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Showing posts with label <b>Robert Grenier</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Robert Grenier</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grenier_%28poet%29"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Grenier</span></a>,
<a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pepc/authors/perelman/"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Bob</span></a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Perelman"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Perelman</span></a>,<br />
<a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Al</span></a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Filreis"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Filreis</span></a>
&amp; <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/silliman/"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">yours</span></a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Silliman"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">truly</span></a><br />
</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: red; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 250%;"><a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Grenier/Grenier-Interview-1_10-27-09_KWH.mp3"><span style="color: red;">discussing</span></a></span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 250%; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;"><br />
the early 1960s</span></b><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 250%; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;"></span></div>
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at
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<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2014/08/14_5.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2014-08-05T00:00:00-04:00'>Tuesday, August 05, 2014</abbr></a>
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Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Al%2520Filreis' rel='tag'>Al Filreis</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Bob%2520Perelman' rel='tag'>Bob Perelman</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/New%2520American%2520Poetry' rel='tag'>New American Poetry</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Personal' rel='tag'>Personal</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Robert%2520Grenier' rel='tag'>Robert Grenier</a>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, May 23, 2013</span></h2>

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</div><div><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;"><a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Grenier.php"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Robert</span></a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grenier_(poet)"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Grenier</span></a></span></b><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;"><br />
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, July 30, 2011</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1; mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Grenier_%28poet%29"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Robert</span></a> <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/grenier/"><span style='color:#0D0D0D; mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Grenier</span></a> &amp; <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2010/08/stephen-ratcliffes-humannature-with.html"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Stephen</span></a> <a href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/ratcliffe/"><span style='color:#0D0D0D; mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Ratcliffe</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, May 21, 2007</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='color:black'><img height="123" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/C62ubUIpnaIQaIhrQl2jveY3SOADlAaRV1sZP25OVAlNlaL_wBQHHlXMdMfqyibOm13Np3xPmUM3UDrb8klqhvM26ZKjKaa6DhEzuFlS-nxT%3Ds0-d" width="156"><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Of my reluctance in 1970 to include Bob Grenier in the &#8220;15 New Poets of the San Francisco Bay Area&#8221; feature that David Melnick &amp; I edited for the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Chicago Review, </i>an old acquaintance &amp; longtime editor writes that<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'>there was really no need in late 1970 to be afraid of bob <span class=SpellE>grenier's</span> minimalism: </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   class=SpellE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>aram</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'> <span class=SpellE>saroyan</span> was already there<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 was, of course, impossible <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>not </i>to know about Aram Saroyan circa 1970. Random House had published his eponymous volume, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/ARAM/aram.html"><span style='color:black'>Aram Saroyan</span></a>, </i>(in which the poem above appears) in 1968, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/PAGES/pages.html"><span style='color:black'>Pages</span></a> </i>one year later. How many other experimental poets were getting books published &amp; widely distributed by </span><st1:State><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> trade presses back then? Clark Coolidge&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/SPACE/space.html"><span style='color:black'>Space</span></a>, </i>published by Harper &amp; Row in 1970&#185;, <span class=GramE>was</span> really the only other one. If you knew about 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'>, you knew about Aram Saroyan. Ditto if you paid attention to the conceptual poetics that seemed to be emerging from <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/page-0-9.html"><span style='color:black'>0 &#8211; 9</span></a>, </i>the journal co-edited by Vito Acconci &amp; Bernadette Mayer, tho that was, at the time, a much more fugitive endeavor. And, of course, when Saroyan got a grant from the NEA, some congressman read some of his work, perhaps &#8220;<span class=SpellE>Blod</span>&#8221; (a one-word poem, if, that is, <span class=SpellE>Blod&#8217;s</span> a word) into the Congressional Record with all the rhetorical froth we would expect today from Bill O&#8217;Reilly. Finally, the name Aram Saroyan inevitably rang bells simply because, for my generation &amp; at least in </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>California</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, William Saroyan&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Aram"><span style='color:black'>My Name is Aram</span></a> </i>was as predictably a part of the high school curriculum as <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Things Fall Apart </i>or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Beloved </i>are today. <span class=GramE>That the title character&#8217;s name in the book is not Saroyan, or that the poet was born three years after <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>My Name is </i></span></span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span class=SpellE><span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Aram</span></i></span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span class=SpellE><span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>&#8217;s</span></i></span></span><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> initial publication, were just details.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But, as I replied, I was pretty sure that, in 1970, I wouldn&#8217;t have included Aram Saroyan in that grouping either. His conceptual poetics were perceived, I think, as a satire on publishing and poetry itself, witty &amp; fun perhaps, but decidedly &amp; willfully outré. And outré was not what <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Chicago Review </i>was about in that era. While it published some experimental fiction, thanks to editor Eugene Wildman, in poetry the journal struck Melnick &amp; I as being anxious about its status as a &#8220;major&#8221; college-based publication, which meant in practice that they were not looking for Aram Saroyan but the next Sylvia Plath. <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'>Besides which, what Saroyan &amp; Grenier were doing at that time were not exactly identical, a distinction that might have been lost because both used exceptionally short forms &amp; were often paired in the minds of readers &amp; editors with Clark Coolidge. Grenier&#8217;s best known work from this period is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences, </i>published originally by <a href="http://www.whalecloth.org/"><span style='color:black'>Whale Cloth Press</span></a> in an edition of 500 cards delivered in a box, but now online at the Whale Cloth site. Saroyan&#8217;s work has been online also, principally at the Eclipse website, but now is available in a fat &amp; sumptuous edition from <a href="http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/"><span style='color:black'>Ugly Duckling <span class=SpellE>Presse</span></span></a> under the title <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Complete Minimal Poems. </i>At 275 pages, it&#8217;s just slightly over half the size of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences. <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'>Saroyan&#8217;s work often seems to come out of the same conceptualism that drove <span class=SpellE>Acconci&#8217;s</span> work of that period. One poem in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Aram Saroyan, </i>the first of Saroyan&#8217;s minimal books, is a page of nothing but radio call letters. Another reads:<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:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>STEAK<br>
<br>
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQURSTUVWXYZ<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>A third contains the word <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>crickets </i>repeatedly typed, one word to a line, down an entire page. This is a type of poem almost entirely absent from Grenier&#8217;s work, which shows almost no interest in conceptualism. The closest Grenier gets to this mode is an occasional poem that functions at the <span class=SpellE>metacomment</span> level:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana; so-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>TWELVE VOWELS<br>
<br>
breakfast<br>
<br>
the sky flurries<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>A second Saroyan type that comes closer to Grenier entails poems that utilize the graphic elements of language &#8211; the poem at the top of this note is a famous instance of this. As it does there, this kind of poem works when there is some intelligible connection &#8211; it doesn&#8217;t have to be articulatable &#8211; between what is going on the page and denotative &amp; connotative dimensions of the word at hand. Thus<o:p></o:p></span></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:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>eyeye</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-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>strikes me as effective precisely for the way it calls up the double-image element involved in stereoscopic vision, why humans see in 3D, whereas<o:p></o:p></span></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:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>lighght</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-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>just sits there on the page doing not much of anything. <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 likewise has works in <i>Sentences</i> that depend on their graphic presentation, such as this poem, which builds on a device &#8211; the s t r e t c h e d word &#8211; first developed by Paul Blackburn<span class=GramE>::</span><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:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>s o m e o l d g u y s w <span class=SpellE>i</span> t h s c y t h e s<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>At one level, this is a poem about the blank space, what Hugh Kenner liked to call the 27<sup>th</sup> letter of the alphabet (and certainly the last one &#8220;invented&#8221;) and how it cuts (or scythes) discrete words from the flow of speech &#8211; it a prerequisite for the existence of words at all. Yet there is a richness both of sound and image here that gives Grenier&#8217;s poem dimensions that simply aren&#8217;t active in Saroyan&#8217;s work. This is characteristic of Grenier, whose most common mode of <span class=SpellE>micropoetics</span> in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences </i>is a snatch of language that begins &amp; ends in atypical places, e.g.,<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:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>yawns at solid<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>or <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='margin-bottom:12.0pt;text-align:center'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>or the starlight on the porch since when<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&#8217;s use of the graphic dimension of language doesn&#8217;t really occur until much later, when he moves into his &#8220;<a href="http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&amp;d/grenier/lgrena00.htm"><span style='color:black'>scrawl</span></a>&#8221; works. In those pieces, tho, what seems to interest Grenier most is the making explicit of the &#8220;coming to recognition&#8221; process of <span class=GramE>reading.</span> He is really fascinated at the idea of identifying the instant a word &#8220;pops&#8221; into consciousness &amp; poem after poem functions to locate precisely this moment. I&#8217;ve often that Grenier comes closest to what I would call a cognitive formalism &#8211; using form to explore cognition, the mind as such. There are of course limits to this &#8211; one can explore that instant in which words appear, for example, but it would far harder to identify a gap that occurs, for example, when one can&#8217;t think of a term, even tho it is every bit as palpable. <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 place where Saroyan and Grenier completely overlap, not surprisingly, are in the poems that call up the relationship to what they&#8217;re doing as poets and the larger tradition of poetry, as such, especially the short poems of Louis Zukofsky &amp; the Robert Creeley of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pieces</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>LOUIS<br> <br>
<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Noisy <br>
&#8220;Zukofsky&#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'>Or <span class=GramE>this,</span> entitled &#8220;Placitas&#8221; and dedicated to L.Z.:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:4.2in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0in;text-align:right'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>The trees&#8217;<br>
noise of<br>
the sea<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Or this, entitled &#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:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>One two<br>
three there<br>
are three are<br>
never seen<br>
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'>These three all are the work of Saroyan. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>A word that turns out to be important to both poets is <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>crickets. </i>Not only does Saroyan have a couple of poems that allude not just to the critter, but to the great summer drone of insects, one of Grenier&#8217;s <a href="http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/LANGUAGEn5/pictures/001.shtml"><span style='color:black'>best known essays</span></a> explores the ways in which Keats&#8217; own use of the term &#8211; &#8220;hedge-crickets sing&#8221; &#8211; milk <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>words of all possible letter/phonemic qualities without really challenging notion of English word/morpheme as basic unit of &#8216;meaning.</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-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>My favorite of Saroyan&#8217;s several cricket poems is one that falls into the neo-<span class=SpellE>Zukofsian</span> category:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Not a<br>
cricket<br>
<br>
ticks a<br>
clock<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 when Saroyan moves away from this one area that he shares with Grenier, he goes back toward either a conceptual poetics and/or a </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> one. These two poems appear on facing pages in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pages</i>: <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>cat<br> book<br>
city<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<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Ted <span class=SpellE>Ted</span> <span class=SpellE>Ted</span> <span class=SpellE>Ted</span><br>
Ted<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The first depends entirely on scale of referents for its impact, something I can&#8217;t imagine Grenier ever <span class=GramE>doing,</span> the second may be a parody of the NY School&#8217;s (esp. Gen 2) penchant for name dropping. Or it might be the most NY School poem ever written.<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&#8217;s default mode, in sharp contrast, tends toward documentation:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>of life days like<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><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:2.0in'><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>a port to a green<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><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:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>rain drops the first of many<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><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:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>repetitive bird and black<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Each of these four one-line poems can be read both as an instance of language-in-the-world and as a study in form. It requires an almost obsession focus on the language itself. With Saroyan, not so much:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:2.0in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>Later<br> <br>
the atelier<br>
<br>
ate her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>It&#8217;s not that Grenier does the <span class=SpellE>micropoem</span> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>better</i>, whatever that means, than Saroyan. Nor is it that Saroyan is the original, Grenier the copy. Rather, what each was seeking to find &amp; explore was ultimately something different about language &amp; the poem. Which suggests that even one-line poems can (are) so thoroughly stylized that one can discuss their relationship to different literary movements. This makes me wonder what a new formalist one-line poem would look like &#8211; not a couplet, not a haiku, but a real single-line work of art. How would it then enact its values? What would it be able to look, see, do in the world of poetry? Or is it simply the case that new formalism, so called, is by definition incapable of writing so focused? I&#8217;d love to see someone try. <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:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><o:p>&nbsp;</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'>&#185; As part of Fran McCullough&#8217;s attempt to bring the second generation </span></span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New   York</span></span></st1:PlaceName><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> </span></span><st1:PlaceType><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> out broadly through Harper.</span></span><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> Other books published by Harper during that period included Tom Clark&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Stones </i>(1969), his volume <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Air, </i>Dick Gallup&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Where I Hang My Hat </i>and Lewis Mac Adams&#8217; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Poetry Room </i>(all 1970). Then it stopped. Once Robert Duncan &amp; Robert Creeley left Scribner&#8217;s for New Directions, the publication of post-avant poets by the New York Trades largely came to an end, save for later collected editions of already canonic poets. The </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span  style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> had successfully defended what it saw as its turf. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, February 01, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-family:Arial'>Robert Grenier&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences</i></span></b><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-family:Arial'>,</span></i><span
style='font-family:Arial'> much discussed previously on this site, most
recently <a
href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2003_01_01_ronsilliman_archive.html%2387951724">January
24</a>, are now up on the net at the <a href="http://www.whalecloth.org/">Whale
Cloth Press</a> web site. There is also a link on the <a
href="http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/grenier/">Grenier page</a> at the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Electronic</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>Poetry</span></st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Center</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span
style='font-family:Arial'> that takes you directly to the cards themselves &#8211;
but I think it makes more sense to head first over to publisher </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Michael Waltuch</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s useful notes &amp; it&#8217;s both fun &amp; valuable to
take a look at the images of the box itself. The electronic site comes very
close to replicating the experience of the box itself. Each time you go through
the stack, the cards will appear in a different order. I&#8217;ve gone through it at
least a dozen times in the past couple of weeks, and I don&#8217;t tire of the
process at all.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>In </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>New York City</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'> on February 8, Grenier will be reading/slide
presentation at the <a href="http://www.marianneboeskygallery.com/index2.php">Marianne
Boesky Gallery</a> in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>Chelsea</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-family:Arial'>,
</span><st1:Street><st1:address><span style='font-family:Arial'>535 W. 22<sup>nd</sup>
  Street</span></st1:address></st1:Street><span style='font-family:Arial'>, at </span><st1:time
Minute="0" Hour="20"><span style='font-family:Arial'>8 PM</span></st1:time><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, 212-680-9889. In addition to the reading/slides,
Grenier is, in the gallery&#8217;s words, &#8220;debuting 2 new suits of iris prints of his
drawn poems, and a series of photographs from the notebooks.&#8221; These editions
will be on view and for sale at the gallery. The gallery plans to keep the
prints on display in its viewing room for the following week. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'><a
href="http://www.spdbooks.org/">Small Press Distribution</a>, incidentally,
lists <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences <span class=GramE>Towards</span>
Birds</i>, the 1975 L Press selection, as still available at $15. This
selection of about 50 cards differs from The Box in part also because of the
typeface, a crisp Times Roman rather than the blocky Courier of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences. </i>However, as only 100 copies
of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences Towards Birds </i>were
printed &amp; the SPD website characterizes it as a paperback when in fact it
is a pack of cards in a specially printed manila envelope, I would call SPD
directly before I ordered that item: 800-869-7553 (free phone call within the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>United States</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-family:Arial'>). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Friday, January 24, 2003</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">My blogs on the work of
Robert Grenier generated several responses. Allen Bramhall wrote with a
first-hand account of Grenier&#8217;s cards at </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">Franconia</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">College</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> (ellipsis in the original):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Dear Ron,<o:p></o:p></span></tt></div>
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<span class="GramE"><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">mention</span></tt></span><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> of Robert Grenier makes me jump
up. Robert arrived at </span></tt><st1:place><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Franconia</span></tt></st1:place><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> the second of my two years there.
<span class="GramE">he</span> has influenced me greatly, even tho I have not
stayed in touch with him since leaving school. <span class="GramE">his</span>
curiosity and openness remain lessons to me as a reader and writer. I remember
him hauling out his batch of cards and saying he didn't know what to do with
them. <span class="GramE">sometime</span> after that he filled a hallway, that
was normally given over to displays of photographs and prints, to a... well I
want to say a performance of his cards. <span class="GramE">he</span> pinned them
in neat rows and columns on the corkboard. I remember seeing him at it, and
there was something of a graffiti artist's earnestness about where he was doing
this. <span class="GramE">the</span> hallway was rather dark but with the white
cards notably brighter. I did not expect the visceral effect of seeing so many
of his pieces on display. <span class="GramE">there</span> was and is a neat
feeling to holding a pile of his poems on your lap or spreading them across a
table or the floor, but the hallway display was of a different order. I
remember waiting for those poems to appear in some published form, because he
had said he wanted to bring them out somehow. <span class="GramE">his</span>
poster </span></tt><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Oakland</span></tt></i></st1:place></st1:city><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">* is one attempt to make a display
of his works. <span class="GramE">the</span> </span></tt><st1:place><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Franconia</span></tt></st1:place><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> hallway was much more spacious,
of course, and whether or not he was satisfied with how the poster worked, it
was different from filling a hallway. I remember sticking a poem on the wall, a
quiet homage I think, not to horn in but because it felt right. <span class="GramE">the</span> display seemed to ask for response, as in an addition of
voice or something such. <span class="GramE">no</span> one else saw fit to chime
in, but as I said, the hallway display bore at least a little of the sense of
graffiti. <span class="GramE">anyway</span>, I was quite ignorant about poetry at
the time, and the year with Robert threw all sorts of mysteries at me, Olson,
Stein, Coolidge, Ashbery, Saroyan. <span class="GramE">he</span> got Coolidge,
Ashbery, and even Larry Eigner to read at </span></tt><st1:place><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Franconia</span></tt></st1:place><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">, no small feat considering the
school's proximity to nowhere. <span class="GramE">it</span> pleases me that you
speak of him.<o:p></o:p></span></tt></div>
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<span class="GramE"><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">yours</span></tt></span><tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></tt></div>
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<tt><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Allen Bramhall<o:p></o:p></span></tt></div>
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<st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Barrett
 Watten</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> notes that <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>published the selection entitled &#8220;30
from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences</i>&#8221; with (not in) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This 5,</i> not no. 4, which places the
publication date in the Winter of 1974, rather than the Spring of the previous year,
as I&#8217;d indicated. I also suggested that the selection was 30 cards, but in fact
the cards are printed on both sides &#8211; unlike the <a href="http://findaid.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft5k4005j1/C02/190733839">200
copy Whale Cloth Press box edition</a> &#8211; which, with a card set aside for the
title, made it just 16 cards. Watten also reminded me of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences from Birds</i>, another selection of the cards that was
published by Curtis Faville&#8217;s L Press in 1975. I know I had that at one time
&amp; I&#8217;ve never sold a Grenier item in my life, but like the poster, it seems
to have wandered off on its own. According to Faville, only 100 copies were
published to &#8220;little or no feedback.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Bob Grumman posted a dissent
to the Poetics List that said, in part:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Ron also opines that Grenier's &#8220;<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences</i> still qualifies as the
furthest anyone has pushed poetry &amp; form in the investigation of the
world.&#8221;&nbsp; I AM enough of a literary historian to know that this is
certainly not true.&nbsp; It may be possible reasonably to claim that Grenier
pushed poetry and form as far as anyone, but further?&nbsp; It's extremely hard
to make comparisons (because of the apples/pears problem, among other things)
but it seems to me Ron is overlooking Stein, Pound, Cummings and Aram Saroyan,
for a start--and all of visual poetry and later <span class="SpellE">pluraesthetic</span>
works.&nbsp; I would add that in some respects, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences</i> is pretty straightforward minimalism that's been around
quite a while.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Grumman is on target in that
I did not make myself very intelligible with that statement, since that
assertion could be taken to mean almost anything. His alternative suggestions
illustrate the point nicely. All four writers Grumman cites were interested in
various extensions of poetic form &#8211; Stein &amp; Pound making profound
contributions in that area, <span class="GramE">cummings</span> &amp; Saroyan
more modest ones. What Grenier did was to focus on what linguists still call <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">parole,</i> the language as she is spoke by
them what <span class="GramE">speak</span> it. Neither Stein, Pound, <span class="GramE">cummings</span> nor Saroyan focus on that particular dimension,
although Stein comes closest &amp; has a sense of grammar &amp; discourse as
developed as anyone has ever had. However, like Joyce, she has a 19<sup>th</sup>
century-centric sense of language as infinitely plastic &amp; malleable that
language itself does not bear out (hence the failure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Finnegans Wake</i>). Unlike Joyce, Stein seems to have had a stronger
sense of self-confidence in her own analytical skills with regards to the
language &#8211; she never is in thrall to the 19<sup>th</sup> century concept of
language as historic philology, which bedevils both Joyce &amp; Pound (&amp;, I
dare say, Kenner). Where Stein &amp; Grenier diverge most strongly is that
Stein&#8217;s interest lies principally in the compositional possibilities of
language, whereas Grenier is most focused on, as the famous &#8220;On Speech&#8221; flatly
states, &#8220;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">the</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> word
way back in the head that is the thought or feeling forming out of the &#8216;vast&#8217;
silence / noise of consciousness experience world <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">all the time<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,</i></b> as
waking/dreaming, words occurring and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">these
are the words of the poem . . . . </b>(<span class="GramE">boldface</span> in the
original)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">This is, it seems to me, as
true of the scrawl works of today as it was of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences.</i> One might say that Stein &amp; Grenier were on parallel
tracks, headed however in opposite directions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">There are of course
antecedents for Grenier&#8217;s minimalism &#8211; really a mode of gigantism, in that he
is literally putting elements of language under a microscope: Stein&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tender Buttons, </i>Creeley&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieces</i>, many short poems by Zukofsky
&amp; even Aram Saroyan&#8217;s brief foray into innovative poetics in the 1960s.
&amp; if one examines a book such as Saroyan&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pages </i>(Random House, 1969), you can find a few pieces that are
reminiscent of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences:</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;;">incomprehensible</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;;"> birds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Or<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;;">cat</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;;">book</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;;">city</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Or even<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="SpellE"><span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;; font-size: 20.0pt;">lobstee</span></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;; font-size: 20.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">But these works merely put the
proverbial toe in the water compared with Grenier&#8217;s exploration of the whole
ocean.** A good part of what make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences
</i>such a profound experience is its scale &#8211; 500 poems with no set order. I
find that reading the work over &amp; over &#8211; the forthcoming website
underscores this aspect of the experience, especially since the cards are
shuffled each time one begins again &#8211; is when I start to get, literally, &#8220;into
the work.&#8221; <span class="GramE">A single poem, or even the selections published by
Watten, Faville or to found in <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> the American Tree</i>,
don&#8217;t</span> begin to approach this project. It is a classic instance of a text
that resists excerpting or editing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Grumman&#8217;s other alternatives
&#8211; &#8220;all of visual poetry and later <span class="SpellE">pluraesthetic</span>
works&#8221; &#8211; reinforces the point. Such poetries, which can be both delightful
&amp; dazzling (no argument there, I hope), tend to move towards the graphic or
whatever other media pluralizes them &amp; thus even </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">furth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">er from any focus on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">parole</i>. They may at times be grammatological, in the sense of
invoking the written system of a language, but they&#8217;re seldom truly <span class="GramE">linguistic</span>. Part of what makes Grenier&#8217;s recent <a href="http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&amp;d/grenier/lgrena00.htm">scrawl writing</a>
so fascinating is that he has taken on both the linguistic &amp; grammatological
dimensions simultaneously. The scrawl works are virtually the only intermedia
writing I can think of that isn&#8217;t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">déjà
toujours</i> &#8220;poetry &amp;&#8221; &#8211; as in &#8220;poetry &amp; dance,&#8221; &#8220;poetry &amp;
painting,&#8221; &#8220;poetry &amp; music,&#8221; &#8220;poetry &amp; anime,&#8221; &#8220;poetry &amp;
programming,&#8221; &#8220;poetry &amp; laundry.&#8221; Those ampersands invariably seem fatal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* The
poster is, in fact, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CAMBRIDGE M&#8217;ASS</i>. </span><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Oakland</span></i></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> was a chapbook. Both were published by Tuumba Press, the
poster in 1979, the chapbook in 1980.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** There is
a good doctoral dissertation to be had in figuring out why Saroyan, for all
purposes, abandoned poetry while Grenier, in the face of little early
recognition, persisted &amp; took his project so much further. Why &amp; how do
artists make such choices? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Friday, January 17, 2003</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">After Berkeley, Robert
Grenier taught at Tufts University, then moved on to Franconia College, an
experimental school tucked in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The move,
as well as Grenier&#8217;s departure from the masthead of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This</i>, put him further outside of the scene, as such. At the same
time, however, Grenier&#8217;s writing was developing rapidly. Gradually world
filtered west of new poems that were being written not on pages, as such, but
on cards. At one point there was a show of such cards, either at or near
Franconia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Grenier was hardly the only
poet to be showing cards in a gallery setting during that period &#8211; Yoko Ono
&amp; Jim Rosenberg both had occasions to attach words to heavyweight paper to
wall (&amp; in Ono&#8217;s case ceiling) &#8211; but Grenier&#8217;s focus on language had
expanded so dramatically during this period that poems like &#8220;WINTRY&#8221; &amp; &#8220;a
long walk&#8221; seem positively literary, in the old-fashioned sense of that word,
by comparison. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">This </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">published
a sampling of 30 cards in its fourth issue in the Spring of &#8217;73. But it wasn&#8217;t
until Michael Waltuch&#8217;s Whale Cloth Press published &#8220;the box,&#8221; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences,</i> five full years later, that
the scale &amp; scope of Grenier&#8217;s work really came into view. It&#8217;s a project
that I would suspect has had a profound impact on every reader who ever gave it
serious attention. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ve written in the past
about both Grenier (in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Verdure </i>3&amp;4)
&amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences </i>per se (a review in
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Book Review</i> in 1979) in
the past &amp; don&#8217;t feel the need to rehearse those arguments here, other than
to underscore the degree to which Grenier saw things that nobody prior to him
had envisioned as literature. In some ways, it is the very plainest of these
poems that are the most truly radical:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">twelve to twelve to one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A text like the one above is
not only &#8220;about&#8221; found language, but presents a dance of symmetry at the level
of syntax &amp; asymmetry at the level of letters that will <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">never </i>settle into a balanced, stable whole.
Like an optical illusion &#8211; such as a <a href="http://eluzions.com/Pictures/Illusions/">Necker cube</a> &#8211; the poem will
never resolve. There is more going on in these five words than in many books by
normative &#8220;mainstream&#8221; poets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Even the publication in a
box-of-cards format was designed to unsettle any presumptions the reader might,
literally, bring to the table. Michael Davidson used to tell a story about
assigning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences</i> to students at UC
San Diego who would dutifully head up to the rare book archive, set it down on
a table on begin reading through, only to have Davidson show up, come over to
their table <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">&amp; begin shuffling the
cards</i> as the students struggled with their impulse to become hysterical. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Now the cut-up, regardless
of whether you trace it back to Brion Gyson, Bob Cobbing or just Allen Ginsberg
straightening up the papers on Bill Burroughs&#8217; floor in Tangiers, likewise
predates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences</i> by some time.
Grenier&#8217;s genius lies in specifically asking the reader to take on the
consequent role of ordering the units. As such, each card thus must float free.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">yah gee<br />
yah gee<br />
yah gee<br />
yah gee<br />
yah gee<br />
yah gee<br />
yah gee<br />
yah gee<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">is not building towards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">TWELVE VOWELS<br />
<br />
<br />
breakfast<br />
<br />
<br />
the sky flurries<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">any more than it is toward<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">lakeshore spondee<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">or vice versa. By removing
&#8220;before&#8221; &amp; &#8220;after&#8221; from the book of poetry &#8211; or at least by rendering it
visibly arbitrary &#8211; Grenier has in fact created &#8220;new sentences&#8221; in a way that
had not been previously possible, let alone contemplated. Indeed, I&#8217;ve often felt
as though I was given much more than my own share of credit for my talk, &#8221;The
New Sentence,&#8221; when something like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences</i>
demonstrates the degree to which I was merely stating the obvious, somewhat
clumsily at that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I&#8217;ve written with regard to
the Objectivists that I&#8217;ve often thought that the poetry of the 1950s, from
Ginsberg to Olson to the Ashbery of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tennis
Court Oath</i>, seemed much more revolutionary precisely because there had been
a break in the historical record &amp; that the moderating connection between
the generation of Pound &amp; Williams &amp; these post-war poets was
(temporarily) lost.* In something of a reverse dynamic, I sometimes think that
language poetry has been integrated all too comfortably into the spectrum of
post-New American poetries in part because its most revolutionary works,
specifically <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences</i>, haven&#8217;t been
more widely distributed. You cannot find it anywhere in <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/">Abebooks.com</a>, nor even Grenier&#8217;s 1979
oversized (40&#8221; by 48&#8221;) poster &#8211; or, to be accurate, book in the form of a
poster &#8211; from Tuumba Press, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CAMBRIDGE
M&#8217;ASS.</i> Functionally, an entire generation of poets have come along who have
only had occasion to see these works either second hand &#8211; in a library or
someone else&#8217;s home &#8211; or excerpted in formats that cancel out at least some of
the elements of the work, as in the 28 pieces contained in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the American Tree, </i>the book freezing the order in spite of all
otherwise good intentions**.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">All of this hopefully is
soon to change. What&#8217;s occasioned my thinking on Grenier this week has been a
chance to beta test a still unannounced site that, when complete, will make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences</i> available in a fully
equivalent electronic version, a wonderful solution. At one level this approach
seems &#8220;obvious,&#8221; albeit ironic insofar as Grenier &#8211; like Clark Coolidge &#8211; has
been one of the last poets to resist the onset of computing.*** There are still
some bugs to work through but, overall, I can already tell that the site is
going to be wonderful &#8211; and accurate to the impulse of the work itself. For
example, each time a reader proceeds through the deck, the cards will appear in
a new &amp; different order. When the site is fully up &amp; running, I&#8217;ll be
certain to make a note of it here. If you haven&#8217;t yet read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences,</i> the opportunity will soon be at hand. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Thus
Oppen has been misread on occasion as being a far more conservative poet of the
1960s than ever was the case. In fact, he was a radical poet of the 1930s who was
being viewed from a very different historical context. The more interesting (if
unanswerable) question is whether Olson or Ginsberg could have been who they
were in a world in which Objectivism had not been erased.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** This
explains the otherwise awkward title, &#8220;A Sequence / 28 Separate Poems from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences,</i>&#8221; used in the anthology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">*** The
irony is compounded as even Grenier&#8217;s most recent <a href="http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&amp;d/grenier/lgrena00.htm">&#8220;scrawl&#8221; texts</a>
have been most widely distributed via the web. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, January 16, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>If &#8220;a long walk&#8221; was not
speech, Robert Grenier&#8217;s &#8220;WINTRY&#8221; certainly was:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana'>German<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana'>Magnus massive<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=SpellE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>Dagny</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> <span class=SpellE>Dagny</span>
calling<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>call</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> me call me<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>lazy</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> prairie icy<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>streams</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>, nicely<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>nicely</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> <span class=SpellE>nicely</span> <span
class=SpellE>nicely</span> Norwegians<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=SpellE><span
class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>vell</span></span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> I, well I<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=SpellE><span
class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>vell</span></span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> I, <span class=SpellE>vell</span>
I<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>snowy</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> <span class=SpellE>vell</span> I<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=SpellE><span
class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>vell</span></span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> I don&#8217;t know<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>oh</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> <span class=SpellE>vell</span> I,
oh well, I<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>well</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> I don&#8217;t know<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>oh</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>, <span class=SpellE>vell</span>,
I don&#8217;t know<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Verdana'>Ah yah<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>ah</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>, yah<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=SpellE><span
class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>ja</span></span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>a</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> sod hut<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>One can almost hear Frances
McDormand in the 1996 film <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a
href="http://us.imdb.com/Details?0116282">Fargo</a> </i>speaking these last
three stanzas while chewing a hoagie, battling morning sickness &amp;
extracting a leg from a wood chipper. Like the <span class=SpellE>Coen</span>
Brothers film, which I&#8217;ve sometimes thought of as being little more than an
extension of this poem by </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>Minnesota</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-family:Arial'>
native Grenier, &#8220;WINTRY&#8221; is obsessed with the dialect of the American far
north. After its opening stanza suggesting a shortwave radio operator&#8217;s attempt
to connect to the <span class=GramE>Other</span> &amp; a second stanza that
contextualizes what follows, the final three stanzas focus on the smallest
imaginable distinctions of enunciation &amp; pause. If Paul Blackburn had
perhaps best articulated a process for the transcription of speech as such, he
nonetheless still focused on that speech&#8217;s spectrum of reference. For Grenier
here, the articulation <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>is </i>the
reference. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>In 1970, Grenier was quite
clear in stating the revolutionary nature of his intentions toward literature.
While his &#8220;I HATE SPEECH&#8221; comment from the first issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>This*</i>, the journal that Grenier initially edited with </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Barrett Watten</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, has become iconic in its role initiating langpo,
Grenier&#8217;s comment there was more typical of what he was telling anybody who
would listen in those days. In the same first issue of that publication,
Grenier declares, again all in caps (&amp; adding boldface in the place of
italics), that &#8220;&#8217;PROJECTIVE VERSE&#8217; IS <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>PIECES</b>
ON,&#8221; very neatly erasing twenty-plus years of labor on the part of Olson,
Duncan, Blackburn et al. &#8220;WINTRY&#8221; first appeared in that same issue of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This</i> &amp; is reprinted on the first
page of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a
href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/~upne/0-943373-51-4.html">In the American Tree</a>.
<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>While Grenier was not the
only person doing interesting new work in 1970 that was clearly already outside
of &#8211; or beyond, if you prefer &#8211; the New American framework &#8211; Bernadette Mayer,
Clark Coolidge &amp; Jackson Mac Low are all cases in point &#8211; he was the one
person actively arguing for the position&#8217;s revolutionary potential. This is
why, in retrospect, it has always been easy to identify the &#8220;origin&#8221; of
language poetry. Grenier let everyone know early on that to investigate new
alternatives required a break with a past, even as his &#8220;recuperation&#8221; of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pieces</i> into a version of Projectivism
demonstrated that this new model in his head was in fact insistently loyal at
least to the abstract principles, as Grenier saw them, of one particular
version of the New American perspective. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>It would be hard to
overestimate the impact Grenier&#8217;s poetry &amp; perspective had on the writers
around him. In the thirty years since it was first written, I doubt that there
has been a week in which I did not find myself reciting &#8220;WINTRY,&#8221; all or in
part. If there is an &#8220;Ur-poem&#8221; somewhere deep in my imagination, a mantra for
what poetry might be<span class=GramE>,</span> that poem is it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* <a
href="http://www.greenapplebooks.com/">Green Apple Books</a> in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>San Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> is advertising a &#8220;complete run&#8221; of <span
class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This</i></span>, vol. 1
through 11 through <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/">Abebooks</a> for $150.
That&#8217;s a good price &amp; the collection is said to include the samples of
Grenier&#8217;s cards &#8211; &#8220;30 from <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sentences</i>&#8221;
&#8211; slipped into <span class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This</i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>4. But <span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'> </i>published 12 issues, so this set is one item short. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, January 15, 2003</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Twenty five years ago, Whale
Cloth Press published what at the time was the most radically innovative poetry
project I&#8217;d ever seen, Robert Grenier&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences.</i>
Rereading it today, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sentences </i>still
qualifies as the furthest anyone has pushed poetry &amp; form in the
investigation of the world:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;Courier New&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">JOE<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
JOE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The above is just one of 500
cards, 5 inches high, 8 inches wide, text typed (in &#8220;landscape&#8221; format) in
Courier from an IBM Selectric typewriter, housed in a dark blue cloth covered
folding box. You could shuffle the cards &amp; there was a rumor that no two
boxes had the works in the same order. This was, Whale Cloth &amp; Grenier
seemed to be insisting, a book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">It was as if nobody had ever
taken the time before Grenier to just simply look at the language. When his
work first began to telescope down from the mid-level lyrics that he was
composing as this one-time Robert Lowell protégé left Iowa City for a teaching
job at Berkeley &#8211; a job obtained in good part on the recommendation of James
Tate &amp; Richard Tillinghast &#8211; it occurred in a climate in which the most
radical book anyone had ever seen or even imagined was </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Robert Creeley</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieces</i> (<span class="SpellE">Scribners</span>, 1969). At the time, I recall poetry students
around </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">San
  Francisco</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">State</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> being utterly stunned by the Creeley book &#8211; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">&#8220;how dare he call that poetry?&#8221; </i>But
within less than two years, Grenier was starting to write works in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> that made Creeley look as mainstream </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">New England</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> as Robert Frost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I first met Grenier when I
transferred to UC Berkeley for the <span class="GramE">Spring</span> term in
1970. I had dropped out of </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">San Francisco</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">State</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">
after the debilitating student strike that then-governor Reagan had consciously
used as a model testing ground for ways of defeating student activism. Every
single teacher of any true value I had had at State either was fired or quit.
One professor I knew was so freaked out by the presence of cops on horseback on
campus that he was carrying a pistol at all times. The new university president,
S. I. Hayakawa, was a linguistics professor whose class I&#8217;d sat in on a few
times until it became apparent that he hadn&#8217;t read a book in perhaps 15 years.
It was obvious he was little more than a puppet for the governor, who
originally hoped to use SF State to help get his secretary of education Max
Rafferty elected to the U.S. Senate over incumbent Democrat Alan Cranston
(Charles Olson&#8217;s one-time boss). The only thing that the student strikers did
intelligently that entire fall had been to wait until late on Election Day
itself to go out on strike, thwarting Reagan&#8217;s original plan. But from that
point on, it was a debacle as the state showed that it was willing to use
whatever force was necessary to break the strike.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Because I didn&#8217;t have enough
units to transfer as a junior to </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> right away, I detoured briefly to </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">Merritt</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">College</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">, which in those days was still in the flatlands of </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">North Oakland</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">, the &#8220;bad&#8221; neighborhood in which my grandfather had
grown up. I took as many of the my breadth courses as I could get out of the
way, working as a TA for an anthropology class (the one time I ever held such a
role in college), then moved to Berkeley in January 1970 where several people I
knew, including David Bromige, David Melnick &amp; my wife at the time, </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Rochelle Nameroff</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">, were already students. I arrived just as students
were preparing to submit manuscripts for a series of undergraduate writing
contests. I dutifully gathered my work into a couple of different clusters and
asked around what people thought about sending different groups to the
different contests. Although the judges for each contest were announced at the
outset, I was so new that I didn&#8217;t know any of the faculty to speak of, with
the lone exception of Robin Magowan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">One of my clusters was a
group of short, Williams-<span class="SpellE">esque</span> poems, the core it
would later turn out of my first book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crow</i>.
Both Melnick &amp; Nameroff suggested that I should I submit that group to the
Joan Yee Lang Award contest, whose judge was Robert Grenier, somebody I&#8217;d never
heard of before. &#8220;He likes short poems,&#8221; Melnick insisted. This turned out to
be excellent advice, as I won the award before ever having met the judge. One
day later that <span class="GramE">Spring</span>, however, Grenier introduced
himself to me at Serendipity Books, in those days a great poetry bookshop on
Shattuck in </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">North Berkeley</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">. &#8220;I thought you were Arthur <span class="SpellE">Sze</span>,&#8221;
he told me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I didn&#8217;t really get to know
Grenier well until the following fall when I attempted to do a special study
course on Louis Zukofsky only to discover that almost nobody at </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> had ever even heard of the Brooklyn Objectivist.
James E.B. <span class="SpellE">Breslin</span>, whom I&#8217;d asked first, sort of
knew the work but was clearly intimidated by it &amp; wasn&#8217;t sure he could help
me. He not only recommended Grenier, but &#8211; as it happened &#8211; gave me some
excellent advice about getting the class approved by my advisor, arguing for
Zukofsky&#8217;s relevance in terms of his association with Williams, whom professors
in the department had heard of before. Grenier agreed &amp; the Williams ploy
worked. It was only a matter of weeks before I became a full-fledged member of
the Cult of Grenier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In 1970, it was evident to
any of the young writers around Grenier that he was rethinking poetry from the
ground up. If Creeley&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pieces</i>
offered poetry as it might descend from Louis Zukofsky&#8217;s short poems by way of
Ted Berrigan, Grenier was adding Stein into the mix as well as the Williams of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spring &amp; All</i>, which Harvey Brown had
just published, suddenly demonstrating the good doctor not only to be the
epitome of a speech-based poetics that everyone had recognized for the previous
20 years, but also the most consciously radical critic of poetry of the first
half of the 20<sup>th</sup> century &#8211; which came as a total surprise of many.
On top of this, Grenier wasn&#8217;t merely mixing influences in a new way &#8211; although
he was doing that also &#8211; he was gradually insisting that anything, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anything</i>, looked at closely enough could
become poetry. His works from that period &#8211; which make up the first two pages
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/acad-inst/upne/0-943373-51-4.html">In the
American Tree</a></i>, were working themselves down toward a new level of
minimalism not seen before in American poetry: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">a</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> long
walk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">a</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">walk</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> a long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">walk</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> a long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">walk</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> along<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">To poets raised on the
writings of Duncan, Spicer, Olson, Creeley &amp; Zukofsky &#8211; which is exactly
where I was coming from &#8211; the sheer gait of this poem, with its deliberately
limping prosody, was like an explosion in the face of everything I&#8217;d ever
known. This was not speech. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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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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