SpellE>Alyce</span> Miller.</span> Essays by Charles
Bernstein &amp; Andrea Dworkin &#8211; that&#8217;s a combination worth thinking about &#8211; as
well as by Carol Bly &amp; Phillip Lopate. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Finally, there is a category
in the table of contents called Prose Poetry / Short Prose, which includes
Lawrence Fixel, Eduardo Galeano, Rosmarie Waldrop, <span class=GramE>Tom</span>
Andrews &amp; Killarney Clary. As a grouping, this is the one category in this
issue that makes sense. Not because Clary or Galeano are doing anything
remotely similar to Waldrop or Fixel or Andrews, but because the parameters of
the genre (at least as defined here) are such that it raises issues that one
can see being worked out in consistently interesting, if different, ways. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Given where she usually
publishes, Clary might be seen as part of the new quietude, but in having to
work through her impressionistic &amp; deeply personal pieces in prose rather
than verse, she forces herself to a formal rigor that&#8217;s uncharacteristic of
that scene: <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:justify'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>As she
woke from her screaming dream she heard her voice &#8211; a weak, worthless gasp,
little more than air. On that seam she heard herself before her shame &#8211; an odd
shame in the dark alone as she was &#8211; before leaving into sleep, before leaving
on the liner from the quay with her parcels. We test goodbye new every time, to
tear out a few stitches, to measure what enters.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'><a
href="http://www.beginnerbikes.com/pages/addendum.htm">Andrews</a> is the sort
of comic poet who would have done fabulously living in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>New York City</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, hanging out with 3<sup>rd</sup> &amp; 4<sup>th</sup>
gen St. Marks poets, but who instead did the small city MFA &amp; tenure route
until he died way too young from a rare blood disorder. The curious result is
that Andrews is a well-known poet, but not by the readers who would probably
have appreciated him best. It would be interesting to see his work set
alongside the likes of, say, Joe Brainard or Tom Veitch or an Actualist such as
Darrell Gray. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'><a
href="http://www.drunkenboat.com/db2/fixel/glimmers.html">Lawrence Fixel</a> in
some respects is the really great presence in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Hotel Amerika.</i> At 85, Fixel has been a quiet &#8211; indeed almost silent
&#8211; presence on the </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>San
  Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-family:Arial'> scene
for at least five decades, coming to readings, sitting in back, saying little
or nothing, leaving as soon as the events were over. His own prose works, which
have appeared in little magazines &amp; small volumes also for decades, may
have started out of an interest in surrealism but have evolved into a
meditative terrain all their own. In some respects, Fixel, who is characterized
as a &#8220;guardian spirit&#8221; by David Lazar in a prefatory editorial note, may be the
one poet included in this issue not because he (or she) was a &#8220;name.&#8221; <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Andrews has five works in <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Hotel Amerika</i> while Fixel has four &#8211;
and, if anything, the magazine would have been stronger had it included more of
their writing &amp; had fewer cameo appearances by more famous names. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>From the perspective of a reader,
the disparate hodge-podge of writers comes across as a lack of editorial
vision. The absence of an articulated aesthetic stance most clearly impacts the
poetry. On the plus side, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Hotel Amerika </i>includes
Rachel Blau DuPlessis&#8217; &#8220;<a
href="http://www.hotelamerika.net/pastissues/v1n1/duplessis.html">Draft 53:
Eclogue</a>.&#8221; It&#8217;s absolutely worth reading &#8211; this is true for every section of
that <span class=GramE>work</span> &#8211; and is reprinted in full on the website.
And it&#8217;s good to see Hugh Seidman &amp; Diane Wakoski given ample space for
their poems as well. But John Hollander&#8217;s offering of what can only be called
an <a href="http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/cat57.html">Armand Schwerner</a>
imitation, &#8220;Antique Fragments,&#8221; is a howler even by Hollander&#8217;s standards. Here
is the <span class=SpellE><span class=GramE>VII<sup>th</sup></span></span><span
class=GramE> <span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;</span>and</span> final section:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>This boat that holds us near
the edge of the lake<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Has quickly run over the
evening water<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Now <span class=GramE>[ .</span>
. . ] at rest [ . . . ] rocking [ . . . ]<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>I am in your arms [. . <span
class=GramE>. ]</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Our
lives in the arms of the waves.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>If the sentimentality of
those final lines <span class=GramE>are</span> intended to be satiric, they
fall so far short of Schwerner&#8217;s far more comic, erudite &amp; pointed <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tablets </i>as to be embarrassing. What is
even more startling, I suspect, is the idea of Hollander imitating Schwerner in
the first place. It has even occurred to me that Hollander might <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>not </i>be imitating Schwerner, however
badly, &amp; that maybe Hollander doesn&#8217;t know Schwerner&#8217;s work. That would be
a far more damning conclusion. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>As is often enough the case
when new journals start with a burst of name writers &amp; no clear direction
like this, it may be that <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Hotel <span
class=SpellE>Amerika&#8217;s</span></i> actual aesthetics won&#8217;t become evident for a
few issues. Looking at the table of contents for the second issue posed on the
website, only one of the ten or so names I recognize, John <span class=SpellE>Latta</span>,
isn&#8217;t associated with the school of quietude unless one includes the right-wing
author, Mario Vargas <span class=SpellE>Llosa</span>. All in all, it&#8217;s a
curious mix, even more so perhaps because George Hartley is on the masthead as
a contributing editor. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, November 23, 2002</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
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<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-84966934' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Ruth Lilly, heir to the Eli
Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, has made a donation to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Poetry</i> magazine estimated to be worth at least $100 million. It&#8217;s
an interesting proposition, not nearly as random in nature as some of those who
have publicly bewailed her foolishness have suggested, and is likely to set off
any number of consequences, intended and otherwise. Let&#8217;s cast a cold eye at
the facts:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial'>Poetry </span></i><span style='font-family:Arial'>is
a monthly magazine that has been around for some 90 years, currently with a
subscription base of about 10,000, down some 20 percent from its </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>high point</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'> of a few years back.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-family:Arial'>Its current
annual budget of around $65,000 enables it to actually print over 100,000
individual copies of the magazine per year and employ a staff of four, a record
of frugality that is worth noting (though subsidized by such things as free
rent and, I believe, academic salaries).<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-family:Arial'>For the past 33
years, since the sudden death of then-editor Henry Rago, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Poetry </i>has been merely one of several larger publications
associated with what I&#8217;ve been calling the school of quietude, no better, <span
class=GramE>no</span> worse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial'>Poetry&#8217;s </span></i><span style='font-family:Arial'>fabled
beginning as the official publication of American modernism, of which much has
been made, is to some degree a myth &#8211; a look at any early issues that do not
reflect the somewhat overbearing assistance of Ezra Pound shows the publication
to have almost always been at heart muddled in the middle of the road, with a
bias toward the conservative. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-family:Arial'>There was a
period of greater diversity and experimentation between the late 1940s, when
Hayden Carruth &amp; Karl Shapiro were briefly in the editor&#8217;s role, &amp;
Rago&#8217;s death in 1969 &#8211; particularly during the latter half of Rago&#8217;s 1955-69
tenure &#8211; but was something of an aberration in its history.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list .75in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-family:Arial'>During that
brief period &#8211; 1962 through &#8217;69 &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>actually
achieved for a brief moment what its editors seem always to have envisioned as
the magazine&#8217;s true role, as the closest thing possible to &#8220;the publication of
record&#8221; for American verse culture. During this period, it was where poets of
all stripe would invariably send the poems they envisioned as the title pieces
for their next works. It not only published the best of everybody, but did so
with a balance that reflected a much larger vision of American poetry. Let&#8217;s
look at three representative issues from that period:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo4;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial'><span style='mso-list:
Ignore'>1.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span class=GramE><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>October ,</span></b></span><b
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'> 1965</span></b><span
style='font-family:Arial'>. The issue is devoted to a single poem, Louis
Zukofsky&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>&#8220;A&#8221;</i>-14, Beginning <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>An.</i> In addition, there are three
reviews: one of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>All</i> by Robert
Creeley; a second review of the same book by &#8220;Thomas&#8221; Clark (not yet Tom,
although already poetry editor of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The
Paris Review</i>); a review of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Bottom </i>and
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>After <span class=SpellE><span
class=GramE>I&#8217;s</span></span></i> by Gerard Malanga. Finally, there is an
article on Blake by Zukofsky, &#8220;Pronounced <span class=SpellE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Golgonoozà</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>.&#8221; </i>Is the publication you associate with <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Poetry </i>today?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo4;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial'><span style='mso-list:
Ignore'>2.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial'>March, 1967</span></b><span style='font-family:Arial'>.
A general issue. The lead poet on the cover is Denise Levertov, listed next to
the title of her poem, &#8220;A Vision.&#8221; Also on the top portion of the cover with
their works more or less listed are, in this order, John Logan, Tom (now it&#8217;s
Tom) Clark, John Woods, Thomas McGrath &amp; Edward Dorn (&#8220;The Sundering U.P.
Tracks,&#8221; one of his finest poems). On the center of the cover, six other poets
are listed without mention of titles: Barry <span class=SpellE>Spacks</span>,
Etta Blum, James L. Weil (a fine poet in the Corman tradition, better
remembered today as the publisher of Elizabeth Press books), John <span
class=SpellE>Ingwersen</span> (&#8220;his first appearance anywhere&#8221; according to the
contributor&#8217;s note), Louise Gluck and Frank Samperi. There are also five
critical articles by Laurence Lieberman, Hayden Carruth, </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Don</span></st1:PersonName><span style='font-family:
Arial'>ald W. Baker, Robert Sward, and Philip <span class=SpellE>Legler</span>.
These reviews cover some 19 books of poetry, ranging from Richard <span
class=SpellE>Lattimore</span> to Harriet <span class=SpellE>Zinnes</span>.
Sward&#8217;s review includes, in addition to a volume by Keith Wilson, three books
published by Aram Saroyan&#8217;s Lines Editions, by Richard <span class=SpellE>Kolmar</span>,
John Perrault and Clark Coolidge. Levertov &amp; Logan, Woods &amp; Dorn, <span
class=SpellE>Spacks</span> &amp; Weil &#8211; this is an almost panoptic view of
American poetry. The Sward review, which infamously slam&#8217;s Coolidge&#8217;s <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Flag Flutter &amp; U.S. Electric</i>
(&#8220;slippery sort of instant poetry,&#8221; &#8220;a psychedelic outpouring,&#8221; verbal
hop-scotch,&#8221; &#8220;an inspired centipede,&#8221; &#8220;no actual imagination&#8221; &#8220;a dead-end,&#8221; &#8220;<i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>chic, </i>trivial piling up of images,&#8221;<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span>&#8220;finally a bore,&#8221; &#8220;irrelevant preening,&#8221;
&#8220;self devouring cuteness,&#8221; &#8220;virtually without voice,&#8221; &#8220;nothing of any human
urgency,&#8221; &#8220;pointless curios&#8221;) is entitled &#8220;Landscape and Language,&#8221; the first
use of that latter noun in association with Coolidge or any of the langpos yet
to be. While Sward&#8217;s piece is hysterically (&amp; historically) wrong in its
view of Coolidge as a dead-end, the willingness of the publication to offer
such partisan fare differs sharply from <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry&#8217;s</i>
current approach to the post-avant world, one of benign neglect, acting as
though it simply does not exist. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo4;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial'><span style='mso-list:
Ignore'>3.<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial'>January, 1969</span></b><span style='font-family:
Arial'>. Another general issue. Just two poets listed alongside the titles of
their contributions in this issue, Kenneth Koch (&#8220;Sleeping with Women&#8221;) and
Helen Singer. Then <span class=GramE>comes</span> the first of two clusters of
other poets: Philip Booth, Anselm Hollo, Larry Eigner, David <span
class=SpellE>Galler</span> &amp; Lewis <span class=SpellE>Turco</span>. That&#8217;s
quite a quintet. The second group includes four poets making first appearances:
Mitchell Goodman (the novelist &amp; then still married to Levertov), Stephen <span
class=SpellE>Dobyns</span>, Hugh <span class=SpellE>Seidman</span> and &#8220;Ronald&#8221;
(yes!) <span class=GramE>Silliman,</span> identified in the contributor&#8217;s notes
as a sophomore at &#8220;</span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>San Francisco</span></st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>College</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span
style='font-family:Arial'>&#8221; (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>sic</i>) and
a postal clerk. Ralph J. Mills has the entire critical section in which he
actually reviews 30 books &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>just try to
imagine that as a project </i>&#8211; a strategy to reviewing that was not uncommon
at <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>during the 1960s.
Contributing Editor Hugh Kenner has a letter, correcting a detail from an
earlier article on Pound. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>This last issue appeared
just before Rago&#8217;s death, which occurred while he was taking time off to write,
leaving &#8220;Visiting Editor&#8221; Daryl <span class=SpellE>Hine</span> (a Canadian old
formalist) to accidentally inherit the journal and take it rightward with a vengeance.*<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I go on at some length here
to make a point. Putting Kenneth Koch along side Helen Singer, or Louise Gluck
on the same line as Frank Samperi is an act of radically representing the
breadth of American poetry on a scale that has not even been attempted in the
33 years since Henry Rago died. While there certainly are a lot of little
magazines, especially around colleges, that will publish poetry of any stripe,
none do so with any sense of shape as to the broader whole, even if that vision
is understood as the editor&#8217;s first responsibility. And without that sense of
shape, they also lack the potential for impact.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>It is worth noting that this
broad view was still the image of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>that
lingered for some time after Rago&#8217;s passing &#8211; indeed, it was still the image of
the magazine back when Ruth Lilly was submitting her poems to then associate
editor Joseph Parisi. If the publication today is viewed as sleepy &amp;
harmless, a narrow journal that drifts between the sclerotic &amp; the
bathetic, it was not (and need not be) always thus.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>If <span class=SpellE>Hine&#8217;s</span>
takeover was accidental, so in a way is the Lilly endowment &#8211; while it was not
an accident that Lilly chose <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry, </i>the
publication appears not to have planned for such a gift. $100 million might do
a lot. But let&#8217;s take a look at what it will <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>not </i>do &#8211; change the balance of power between the two primary
traditions in American literature. The mainstream will continue to have all the
resources. The Whitman-Dickinson / Pound-Williams-Stein-Zukofsky / New American
tradition will continue to have all the poetry &amp; fun. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>What it is much more likely
to do is to radically transform the power relations <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>within </i>the school of quietude. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>APR
</i>and all the other pretenders to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry&#8217;s</i>
role as the hegemonic &#8220;mainstream&#8221; journal of verse are now cast as
establishment subalterns, a curious phenomenon indeed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Parisi, to his credit, seems
&#8211; if his public statements are any indication &#8211; to understand that this changes
his role dramatically. He is now the CEO of the largest poetry non-profit
organization in the world, a role that may well soon preclude his editing a
journal that is sure to be only one of many Modern Poetry Association projects.
Parisi himself is already talking about teaching institutes, high school
programs, and a line of books. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I have seen the word
&#8220;horror&#8221; used to describe the potential of a generation of high school students
introduced to American poetry through the vision of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Poetry</i> magazine as it is currently edited. But I don&#8217;t agree. It
hardly matters what poetry a teenager is introduced to if they have, at some
point, that &#8220;aha&#8221; experience that will set them off to be serious readers &amp;
possible writers of poetry for the rest of their lives. The absolute number of
post-avant writers who themselves began as students of the most reactionary
professors imaginable makes it quite clear that, if these students are going to
find their way, they will do so as people always do, on their own. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>So even in the worse case
scenario, one in which <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>&amp;
the Modern Poetry Association acquire pseudo-state status over many
institutions of poetry, rather like the role of the Red Cross in medicine, it
is likely to have very little impact on the post-avant world that I inhabit,
and the poetry about which I care most deeply. In this sense, it is a
non-event. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>If anything, simply the need
to expand its horizons in order to make use of such sudden abundance, <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>might even take a step or two back
in the direction of Henry Rago&#8217;s heyday. One obvious first task would be to
hire a new full-time editor for the magazine so that Parisi can turn his
attention full-time to the institution building tasks that are now on his plate
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>whether he wants them there or not.</i>
It would be great &#8211; even utopian &#8211; if he were to hire somebody with the breadth
and vision for American verse that Rago had and who would stretch the magazine
beyond its current narrow confines. C.D. Wright would be an stellar example of
such a person, but even in <span class=SpellE>Parisi&#8217;s</span> own back yard he
can find Paul Hoover and Maxine <span class=SpellE>Chernoff</span>, <span
class=GramE>whose</span> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New American
Writing</i> for over 20 years has done a far better job at representing its
subject than <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry. <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>

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

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* </span></i><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>It was Rago, not <span class=SpellE>Hine</span>, who
accepted my work for publication. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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