<!DOCTYPE html>
<html dir='ltr' xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'>
<head>
<link href='https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/widgets/2549344219-widget_css_bundle.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>
<meta content='text/html; charset=UTF-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/>
<meta content='blogger' name='generator'/>
<link href='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/favicon.ico' rel='icon' type='image/x-icon'/>
<link href='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%20of%20poetry?updated-max=2007-04-06T04:51:00-07:00&amp;max-results=20&amp;start=24&amp;by-date=false' rel='canonical'/>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Silliman&#39;s Blog - Atom" href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Silliman&#39;s Blog - RSS" href="https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss" />
<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml" title="Silliman&#39;s Blog - Atom" href="https://www.blogger.com/feeds/3738579/posts/default" />
<!--Can't find substitution for tag [blog.ieCssRetrofitLinks]-->
<meta content='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%20of%20poetry?updated-max=2007-04-06T04:51:00-07:00&amp;max-results=20&amp;start=24&amp;by-date=false' property='og:url'/>
<meta content='Silliman&#39;s Blog' property='og:title'/>
<meta content='A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.' property='og:description'/>
<!--[if IE]> <script> (function() { var html5 = ("abbr,article,aside,audio,canvas,datalist,details," + "figure,footer,header,hgroup,mark,menu,meter,nav,output," + "progress,section,time,video").split(','); for (var i = 0; i < html5.length; i++) { document.createElement(html5[i]); } try { document.execCommand('BackgroundImageCache', false, true); } catch(e) {} })(); </script> <![endif]-->
<title>Silliman's Blog: Schools of poetry</title>
<style id='page-skin-1' type='text/css'><!--
/*
* Blogger Template Style
*
* Sand Dollar
* by Jason Sutter
* Updated by Blogger Team
*/
/* Variable definitions
====================
<Variable name="textcolor" description="Text Color"
type="color" default="#000">
<Variable name="bgcolor" description="Page Background Color"
type="color" default="#f6f6f6">
<Variable name="pagetitlecolor" description="Blog Title Color"
type="color" default="#F5DEB3">
<Variable name="pagetitlebgcolor" description="Blog Title Background Color"
type="color" default="#DE7008">
<Variable name="descriptionColor" description="Blog Description Color"
type="color" default="#9E5205" />
<Variable name="descbgcolor" description="Description Background Color"
type="color" default="#F5E39e">
<Variable name="titlecolor" description="Post Title Color"
type="color" default="#9E5205">
<Variable name="datecolor" description="Date Header Color"
type="color" default="#777777">
<Variable name="footercolor" description="Post Footer Color"
type="color" default="#444444">
<Variable name="linkcolor" description="Link Color"
type="color" default="#DE7008">
<Variable name="footerlinkcolor" description="Post Footer Link Color"
type="color" default="#968a0a">
<Variable name="visitedlinkcolor" description="Visited Link Color"
type="color" default="#DE7008">
<Variable name="sidebarcolor" description="Sidebar Title Color"
type="color" default="#B8A80D">
<Variable name="sidebarlinkcolor" description="Sidebar Link Color"
type="color" default="#999999">
<Variable name="bordercolor" description="Border Color"
type="color" default="#e0ad12">
<Variable name="bodyfont" description="Text Font"
type="font"
default="normal normal 100% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-Serif">
<Variable name="headerfont" description="Sidebar Title Font"
type="font"
default="normal bold 150% Verdana,Sans-serif">
<Variable name="dateHeaderFont" description="Date Header Font"
type="font"
default="normal bold 105% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-serif">
<Variable name="pagetitlefont" description="Blog Title Font"
type="font" default="normal bold 300% Verdana,Sans-Serif">
<Variable name="titlefont" description="Post Title Font"
type="font" default="normal bold 160% Verdana,Sans-Serif">
<Variable name="startSide" description="Start side in blog language"
type="automatic" default="left">
<Variable name="endSide" description="End side in blog language"
type="automatic" default="right">
*/
body {
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
background:#ffffff;
color:#000000;
font-size: small;
}
#outer-wrapper {
font:normal normal 12px Arial, sans-serif;
}
a {
color:#666666;
}
a:hover {
color:#9E5205;
}
a img {
border-width: 0;
}
#content-wrapper {
padding-top: 0;
padding-right: 1em;
padding-bottom: 0;
padding-left: 1em;
}
@media all  {
div#main {
float:right;
width:66%;
padding-top:30px;
padding-right:0;
padding-bottom:10px;
padding-left:1em;
border-left:dotted 1px #e0ad12;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden;     /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
div#sidebar {
margin-top:20px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0;
padding:0px;
text-align:left;
float: left;
width: 31%;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden;     /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}
}
@media handheld  {
div#main {
float:none;
width:90%;
}
div#sidebar {
padding-top:30px;
padding-right:7%;
padding-bottom:10px;
padding-left:3%;
}
}
#header {
padding-top:0px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-bottom:0px;
padding-left:0px;
margin-top:0px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0px;
border-bottom:dotted 1px #e0ad12;
background:#000000;
}
h1 a:link  {
text-decoration:none;
color:#ffffff
}
h1 a:visited  {
text-decoration:none;
color:#ffffff
}
h1,h2,h3 {
margin: 0;
}
h1 {
padding-top:25px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-bottom:10px;
padding-left:5%;
color:#ffffff;
background:#940f04;
font:normal bold 80px Verdana,Sans-Serif;
letter-spacing:-2px;
}
h3.post-title {
color:#9E5205;
font:normal bold 150% Arial, sans-serif;
letter-spacing:-1px;
}
h3.post-title a,
h3.post-title a:visited {
color: #9E5205;
}
h2.date-header  {
margin-top:10px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0px;
color:#ffffff;
font: normal bold 104% 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-serif;
}
h4 {
color:#aa0033;
}
#sidebar h2 {
color:#cc0000;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
font:normal bold 120% Arial, sans-serif;
}
#sidebar .widget {
margin-top:0px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:33px;
margin-left:0px;
padding-top:0px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-bottom:0px;
padding-left:0px;
font-size:120%;
}
#sidebar ul {
list-style-type:none;
padding-left: 0;
margin-top: 0;
}
#sidebar li {
margin-top:0px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
margin-left:0px;
padding-top:0px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-bottom:0px;
padding-left:0px;
list-style-type:none;
font-size:95%;
}
.description {
padding:0px;
margin-top:7px;
margin-right:12%;
margin-bottom:7px;
margin-left:5%;
color:#cc0000;
background:transparent;
font:bold 100% Verdana,Sans-Serif;
}
.post {
margin-top:0px;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:30px;
margin-left:0px;
}
.post strong {
color:#000000;
font-weight:bold;
}
pre,code {
color:#000000;
}
strike {
color:#000000;
}
.post-footer  {
padding:0px;
margin:0px;
color:#ffffff;
font-size:80%;
}
.post-footer a {
border:none;
color:#968a0a;
text-decoration:none;
}
.post-footer a:hover {
text-decoration:underline;
}
#comments {
padding:0px;
font-size:110%;
font-weight:bold;
}
.comment-author {
margin-top: 10px;
}
.comment-body {
font-size:100%;
font-weight:normal;
color:black;
}
.comment-footer {
padding-bottom:20px;
color:#ffffff;
font-size:80%;
font-weight:normal;
display:inline;
margin-right:10px
}
.deleted-comment  {
font-style:italic;
color:gray;
}
.comment-link  {
margin-left:.6em;
}
.profile-textblock {
clear: both;
margin-left: 0;
}
.profile-img {
float: left;
margin-top: 0;
margin-right: 5px;
margin-bottom: 5px;
margin-left: 0;
border: 2px solid #940f04;
}
#sidebar a:link  {
color:#000000;
text-decoration:none;
}
#sidebar a:active  {
color:#ff0000;
text-decoration:none;
}
#sidebar a:visited  {
color:sidebarlinkcolor;
text-decoration:none;
}
#sidebar a:hover {
color:#cc0000;
text-decoration:none;
}
.feed-links {
clear: both;
line-height: 2.5em;
}
#blog-pager-newer-link {
float: left;
}
#blog-pager-older-link {
float: right;
}
#blog-pager {
text-align: center;
}
.clear {
clear: both;
}
.widget-content {
margin-top: 0.5em;
}
/** Tweaks for layout editor preview */
body#layout #outer-wrapper {
margin-top: 0;
}
body#layout #main,
body#layout #sidebar {
margin-top: 10px;
padding-top: 0;
}

--></style>
<link href='https://www.blogger.com/dyn-css/authorization.css?targetBlogID=3738579&amp;zx=a1164a5b-94f7-434c-afab-b49aa5a29e3f' media='none' onload='if(media!=&#39;all&#39;)media=&#39;all&#39;' rel='stylesheet'/><noscript><link href='https://www.blogger.com/dyn-css/authorization.css?targetBlogID=3738579&amp;zx=a1164a5b-94f7-434c-afab-b49aa5a29e3f' rel='stylesheet'/></noscript>

</head>
<body>
<div class='navbar section' id='navbar'><div class='widget Navbar' data-version='1' id='Navbar1'><script type="text/javascript">
    function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) {
      if(window.addEventListener) {
        window.addEventListener('load',
          function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false);
      } else {
        window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; });
      }
    }
  </script>
<div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
      gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() {
        if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) {
          gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({
              url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID\x3d3738579\x26blogName\x3dSilliman\x27s+Blog\x26publishMode\x3dPUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT\x26navbarType\x3dBLUE\x26layoutType\x3dLAYOUTS\x26searchRoot\x3dhttps://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search\x26blogLocale\x3den\x26v\x3d2\x26homepageUrl\x3dhttps://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/\x26vt\x3d-6983219020609693114',
              where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"),
              id: "navbar-iframe"
          });
        }
      });
    </script><script type="text/javascript">
(function() {
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.type = 'text/javascript';
script.src = '//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/google_top_exp.js';
var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
if (head) {
head.appendChild(script);
}})();
</script>
</div></div>
<div id='outer-wrapper'><div id='wrap2'>
<!-- skip links for text browsers -->
<span id='skiplinks' style='display:none;'>
<a href='#main'>skip to main </a> |
      <a href='#sidebar'>skip to sidebar</a>
</span>
<div id='header-wrapper'>
<div class='header section' id='header'><div class='widget Header' data-version='1' id='Header1'>
<div id='header-inner'>
<div class='titlewrapper'>
<h1 class='title'>
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/'>
Silliman's Blog
</a>
</h1>
</div>
<div class='descriptionwrapper'>
<p class='description'><span>A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.</span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div id='content-wrapper'>
<div id='crosscol-wrapper' style='text-align:center'>
<div class='crosscol no-items section' id='crosscol'></div>
</div>
<div id='main-wrapper'>
<div class='main section' id='main'><div class='widget Blog' data-version='1' id='Blog1'>
<div class='blog-posts hfeed'>
<div class='status-msg-wrap'>
<div class='status-msg-body'>
Showing posts with label <b>Schools of poetry</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
</div>
<div class='status-msg-border'>
<div class='status-msg-bg'>
<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Schools of poetry</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Friday, December 01, 2006</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='http://static.flickr.com/112/311033825_b5b1f0fd4f_m.jpg' itemprop='image_url'/>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='116497257444151826' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='116497257444151826'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-116497257444151826' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><img height="200" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/dMOOYrcnyOqOx5Ltm18S6PHjY-uTx1low3-muD8dm3iY1hcwkyTxYLWeVRdePiJnGUzoZY6_qknpgKbSaco2Fb7cRO955lHsypMs%3Ds0-d" width="122"></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'><a href="http://lellovoce.altervista.org/article.php3?id_article=519"><span class=SpellE><span style='color:windowtext'>Nuova</span></span><span style='color:windowtext'> <span class=SpellE>Poesia</span> Americana &#8211; San Francisco</span></a> </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>is the second volume (</span><st1:City><st1:place><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Los Angeles</span></i></st1:place></st1:City><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>was the first) in a series of nice fat anthologies translating American poetry for the Italian reader, published by Oscar <span class=SpellE>Mondadori</span> under its <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poesia</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i></span><st1:State><st1:place><i   style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>del</span></i></st1:place></st1:State><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> &#8216;900</span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> imprint. Edited by <a href="http://www.italian.ucla.edu/faculty/Ballerini_L/index.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>Luigi <span class=SpellE>Ballerini</span></span></a> &amp; <a href="http://gw.otis.edu/paul%20vangelisti.html"><span style='color:windowtext'>Paul Vangelisti</span></a>, it&#8217;s an interesting take on San Francisco poetry since, say, 1950, and makes some attempt at being broadly inclusive, containing everyone from the North Beach street poet scene (Bob Kaufman, <span class=SpellE>Neeli</span> Cherkovski) to language poets (David Bromige, yours truly, Lyn Hejinian, Michael Palmer) to the SF Renaissance (Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser, Jack Spicer, Lew Welch, Phil Whalen, David Meltzer, Philip Lamantia) to the School of Quietude (Stan Rice, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Gillian <span class=SpellE>Conoley</span>), stretching in time from George Oppen to Jeff Clark. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>There are some gems of inclusion here &#8211; Kaufman is one example, too often by-passed for any other member of the Beats, or <a href="http://www.ohioswallow.com/bookinfo.php?book_id=0804010277"><span style='color:windowtext'>James Schevill</span></a>, the Berkeley-born poet who, having refused to sign the loyalty oath at the University of California, went on to become perhaps the defining director of the San Francisco Poetry Center before moving to Providence in the mid-60s, or Ronald Johnson, long a San Francisco poet before he returned to his native Kansas in the last decade of his life, whose prickly personality kept him from being fully active in any of San Francisco&#8217;s various literary communities. And I was ecstatic to see George Stanley included, given his importance to the scene in the 1960s. Like Joanne Kyger, also present &amp; accounted for, </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Stanley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> is one of those writers without whom that decade of American verse &#8211; let alone Bay Area poetry &#8211; ceases to make sense, but who all-too-often is not included because he&#8217;s lived in  </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Canada</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> for 40 years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>There are choices here as well &#8211; this is a 500 page book, but because everyone is represented by work in both English and Italian, it has the range one might expect from a collection half its size. Contrast this with Stephanie Young&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Details.asp?BookID=097652113X"><span style='color:windowtext'>Bay Area Poetics</span></a>, </i>which has roughly the same number of pages, but 109 contributors. It&#8217;s great to see work by Norma Cole, Leslie Scalapino &amp; Laura Moriarty in <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Nuova</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> <span class=SpellE>Poesia</span> Americana</i>, but Jean Day, Kit Robinson &amp; Bev Dahlen are absent. The </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> selections underscore the fact that, at least after Louis Simpson fled </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> in the wake of the 1965 Poetry Conference, the &#8220;traditional&#8221; or &#8220;conservative&#8221; poets in the Bay Area have never really been very traditional or conservative. Adding Thom Gunn, John Logan or Kay Ryan wouldn&#8217;t really have changed that perspective (tho possibly including Chana Block or William Dickey might have). And given all the warriors from the 1950s, it&#8217;s odd that Lawrence Ferlinghetti &#8211; to whom the volume is dedicated, along with Kenneth Rexroth (also not present), Ambrose Bierce, <span class=SpellE><span class=GramE>Dashiel</span></span> Hammett &amp; Joe DiMaggio &#8211; is not found in these pages. Ditto Carl Rakosi, who spent nearly 30 years in the City after he retired. Or Tom Clark or Bill Berkson, poets whose aesthetics may shout </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, but who have lived in the Bay Area for decades. Or &#8211; and this might have been harder to articulate within the space of an anthology &#8211; writing associated with the New Narrativity: Bob Glück, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Mary Burger, Camille Roy, Michael Amnasan. How to identify a kind of writing that most often opts for fiction as its genre-coat, but also is integral to the poetry scene, as such? Realistically, tho, there are only one or two spots in this collection where one wants not just more, but different poets &#8211; I don&#8217;t see how you choose Cherkovski, for instance, when you don&#8217;t include either of the two Jacks, Hirschman or <span class=SpellE>Micheline</span>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Given the space constraints, I wonder actually about my own inclusion here, as well as that of Jeff Clark, since both of us have moved on to other parts of the country. I did live in the Bay Area &#8211; in San Francisco as well as three different cities in the East Bay (Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, to be precise) &#8211; for over 45 years and I&#8217;d be lying to say that I wasn&#8217;t pleased to be thought of in this context, just as I am to have a plaque on Berkeley&#8217;s  poets&#8217; walk on Addison. But when resources are finite, it feels odd to be on board when others are not. And it raises the question of all the other poets who made their mark first in the Bay Area before moving elsewhere: Rae Armantrout, Erica Hunt, Stan Persky, Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Jack Gilbert, Carla Harryman, Kathy Acker, Tom Mandel, Shirley Kaufman, John Wieners, James <span class=SpellE>Liddy</span>, Ted Pearson, Linda Gregg, Andrei Codrescu, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Myung Mi Kim, Larry Fagin, Mary-Margaret Sloan, Arthur Sze, Lytle Shaw. <span class=GramE>Even Louis
Simpson.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Two larger absences are writing from people of color &#8211; Ishmael Reed &amp; Kaufman are the only representatives among the 29 contributors &#8211; and writing explicitly related to the feminist movement, such as the work of poets like Pat Parker &amp; Paula Gunn Allen, Judy Grahn or Susan Griffin. Parker &amp; Allen would have helped on both counts. The feminist literary movement that first emerged in the 1970s is inconceivable without the presence of the Bay Area, and those writers were hardly cordoned off from the rest of the scene. Susan Griffin &amp; I both took the same classes at San Francisco State, Parker &amp; I read together quite regularly in the open reading series at Shakespeare &amp; Co Books in Berkeley in the mid-1960s, Grahn &amp; Allen both read at the Grand Piano. (Some others, like Kathleen Fraser, Frances Jaffer &amp; Edith Jenkins, clearly drew from both that world as well as the heritage of the post avant &#8211; none of them here either.) I can make virtually the same argument for more than a few poets of color, from Al Young to Al Robles to <span class=SpellE>Ntozake</span> <span class=SpellE>Shange</span> to Janice <span class=SpellE>Mirikitani</span> to David Henderson to Jessica <span class=SpellE>Hagedorn</span> to William Anderson to Victor Hernandez Cruz to Nate Mackey to Harryette Mullen &#8211; all are completely a part of the history of Bay Area poetries. Big Oops not find at least two or three more of them here. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Some of this may just be a combination of space limitations and the difficulty of editing an anthology of this kind at some distance &#8211; Vangelisti is a long-time </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Los Angeles</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> resident &amp; chairs the MFA program at the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Otis</span></st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>College</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> of Art and Design. <span class=SpellE>Ballerini</span> divides his time between </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>L.A.</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> and </span><st1:State><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>. I certainly couldn&#8217;t do half the job they have if I were trying to put together an anthology of the </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Los  Angeles</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> region. <span class=GramE>But at the same time, having lived not that far outside </span></span><st1:City><st1:place><span   class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Philadelphia</span></span></st1:place></st1:City><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> now for 11 years, I&#8217;m not at all sure that I could begin to do the same job for Philly either.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> It really takes a full immersion in a major regional scene like that of the Bay Area &#8211; or </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Philadelphia</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> or </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Detroit</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, or any major metro &#8211; to completely appreciate its richness, breadth &amp; depth. Indeed, that&#8217;s why finding Schevill, Johnson &amp; </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Stanley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> is so great here. Vangelisti &amp; <span class=SpellE>Ballerini</span> have come within shooting distance of having accomplished the impossible, making this a good book to own even if you don&#8217;t read one word of Italian. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/12/nuova-poesia-americana-san-francisco.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/12/nuova-poesia-americana-san-francisco.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2006-12-01T06:18:00-05:00'>Friday, December 01, 2006</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=116497257444151826' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/anthologies' rel='tag'>anthologies</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%2520of%2520poetry' rel='tag'>Schools of poetry</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, July 24, 2006</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='115375392156192838' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='115375392156192838'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-115375392156192838' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>While I was 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'> back on July 10, the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://online.wsj.com/google_login.html?url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115249443313702007.html?mod=googlenews_wsj"><span style='color:black'>Wall Street Journal</span></a> </i>ran a piece on Afghan poetry in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> on its front page. The article by <span class=SpellE>Masood</span> <span class=SpellE>Farivar</span>, which has been reprinted by a few other newspapers in places such as <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06191/704786-42.stm"><span style='color:black'>Pittsburgh</span></a> and Birmingham, Alabama, is worth reading in its entirety &#8211; when was the last time you saw a cogent piece on the sociology of poetry on the front page of a newspaper? Me neither. The headline in the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Journal </i>was &#8220;For Afghan Cabbies, A Poetry Tradition Spurs War of Words.&#8221; Most of the other papers, however, realized that this wasn&#8217;t about taxi drivers, giving it the plainer, but more accurate heading of something like the Post-Gazette&#8217;s &#8220;D.C. Afghan poetry groups fight war of words.&#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'>The gist of the article concerns two reading series that take place in the same Masonic Lodge in </span><st1:place><st1:City><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Springfield</span></st1:City><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, </span><st1:State><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>VA</span></st1:State></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, on different Friday nights each month. One, &#8220;An Evening with the Dervishes,&#8221; in the words of <span class=SpellE>Farivar</span>, &#8220;<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'>prefers what it calls the serious, scholarly pursuit of poetry. The group views itself as a literary clique focusing on masters such as Abdul <span class=SpellE>Qadir</span> <span class=SpellE>Bedil</span>, a 17<sup>th</sup> century poet and Islamic mystic, or Sufi. Its gatherings feature top scholars and poets.<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, older series, &#8220;An Evening of Sufism,&#8221; <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'>brings all forms of Afghan poetry to large audiences.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'> It also treats attendees to free refreshments and pop-music performances.<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 article makes a point of noting that a reader in the latter series recently &#8220;informed the audience that she&#8217;d just finished her poem in the parking lot.&#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'>The differences between the two groups echo the division within American poetries between the School of Quietude, that ensemble of aesthetic tendencies that tends to stress the conventionality of poetry and its continuity with English literary traditions (and tensions) &amp; the broad range of post-avant alternatives that emerged with the New American Poets of the 1950s, but which can be traced back to Whitman &amp; Poe a century earlier. <span class=SpellE>Farivar</span> characterizes the dispute:<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;color:black'>Mostly they adhere to Afghan social norms, treating each other with civility and even deference. Occasionally, they drop by each other's gatherings. But at times, their rivalries have burst into the open.<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;color:black'>Members of &quot;An Evening of Sufism&quot; accuse the Dervishes of tearing down their flyers from Afghan stores, and have dubbed them &quot;hash-heads,&quot; which in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Afghanistan</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'> is a term associated with the uneducated. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>In fact, the Dervishes seem closer to the group&#8217;s origins in a series of evenings when the poets would seriously debate the nuances of classic Afghan texts, pooling their money to call M.I. <span class=SpellE>Negargar</span>, a former </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Kabul</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'>University</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> professor now living in exile in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>England</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, to tease out the full potential of the works they were discussing. <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 one steps back from the specifics of the current tempest &#8211; who tore down whose flyers or who is trying to get whom kicked out of the Masonic Lodge &#8211; one sees two distinct approaches to literature emerging, one focused on the historic canon of Afghan poetry and emphasizing continuity with traditional Afghan culture &#8211; there is a move among the Dervishes, for example, to ban all forms of musical accompaniment at their readings &#8211; the other focused more on the present, which includes contemporary writing and concerns that may affect Afghan exiles in the U.S., but which would be of little import from the perspective of traditional culture in Afghanistan. Finishing a poem in the parking lot just before the start of a reading may not be the best way to present polished writing, but it certainly is one way of foregrounding the value on the present that the other group has.<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 article made me wonder just how much these same divisions may underscore roughly parallel, and far older, chasms within American poetry. For example, just how much of the School of Quietude/post-avant debate can still be traced back to this nation&#8217;s origins as a gathering of exiles, one group concerned with accentuating its continuity with European cultures, especially British culture, the other hoping to foreground that which is somehow uniquely American about American poetry?&#185; How does this compare with the same sort of division, say, back in the U.K., where the distinction seems instead to reflect class divisions as much as anything else (a cleavage that goes back to Shakespeare&#8217;s day, at the least, when the Bard initiated the post-avant impulse by composing his own sonnet series to demonstrate that an uneducated writer of popular entertainments from the boonies could perform at least as well as a &#8220;University wit&#8221; like Ben <span class=SpellE>Jonson</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'>The U.S. Afghan exile literary scene dates, according to this article, back to the 1980s when the first wave of exiles began to write. The article implies, without seeming to realize that this is what it is suggesting, that the scene in Springfield, VA, represents literary processes that may be larger than just Afghan or U.S. verse, and represents an opportunity to observe an evolution in the social history of poetry not unlike the way a cyclotron enables a scientist to recreate conditions near, if not at, the Big Bang from which all current tendencies necessarily follow. Regardless of where you might fit into these broader literary traditions, the rise of Afghan poetry in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> should be worth watching.<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 could argue that between a colonial imperialism lurking within one tradition &amp; an unexamined nationalism lurking in the other, that both tendencies offer ample territory for critique. This division isn&#8217;t so much about who might be &#8220;right&#8221; as it is about the values being propagated by each tendency&#8217;s agenda. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/07/while-i-was-in-california-back-on-july.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/07/while-i-was-in-california-back-on-july.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2006-07-24T11:11:00-04:00'>Monday, July 24, 2006</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=115375392156192838' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/School%2520of%2520Quietude' rel='tag'>School of Quietude</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%2520of%2520poetry' rel='tag'>Schools of poetry</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Theory' rel='tag'>Theory</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, June 03, 2003</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='95231548' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='95231548'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-95231548' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Sometime back around the
days of the Kennedy </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-family:Arial'>admin</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'>istration, an American poet was penning lines such as
these:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=SpellE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>Cetus</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>-white flakes of boar still are
sticking to my back<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'>like</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> dying leeches, and the aged<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'>strata</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> of flesh<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'>rippled</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> to numb<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'>friction</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> by dregs of <span class=SpellE>Hudsonian</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span class=GramE><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>wind</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;&#160;
</span>Shoulder-blade armor, slabs<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'>of</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> the ass, lock around<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'>shaking</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'> armadillo<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'>candy</span></span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>.<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'>Not the psychological jargon
or landscapes of surrealism, this poetry was trying on the possibility of
linguistic meaning treated very much in the manner that abstract expressionists
had been treating painting. This was a poetry that did not feign speech, even
as it invoked elements thereof.<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'>At that moment in history &#8211;
say 1963 &#8211; one could count such poetic investigators of the linguistic in 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'> on the fingers of one hand. While John Ashbery&#8217;s <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Tennis Court Oath </i>was<i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>first published by Wesleyan University
Press in 1962, Kenneth Koch&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>When the
Sun Tries to Go On</i> was written initially in 1953. <span class=GramE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>When the Sun, </i>however, didn&#8217;t become
widely available until published by Black Sparrow in 1969.</span> Jackson Mac
Low was also <span class=GramE>about,</span> active as were Ashbery &amp; Koch,
in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>New York City</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, but his poetry took even longer to get into print.
Mac Low&#8217;s work didn&#8217;t become widely available in book form until Black Sparrow
published <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>22 Light Poems</i> &#8211; the first
16 of which were written in 1962 &#8211; in 1968. That work, in spite of the
elaborate methods by which Mac Low determined which light went where in the
text, generally followed a traditionally discursive model. As a result the true
radicalism of Mac Low&#8217;s project, although evident to those who knew him or saw
him perform in &amp; around </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, wasn&#8217;t really visible to many until Dick Higgins
published <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Stanzas for Iris <span
class=SpellE>Lezak</span> </i>in 1971. Mac Low had been writing using chance
methodologies to generate texts since the final days of 1954. Mac Low &amp;
Koch in particular appear to have been models that Ted Berrigan had in mind
when he first put together <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Sonnets</i>
in the spring of 1963. And that was 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'>The result is that you have
parallel but different narratives for this new writing that was no longer the
mimicking the spoken. In order of composition, you get the following:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Koch </span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8594;</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> Mac
Low </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8594;</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>
Ashbery </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8594;</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>
Berrigan<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'>But in terms of publication
in book form, you get a very different sequence: <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Ashbery
</span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8594;</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>
Berrigan </span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8594;</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> Koch </span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8594;</span><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'> Mac
Low<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&#8217;s even far more
complicated than I&#8217;m making it, given that, to pick just one complicating
factor, Clark Coolidge published <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Ing</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>with Angel
Hair in 1968 (that is, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>prior </i>to
Koch&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Sun</i>) &amp; <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Space</i> with Harper &amp; Row, complete
with a hardback printing, in 1970. By the time <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Stanzas for Iris <span class=SpellE>Lezak</span></i> came out, <span
class=GramE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>This</i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>magazine &amp; the whole langpo scene
were already gathering considerable momentum. Plus, both Ashbery &amp; Koch had
largely stepped back from the formal radicalism of their works of the 1950s.
Indeed, after <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Three Poems</i>, Ashbery
spent the 1970s issuing his savage </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>Quietude</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> parodies &#8211; for which he was awarded every prize that school could
muster. Untangling a narrative of the actual evolution of innovation was
virtually impossible by 1972, especially since at that time it all was too new,
too close &amp; still very fluid. <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'>Yet for me the biggest
problem with any of these theoretical chronologies is that each leaves out the
poet I&#8217;ve quoted at the head of this blog: <a
href="http://www.bigbridge.org/Issue2/Text/Bios/Collom_Bio.html">Jack Collom</a>.
The poem whose opening stanza I&#8217;ve just reprinted, &#8220;Spring&#8217;s First Day Ode,&#8221;
didn&#8217;t appear in book form, as best I can tell, until it showed up in the
&#8220;Early Poems&#8221; section of his selected works, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Red Car Goes By (Selected Poems 1955-2000)</i>, published by Lyn
Hejinian&#8217;s Tuumba Press &amp; edited by an all-star collective that included
Hejinian, Reed Bye, Clark Coolidge, Larry Fagin &amp; Merrill Gilfillan. The
book was published in 2001. I&#8217;ve had the book since it came out, but I&#8217;ve just
begun to really dive in.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I think I must have seen
Collom&#8217;s work for the first time when </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>David Gitin</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'> included the both of us in an issue of his journal <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Amphora</i> in 1971.* I presumed that he
was, like me, a poet in his early 20s, just getting going. Collom was in fact
already 40. And while he published at least 16 books of his own poetry prior to
this 500-page selected, most were with small presses located in </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Colorado</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'> or </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Nebraska</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>. Outside of three textbooks published by the
Teachers &amp; Writers Collective, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Red
Car Goes By </i>is the first collection of Collom&#8217;s work ever to be widely
available, its nearest competitors for that honor being a 300-copy edition
published by <span class=SpellE>Grosseteste</span> in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>U.K.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-family:Arial'> &amp; a stapled book from Lewis Warsh&#8217;s United
Artists. <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'>While Collom did spend some
time in </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, his Poetry-in-the-Schools assignments &#8211; </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Colorado</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Nebraska</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Idaho</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, </span><st1:State><st1:place><span class=GramE><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Wyoming</span></span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'> &#8211; tell you the real reason why he has been so
terribly neglected. Up until very recently &#8211; &amp; I mean in the last
half-dozen years, as the web has begun to erase the hard borders of
geographical isolation &#8211; any poet living outside of the major metro areas on
the two coasts confronted an especially daunting task in getting their work
known. In fact, Collom in this regard was exceptionally lucky since, in 1974, </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'> more or less came to him in the form of the Jack
Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a subway stop on that old
Tibet-Manhattan line right there on </span><st1:Street><st1:address><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Arapahoe Ave.</span></st1:address></st1:Street><span
style='font-family:Arial'> What if, I wonder, Collom were living in </span><st1:place><st1:City><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Mitchell</span></st1:City><span style='font-family:
 Arial'>, </span><st1:State><span style='font-family:Arial'>South Dakota</span></st1:State></st1:place><span
style='font-family:Arial'>? Or Rock Springs, </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Wyoming</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>? </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Colorado</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'> had only a little over one million in population in
1952, the year Collom got a degree from Colorado <span class=GramE>A&amp;M</span>.
<span class=GramE>It&#8217;s</span> population since then has more than tripled. The
population of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>Boulder</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'> has more than quadrupled. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>Hollywood</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s <span class=GramE>romance of the west over several
decades of cowboy movies have</span> tended to blind us to the fact that these
landlocked states are in some very real ways </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>America</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s own </span><st1:place><span style='font-family:
 Arial'>Siberia</span></st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>. (Indeed, </span><st1:place><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Siberia</span></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> is reputed to have just as many natural wonders as the </span><st1:place><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Rockies</span></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> or the </span><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>Grand Canyon</span></st1:place><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, including the largest inland lake in the world.)
Even now you can find poets &#8211; Gene <span class=SpellE>Frumkin</span>, Lisa
Cooper &amp; Keith Wilson are three examples &#8211; whose work would be much more
widely read if they only lived within 300 miles of St. Marks or City Lights. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>So <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Red Car Goes By </i>is more than <span class=GramE>just a selected
poems</span> by a major poet, although it is that also. It&#8217;s an intervention
into the collective amnesia that causes muddled thinking about the history of
American letters. I can tell already that this is one book that is going to
transform how I think about poetry &amp; the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* Gitin also
included Carl Rakosi, Larry Eigner, Peter Riley, Diane <span class=SpellE>di</span>
Prima, Lewis Mac Adams Jr., Denise Levertov, Andrew <span class=SpellE>Crozier</span>,
<span class=GramE>Clark</span> Coolidge &amp; Charles Amirkhanian in that same
40-page issue. With over 30 years of hindsight, <span class=SpellE>Gitin&#8217;s</span>
editorial instincts seem remarkably on target.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2003/06/sometime-back-around-days-of-kennedy.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2003/06/sometime-back-around-days-of-kennedy.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2003-06-03T07:03:00-04:00'>Tuesday, June 03, 2003</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=95231548' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%2520of%2520poetry' rel='tag'>Schools of poetry</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, May 21, 2003</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='94679303' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='94679303'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-94679303' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Before I got up this
morning, I spent some time in bed reading through Joe LeSueur&#8217;s delicious new
memoir, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a
href="http://www.holtzbrinckpublishers.com/FSG/search/SearchBookDisplay.asp?BookKey=800882">Digressions
on Some Poems by Frank O&#8217;Hara</a></i>, a wonderfully intimate &amp; informal
portrait of a world that is utterly gone now. There are some amazing moments in
this book, such as the tale of how an incident with Chester <span class=SpellE>Kallman</span>
convinced FOH to give up anonymous sex or how, far more reticently, LeSueur
visiting O&#8217;Hara on his deathbed proved unable to say anything or even reach out
to touch his dying friend.<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I&#8217;d paid no attention to the
work of Frank O&#8217;Hara until I saw the mesmerizing television show* on him in
Richard Moore&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry USA</i> series on
PBS, a blur of constant motion &#8211; O&#8217;Hara on the phone &amp; typewriter
simultaneously while managing to keep up a conversation with the camera, drink
&amp; smoke, he was the ultimate multitasker decades before that term came into
use &#8211; until, in the show&#8217;s closing credits as I recall (I haven&#8217;t actually seen
the whole thing in 37 years), the voiceover mentions that O&#8217;Hara has recently
died. I remember at the time sitting in front of the little black-&amp;-white
TV completely stunned, as if I&#8217;d seen a wonderful door open, only to have it
slammed shut in the last 10 seconds of the show.<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&#8217;Hara&#8217;s death, not unlike
that of Jack Spicer a year earlier, marked a critical moment in the history of
the New American poetry. Both poets had been the central social organizers of
distinctly geographic literary communities, and their passing transformed each
town. Almost overnight, or so it seemed at a distance, the New York scene
shifted its focus away from this group of largely gay men born in the 1920s &#8211;
Ashbery was in Europe, Schuyler too much the recluse &#8211; and onto younger (&amp;
straighter) acolytes. The role Ted Berrigan would soon take in the environs
around Gem Spa hardly seems conceivable in a world in which Frank O&#8217;Hara
attends a party whose primary memorable feature is a lascivious tale told by
W.H. Auden&#8217;s partner. <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'>Auden&#8217;s role with regards to
the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span style='font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> both was &amp; was not like that taken by Kenneth Rexroth toward the
poetries that crowded into </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>San Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-family:
Arial'> during the 1950s. The two poets were parallel in that Auden, like
Rexroth, functioned at least partially as a sponsor, going <a
href="http://jacketmagazine.com/02/jaiv1988.html">out of his way</a> to put
Ashbery&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>second</i> book into the Yale
Younger Poets series for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>first </i>books.
And, also <a
href="http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rexroth/sacramental.htm">like
Rexroth</a>, apparently felt some <a
href="http://www.cmonitor.com/stories/a&amp;e2002/book_ashbery_2002.shtml">ambivalence</a>
about what these youngsters were up to. But, whereas Rexroth aligned with the
bulk of the New Americans in his distrust for an American poetics that was
cravenly derivative of the conservative mainstream poetry of the British isles
&#8211; a distrust you can find amid the Beats, the Projectivists &amp; the so-called
San Francisco renaissance** &#8211; Auden virtually <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>was </i>British poetry, easily the most established &amp; celebrated
British poet since Yeats, even if he was now living variously in Brooklyn &amp;
on St. Marks Place.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>I&#8217;ve sometimes wondered if
the ease with which the first generation New York School connected with New
York trade publishers wasn&#8217;t simply an accident of proximity, but also occurred
at least in part because the NY School, at least until Mr. Berrigan showed up &#8211;
and this really is Ted&#8217;s great contribution to this tendency &#8211; did not
challenge the paradigm that American poetics was a tributary of British
letters, a paradigm that has been central to all variants of the school of
quietude. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* Listen to O&#8217;Hara&#8217;s
reading of &#8220;Having a Coke with <span class=GramE>You</span>&#8221; from that TV show <a
href="http://www.ubu.com/sound/corpse.html">here</a>.<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-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>** Virtually
everyone who at that point took William Carlos Williams seriously. While one
can similar attitudes in American poetry over a century earlier, Williams
rather steady campaign of negativity towards Eliot resonated with the rise of
New Criticism, which had gain control over many of the English departments
after WW2 even if the New Critics themselves had long been spent as poets. In
this regard, the stance taken by the Objectivists, the first wave of <span
class=GramE>Williams</span> followers, deserves more scrutiny. It is also worth
noting, of course, that this debate between anglophiles and those arguing <span
class=GramE>for a &#8220;new&#8221; or &#8220;indigenous&#8221; poets</span> was ongoing as early as
the 1840s. The fact that American universities looked to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>England</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'> for legitimacy in their model of
post-secondary education led most early </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'>U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Arial'> colleges to align with the
anglophiles, a phenomenon that is still visible in many universities. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2003/05/before-i-got-up-this-morning-i-spent.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2003/05/before-i-got-up-this-morning-i-spent.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2003-05-21T06:51:00-04:00'>Wednesday, May 21, 2003</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=94679303' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%2520of%2520poetry' rel='tag'>Schools of poetry</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, February 13, 2003</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='89028917' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='89028917'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-89028917' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8220;Job share archivists&#8221; </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Susan M. Schultz</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> &amp; </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Pam Brown</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> have
augmented the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.icols.org./pages/PB&amp;SS/PB&amp;SS.html">Department of
Dislocated Memory</a></i> with a new installment of their collaboration
&#8221;Amnesiac recoveries.&#8221; It&#8217;s a project that raises all kinds of interesting
questions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I have never seen a history
of poetic collaboration. A search in Google for all sites that use both
&#8220;poetry&#8221; &amp; &#8220;collaboration&#8221; yields 199,000 sites. A search for the exact
phrase &#8220;history of poetic collaboration&#8221; yields none &#8211; or will until the Google
crawler finds today&#8217;s blog. My sense &#8211; and it may be quite incomplete &#8211; is that
poetic collaboration arises truly with the surrealists.* <span class="GramE">It</span>
enters the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: Arial;"> largely through the writing of the one group most
heavily influenced by surrealism: the </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">New York</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">School</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">. You will not find any <span class="GramE">collaborations</span> in the
Allen anthology. Indeed, the only ones you can actually spot** even 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> are in the section of
critical statements, first a collaborative manifesto for the French journal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Change</i> &amp; later the famous list of
experiments that Bernadette Mayer &amp; several groups of students at her
Poetry Project workshops created. But if you look to Tom Clark&#8217;s anthology <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Stars</i> (Grossman Publishers/ Goliard
&#8211; Santa Fe, 1972), a combination of NY School &amp; beat writers that reflected
</span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Clark</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8217;s view from the Bolinas mesa, Ron Padgett&#8217;s
selection consists of 17 collaborations &#8211; with Dick Gallup, Ted Berrigan, <span class="SpellE">Tessie</span> Mitchell, Michael Brownstein, Anne Waldman, Pat
Padgett, Bill Berkson, Larry Fagin, Jimmy Schuyler &amp; of course Tom Clark. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The absence of collaboration
among Beats &amp; Projectivists***, and for the most part from the San
Francisco Renaissance+, is worth noting. It suggests, I think, a stance toward
the author &amp; literal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">author</i>ity
that is substantially different from that of other communities of writing.
Allen Ginsberg may well have been the <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kral</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <span class="SpellE">Majales</span></i> or King of the May in 1965 </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Prague</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, but he also appears to have been a meticulous &amp;
careful warden of his own literary production. At the same time, Ginsberg took
no credit for the editing job that literally transformed the pages on William
Burroughs&#8217; floor into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Naked Lunch</i> &#8211; a
stance that parallels Ezra Pound&#8217;s similar editing of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The </i></span><st1:place><st1:placename><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Waste</span></i></st1:placename><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></i><st1:placetype><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Land</span></i></st1:placetype></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">.</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But the </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">New York</span></st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="font-family: Arial;">School</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> had no such hang-ups with sharing credit. As with Surrealism,
boundaries existed only to be transgressed, albeit with more of a smile &amp;
wink than the </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Europe</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">ans generally brought to the process. Boundaries are
precisely what are at stake in &#8220;Amnesiac recoveries.&#8221; Here, for example, is
&#8220;Shut-Lip&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
investment banker sewed his lips shut. He'd arrived in a leaky ship, having
paid dues to the dark haired man who answered to no name he could pronounce.
Pronunciation is over-rated, he muttered to himself as he eased into the hold,
arms bound in fetal position. His middle passage was punctuated (never leave
metaphors of language behind, he added, pensively) by hunger pangs. No-name man
told him nothing of the end, though his origin had been clear (he remembered,
at least, his hard-earned MBA). He wanted to escape big words, like
globalization, like fraud. Crusoe's accountant had nothing on his, member of
the magic club in high school, artist of the extraordinary bottomless line. </span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">In
the end, it was hard to collect his story, through teeth clenched like
broken-jawed Ali's. One had to assume consonants, or <span class="GramE">were</span>
they vowels, emerging as from some Afghan cave into the abortive syntax of a
bombing run. What we heard had something to do with sea, and ground, and
sickness. The south sea island that welcomed him (sic) has only years left
before the flood (lawsuits are pending). On its coral, the banker sits, quiet
as monk, though not so tranquil. He knows his days are numbered, so he counts
them in his throat. If he were a poet, one might say he'd found his voice.</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<span class="SpellE"><span class="GramE"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">memoricide</span></span></span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> -<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>bombing the library.<br />
<span class="GramE">collective</span> memory,<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>the treasures of manuscript,<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>the texts<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>history, natural sciences,<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>philosophy, poetry, mathematics<br />
anthologies, dictionaries, treatises on everything,<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>his story,<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span>collected,<br />
the bombing filmed</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 5.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">in</span></span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"> the peace zone,<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><i>Coca- Cola</i><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>phones the film collector<br />
seeking footage<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>of "real
UFOs"</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">There is a political tone
here that one hardly ever sees even with Gen XXXVII of the NY School, and it&#8217;s
stronger even in several of the other pieces, which generally circle around the
topics of oil, corporate corruption &amp; </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;"> imperialism in the </span><st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">Middle East</span></st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">, always impacted by questions of
memory &#8211; &amp; of why memory fails to beget a seemingly appropriate political
response. Of course, neither Brown nor Schultz can by any remote stretch of the
imagination be characterized as part of the old St. Marks scene &#8211; Schultz is as
far removed from there as one can be physically &amp; still reside within the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">United States</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">, </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">Hawai&#8217;i</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">, while Brown is a well-known
Australian poet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">Indeed, one of the most
interesting aspects of this as <span class="GramE">a collaboration</span> is how
it challenges &#8220;the political.&#8221; Typically &amp; traditionally, one key to the
political has been what might be thought of as &#8220;angle of positionality,&#8221; which
usually gets reduced to an idea of stance. This is visible at the surface in
identarian texts of all <span class="GramE">manner</span>: the poet writes from
his or her historical/ethnic/social/gendered position &amp; articulation of
that position is often what the resulting text is about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But Schultz &amp; Brown come from different
nations with different roles in the oil = global domination scenario. Schultz
may be marginalized in her role as poet within the hegemon, but within it she
most certainly &amp; visibly is. Brown is at least doubly marginalized, living
in a country that the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;"> has been known to treat as a branch
office. There are of course further complications: Schultz is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">haole,</i> an Anglo outsider functioning in
a role as authority by virtue of the teaching profession. The relationship of </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">Hawai&#8217;i</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;"> to the mainland is exceptionally
problematic &amp; a separatist movement continues to percolate there. </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">Australia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">&#8217;s history vis-à-vis an imperial
center &amp; its aboriginal population is no less convoluted. Both of these
writers are perpetually aware of these conditions.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">Part of what makes
&#8220;Amnesiac recoveries&#8221; so interesting is that it&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> possible to tell who in the collaboration is writing at any
given moment, something that is so discernible, say, in a work like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.aerialedge.com/sight.htm">Sight</a></i>
that its authors, Lyn Hejinian &amp; Leslie Scalapino, two fabulous poets who
grew up in the same town in the same country within a couple of years of one
another &amp; whose fathers both taught at the same school, actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">initial</i> their individual passages. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">But if we cannot tell who
is speaking, or at least <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">writing</i>, in
&#8221;Amnesiac recoveries,&#8221; how does the reader then position these </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">tex</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">ts with regards to the issues of
globalization that are raised? This is what strikes me as so remarkable:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Schultz &amp; Brown have arrived at what I
can only call a transnational voice, a position that steps quite clearly
outside of the role of states precisely as it address the problem of the rogue
hegemon. If there is a position of world citizen from which one might be able
to write, this is it. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: Arial;">Brown &amp; Schultz do this
with wit, sharpness &amp; élan. The entire project &#8211; I have no idea if the two
sections that are up are all of the collaboration or only just the first
portion of it &#8211; is gutsy &amp; fun while being serious in the face of some
extraordinary challenges<span class="GramE">.+</span>+ In connecting the dots
north-south across the equator between their two homes, these poets are erasing
lines that we often forget are &#8220;always already&#8221; there. &amp; it&#8217;s fascinating
to see what now shows through.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Some
writers characterize the relationship between William Wordsworth &amp; Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, especially during the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lyrical
Ballads</i> period, as <span class="GramE">a collaboration</span>. An argument
can certainly be made for that, even though they didn&#8217;t publish poems as
composed by both.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** I
believe that the phrase that is used as the epigraph to the West section of the
book, &#8220;Instead of ant <span class="SpellE">wort</span> I saw brat guts,&#8221; was
itself composed during <span class="GramE">a collaboration</span>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">*** Thus
when Daphne <span class="SpellE">Marlatt</span> works collaboratively, as in the
book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Double Negative</i> with Betsy <span class="SpellE">Warland</span>, it&#8217;s because she&#8217;s moved away from the
Projectivism of her youth toward a political feminism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">+ The
notable exception was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The <span class="SpellE">Carola</span> Letters</i> co-authored by Joanne Kyger &amp; George
Stanley. See <a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/11/kyger-killian.html">Kevin
Killian&#8217;s article</a> on the row it caused in the SF scene. Killian raises the
possibility that camp, the arch subgenre of gay culture, was a major thorn in
the side of Robert Duncan. Camp as a discourse erases boundaries not unlike the
ones that Schultz &amp; Brown are tackling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">++ The web
site captures this beautifully with a photograph of the two poets in </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">Hawai&#8217;i</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"> staring at the apotheosis of the
problem, a stretch limo in a setting in which no limousine should ever appear. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2003/02/job-share-archivists-susan-m.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2003/02/job-share-archivists-susan-m.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2003-02-13T07:45:00-05:00'>Thursday, February 13, 2003</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=89028917' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/New%2520York%2520School' rel='tag'>New York School</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Politics' rel='tag'>Politics</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%2520of%2520poetry' rel='tag'>Schools of poetry</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/surrealism' rel='tag'>surrealism</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

          </div></div>
        

          <div class="date-outer">
        
<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, October 30, 2002</span></h2>

          <div class="date-posts">
        
<div class='post-outer'>
<div class='post hentry uncustomized-post-template' itemprop='blogPost' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/BlogPosting'>
<meta content='3738579' itemprop='blogId'/>
<meta content='83765422' itemprop='postId'/>
<a name='83765422'></a>
<div class='post-header'>
<div class='post-header-line-1'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-body entry-content' id='post-body-83765422' itemprop='description articleBody'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Objectivist poet Carl Rakosi
turns 99 this week. At 7:00 PM Eastern tonight, Kelly Writers House on the Penn
campus will sponsor a webcast of a live reading and conversation with the
poet.* <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'>Rakosi is our last living
connection with the Objectivists. In far too similar a fashion, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti has emerged as the last of our Beat poets, John Ashbery the lone
remaining core member of the New York School&#8217;s first generation, Robert Creeley
the last of the great teachers at Black Mountain College, Robin Blaser the last
participant in the Berkeley Renaissance (later the San Francisco Renaissance),
etc. We are, it would seem, in a curious interregnum, an epoch of lasts.<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'>There are of course an
infinite number of problems with all such easy definitions. Perhaps it is
impossible to find any other living participant from the Objectivist issue of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry </i>&#8211; the age of 99 will put some
distance between you &amp; others &#8211; but what about Barbara Guest &amp; the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'>, what about Snyder, McClure or Meltzer among the Beats? Or, conversely,
what about the ways in which Ginsberg &amp; Kerouac seem to have kept
Ferlinghetti at arm&#8217;s length, at least in the 1950s? He was a publisher before
he was their comrade. <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'>Literary formations are
intellectual constructs that live in time. If Objectivism lives today, it does
so first in the memory of Carl Rakosi, a poet who apparently did not meet most
of his fellow Objectivists in person until the 1960s, and then in our own sense
of what that collective term represents. Before February, 1931, when the
Zukofsky-edited special issue of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry</i>
first appeared, it is safe to say that hardly anyone beyond Zukofsky had any
idea of what that term might entail. <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'>Among the appendices to <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Collected Books of Jack Spicer</i>,
editor Robin Blaser includes Robert Duncan&#8217;s questionnaire for his 1958
&#8220;Workshop in Basic Techniques,&#8221; as well as Spicer&#8217;s whimsical subversions in
response<span class=GramE>.*</span>* Under the third section &#8211; &#8220;Tradition&#8221; &#8211; </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Duncan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'> asks the respondent to choose one of two figures,
alternative he refers to as &#8220;the tree or constellation,&#8221; the former being a
straight-forward genealogical abstraction. Duncan instructs the applicant to
&#8220;conceive of yourself as poet (that is, the spirit of your work) in the
position marked with an x; then list as many poets . . . of your genius as you
can numbering them according to their position in the design.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>The tree identifies &#8220;x&#8221; as
the off-spring of 1 &amp; 2. Positions 3 through 6 represent the &#8220;parents&#8221; of 1
&amp; 2, with 7 &amp; 8 standing for a sibling of each. Figures 9 through 12
are siblings or equals of &#8216;x.&#8221; The constellation offers no lines connecting
figures. Rather some are closer, some </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>furth</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>er, some larger, some smaller. In this figure, &#8220;x&#8221; is
near an unfilled center. Spicer in fact chose the constellation as his form,
placing himself (&#8220;x&#8221;) into the lower-right hand sector of a rectangular
quadrant that has now been moved directly into the center. The other three
sectors are labeled variously, &#8220;Robin,&#8221; &#8220;</span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Duncan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>,&#8221; &amp; &#8220;To be found.&#8221; Spicer adds two items to his
constellation, enabling him to array six figures relatively near to this bound
quadrant: Pound, Cocteau, Dada, Yeats, <span class=SpellE>Lorca</span>, &amp; &#8220;<span
class=SpellE>Vachael</span>&#8221; (<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>sic</i><span
class=GramE>)<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>Lindsay</span>. Above and
below are two more distant figures &#8211; Miles, meaning Josephine Miles, the
dominant poet at UC Berkeley in the 1940s and &#8216;50s, and &#8220;<span class=SpellE>Untermeyer&#8217;s</span>
Anthology.&#8221; Notably more distant, because &#8220;beyond&#8221; the array of six nearer
influences, Spicer places two final figures, &#8220;The English Dept&#8221; and &#8220;The
Place,&#8221; the latter being a North Beach bar associated with the Beats (and not,
pointedly, with Jack&#8217;s crowd at Gino &amp; Carlo&#8217;s). <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'>How would Carl Rakosi
respond to this questionnaire? <span class=GramE>Or Allen Ginsberg?</span> Jack
Kerouac? Frank O&#8217;Hara? <span class=SpellE>Harryette</span> Mullen? Anselm
Berrigan?<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>Gil <span class=SpellE>Ott</span>?
</span><st1:City><st1:place><span class=GramE><span style='font-family:Arial'>Jena</span></span></st1:place></st1:City><span
class=GramE><span style='font-family:Arial'> Osman?</span></span><span
style='font-family:Arial'> Dale Smith? </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Linh Dinh</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-family:Arial'>? Dodie Bellamy? Regardless of the formation you
select, or the modifications you might make (a la Spicer) to one of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Duncan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s figures, the process requires you to <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>position yourself</i> within the terrain of
a poetics. All any literary formation is<span class=GramE>,</span> in one
sense, is just such a process carried out consciously, collectively &amp; in
public. <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'>But this hardly means that
such formations are fixed or frozen in time. To see that, one need only look at
the three broad phases of Objectivism &#8211; <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-family:Arial'>The 1930s,
interactivity, optimism, joint publishing projects, critical statements,
recruiting (Niedecker)<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-family:Arial'>The 1940s &amp;
&#8216;50s, almost totally receding, with several Objectivists either not publishing
and even not writing for long periods of time<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 1.0in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span
style='font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-family:Arial'>1960s onward,
the emergence &amp; success of these writers precisely as a literary formation<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>In 2002, one might argue
that Objectivism must be whatever Carl Rakosi says it is, even if he did not
meet most of his collaborators until the third phase itself was under way.
While John Taggart, Michael Heller, Rachel Blau <span class=SpellE>Du</span> <span
class=SpellE>Plessis</span> or I might include Objectivism somewhere in
whatever configurations we ended up drawing in response to </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Duncan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s question, only Rakosi might be apt to place it at
or near &#8220;x.&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>Even within formations,
individual elements vary dramatically. Spicer, Duncan &amp; Blaser had three
very different relationships with Charles Olson, for example. Among langpos,
one can find several people who have found Russian futurism &amp; its critical
front, Russian formalism, to be of great value. But one can find more who seem
to have paid it only cursory attention, if any. Further, no two poets came to
what we might call Russian modernism <span class=GramE>from exactly the same
direction nor</span> with the same set of concerns. Thus one can&#8217;t say that the
relation of Russian futurism to language poetry is X or Y or whatever unless
one specifies it down to the individual. Rather, it is &#8220;part of the mix,&#8221; as
are (or were) any number of other disparate elements, from the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> to surrealism to Stein to Projectivism to Zukofsky to the Bolinas Mesa
phenomenon of the early 1970s<span class=GramE>.*</span>** <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:Arial'>If ever there were an
instance of the map not being the territory, such subjective positionings as
these models suggest would be it. Spicer&#8217;s filled-out questionnaire is a
perfect case in point, even if we concede that Spicer is playing with the
document. Beyond </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>Duncan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'> &amp; Blaser, the New American Poetry is entirely
absent from this 1958 document. Those two &amp; Josephine Miles are the only
poets even born in the 20<sup>th</sup> Century. While Spicer&#8217;s constellation is
notable for its internationalism, the choice of Vachel Lindsay (whose first
name Spicer misspells), that old premodernist <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>post le <span class=SpellE>lettre</span></i>, as his instance of Yankee
nativism seems premeditatedly daft, given the absence, say, of Williams,
Whitman, Dickinson, Crane or Stein. In a parallel mode, &#8220;<span class=SpellE>Untermeyer&#8217;s</span>
anthology&#8221; (either <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Pocket Book of
American Poems </i>or <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Modern American
Poetry, </i>both of which were &#8220;best sellers&#8221;) seems calculated to invoke the
low-brow &amp; decadent side of verse. <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'>But what is most remarkable
about Spicer&#8217;s 1958 map is what a resolutely <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>static</i></span> <span style='font-family:Arial'>view of poetry it offers
&#8211; two friends, one professor, one poet locked up in an insane asylum, as such
hospitals were styled in those days, and everybody else basically is dead,
anthologized, relegated to the English Department. The only inscrutable
possibility &#8211; and it&#8217;s positioned on the outermost ring of Spicer&#8217;s
constellation, as distant as the English Department &#8211; is the Beat scene at The
Place.<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'>Contrast this with the
extraordinarily active sense of poetry, place &amp; position to be found in
Spicer&#8217;s final work, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Book of Magazine
Verse,</i> published posthumously in 1966. There we find poems consciously
written &#8220;for&#8221; &#8211; Spicer&#8217;s sense of preposition is especially barbed; not one of
the named journals would ever print anything from this volume &#8211; <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation,</i> whose poetry was then being
edited by Denise Levertov; for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry
Chicago</i>, then in the hands of Henry <span class=SpellE>Rago</span>+; for
the Canadian little magazine <span class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Tish</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>; </i>for <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ramparts,</i> a Catholic journal that was at
that point transforming itself into a muckraking antiwar publication, a
leftwing publication that might have attracted Spicer precisely because it was
published in San Francisco, a rare thing for a national publication in those
days; for <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The St. Louis Sporting News</i>,
the bible of baseball in 1965; for the Vancouver Festival, not a magazine at
all; and finally for the jazz journal, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Downbeat.
</i>Spicer&#8217;s choices here are as clear a map as the 1958 questionnaire, but the
world they address is radically changed. One might see <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Poetry Chicago </i>as an equivalent, say, for either the English
Department (especially given Spicer&#8217;s paranoia about his exclusion) or even &#8220;<span
class=SpellE>Untermeyer&#8217;s</span> anthology&#8221; &#8211; advertised no less in that grand
50<sup>th</sup> anniversary issue. Inside, the poems are full of pop culture
references: the Beatles, Ginsberg&#8217;s bust in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Prague</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>, the Vietnam war<span class=GramE>,<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>Peter</span>, Paul &amp; Mary. In 1966, when <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Book of Magazine Verse </i>came out, it
never occurred to me that as a 19 year old, I was a regular reader of four of
the publications Spicer references. But in retrospect, that&#8217;s a remarkable
statement about Spicer. <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 could argue that Spicer
had changed dramatically, both as person and as a poet between 1958, when he
had just finished writing <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>After <span
class=SpellE>Lorca</span>,</i> and 1965, when he died. But whether one fixes
one&#8217;s lens on the </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>ind</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-family:Arial'>ividual or on the social matters relatively little.
Either way, the map itself is not static, but must be negotiated, in both the
navigational and contractual senses of that word, continually. <span
class=SpellE><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Periplum</i></span><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>, </i>as </span><st1:place><span
 style='font-family:Arial'>Po</span></st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>und
called it, the ability to steer through waters in which no reference point is
fixed. <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'>All of which is to suggest
that when one refers to Carl Rakosi as an Objectivist, or of Spicer as writer
from the </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>San
  Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-family:Arial'> (nee </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-family:Arial'>) Renaissance, one needs to ask further: which
Objectivism, which renaissance? The </span><st1:place><span style='font-family:
 Arial'>Ob</span></st1:place><span style='font-family:Arial'>jectivism of 1931
was a far cry from that of 1945, let alone 1965 or even as recently as 1985. If
Objectivism (or modernism, or language poetry, the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span style='font-family:
  Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span style='font-family:
Arial'> or what have you) is perceived as a continuous &amp; relatively fixed
set of values, then it has become a map unanchored from the territory to which
it ostensibly refers. <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 class=GramE><span style='font-family:Arial'>Which is
why it is not possible to write language poetry in 2002.</span></span><span
style='font-family:Arial'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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

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

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

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>* For more information,
call 215-573-WRIT or see the special website: </span><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/rakosi.html"><span
style='color:windowtext'>www.english.upenn.edu/~wh/rakosi.html</span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>**
(</span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
  color:black'>Los Angeles</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>: Black Sparrow, 1975), pp. 357-60. Black
Sparrow books are now an imprint of David R. Godine. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>***
In the early 1970s, Bolinas&#8217; population, never more than a few hundred,
included Robert Creeley, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Joanne Kyger, Larry Kearney,
Jim Gustafson, Jim Carroll, Tom Clark, Bill <span class=SpellE>Berkson</span>,
Louis <span class=SpellE>MacAdams</span> Jr., and several other poets all
loosely affiliated with different strands of the New American Poetry. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
text-align:justify'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>+<span
class=SpellE>Rago&#8217;s</span> tenure at <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry</i>
is worth examining </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
  font-family:Arial;color:black'>furth</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>er. From his arrival in
1955 through 1961 or so, he was more or less indistinguishable from the bland
academics who were to follow in his wake, but from 1962 until <span
class=SpellE>Rago&#8217;s</span> death in 1969, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poetry
</i>had a brief reawakening and was for that seven year period the <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>only </i>magazine 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'> to publish the New
Americans &amp; the school of quietude side by side, devoting issues to
Zukofsky, publishing a 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary issue that included Creeley,
Olson, Levertov, Koch, Pound, Mac <span class=SpellE>Diarmid</span>, Rexroth,
Williams &amp; Zukofsky as well as Aiken, Berryman, Merrill, <span
class=SpellE>Bogan</span>, <span class=SpellE>Ciardi</span>, Cummings,
Eberhart, Frost, Graves, Hecht, Jarrell, <span class=SpellE>Kunitz</span>,
Lowell, Merrill, <span class=SpellE>Merwin</span>, Moss, <span class=SpellE>Nemerov</span>,
Sexton, Spender, Wilbur, William Jay Smith &amp; James Wright. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style='clear: both;'></div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer'>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>
<span class='post-author vcard'>
Posted by
<span class='fn' itemprop='author' itemscope='itemscope' itemtype='http://schema.org/Person'>
<span itemprop='name'>Ron</span>
</span>
</span>
<span class='post-timestamp'>
at
<meta content='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/10/objectivist-poet-carl-rakosi-turns-99.html' itemprop='url'/>
<a class='timestamp-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2002/10/objectivist-poet-carl-rakosi-turns-99.html' rel='bookmark' title='permanent link'><abbr class='published' itemprop='datePublished' title='2002-10-30T06:42:00-05:00'>Wednesday, October 30, 2002</abbr></a>
</span>
<span class='reaction-buttons'>
</span>
<span class='post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-backlinks post-comment-link'>
</span>
<span class='post-icons'>
<span class='item-action'>
<a href='https://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=3738579&postID=83765422' title='Email Post'>
<img alt='' class='icon-action' height='13' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='post-share-buttons goog-inline-block'>
</div>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'>
<span class='post-labels'>
Labels:
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Objectivism' rel='tag'>Objectivism</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%2520of%2520poetry' rel='tag'>Schools of poetry</a>
</span>
</div>
<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<span class='post-location'>
</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

        </div></div>
      
</div>
<div class='blog-pager' id='blog-pager'>
<span id='blog-pager-newer-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-newer-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%2520of%2520poetry%3Fmax-results%3D20' id='Blog1_blog-pager-newer-link' title='Newer Posts'>Newer Posts</a>
</span>
<span id='blog-pager-older-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-older-link' href='https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%20of%20poetry?updated-max=2002-10-30T06:42:00-05:00&amp;max-results=20&amp;start=44&amp;by-date=false' id='Blog1_blog-pager-older-link' title='Older Posts'>Older Posts</a>
</span>
<a class='home-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/'>Home</a>
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<div class='blog-feeds'>
<div class='feed-links'>
Subscribe to:
<a class='feed-link' href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default' target='_blank' type='application/atom+xml'>Posts (Atom)</a>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div id='sidebar-wrapper'>
<div class='sidebar section' id='sidebar'><div class='widget Text' data-version='1' id='Text4'>
<h2 class='title'>Upcoming</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<b>October</b><br /><br />Madrid<br />with Charles Bernstein & Susan Bee<br /><br />Barcelona<br /><div><br /><br />Saragossa?<br /><br /><b>November</b><br /><br />Rome?<div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Text&widgetId=Text4&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Text4"));' rel='nofollow' target='configText4' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div><div class='widget TextList' data-version='1' id='TextList1'>
<h2>Email</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<ul>
<li>silliman AT gmail DOT com</li>
</ul>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=TextList&widgetId=TextList1&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("TextList1"));' rel='nofollow' target='configTextList1' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div>
</div><div class='widget LinkList' data-version='1' id='LinkList1'>
<h2>Silliman Sites</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<ul>
<li><a href='http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1544'>Academy of American Poets</a></li>
<li><a href='http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/silliman'>Electronic Poetry Center</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.facebook.com/ron.silliman'>Facebook</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.goodreads.com/search/search%3Fsearch_type%3Dbooks%26search%5Bquery%5D%3Dron%2Bsilliman'>GoodReads</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/silliman/silliman.htm'>Modern American Poetry</a></li>
<li><a href='http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Silliman.php'>PennSound</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.pcah.us/the-center/grants-awarded/grantees-1998-ron-silliman/'>Pew Fellowships in the Arts</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6323'>Poetry Foundation</a></li>
<li><a href='http://ronsillimanbibliography.blogspot.com/'>Silliman's Bibliography</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?AuthorName=Ron+Silliman'>Small Press Distribution</a></li>
<li><a href='http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/TOTTELS/'>Tottel's</a></li>
<li><a href='http://twitter.com/ronsilliman'>Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.ubu.com/contemp/silliman/index.html'>Ubuweb</a></li>
<li><a href='https://library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/findingaids/mss0075.html'>UC San Diego Archives</a></li>
<li><a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Silliman'>Wikipedia</a></li>
</ul>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=LinkList&widgetId=LinkList1&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("LinkList1"));' rel='nofollow' target='configLinkList1' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div>
</div><div class='widget Text' data-version='1' id='Text1'>
<h2 class='title'>Ketjak</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Text&widgetId=Text1&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Text1"));' rel='nofollow' target='configText1' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div><div class='widget Text' data-version='1' id='Text3'>
<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
<div class='widget-content'>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Text&widgetId=Text3&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Text3"));' rel='nofollow' target='configText3' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div><div class='widget Image' data-version='1' id='Image1'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<img alt='' height='163' id='Image1_img' src='//3.bp.blogspot.com/_TEBx9oYcXio/S9oGYEaetqI/AAAAAAAABDs/UI7l5u8GwcA/S230/redron.jpg' width='230'/>
<br/>
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Image&widgetId=Image1&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Image1"));' rel='nofollow' target='configImage1' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div><div class='widget Text' data-version='1' id='Text2'>
<div class='widget-content'>
<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
</div>
<div class='clear'></div>
<span class='widget-item-control'>
<span class='item-control blog-admin'>
<a class='quickedit' href='//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID=3738579&widgetType=Text&widgetId=Text2&action=editWidget&sectionId=sidebar' onclick='return _WidgetManager._PopupConfig(document.getElementById("Text2"));' rel='nofollow' target='configText2' title='Edit'>
<img alt='' height='18' src='https://resources.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png' width='18'/>
</a>
</span>
</span>
<div class='clear'></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<!-- spacer for skins that want sidebar and main to be the same height-->
<div class='clear'>&#160;</div>
</div>
<!-- end content-wrapper -->
</div></div>
<!-- end outer-wrapper -->

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/widgets/1068551213-widgets.js"></script>
<script type='text/javascript'>
window['__wavt'] = 'AOuZoY4NNW4CF0TWUUzF1akAKx5Gb6F4pg:1574711429724';_WidgetManager._Init('//www.blogger.com/rearrange?blogID\x3d3738579','//ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%20of%20poetry?updated-max\x3d2007-04-06T04:51:00-07:00\x26max-results\x3d20\x26start\x3d24\x26by-date\x3dfalse','3738579');
_WidgetManager._SetDataContext([{'name': 'blog', 'data': {'blogId': '3738579', 'title': 'Silliman\x27s Blog', 'url': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%20of%20poetry?updated-max\x3d2007-04-06T04:51:00-07:00\x26max-results\x3d20\x26start\x3d24\x26by-date\x3dfalse', 'canonicalUrl': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%20of%20poetry?updated-max\x3d2007-04-06T04:51:00-07:00\x26max-results\x3d20\x26start\x3d24\x26by-date\x3dfalse', 'homepageUrl': 'https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/', 'searchUrl': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search', 'canonicalHomepageUrl': 'https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/', 'blogspotFaviconUrl': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/favicon.ico', 'bloggerUrl': 'https://www.blogger.com', 'hasCustomDomain': false, 'httpsEnabled': true, 'enabledCommentProfileImages': true, 'gPlusViewType': 'FILTERED_POSTMOD', 'adultContent': false, 'analyticsAccountNumber': '', 'encoding': 'UTF-8', 'locale': 'en', 'localeUnderscoreDelimited': 'en', 'languageDirection': 'ltr', 'isPrivate': false, 'isMobile': false, 'isMobileRequest': false, 'mobileClass': '', 'isPrivateBlog': false, 'feedLinks': '\x3clink rel\x3d\x22alternate\x22 type\x3d\x22application/atom+xml\x22 title\x3d\x22Silliman\x26#39;s Blog - Atom\x22 href\x3d\x22https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default\x22 /\x3e\n\x3clink rel\x3d\x22alternate\x22 type\x3d\x22application/rss+xml\x22 title\x3d\x22Silliman\x26#39;s Blog - RSS\x22 href\x3d\x22https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt\x3drss\x22 /\x3e\n\x3clink rel\x3d\x22service.post\x22 type\x3d\x22application/atom+xml\x22 title\x3d\x22Silliman\x26#39;s Blog - Atom\x22 href\x3d\x22https://www.blogger.com/feeds/3738579/posts/default\x22 /\x3e\n', 'meTag': '', 'adsenseHostId': 'ca-host-pub-1556223355139109', 'adsenseHasAds': false, 'view': '', 'dynamicViewsCommentsSrc': '//www.blogblog.com/dynamicviews/4224c15c4e7c9321/js/comments.js', 'dynamicViewsScriptSrc': '//www.blogblog.com/dynamicviews/f3d926f4a203e3ca', 'plusOneApiSrc': 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js', 'disableGComments': true, 'sharing': {'platforms': [{'name': 'Get link', 'key': 'link', 'shareMessage': 'Get link', 'target': ''}, {'name': 'Facebook', 'key': 'facebook', 'shareMessage': 'Share to Facebook', 'target': 'facebook'}, {'name': 'BlogThis!', 'key': 'blogThis', 'shareMessage': 'BlogThis!', 'target': 'blog'}, {'name': 'Twitter', 'key': 'twitter', 'shareMessage': 'Share to Twitter', 'target': 'twitter'}, {'name': 'Pinterest', 'key': 'pinterest', 'shareMessage': 'Share to Pinterest', 'target': 'pinterest'}, {'name': 'Email', 'key': 'email', 'shareMessage': 'Email', 'target': 'email'}], 'disableGooglePlus': true, 'googlePlusShareButtonWidth': 300, 'googlePlusBootstrap': '\x3cscript type\x3d\x22text/javascript\x22\x3ewindow.___gcfg \x3d {\x27lang\x27: \x27en\x27};\x3c/script\x3e'}, 'hasCustomJumpLinkMessage': false, 'jumpLinkMessage': 'Read more', 'pageType': 'index', 'searchLabel': 'Schools of poetry', 'pageName': 'Schools of poetry', 'pageTitle': 'Silliman\x27s Blog: Schools of poetry'}}, {'name': 'features', 'data': {'sharing_get_link_dialog': 'true', 'sharing_native': 'false'}}, {'name': 'messages', 'data': {'edit': 'Edit', 'linkCopiedToClipboard': 'Link copied to clipboard!', 'ok': 'Ok', 'postLink': 'Post Link'}}, {'name': 'template', 'data': {'name': 'custom', 'localizedName': 'Custom', 'isResponsive': false, 'isAlternateRendering': false, 'isCustom': true}}, {'name': 'view', 'data': {'classic': {'name': 'classic', 'url': '?view\x3dclassic'}, 'flipcard': {'name': 'flipcard', 'url': '?view\x3dflipcard'}, 'magazine': {'name': 'magazine', 'url': '?view\x3dmagazine'}, 'mosaic': {'name': 'mosaic', 'url': '?view\x3dmosaic'}, 'sidebar': {'name': 'sidebar', 'url': '?view\x3dsidebar'}, 'snapshot': {'name': 'snapshot', 'url': '?view\x3dsnapshot'}, 'timeslide': {'name': 'timeslide', 'url': '?view\x3dtimeslide'}, 'isMobile': false, 'title': 'Silliman\x27s Blog', 'description': 'A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.', 'url': 'https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools%20of%20poetry?updated-max\x3d2007-04-06T04:51:00-07:00\x26max-results\x3d20\x26start\x3d24\x26by-date\x3dfalse', 'type': 'feed', 'isSingleItem': false, 'isMultipleItems': true, 'isError': false, 'isPage': false, 'isPost': false, 'isHomepage': false, 'isArchive': false, 'isSearch': true, 'isLabelSearch': true, 'search': {'label': 'Schools of poetry', 'resultsMessage': 'Showing posts with the label Schools of poetry', 'resultsMessageHtml': 'Showing posts with the label \x3cspan class\x3d\x27search-label\x27\x3eSchools of poetry\x3c/span\x3e'}}}]);
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_NavbarView', new _WidgetInfo('Navbar1', 'navbar', document.getElementById('Navbar1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_HeaderView', new _WidgetInfo('Header1', 'header', document.getElementById('Header1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_BlogView', new _WidgetInfo('Blog1', 'main', document.getElementById('Blog1'), {'cmtInteractionsEnabled': false, 'navMessage': 'Showing posts with label \x3cb\x3eSchools of poetry\x3c/b\x3e. \x3ca href\x3d\x22https://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/\x22\x3eShow all posts\x3c/a\x3e', 'lightboxEnabled': true, 'lightboxModuleUrl': 'https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/jsbin/4152225668-lbx.js', 'lightboxCssUrl': 'https://www.blogger.com/static/v1/v-css/368954415-lightbox_bundle.css'}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextView', new _WidgetInfo('Text4', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Text4'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextListView', new _WidgetInfo('TextList1', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('TextList1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_LinkListView', new _WidgetInfo('LinkList1', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('LinkList1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextView', new _WidgetInfo('Text1', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Text1'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextView', new _WidgetInfo('Text3', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Text3'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_ImageView', new _WidgetInfo('Image1', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Image1'), {'resize': false}, 'displayModeFull'));
_WidgetManager._RegisterWidget('_TextView', new _WidgetInfo('Text2', 'sidebar', document.getElementById('Text2'), {}, 'displayModeFull'));
</script>
</body>
</html>