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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, March 06, 2007</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><st1:country-region><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Jordan&#8217;s note to the comments stream regarding my note about <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>was short, but to the point:<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'>Never mind the names &#8211; any <i>work</i> in the issue you'd consider major? <br>
<br>
I nominate Marcella Durand's lyric essay.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s a good question. I found myself sympathizing also with the commentators who bemoaned the difficulty of &#8220;keeping up&#8221; with journals in an era of shit distribution, increasing reliance on web publishing &amp; still way too many print magazines. <span class=GramE>Even as I get notes every week as to &#8220;where should I send my work?&#8221; from two or three blog readers here.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I get 20 books in the mail on a slow week these days. Of these, somewhere between seven &amp; ten deserve some serious attention. And I&#8217;m lucky if I get to half of those. It would be very easy indeed to become overwhelmed with guilt because I didn&#8217;t read your book, or his book, or her book, or that stack over there, three freaking feet tall next to the exploding eight-foot tall bookcase that contains the unread books that fit into the &#8220;deserve serious attention&#8221; category. And I can understand why friends of mine in the bookstore industry often treat their wares as if it <span class=GramE>were</span> shit &#8211; it&#8217;s really a defense against that overwhelming guilt. There&#8217;s a tale that </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Milton</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> was the last man to have read all the available literature in his time, but I suspect that&#8217;s apocryphal. I suspect that that had already become impossible. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>So what does one do? <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>There are of course many more ways than one to read a text simply front to back the way you were taught in preschool. <span class=GramE>Just as there different ways to go to a museum or to look at a work of visual art.</span> It&#8217;s perfectly reasonable to go to a museum and to sit in front of a single painting or sculpture all day long, just as it is to walk rapidly through gallery after gallery, letting the paintings sweep over you in waves &amp; clusters. That is at least as valid as the zombies you see at these palaces of visual culture with the Official Story literally hanging from their neck &amp; plugged into their ears, wandering from numbered work to numbered work, missing everything else. <span class=GramE>Or trailing a half-trained docent.</span> Is there anyone who goes to a museum just to look at a single detail &#8211; a corner of a Rothko, or the way the registration of paint doesn&#8217;t quite fit the lips in one of Warhol&#8217;s Marilyn multiples? I don&#8217;t see why not. One can learn a lot this way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>There are, looking in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions&#8217; </i>25<sup>th</sup> anniversary number, several poets whom I do tend always to read straight through &#8211; Rosmarie Waldrop, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Clark Coolidge, Forrest Gander, Robert Kelly, C.D. Wright &#8211; as well as a number of others whom I tend to read a lot. But even with these poets, it&#8217;s not always <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>how </i>I read them when I&#8217;m going through a magazine. For example, Peter Gizzi has a longish piece here, five pages, that <span class=GramE>is</span> quite unlike much of his other poetry, entitled &#8220;Vincent, Homesick for the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Land</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'>Pictures</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>.&#8221; Gizzi&#8217;s work often starts from a take on the work of poets, mostly New Americans, around which he constructs often dazzling meta-commentaries. &#8220;Vincent,&#8221; tho, doesn&#8217;t immediately suggest such an approach and is composed instead of 14 stanzas, each of 11 lines, long lines at that. Reading a stanza in the middle, I start to count out the feet, ten here, twelve there, until I ascertain that there isn&#8217;t a fixed pattern at this level as well. I go back to the beginning, which starts, literally, with a rhetorical question and realize that there is no way on earth I would ever complete this poem if it were by someone whose name I had never heard of before, my distaste for this relic of the 19<sup>th</sup> century is so strong. It is noteworthy, I think, that the rhetorical question &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Is this what you intended, Vincent<br> 
that we take our rest at the end of the grove<br>
nestled into our portion beneath the bird&#8217;s migration<br>
saying, who and how am I made better through struggle.<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'>&#8211; itself contains an interior question, yet neither invokes or otherwise seems to warrant the actual deployment of a question mark. Gizzi wants to put the reader into a particular style of discomfort, which is consistent not only with the next question, but the remainder of the stanza itself:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Or why am I <span class=SpellE>I</span> inside this empty arboretum<br>
this inward spiral of whoop ass and vision<br>
the leafy vine twisting and choking the tree.<br>
O, dear heaven, if you are indeed that<br>
or if you can indeed hear what I might say<br>
heal me and grant me laughter&#8217;s bounty<br>
of eyes and smiles, of eyes and affection.<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'>How is it, in the middle of all this self-consciously stilted language, does a phrase like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>whoop ass and vision </i>suddenly show up? Otherwise, the stanza reads like a translation, deliberately so. Gizzi&#8217;s poetry often pushes &amp; prods the reader, but this one seems instead to want to smother him or her. Gizzi very much to knows what he wants &amp; what he&#8217;s doing here, but it&#8217;s not a journey I&#8217;m personally comfortable taking. I read &amp; think through the first two pages, but don&#8217;t complete the piece. But I don&#8217;t feel as tho I &#8220;haven&#8217;t read it,&#8221; tho in some sense that&#8217;s exactly the case.<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'>Another piece that seems to me no less problematic is &#8220;Realm of Ends&#8221; by Ann Lauterbach. I like Ann personally a great deal &amp; trust her sense &#8211; one shared by several other poets in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions, </i>including Gander &amp; Wright &#8211; that there can be a middle road between the New Americans &amp; the traditionalism of the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, that one can have literally the best of both worlds without necessarily being torn apart by the contradictions. &#8220;Realm of Ends&#8221; immediately raises this same specter for me that Gizzi&#8217;s choice of dramatic monolog invokes. It is narrative to the point where I could imagine hearing Danny Glover read it aloud on NPR&#8217;s salute to fiction, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.symphonyspace.org/genres/shorts_static.php?id=31"><span style='color:black'>Selected Shorts</span></a>:</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Francis turns. He has something to say. He has an<br> 
announcement. He says, &#8220;Snow in summer&#8221; and falls silent.<br>
<br>
<span class=GramE>A single egg in the nest.</span> Francis turns.<br>
It is not metaphysical; it is merely distraction.<br>
<br>
Time passes. The nest is empty.<br>
<span class=GramE>The snow, bountiful.</span> A girl dedicates her last weeks<br>
<br>
to a show of force. She writes gracefully about force.<br>
Francis turns. He seems weak and small and without volition.<br>
<br>
Thus the bird lands on his head.<br>
Thus there are radiant seconds.<br>
<br>
Is it reliable? Not the garden. Not the bed.<br>
The streaming elocution is more or less prosaic.<br>
<br>
The bird lifts up onto the bare branch.<br>
The tree, an elm, is dying, almost dead.<br>
<br>
Francis is indifferent, but the bird, a cardinal<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
shines on the barren branch.<br>
<br>
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tit <span class=SpellE>tit</span> <span class=SpellE>tittit</span> tit </i><span class=GramE>hovers</span> the weary pragmatist.<br>
It is hoped, by Francis and the rest, that she<br>
<br>
cannot know heartbreak, not<br>
the melodrama of the nest&#8217;s margin of error. <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'>Here Lauterbach&#8217;s mastery of line and stanza fascinate me &amp; carry me past my initial flinch at the recognition of a narrative so symbolic that I want to cringe at a phrase like &#8220;weary pragmatist&#8221; characterizing a bird, recognizing the Catholic undertone in the choice of a cardinal, just as, at this moment, I think Lauterbach wants the reader to at least entertain the idea that this may be Francis of Assisi. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The person I immediately think of here, curiously enough, is the late William Bronk, whom I think of as the master  of the line that contains within it multiple sentences with their inevitable full stops &#8211; it&#8217;s the point in Bronk&#8217;s work where he gets closest also to the Oppen of <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Of</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> Being Numerous, </i>the nearest Bronk gets to Objectivism as an overall program. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>This puts me into an interesting position &#8211; Lauterbach is doing things narratively here I would almost never bother to read &#8211; it&#8217;s a model of the tale I inherently think of as false because it excludes too much, leaving us only the threads she wants to remain, more suitable to a motion picture (where the camera raises problems of containment poetry never need confront) than to a poem &#8211; but Lauterbach is also doing things to line and stanza that completely draw me in. I read the whole poem &#8211; the section above is just the first of six &#8211; feeling this push-pull dynamic the entire way. At the end I feel that Lauterbach has had her way with me, gotten me to do things I don&#8217;t generally like to do, <span class=GramE>gotten</span> me even to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>enjoy it. </i>It&#8217;s exhausting and brilliant, but it leaves me feeling upset at the same time, not just because of what occurs in the narrative, but because of the narrative itself &#8211; this poem would make a great short film, tho perhaps one only <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman"><span style='color:black'>Ingmar Bergman</span></a> could have directed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>So in this manner I proceed through <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions</i>, mostly skipping the <span class=SpellE>fictioneers</span> to whom I may or may not come back later. Are there works here that are <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>major, </i>at least in the way I presume that </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Jordan</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> must mean? I&#8217;m not sure that&#8217;s the role of a journal. There <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>are </i>works that are entirely new in what they&#8217;re doing, including (as </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Jordan</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> suggests) Marcella Durand&#8217;s work, though I wouldn&#8217;t call it a &#8220;lyric essay&#8221; so much as meditative. Jonathan Lethem has a piece that bristles with brilliance from beginning to end. Called &#8220;Their Back Pages,&#8221; this short story, which has more akin to the work of fiction of Thomas Pynchon (young Pynchon at that) than to other work I&#8217;ve previously read by Lethem, is not unmindful of the allusion to Dylan, as this inserted poem, clearly &#8220;to the tune&#8221; of &#8220;Woody&#8217;s Song,&#8221; Dylan&#8217;s very first effort at writing, testifies:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Say, Keener Dingbat, I wrote you a poem<br>
On a funny old island where much has gone wrong<br>
Sit right back and you&#8217;ll hear of my love<br>
For coiled scribbled hair and your spidery legs<br>
Not so spidery though as the giant spider I killed<br>
To protect you, my love, but should I have let it eat<br>
Your husband and kids and that wretched vile clown?<br>
Oh, Keener Dingbat, you&#8217;re haunting my days<br>
I see you in the pale lagoon and at the hidden spring<br>
I seek you<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>like a sheriff hunting a walnut oh shit<br>
I stole that line, I can&#8217;t help myself, I steal everything, I am<br>
Your Villain,<br>
<span class=SpellE>Murkly</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It is worth noting that everything above is immediately apparent and relevant from the perspective of the story as a whole. <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'>Another work that jumps out at me here is by <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/welish/"><span style='color:black'>Marjorie Welish</span></a>, yet another of the </span><st1:Street><st1:address><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Third Way</span></st1:address></st1:Street><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> poets. Written in numbered sections a la Lauterbach, but centered on the page in the manner of Michael McClure, &#8220;Isle of the Signatories,&#8221; plays with narrative, literature (from Virgil to <span class=SpellE>Artaud</span>), pop culture, <span class=GramE>ontology</span> &amp; much more all at once. Here are the first three, of eleven, sections. Be sure to read at least the first aloud:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
<br>
The following lines were omitted:<br>
<br>
Even in </span><st1:place><span class=SpellE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Arcady</span></span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> I exist<br>
e-signature in whose writings<br>
lie the body<br>
or its facsimile<br>
Et in arcadia, I also, </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Pierre</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
Saw &#8220;</span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Pierre</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8221; there also.<br>
<br>
<br>
<span class=GramE>2.</span><br>
<br>
The following lines were omitted:<br>
<br>
I, too, have known </span><st1:place><span class=SpellE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Arcady</span></span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
Name, signature<br>
Here lie<br>
Ego&#8217;s avatars also<br>
I, Jacques <span class=SpellE>Rivière</span>,<br>
The lie:<br>
Fabrication requires a thinker, he said.<br>
Whereas, he went on, attempting to think<br>
Any thought, yet<br>
<br>
Attempting to think henceforth<br>
As a text though ex <span class=SpellE>temporare</span><br>
All were reprinted<br>
With the lyric effect<br>
His and &#8220;there is&#8221;<br>
By adverting to the effect.<br>
<br>
<br>
<span class=GramE>3.</span><br>
<br>
The following lines were omitted, probably deliberately:<br>
<br>
I, <span class=SpellE>Marni</span> Nixon, unpaginated<br>
&#8212;spacing.<br>
And the corrected typescript<br>
At a table, as a text<br>
Attempting to think henceforth<br>
To think as the corrected typescript would think<br>
through the lyric effect<br>
incited to rhetoric where structure has been.<br>
<br>
Followed by an additional line<span class=GramE>:</span><br>
<br>
I, writing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8220;Isle of the Signatories&#8221; has one characteristic I associate with all great literature &#8211; it makes me madly jealous that I didn&#8217;t write it. At what level is <span class=GramE>this a</span> discussion of death&#8217;s immanence in writing? Or of the &#8220;ghost&#8221; in so much movie music that was <span class=SpellE>Marni</span> Nixon (check out her career). <span class=GramE>Or the role of the editor in the text, which is how I read <span class=SpellE>Rivière&#8217;s</span> presence here?</span> If this poem is characteristic of what Welish is doing these days, she has clearly moved to a new level in her already quite significant career. This is a poem that not only ensures that I will read it completely, but that I will now have to go read &amp; reread her most recent books. As Lethem&#8217;s <span class=SpellE>Murkly</span> might put it, something is happening here and there&#8217;s only one way to find out. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, March 01, 2007</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:black'><img height="273" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/mtPNdJh65Hyc1AZOAbs6FNSPng35fDylUXqpdsd7gcYIb87YoA96Hd8ooNZnLCUhp_MeQUNsJ8iyFED3xnk4mw2t%3Ds0-d" width="178"><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It is a sign of a considerable amount of editorial confidence for a literary journal, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>any</i> literary journal, to start running three poems by John Ashbery on page 319. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.conjunctions.com/"><span style='color:black'>Conjunctions</span></a> </i>can do it for its 25<sup>th</sup> anniversary issue because <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>(a) <span style='mso-tab-count:1'> &nbsp;</span>it&#8217;s an all-star issue, even by the standards of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions, </i>which has been the best literary review in American now for pretty much all of its 25 years; <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>(b) &nbsp;<span style='mso-tab-count:1'> </span>the lead-off position is already inhabited by Jonathan Lethem; <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.75in;text-indent:-.25in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>(c) &nbsp;<span style='mso-tab-count:1'> </span>319 <span class=GramE>is</span> still 97 pages ahead of where John <span class=SpellE>Barth&#8217;s</span> latest work turns up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The table of contents for this issue is simply intimidating. It includes, in the following order: </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Jonathan Lethem; Ann Lauterbach; Jim <span class=SpellE>Crace</span>; Peter Gizzi; Joanna Scott; Valerie Martin; Robert <span class=SpellE>Antoni</span>; Lydia Davis; Robert Kelly; Howard Norman; Edie <span class=SpellE>Meidav</span>; Clark Coolidge; Marcella Durand; C.D. ; Wright; Christopher Sorrentino; Joyce Carol Oates; Reginald Shepherd; Rosmarie Waldrop; Elizabeth Robinson; Peter Dale Scott; William H. <span class=SpellE>Gass</span>; <span class=SpellE>Micheline</span> <span class=SpellE>Aharonian</span> <span class=SpellE>Marcom</span>; Can <span class=SpellE>Xue</span>; Martine <span class=SpellE>Bellen</span>; Marjorie <span class=SpellE>Welish</span>; Edmund White; <span class=SpellE>Rikki</span> <span class=SpellE>Ducornet</span>; Jonathan Carroll; Peter Straub; John Ashbery; Barbara Guest; Keith Waldrop; Maureen Howard; Lynne Tillman; Rick Moody; Julia Elliott; Rae Armantrout; Lyn Hejinian; Forrest Gander; Jessica <span class=SpellE>Hagedorn</span>; Brenda <span class=SpellE>Coultas</span>; Scott Geiger; Diane Williams; John <span class=SpellE>Barth</span>; and Will Self.<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 regards to poetry, that&#8217;s an interesting list in &amp; of itself. It includes two masters of the New Americans Poetry (NAP) (Ashbery &amp; Guest), four poets from the generation immediately following the New Americans (Kelly, both <span class=SpellE>Waldrops</span>, Peter Dale Scott), three langpos (Coolidge, Armantrout, Hejinian), several &#8220;third way&#8221; or elliptical poets (Wright, Lauterbach, <span class=SpellE>Welish</span>, Gander), one identarian (<span class=SpellE>Hagedorn</span>), even one School of Quietude writer (Shepherd), plus several younger poets of the post-langpo variety (Gizzi, Durand, Robinson, <span class=SpellE>Bellen</span>, <span class=SpellE>Coultas</span>). That&#8217;s the kind of broad-spectrum inclusion one used to associate with <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>magazine during the later years of Henry <span class=SpellE>Rago&#8217;s</span> tenure there. I wouldn&#8217;t be at all surprised to discover that several of these poets also treat <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>much the way writers did <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>in those years as well, by saving their best, or at least favorite, poems for the journal. It doesn&#8217;t matter all that much that Shepherd might not be one of the SoQ poets I would think to pick if I were making an effort to show that tendency off to its best advantage (tho it's not his first appearance in the journal's pages), or that <span class=SpellE>Hagedorn&#8217;s</span> contribution is fiction. Rather, Brad Morrow is doing what good editors do best: he is giving us a path through poetry that shows how one might choose to read each of these writers &amp; kinds of writing. The issue as a whole can be read as an argument, or even as a jigsaw puzzle. Morrow is showing us how, for him, these pieces fit together. <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'>He is also offering us a series of values as well. With the exception of Shepherd, really all of the other poets included, even <span class=SpellE>Hagedorn</span>, fall into the broad post-avant tradition. But Morrow is not without his commitments here also. There&#8217;s no visual poetry, none of the politically inflected documentation oriented poetics that one saw around a journal like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Chain </i>(tho one might make the case that Peter Dale Scott is a direct antecedent to such)<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, </i>nor the pure-play conceptual poetics, say, of a Kenny Goldsmith or Christian Bök. With the exception of the langpos &amp; Peter Dale Scott, the poets are uniformly from the East Coast. The New American <span class=GramE>are</span> both </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. Someone who knew poetry, but had no information about <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>or Morrow per se, could probably place its editorial address within 50 miles. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I would suspect that one could trace a very similar set of values through the prose work here as well. <span class=SpellE>Gass</span>, White &amp; <span class=SpellE>Barth</span> may be among the most honored fiction writers of the past half century, but they&#8217;re all decidedly High Lit &amp; with more than a little of the Pomo about them. Oates is deceiving because she often looks like a conventional writer, but she produces so much work so quickly (a trait she shares with Robert Kelly) &amp; her writing always bristles with ideas &amp; a superb ear (ditto Kelly again, but one might also say much the same about Stephen King, who <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>would </i>be a surprise to find here). Jonathan Lethem is a present-tense fiction superstar, the way <span class=SpellE>Barth</span> was in the 1970s, &amp;, also like <span class=SpellE>Barth</span>, is a writer whose intellectual ambition is almost without bound. Lydia Davis is very possibly the best writer of short fiction since Borges or Kafka. Although she received a MacArthur a couple of years ago, she&#8217;s still on my list of most under-celebrated writers of my generation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I&#8217;ve tended &#8211; this may be my own bias showing through here &#8211; to imagine that Morrow&#8217;s editorial vision has always been so strong because he got it not so much in grad school as he did in the book business itself, buying &amp; selling books &amp; archives. How much should one credit Morrow&#8217;s co-founder Kenneth Rexroth, whose own allegiances to the New Americans, for example, were not with the New York School (nor, for that matter, with the Projectivists, the other NAP tendency one is apt to find in these pages albeit not so directly in this issue&#185;, at least not after Creeley ran off with his wife), and who died basically the same year <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>was founded? It&#8217;s easy to forget that Morrow was not already a successful novelist when this project began &amp; that the quality of the first handful of issues, before people began to automatically associate <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>with quality, is as much a consequence of his own chutzpah as anything else. <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Conjunctions </i>is</span> a major magazine, possibly the last print journal deserving that designation in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, because Brad Morrow willed it so. <span class=GramE>And was willing to do the work to make it happen.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><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; One might see the Projectivist influence indirectly here through the presence of Kelly, one of the poets most directly influenced by Olsonian poetics and by what I would characterize as &#8220;Duncan&#8217;s reading of Zukofsky&#8217;s ear,&#8221; and in the presence of Christopher Sorrentino, son of Gilbert, who has become a significant fiction writer in his own right, though without the same sense of a poet&#8217;s prose one saw in his father&#8217;s books. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, February 17, 2007</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><img height="354" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/mpUMYe-XRmk1I7DAsOHIkZZT4ajnbOV3vUZvkZayWFP9movlt959CMHn897LEr5PLeefr9FsASxIJZPrVHZy8OsJgwLJAGw%3Ds0-d" width="286"></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>A terrific <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/taiwan/taiwanfront.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>anthology</span></a> <br>
of contemporary poetry<br>
from </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Taiwan</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><br>
edited by <a href="http://www.chicagopostmodernpoetry.com/spai.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>Shin</span></a> <a href="http://www.womenarts.org/network/profile_107.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>Yu</span></a> <a href="http://www.shinyupai.com/"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:windowtext'>Pai</span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>7 poets<br> each with an interview<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
&amp; the poems<br>
include a couple of sound files<br>
and a video<br>
realization <br>
of Chen Li&#8217;s<br>
<a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/taiwan/warsymphony.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>War Symphony</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The rest of<br>
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.fascicle.com/"><span style='color:windowtext'>Fascicle 3</span></a><br>
</i>is no slouch either<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>with an <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/poems/eritrean.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>Eritrean portfolio</span></a><br>
including translations from<br>
Tigrinya, Tigre &amp; Arabic<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>poetry from over 50 poets,<br>
new work by <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/poems/parsh1.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>Alexei Parshchikov</span></a><br>
(<span class=SpellE>gotta</span> wonder about that <br>
translation strategy<br>
tho),<br>
whole chapbooks<br>
by <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/poems/wolftitle.htm"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:windowtext'>Allyssa</span></span><span style='color:windowtext'> Wolf</span></a><br>
&amp; <br>
<a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/poems/huidobrotitle.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>Vicente <span class=SpellE>Huidobro</span></span></a>,<br>
work by <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/pictures/crosby.jpg"><span style='color:windowtext'>Harry Crosby</span></a><br>
plus an essay on Crosby<br>
by <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/essays/lawrence1.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>D.H. Lawrence</span></a>,<br>
plus<br>
Roberto <span class=SpellE>Tejada</span> on <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/essays/tejeda1.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>Clayton Eshleman</span></a>,<br>
Kevin Killian on <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/essays/killian1.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>George Oppen</span></a><br>
Graham Foust on <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/essays/foust1.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>Looking</span></a><br>
Mark Wallace on <a href="http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/essays/wallace1.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>P. Inman</span></a><br>
<br>
&amp; oodles more<o:p></o:p></span></p> 

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Also up online<br>
with a ton of reviews<br>
is the latest<br>
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://galatearesurrection5.blogspot.com/"><span  style='color:windowtext'>Galatea Resurrects</span></a></i><span class=GramE>,</span><br>
a magazine<br>
done entirely in Blogger<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Noisiest home page <br>
for a new mag<br>
goes to<br>
<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue7/index.shtml"><span style='color:windowtext'>Mad Hatters&#8217; Review</span></a><br>
</i><br>
Where <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue7/poetry_amato.shtml"><span style='color:windowtext'>Joe Amato</span></a><br>
has some new poetry<br>
&amp; <br>
Lynda <span class=SpellE>Schor</span><br>
offers <a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue7/whatnots_schor.shtml"><span style='color:windowtext'>an interview</span></a><br>
&amp; a &#8220;<a href="http://www.madhattersreview.com/issue7/whatnots_schor.shtml"><span style='color:windowtext'>whatnot</span></a>&#8221;<br>
with tips on diapering<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.track0.com/ogwc/authors/gold_a.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>Artie Gold</span></a><br>
one of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Montreal</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s<br>
<a href="http://www.vehiculepoets.com/"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:windowtext'>Vehicule</span></span><span style='color:windowtext'> poets</span></a><br>
<br>
&amp; a fine, fine fellow<br>
died Wednesday<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>A <a href="http://www.thevillager.com/villager_198/dianeburnsnative.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>praise day</span></a><br>
in memory of<br>
<a href="http://www.tribes.org/cgi-bin/form.pl?karticle=817"><span style='color:windowtext'>Diane</span></a> <a href="http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/bin/browse.pl/A123"><span  style='color:windowtext'>Burns</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The <a href="http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=14020"><span style='color:windowtext'>politics of slams</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>What I like best<br>
about <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=517088"><span style='color:windowtext'>this review</span></a><br>
of the history of poets<br>
at Harvard<br>
is that the author<br>
can&#8217;t spell<br>
Charles Olson<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2012008,00.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>Looking at the Booker</span></a><br>
from the vantage<br>
of </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>India</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<span style='mso-bookmark:OLE_LINK1'></span> 
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3agxpz"><span style='color:windowtext'>Vaclav Havel</span></a><br>
in <br>
</span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v4n1/poetry/jones_r/index.htm"><span style='color:windowtext'>Rodney Jones</span></a><br>
wins<br>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/books/14poetry.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>$100K poetry prize</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<span style='mso-bookmark:OLE_LINK2'></span>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8220;<a href="http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/view/columns/3617129.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>The Stephen King of his day</span></a>&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Trying to forget<br>
the dreariness of Auden<br>
"<a href="http://tinyurl.com/23qvhp"><span style='color:windowtext'>in his cups</span></a>"<br>
in order to celebrate<br>
the centennial<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2159089/"><span style='color:windowtext'>O</span></a> Anna<br>
Akhmatova!<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2159221/"><span style='color:windowtext'>blindness</span></a><br>
of Borges<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Greg Tate<br>
on<br>
Bob Dylan<br>
<a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/pazzandjop06/0706,tate,75740,22.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>as the future of rap</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.woodlandpattern.org/poems/eric_lorberer01.shtml"><span style='color:windowtext'>The Ashbery Bridge</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span class=SpellE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Viggo</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, <a href="http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/02/15/085714.php"><span style='color:windowtext'>reading</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>If you thought Dan Brown<br>
was dreadful<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
wait till you read<br>
the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/books/16masl.html?_r=1&amp;oref=slogin"><span style='color:windowtext'>Dan Brown Wannabes</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy"><span  style='color:windowtext'>Banksy</span></a> <a href="http://tinyurl.com/yskk6t"><span style='color:windowtext'>gone bad</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,72705-0.html?tw=wn_index_10"><span style='color:windowtext'>Fluffing your aura</span></a><br> 
to make it<br>
even more real<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The problems of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/arts/design/14pain.html?_r=1&amp;oref=slogin"><span style='color:windowtext'>conserving</span></a><br>
contemporary painting<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/arts/design/16hodg.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>Howard Hodgkin at the Yale</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2007/02/18/arts/1154665176653.html?8tpf&amp;emc=tpf"><span style='color:windowtext'>Saving classical music</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>And if<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
on March 2<sup>nd</sup>,<br>
you should find yourself<br>
in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Atlanta</span></st1:place></st1:City><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><br>
at the AWP,<br>
check this out:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><img border="0" height="535" id="_x0000_i1026" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/1juS9hTGLSJZZ5A5OjAq-wrm-PORtxphEI6_q3rZK3ZWtoolZZ9EJ1p116Niq9vSxXO4eCeI0wELO6OsbwpqYgxFmm5rbRVcEaV2Q4Hpvg%3Ds0-d" width="357"></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, January 20, 2007</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'>You still have until 9:00 PM Eastern on Sunday to bid on any of the <a href="http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZraintaxiQQhtZ-1"><span style='color:black'>88 auction items</span></a> in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.raintaxi.com/"><span style='color:black'>Rain Taxi&#8217;s</span></a></i> annual fundraiser. It&#8217;s a terrific cause &#8211; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Rain Taxi </i>is a journal that covers every tendency &amp; every genre with great fairness &amp; intelligence &#8211; and there are some terrific items, ranging from signed chapbooks from Paul <span class=SpellE>Auster</span>, Alice <span class=SpellE>Notley</span> &amp; James Tate, an original draft (with edits) of a poem by Ron Padgett, a rare copy of Robert Graves&#8217; Nazarene <span class=SpellE>Gospell</span> Restored, a <a href="http://tinyurl.com/3x9flx"><span style='color:black'>photograph of <span class=SpellE>Moondog</span></span></a> by Gerard <span class=SpellE>Malanga</span>, signed work from Alan Moore and Neil <span class=SpellE>Gaiman</span>, a <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2kfct2"><span style='color:black'>shawl</span></a> by Maria Damon &amp; much more. One of the secrets of eBay auctions is that a lot of experienced buyers wait right up to the last minute to bid, so that they don&#8217;t inadvertently drive up prices. So you might want to stay up late (or get up early, depending on where you are) just to make sure your bids are in.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, January 08, 2007</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:right'><span style='color:black'><img height="365" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7y9obGnhIU7p5902QLUi2kItNH_xCt6IAC0mmsyRzhq88wsrdH5s4-9fYqhnFe0V__Gngim6R2cc5JfDV16Io5Hx8UtZPFUgUw%3Ds0-d" width="326"><br>
</span><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>El Greco, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The View of </i></span><st1:City><st1:place><i  style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Toledo</span></i></st1:place></st1:City><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>To look at <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.sienese-shredder.com/"><span style='color:black'>The <span class=SpellE>Sienese</span> Shredder</span></a> &#8220;</i>#1,&#8221; you would not immediately think of this luscious amalgam of art, criticism, poetry, interviews &amp; even recordings as a &#8220;little magazine&#8221; &#8211; it appears at first glance to be the sort of museum catalog that accompanies only the larger and more expensive exhibitions about the country. But there you have it. With cover collages by <a href="http://www.francisnaumann.com/JOINT/index.html"><span style='color:black'>Don Joint</span></a> against a bright mustard frame, a CD containing what amounts to a reading of a selected poems by Harry Mathews, bright four-color portfolios of paintings by <a href="http://www.gregkucera.com/hammond.htm"><span style='color:black'>Jane Hammond</span></a> and <a href="http://tibordenagy.com/artists/jaffe.html"><span style='color:black'>Shirley Jaffe</span></a>, some smart essays by co-editor <a href="http://www.trevorwinkfield.com/"><span style='color:black'>Trevor Winkfield</span></a> on <a href="http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/s/sassetta/index.html"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Sassetta</span></span></a>, &#8220;painter of fragments,&#8221; &amp; by <a href="http://www.adeditions.com/barthart_middle.html"><span style='color:black'>Jack Barth</span></a>&#185;, a wonderful short piece that can only be called a close reading of El Greco&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The View of Toledo </i>(&#8220;we are in the middle of a hallucination, in the anxious peripheries of revelation&#8221;),<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>this is very much a high-end art catalog, interspersed with some superb poetry and by some things that you simply can&#8217;t be expecting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>For example, a portfolio of 12 postcard collages by John Ashbery, the sort of miniature frames of "disjunctive but found" wit you might expect, say, from the late painter Jess. Turnabout is fair play, however, as Jess &#8211; or his estate &#8211; contributes two of &#8220;<span  class=SpellE>Osap&#8217;s</span> Fables&#8221; in the form of prose poems. Here is the first:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in;text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>A worm was so fond of his Young Man that at length, seeing with insolent contempt base traps to ensnare the harmless, one day he would marry <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>his </i>constant companion. A <span class=SpellE>SpiderCat</span>, weaving her web with the greatest SILK, became a woman working at her shroud much quicker than a young bride. &#8220;Yes,&#8221; said the Silk, &#8220;but your <span class=SpellE>labours</span>, which are at first Venus, spring from the room, the nature of a Cat. AND the Cat determined that there were no longer the half finished arms of her husband and, only this morning, caught the Mouse, and it was very fine and transparent; and it is still down here HIS YOUNG MAN, hearing you acknowledge that I work <span class=SpellE>behaviour</span> with the greatest care, and seeing that I began it, changed the Cat into a blooming woman. They swept the princes away as dirt, and under the form of a woman she married and killed it; but at night my web is changed and worse than useless, whilst his wishes, as soon as they are seen, are preserved on and in her affection. THE worm and her form and accordingly, mine are made slow and swiftness is hidden.&#8221; SPIDERCAT used to declare that if she were back again, the Silk should see how large and how sincere was nature become. &#8220;what do you think of her and his gratified ornaments?&#8221; <span class=GramE>disagrees</span> THE SILK; &#8220;AND Venus angry at her <span class=SpellE>neighbour</span> designed only as a Mouse of my lady, destroyed the young although beautiful, WORM.&#8221; See this in time: and he looked to THE WORM for <span class=SpellE>labour</span> cries. <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'>Also writing from the dead is Edwin Denby, a tale of terror in a wry tone:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>My father was a cheese grater<br>
My mother was a stair<br>
I&#8217;m a no-nonsense escalator<br>
Less I couldn&#8217;t care<br>
I&#8217;m a slick machine but I turn mean<br>
When from inside my parts that glide<br>
I smell the fetor of a musky sneaker<br>
Taking an upward ride<br>
I grab the toes as my slabs close<br>
I grate my steel<br>
On feet that feel<br>
Tom <span class=SpellE>flet</span> that grab<br>
In his sneaker&#8217;s toe<br>
Click-clack<br>
He can&#8217;t pull it back<br>
<span class=SpellE>Ilzich-zack</span><br>
The monster won&#8217;t let go<br>
The danger peaks<br>
He nearly freaks<br>
Untie the shoe lace, Tom!<br>
He did.<br>
Free the foot slid.<br>
The escalator foiled<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
Tore the sneaker, and ate it oiled.<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'>Early on in the issue, <a href="http://www.pewarts.org/94/Stein/index.html"><span style='color:black'>Judith Stein</span></a> interviews painter <a href="http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/tuttle/index.html"><span style='color:black'>Richard Tuttle</span></a> not about his work, but about the role of art dealer <a href="http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/bellam63.htm"><span style='color:black'>Richard Bellamy</span></a> in &#8220;birthing the new American art that followed Abstract Expressionism.&#8221; In what feels almost like a parallel piece, William Corbett offers a short memoir on &#8220;Three Great Talkers&#8221; &#8211; Charles Olson, Philip Guston and Robert Creeley. I was surprised, given his role commenting on <span  class=SpellE>Guston&#8217;s</span> career<span class=GramE>,<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>to</span> discover that Corbett doesn&#8217;t think of himself as being nearly so intimate with the painter as he does with Creeley. <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 might argue that these indirect works - writings by a painter, even Jess &#8211; was that a cut-up by the artist of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tricky Cad</i>? &#8211; or this marginalia by Denby might not be major, maybe not even serious work (it might be the only bit of Denby I can think of that would be at home with the least formal aspects of the NY School generations 2 or 3), or that Tuttle discussing a dealer likewise isn&#8217;t addressing the question of art directly. But <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sienese</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> Shredder </i>has major contributions mixed in as well &#8211; several scores by <a href="http://www.music.princeton.edu/~alan/"><span style='color:black'>Alan Shockley</span></a>&#178;, 17 pages of new poetry by Ron Padgett and the first new Larry Fagin poems I&#8217;ve seen in print in over a decade, fifteen of them, each in prose one paragraph long. Here is &#8220;Joanne Hates the Curtains in the Kitchen&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in;text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>What&#8217;s the name of this in this language? Virgil would write in the morning and spend the evening struggling to put it into hexameters. But Ovid <span class=GramE>lay</span> it out straight into verse. <span class=SpellE>Brodey&#8217;s</span> flashing bolt. <span class=GramE>Yellow-pink-red-blue-green-black rhomboids with little sprays of paisley.</span> I understand well enough resistance to words. The <span class=GramE>birds is</span> coming, that&#8217;s what they used to say. Now they say &#8230; the truth is &#8230; transubstantiation. Time briefly lengthens, bleeding a little, so we have history to live out, the naturalness of melting. Everyone is hungry for this collation. Why are we in this world? Why does it have to be us? I don&#8217;t know, kids, I&#8217;m just a little Dutch girl holding my pitcher of milk. Change here for all points, many times in future. <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The allusion to the late <a href="http://www.cultureport.com/newhp/catalog/brodey.html"><span style='color:black'>Jim <span class=SpellE>Brodey</span></span></a> is perhaps the one instance of the oblique here, that intimate level of address so typical of the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. The only other moment in the poem that might be said to touch on that same sort of genre-defining (or coterie defining) characteristic is the joke about the Dutch girl in the next to last sentence. Otherwise, this poem could be anything, even direct address (indeed, one interpretation might be that the NY School touches are there precisely to let the reader know that it isn&#8217;t <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>just </i>direct address). <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>As a group &#8211; the same is true for Padgett&#8217;s work &#8211; these poems are terrific, both men are at the top of their game  amp; one&#8217;s only reasonable complaint might be that this seems like an awful lot of work to tuck into a magazine that has no prior readership &amp; costs $25 per copy. If, in fact, this is the only work that Fagin has published in over a decade, it should be in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The New Yorker, </i><span class=SpellE>damnit</span>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>On the other hand, it is one way to guarantee that people will want to pony up for the new journal. <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'>Another piece in the journal that, for me, raises a somewhat similar question is Francis <span class=SpellE>Naumann&#8217;s</span> piece examining &#8211; in stunning detail &#8211; one element of Marcel <span class=SpellE>Duchamp&#8217;s</span> announcement for a 1943 exhibition to be called &#8220;Through the Big End of the Opera Glass.&#8221; (Not to be confused with &#8220;The Big Glass.&#8221;) This element is a chess problem printed on the underside of one of the invitation&#8217;s four folded &#8220;public&#8221; faces (imagine a greeting card). <span class=SpellE>Naumann</span>, who is both an art scholar &amp; a gallery owner &#8211; one of whose shows not that long ago was <a href="http://tinyurl.com/udbjb"><span style='color:black'>a presentation of married life</span></a> on the part of two artists, <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sienese</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> Shredder </i>cover artist Don Joint, and co-editor <a href="http://www.8orange8.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Brice Brown</span></a> &#8211; argues, and pretty well demonstrates, with the aid of chess grandmaster Larry Evans, that the Duchamp problem has no solution. This is a wonderful demonstration of <span class=SpellE>Duchamp&#8217;s</span> method, not to mention his mind in general, and one of the few instances I&#8217;ve ever seen in a general publication of any kind of the way in which chess can be as much philosophy, or art, as it is proto-military strategy, math or spatial relationships. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It is also, along with the Stein-Tuttle interview, the second piece in this 252-page publication to feature an art dealer as a major thinker &#8211; indeed, as a major category of legitimate art critic. The two sections together &#8211; not unlike the two major collections of poetry (there are many other poets here too, including <a href="http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/33"><span style='color:black'>Denise <span class=SpellE>Duhamel</span></span></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%25C3%25A9rard_de_Nerval"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:black'>Gérard</span></span><span style='color:black'> de Nerval</span></a>, <a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Details.asp?BookID=0970625081"><span style='color:black'>Chris Edgar</span></a>, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/ygodyt"><span style='color:black'>Carter Ratcliff</span></a>, <a href="http://appserv.pace.edu/execute/page.cfm?doc_id=5041"><span style='color:black'>Charles North,</span></a> <a href="http://carbonator.blogspot.com/"><span style='color:black'>Nick <span class=SpellE>Carbó</span></span></a> &amp; <a href="http://www.wildhoneypress.com/Audio/Miles_Champion.htm"><span style='color:black'>Miles Champion</span></a>) &#8211; are where this journal clicked into place for me. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The <span class=SpellE>Sienese</span> Shredder </i>seems very much to want to define &#8211; maybe even redefine &#8211; the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> as such, for the  21<sup>st</sup> century. <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'>Indeed, the opening piece is a college commencement address for the San Francisco Art Institute by Bill Berkson. The presence of poets who are major art critics &#8211; Ratcliff, Corbett &#8211; art by poets (not just Ashbery, <span class=SpellE>Carbó&#8217;s</span> contribution is a gorgeous, tho somewhat conceptual, visual poem), poetry by an artist. And the best demonstration of gallery owners as thinkers &#8211; one often hears far more deprecating terms for them &#8211; <span class=GramE>that</span> I&#8217;ve seen &#8211; <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sienese</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> Shredder </i>is making the case for a poetry that is thoroughly immersed in the world of the arts, and especially in a world in which the visual arts are understood as very close to central. <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'>Given the fact that this journal is edited by Trevor Winkfield &amp; <a href="http://www.bricebrown.com/"><span style='color:black'>Brice Brown</span></a>, two painters, this take certainly makes sense. It also follows on <span class=SpellE>Winkfield&#8217;s</span> rather aggressive &amp; controversial British anthology, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://tinyurl.com/y2kf2c"><span style='color:black'>New York Poets II: From Edwin Denby to Bernadette Mayer</span></a>, </i>published by <span class=SpellE>Carcanet</span> in the U.K. as a follow-on to Mark Ford&#8217;s original volume (<span class=SpellE>Winkfield&#8217;s</span> co-editor here), which gathered the work of just Ashbery, Koch, O&#8217;Hara &amp; Schuyler. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>NYP II </i>is notable mostly for the number of key figures who have been airbrushed out of the group portrait: Alice Notley, David Shapiro, Maureen Owen, Lewis Warsh, Anne Waldman, Tom Clark, Tony <span class=SpellE>Towle</span>, Tom <span class=SpellE>Vietch</span>, Frank Lima, John <span class=SpellE>Giorno</span>, Ann Lauterbach, F.T. Prince, John <span class=SpellE>Perrault</span>, Jim <span class=SpellE>Brodey</span>, Ed Sanders, Aram Saroyan, John Godfrey, Paul Violi, Ted Greenwald, Michael Brownstein, Peter Schjeldahl &amp; Dick Gallup. For starters<span class=GramE>..</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>If you include Bill Berkson, as <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>NYP II </i>does, you can hardly argue the absence of others on the constraints of space. <span class=SpellE>Berkson&#8217;s</span> a wonderful poet, but he&#8217;s lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 30 freaking years. Clark Coolidge, another of <i>NYP II</i>'s eleven contributors, hasn&#8217;t lived in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York  City</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> for a day in the 36 years I&#8217;ve known him. So it&#8217;s an aesthetic argument that&#8217;s being made there. But because it&#8217;s an argument by exclusion, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s terribly effective. I have some of the same problems with <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>NYPII</i> that I did with <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poems for the Millennium, </i>vol. 2, which makes a similar claim (in its case, that Fluxus was the central post-WW2 literary movement) without openly owning it.<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>So I find <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The <span class=SpellE>Sienese</span> Shredder </i>&#8211; a name worth exploring some other day &#8211; a really valuable contribution, since this would seem to be something of the same argument as <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>NYP II </i>made positively, on the best possible terms. I don&#8217;t think there can be any question that it&#8217;s a serious argument, tho one could argue its key tenets, at least as manifested here, rather endlessly:<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'>that the visual arts are central in the ensemble of aesthetic practices<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'>that art dealers need to be acknowledged as serious art thinkers<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'>that a </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>  </span><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>  (even if it&#8217;s not called that anymore) continues to exist &amp; be vital, and that it&#8217;s defined by its relation to painting<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'>that the role of St. Marks (&amp;, implicitly, the whole &#8220;post-Ted thing&#8221;) has been  overstated<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s very interesting to look at <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The <span class=SpellE>Sienese</span>-Shredder </i>in contrast, say, to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2005/11/jordan-davis-curtis-faville-ended-up.html"><span style='color:black'>Vanitas</span></a>, </i>which likewise intersects the painting-poetry axis that has existed in </span><st1:State><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> since at least the end of World War 2. Unlike <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The <span class=SpellE>Sienese</span>-Shredder, Vanitas </i>is more open (and various) in its aesthetic arguments, providing not one but three manifestos at the start of its first issue. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>As for the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Shredder, </i>the absence of a manifesto is an interesting move here, consistent with Gen 1 NY School practices, in which manifestos are abjured because one talks seriously about poetry by talking about painting &#8211; a sort of code. It also, I suppose, makes it harder for those outside the definition to argue back, for fear that they might sound too shrill or earnest. And it&#8217;s not that Winkfield &amp; Brown outright exclude other perspectives &#8211; there&#8217;s Corbett, Jess, even Fagin in that light &#8211; but there is a demotic voice one can find at St. Marks that is largely missing in <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sienese</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> Shredder</i>. <span class=GramE>And, given its stated policy of &#8220;submissions by invitation only,&#8221; that almost seems to be the point.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>To purchase <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The <span class=SpellE>Sienese</span>-Shredder, </i>send an email to <a href="mailto:info@sienese-shredder.com"><span style='color:black'>info@sienese-shredder.com</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><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; Not to be confused with the novelist John, whose friends all call him Jack also. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#178; Alan <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Frederick </i>Shockley, not to be confused with the didgeridoo maestro Allen Shockley.</span></span><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, November 15, 2006</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black'><img height="227" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OFrr46G95GyOe-SPUIlJH1vw-w9hl34WS0Fg111jEyfE1CbPbIgIaYgTWgEbITeWWdXFkAuDHO6zfu3_kuqE%3Ds0-d" width="151"><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'>Sometime today, the National Book Awards will be announced. Among the nominees in poetry are Berkeley&#8217;s <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2006_p_lerner.html"><span style='color:black'>Ben Lerner</span></a> &amp; <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2006_p_mackey.html"><span style='color:black'>Nathaniel Mackey</span></a> of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Santa Cruz</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, both fine writers. Also nominated are <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2006_p_hix.html"><span style='color:black'>H.L. <span class=SpellE>Hix</span></span></a>, <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2006_p_gluck.html"><span style='color:black'>Louise <span class=SpellE>Gluck</span></span></a> &amp; <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2006_p_mcmichael.html"><span style='color:black'>James <span class=SpellE>McMichael</span></span></a>, the latter two both representing FSG, the largest of the poetry <span class=GramE>advertisers.</span><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span>If I have a personal preference in this for Mackey, it&#8217;s only because his decades of superb writing &#8211; groundbreaking poetry, groundbreaking fiction &#8211; and his work as an editor of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Hambone </i>over all these years raises his nomination to a level that none of the other poets on the short list can touch.<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'>Lerner, tho, is also doing good work, and <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.nojournal.com/"><span style='color:black'>NO</span></a>, </i>the bi-annual journal he co-edits with Deb <span class=SpellE>Klowden</span>, is a positive joy to receive. Issue <a href="http://www.nojournal.com/five/toc.htm"><span style='color:black'>number five</span></a> is a recent arrival at my door and it&#8217;s no exception &#8211; it may be the best issue yet. It&#8217;s a generally brilliant combination of design &amp; editing with a great sense of focus that relatively few poetry periodicals ever achieve. Its trick, to call it that, is to be generous in the amount of space given to each of its contributors. The current number has 300 pages for just 27 people, at least counting by those listed in needlepoint (!) on the back cover, tho I notice that it doesn&#8217;t include the credit given to Judy Dater for her photograph of Barbara Guest or Che Chen for the needlepoint. <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'>Contributors include a broad range of mostly familiar names with an orientation that reflects Lerner&#8217;s roots coming out of the writing program at Brown: both Keith &amp; Rosmarie Waldrop, C.D. Wright, Dallas Wiebe, Rae Armantrout, Clayton Eshleman (both as poet &amp; as translator of César Vallejo), Barbara Guest, Kevin Killian, Aaron Kunin, <span class=GramE>Jacqueline<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span>Waters</span>, Tan Lin, Mark McMorris, Erín Moure, Lisa Robertson, Geoffrey G. O&#8217;Brien, Juliana Spahr. There is also a complete opera by Robert Ashley called <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Empire </i>that is at least partly a history of tomato sauce (I&#8217;m not making that up!). The CD enveloped on the inner back cover makes for an interesting, just slightly up-tempo meditation track.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But the person who gets my attention first, and most deeply, on my first reading is someone of whom I&#8217;ve never heard before, Amanda Nadelberg. What I know about her is that she used to live in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Boston</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, but is in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Minneapolis</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> now and that Lisa Jarnot picked some work of hers for a chapbook award. Lisa&#8217;s instincts are right on. Here is the first of Nadelberg&#8217;s two poems, &#8220;<span class=SpellE>Peninnah</span>&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>There&#8217;s so little for<br>
this place. A few <br>
sandwiches and<br>
some coffee and<br>
free refills and then<br>
her church (was<br>
Catholic) and my<br>
church consisted of<br>
a dark room of sad<br>
people. Do you<br>
like my picture <br>
map? I bought it<br>
for myself with eight<br>
dollars. We went to<br>
</span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Greenwich Village</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
where we did not see<br>
any of my heroes.<br>
We saw some<br>
people but none<br>
of them smiled. <br>
Teeth in that<br>
city can be<br>
more special the<br>
most special of<br>
anything. Wear<br>
them in your <br>
mouth or find them<br>
in the sink of a<br>
fancy restaurant&#8217;s<br>
washroom. That<br>
bitch punched the<br>
other one&#8217;s teeth<br>
out and left them<br>
in the sink right there.<br>
Who would try<br>
smiling after <span class=GramE>that.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Two things about this poem completely win me over. First is that it handles that radical shift in tone (and back again) with what I can only call complete élan. The second is its use of what I think of as Alan Dugan&#8217;s linebreak. Contrast this &#8211; or for that matter, the following poem of Nadelberg&#8217;s, &#8220;<span class=SpellE>Rella</span>&#8221; &#8211; with something like Dugan&#8217;s famous poem, &#8220;Poem&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Whatever was living is dead<br>
and a lot of what was dead<br>
has begun to move around<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
so who knows what<br>
the plan for a good state<br>
is: they all go out<br>
on the roads! Wherever<br>
they came from is down<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
wherever they&#8217;re going<br>
is not yet up, and everything<br>
must make way, so, <br>
now is the time to plan<br>
a </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>new city</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'> of man.<br>
The sky at the road&#8217;s end<br>
where the road goes up<br>
between one hill and ends<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
is as blank as my mind,<br>
but the cars fall off<br>
into the great plains beyond,<br>
so who knows what <br>
the plan for a good state<br>
is: food, fuel, and rest<br>
are the services, home<br>
is in travel itself,<br>
and burning signs at night<br>
say DYNAFLO! to love<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
so everything goes.<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'>Dugan actually makes less use of enjambment here than does Nadelberg &#8211; there are other works of his that use more &#8211; but the essential formal premise of both is of a linebreak so very soft that it is barely audible. If Charles Olson (to pick a polar opposite) were the linebreak equivalent of Charlie Parker or John Coltrane, Dugan &amp; Nadelberg are Satie &amp; Messiaen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The other work in the issue that feels especially worth noting is what amounts to a sizeable chapbook entitled <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Kansas Poems</i> by <a href="http://www.burningdeck.com/catalog/wiebe2.htm"><span style='color:black'>Dallas Wiebe</span></a>, who like the <span class=SpellE>Waldrops</span> (&amp;, later, Bob Perelman, Tom Clark &amp; Jane Kenyon) comes out of the writing program at </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Michigan</span></st1:place></st1:State><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>In fact, since most pages in this segment of the journal have two poems, this could easily have been a full-length book, tho many of the poems are two or three lines long (and some shorter). Just as Dugan used to title a lot of poems &#8220;Poem,&#8221; virtually half of Wiebe&#8217;s book consists of poems with the simple title &#8220;Tornado.&#8221; As in, to pick three from different places not quite at random:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>In </span></span><st1:City><st1:place><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Cincinnati</span></span></st1:place></st1:City><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
I long to see one.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>*<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>After the storm<span class=GramE>,</span><br>
oatmeal tasted awfully good.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>*<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Come again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>As is often the case with Wiebe&#8217;s work, I find myself wanting to like these poems a lot more than I finally do. A good contrast to these poems might be the work of Robert Grenier, especially his writing from <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences </i>to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Day at The Beach, </i>where individual poems often operate at the same length<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>. </i>Grenier&#8217;s work almost always invoke dimensions of language &amp; of the ear (or, occasionally, the graphemic), whereas Wiebe&#8217;s seldom do, opting instead for little social insights. The result is that Wiebe&#8217;s poems too often feel flat &amp; one dimensional, in spite of their almost infinite good nature. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>No </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>is hardly a perfect journal. I&#8217;m not at all persuaded of the idea of different types of paper for different sections &#8211; which the length of the libretto for Ashley&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Empire </i>isn&#8217;t able entirely to fill, for example, leaving blank pages mid-journal as the design feature from hell. Geezers like me will be reminded of the old magazine <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Trace </i>from the 1960s and this didn&#8217;t look good then either. Similarly, the combination of contributor&#8217;s notes with the table of content yields the front material all but unfathomable. <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But overall the work transcends the limits of the production. I&#8217;d much rather have <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>No </i>take a chance with Dallas Wiebe and fail, then not take chances at all. And again &amp; again here, from Rae Armantrout to Kevin Killian, from Jackie Waters to Lisa Robertson, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>No&#8217;s </i>editorial instincts prove solid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, November 07, 2006</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'><img height="265" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/0JTBdzcjuHtmgpRPJDpMeD-QAMXNdQPvBNL_6Cbft0gQ1JfuzqL0akR8PSBFriFb2EdkX4Oem_fizDDsLV-ZpHAyBQ%3Ds0-d" width="216"><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I first met Barrett Watten in the fall of 1964, when he was a senior at Skyline High School in Oakland &amp; I was hanging out on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. We had a mutual friend, Davy Smith-<span class=SpellE>Margen</span>, a brilliant, peripatetic kid, but he was killed in an auto accident coming back from </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Nevada</span></st1:place></st1:State> <span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>in 1966, and I lost touch with Watten for awhile until we ran into each other in Bob Grenier&#8217;s office in the English Department at UC Berkeley in 1970. <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'>Grenier I met after transferring finally to UC Berkeley. It was a mid-year transfer, which meant in practice that I could still submit work to the various <span class=GramE>student</span> writing contests held by the university each year, but really didn&#8217;t have any time to get to know the faculty who would be judging the submissions. I pulled together three separate submissions &#8211; no names permitted on the manuscript pages &#8211; one for each contest, and was planning to submit the one that looked most Olsonian &#8211; which in practice, or at least in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>my practice, </i>meant longest &amp; most pompous &amp; obtuse &#8211; to the Joan Lee Yang Award, potentially the most lucrative of the contests, when both Rochelle Nameroff &amp; David Melnick persuaded me that I should send in instead a submission that consisted almost entirely of shorter pieces, essentially a first draft of what would become my first book, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Crow. </i>The guy who was judging that contest, they both argued, likes shorter. Their counsel proved its worth when I learned that I had won first prize, tho I still had never met the judge &amp; didn&#8217;t do so for a  couple of months until, one afternoon in Serendipity Books on Shattuck (an operation that encompassed the business that is now Serendipity Books, the rare book emporium, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and </i>Small Press Distribution), a blond fellow who looked too casual to be faculty at Berkeley came up to me &amp; introduced himself, saying, &#8220;I thought you were Arthur Sze.&#8221; <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>I soon got to know Grenier better by taking a tutorial with him, a close reading of Zukofsky&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>&#8220;A&#8221; </i>(I had asked both James E.B. <span class=SpellE>Breslin</span> &amp; Dick Bridgman, but each had passed, since it would have required reading the work as well). Grenier was right in the middle of writing the great works that would eventually make up <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.whalecloth.org/grenier/sentences_.htm"><span style='color:black'>Sentences</span></a>, </i>which to this day I would still rank as one of the crowning achievements of 20<sup>th</sup> century poetry, right alongside <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tender Buttons, Spring &amp; All, &#8220;A&#8221; </i>or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The <span class=SpellE>Pisan</span> Cantos, </i>the best of Creeley, the best of Olson, Duncan&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Passages, </i>or Ashbery&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Three Poems. </i>Grenier, like everyone else at that moment in American poetry, had been reading Creeley&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pieces, </i>and had seen their relationship to Zukofsky&#8217;s short poems, as well as to the linked verse being written by Ted Berrigan &amp; Stein&#8217;s work 65 years earlier in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tender Buttons</i>, a book that had yet to be assimilated into the canon. But where both Creeley &amp; Stein had used <span class=SpellE>micropoetry</span> to focus on formal questions within the poem as such, Grenier&#8217;s focus was outward (and in that regard actually closer to Berrigan&#8217;s work), seeking to learn what this process of magnification would yield if applied to language <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>in situ. </i>It was almost an anthropological poetics that he seemed to propose. And it was also a rebuke. The Projectivist poets, he seemed to be arguing, spent way too much time trying to figure out how to represent language, but not nearly enough thinking of what it actually was, how it operated, in our mouths, ears, and on the page.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>There were a group of younger poets who hung around Grenier in Berkeley &#8211; George <span class=SpellE>Ushanoff</span> and Curtis Faville foremost among them &#8211; and I picked up the sense, very quickly, that I had suddenly stumbled on the revolution. What Grenier was talking about &#8211; constantly, regardless of what the topic at hand might be (even when playing basketball with Hugh <span class=SpellE>Wittemeyer</span> &amp; Stephen Spender, which Grenier once coaxed me into doing) &#8211; was something that I couldn&#8217;t find in any magazine. <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>If you read <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tottel&#8217;s, </i>which is fairly difficult to do given its fugitive nature to begin with &amp; the fact that I had not figured out at  that moment the importance of archives (there may be copies in SUNY Buffalo&#8217;s rare books collection and in that of the New York Public Library), you can see how it evolves from that first issue, in which Grenier is simply one of several post-avants  but the overall aesthetic is much closer to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Caterpillar, </i>to becoming one of the first two journals of what we would today call language poetry. The second issue was again a general number, and while there was no evidence of this new writing as such in its pages, the work I tended to look towards it, such as this poem by David Perry (again, not the young poet by the same name today), which led off the issue. The piece is entitled &#8220;To a Bird Shadow&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>we re<br> 
covered each<br>
other with<br>
out eve<br>
r here<br>
ring who was<br>
spoken or<br>
touching one<br>
<span class=SpellE>ly</span> our own <span class=SpellE>il</span><br>
lustrations and I<br>
love u lie<br>
ka bird shadow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The third issue, in June 1971, was <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tottel&#8217;s </i>first single-author number, devoted to one of the </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> poets whom I had gotten to know, Rae Armantrout. The fourth issue, again a general number (appearing just one month after the third), was led off by Larry Eigner. The fifth (two months after the fourth), was a single author issue devoted to Robert Grenier, consisting of 20 poems<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, </i>of which this was the first. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>84<br>
<br>
48<br>
<br>
24<br>
<br>
42<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'>Clark Coolidge led of the sixth issue, again a general number. He had been somebody whose work I had been unable to read until I met Grenier &amp; ran back into Watten. Watten had, in fact, made a conscious effort to show me how to do this by focusing on the role of humor in Coolidge&#8217;s poetry, which owes a lot to the work of both Phil Whalen &amp; Jonathan Williams. Coolidge would have his own single-author issue two years later (there had been earlier ones devoted to David Gitin &amp; Thomas Meyer in the meantime, and I would follow immediately with issues devoted to Ray DiPalma, David Melnick, Bruce Andrews &amp; Larry Eigner). <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>So that if I say that in 1970, just one year after having appeared in both <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>and <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Caterpillar, </i>plus three other journals &amp; as the frontispiece to a book from a major trade press, my poetry only appeared in the campus magazine at Berkeley, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Occident, </i>and in a five page photocopied handout that I myself had published (this being the first issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tottel&#8217;s), </i>and that 1970 proved to be a much more important year for me, publishing-wise, maybe you will understand what I mean.<o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But the real excitement in the fall of 1970 was the news that Grenier (who had moved on from </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> to Tufts &amp; was now living in the fabled seaport of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Gloucester</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>) and Watten (back in school in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Iowa City</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>) were setting out to publish a magazine of their own. This meant, in theory at least, that what people around Grenier in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> had been just presuming was a revolution in American poetry would no longer be a secret. And the first issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.granarybooks.com/books/clay/clay8.html"><span style='color:black'>This</span></a> </i>was everything it promised to be.  <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s worth taking a look at who shows up in that issue. The first poet is Robert Kelly, the second Curtis Faville, the third &#8211; her only appearance in print to my knowledge &#8211; Laura <span class=SpellE>Knecht</span>, the fourth Tom Clark (short linked poems &#8220;from The Notebooks&#8221; as their title says), followed by Jim Preston &amp; Thomas March Blum (two Grenier students I believe from Tufts &#8211; Blum has one poem entitled &#8220;Africa&#8221; that has  no text at all), followed now by Clark Coolidge, Grenier, Anne Waldman (again very short poems, including the one-line text of &#8220;Turn&#8221;: <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>suddenly you weren&#8217;t listening!), </i>Sidney Goldfarb, Anselm Hollo, Wayne <span class=SpellE>Kabak</span>, more Sidney Goldfarb (this time prose), Grenier&#8217;s wife Emily Lord, extracts from the Ph.D. dissertation of Peter <span class=SpellE>Warshall</span> (picked primarily as instances of language, e.g., &#8220;Last, &#8216;Alone&#8217; was most difficult to define. Kaufman used no other adult within twenty feet.&#8221;), three poems by Marcia <span class=SpellE>Lawther</span>, four poems by me, six poems by Larry Eigner, a serial work by Watten (the fabled &#8220;radio day in Soma City&#8221; that was also published as a chapbook for a printing class at Iowa City), two poems by Robert Creeley, a piece of prose by Ken Irby, a photograph of the desk of Charles Olson at the time of his death by Elsa <span class=SpellE>Dorfman</span>, followed by two other portraits she did of Olson &amp; prose accounts accompanying each, one of which functionally is a description of his funeral. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>And then Grenier&#8217;s critical pieces.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> First a major review of Creeley&#8217;s first volume of essays, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Quick Graph, </i>which Grenier argues <span class=GramE>basically</span> completes the idea of literary criticism:<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'>Criticism as literary indulgence will no doubt go on and be respected, but in the work that matters, comment is finished, there will have to be no essential difference between criticism and poems, if for no other reason than <span class=GramE>that poems</span> are going to be so real that nobody will want to read &#8220;about&#8221; something.<o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>At the end of this piece is a photo, uncredited, of Pound &amp; Olga <span class=SpellE>Rudge</span> looking out of a window in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Rapallo</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. As if to say, this is the end of the </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Old World</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. On the next page is Grenier&#8217;s &#8220;On Speech,&#8221; with its claim &#8220;I HATE SPEECH.&#8221; Again, at the end comes an illustration, this apparently an image taken from a book, or more likely, an old postcard, of entirely empty train station (La <span class=SpellE>Gare</span> Maritime in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Brussels</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>). The symbolism could not be more explicit. This is followed by a review of Creeley&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pieces </i>that announces, early  on,<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8220;PROJECTIVE VERSE,&#8217; IS <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>PIECES </b>ON<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>And this is followed by reviews of Gertrude Stein&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Lectures in America </i> &#8211; nothing but quoted passages until, right at the end, Grenier quotes <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pieces </i>again &#8211; and Edward Lear&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Complete Nonsense Book. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>While Grenier &amp; Watten are clearly including both the New York School &amp; the Projectivists (and by practice <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>not </i>including any SF Renaissance or Beat poets), Grenier&#8217;s critical works frame them as the culmination of the past. Olson is dead &amp; Projectivism is seen as not really beginning until Creeley&#8217;s work of 1969<span class=GramE>,<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pieces</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>. </i>If my own <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tottel&#8217;s </i>glides between a focus on the New American Poetry &amp; what we today would call language writing, the revolutionary nature of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This, </i>and especially <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This </i>1, was inescapable. In my life, this is the magazine that changed the world. <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'>From <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Community Libertarian </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry <span class=SpellE>Nothwest</span> </i>to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tottel&#8217;s </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This &#8211; </i>these represent all of the types of relationships I&#8217;ve really ever had with a journal, from reading &amp; just trying to get my work represented, to using them as a means of making a statement, ultimately to becoming part of a conversation that had, as its explicit goal, a desire to change literature itself. And while there have continued to be journals that have had a major impact on me, from <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetics Journal, Roof </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E </i>to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Chain </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Crayon </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>No, </i>all can seen, from my perspective at least, as extensions of impulses that first found themselves in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Coyote&#8217;s Journal, Caterpillar, </i>the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>of the latter half of Henry <span class=SpellE>Rago&#8217;s</span> editorial years, the campus magazine at UC Berkeley, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Occident, </i>my own photocopied (and later mimeographed) newsletter, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Tottel&#8217;s, </i>and finally <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This. <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>My point being that there isn&#8217;t just one value or one relationship one might have to a journal &amp; that it&#8217;s important to explore all of the many options. Tho to have a <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This </i>in one&#8217;s life is a particular gift &amp; not something very many people get to have. If I have a standard complaint about so many of today&#8217;s journals, that they&#8217;re not sufficiently radical, that they want to be merely <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>of </i>the world, but not to change it, it&#8217;s precisely because what&#8217;s then closed off to their participants is this last dimension. That&#8217;s an experience I&#8217;d love to share with all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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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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