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<p class='description'><span>A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.</span></p>
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Showing posts with label <b>Tom Raworth</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>Tom Raworth</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, February 08, 2017</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y70rm_4JQ4g/WJUkt14OldI/AAAAAAAAHBw/lH1tlRzwtvkKJHI3Fj-pLzCLoZlkLiNNACLcB/s1600/Old%2BTom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="627" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/2.bp.blogspot.com/-y70rm_4JQ4g/WJUkt14OldI/AAAAAAAAHBw/lH1tlRzwtvkKJHI3Fj-pLzCLoZlkLiNNACLcB/s640/Old%252BTom.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Tom Raworth</span></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br />1938 -- 2017</span></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">A link here to the Poetry Foundation's recording of Tom Raworth reading "<a href="https://media.poetryfoundation.org/uploads/media/default/0001/07/af2f7b36a870aa1a22ec93d34c9ac9916553cb52.mp3">Gaslight</a>":</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">a line of faces borders the strangler&#8217;s work</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> heavy european women</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> mist blows over dusty tropical plants</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> lit from beneath the leaves by a spotlight</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> mist in my mind a riffled deck</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &nbsp;</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> of cards or eccentrics</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> was i</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> a waterton animal my head</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> is not my own</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &nbsp;</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> poetry is neither swan nor owl</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> but worker, miner</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> digging each generation deeper</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> through the shit of its eaters</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> to the root &#8211; then up to the giant tomato</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &nbsp;</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> someone else&#8217;s song is always behind us</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> as we wake from a dream trying to remember</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> step onto a thumbtack</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &nbsp;</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> two worlds &#8211; we write the skin</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> the surface tension that holds</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &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;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; you</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &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;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; in</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> what we write is ever the past</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &nbsp;</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> curtain pulled back</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> a portrait behind it</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> is a room suddenly lit</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &nbsp;</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> looking out through the eyes</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> at a t.v. programme</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> of a monk sealed into a coffin</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &nbsp;</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> we close their eyes and ours</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> and still here the tune</span></div>
<div style="padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em;">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> &nbsp;</span></div>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> moves on</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">*** </span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">Tom Raworth died this week. He was a giant as a poet, and a gentle, sweet fellow. One of the greatest compliments I ever received was a simple phone call from him -- how he got my number I do not know -- telling me that my book <i>Ketjak </i>was "alright."&nbsp;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">I knew him slightly during the years he lived in San Francisco in the 1970s, was in the audience at New Langton Arts when he gave what may be the shortest talk ever, and was fortunate to see him whenever he came through Philadelphia in recent years.&nbsp;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">I was once told (by a poet I respect) that Americans were too quick to declare him the finest living British poet. Just the opposite, I suspect, the far reaches of the Commonwealth have been far too slow to recognize the wonder of his work. After Bunting, Tom was the Alps. He himself could not have cared less for accolades, but the weak tea that is so much of British conventionalism is just so much piss-water alongside this stronger brew. I will miss him and we will all miss his work &amp; wit. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">Here are two pieces I wrote on Tom's work some 14 years ago.&nbsp;</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">*** </span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;arial&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">Read <a href="http://tomraworth.com/">Tom Raworth&#8217;s</a> poetry aloud &amp; you
begin to understand almost instantly why, or more accurately how, he developed
his reputation as &#8211; at least until Miles Champion showed up &#8211; the fastest
reader on the scene. Try reading aloud the following stanzas from &#8220;Survival,&#8221; a
poem in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://roofbooks.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=93780100080280">Clean &amp;
Well-Lit: Selected Poems, 1987-1995</a></i>:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">later she would
walk</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">asleep on his
feet</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">to the brink
of inspiration</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">with
lacquered nails</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">paused in
mid-phrase</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">discounting &#8211;
discrediting</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">the epic
sweep of stars</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">devising
stratagems</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">shrunk back
in his head</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">until the day
was filled</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">creating an
illusion</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">radiating
orange lightning</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">sucked into a
vacuum</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">past ponds,
down hills</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">nothing
better than to re-claim</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">duck with its
head swinging</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">knife &#8211; a
blue pencil</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">only bad
things that affect</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">the opposite
still she came</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">a tall black
vase</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">fluttering
her arms</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">always
displeased</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">moving every
year</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">around
protected by the wind</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">shook the
plate in front</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">did not
scream when he fell</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">outside down
the stairs</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">poured all
her brains</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">the
adaptations</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">to
differences in colour</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">associated
with food</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">regarded as
the simplest forms</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">stuck
together in lumps</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">are
irrelevant to survival</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">the struggle
towards</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">countless
changes</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">exhausted
from hunger</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">sounded like
water</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">beginning to
burn</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">or an
extinguished star</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">fading with
darkness</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">smiling at
the skull</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">feelings
belonged to the past</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">his stomach
churned</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">the breeze
blew</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">through thick
underbrush</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">following him
around</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">out onto the
highway</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">and grinned </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">flailing about</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">not to touch
his cold flesh</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">you could
smell it</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">from deep in
the earth</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">watching the
smoke crawl</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">from his
straining lungs</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;verdana&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">with its icy
purity</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;arial&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">The line here represents one
phrase, almost as though each were a single stroke that, together, accumulate
into a large, complex canvas. In general, the lines contain between four
&amp; eight syllables &#8211; the two shorter exceptions in the fourth stanza
above are the first such exceptions in the poem, which is already 16 stanzas
long at the start of this quotation. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;arial&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">A different poet who focused on
the phrase might vary the segments of language actually used line by line more
than Raworth does: a quick tally of the 56 lines above shows 21 starting with
verbs &#8211; only one is a variant of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to be</i> &#8211; with
another ten starting with prepositions. It&#8217;s precisely this combination of line
length &amp; syntax that propels Raworth&#8217;s text
forward so rapidly. A career of reading texts
such as &#8220;Survival&#8221; in public would speed up anyone&#8217;s reading style.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;arial&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">&#8220;Survival&#8221; is the longest poem
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clean &amp;
Well Lit</i>, which &#8211; with the exception of the sequence <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.sunmoon.com/classics/raworth_eternal.html">Eternal Sections</a></i>
&#8211; represents eight years of writing, post-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.obooks.com/tottering.htm">Tottering State</a></i>, Like the
&#8220;14-line poems&#8221; of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eternal
Sections</i> &#8211; Raworth pointedly does not call them sonnets &#8211; &#8220;Survival&#8217;s&#8221;
14-line stanzas carry that familiar quantity about them. Raworth&#8217;s reluctance
to employ the S-word makes sense, as the logic of these stanzas is anything but
sonnet-esque. Rather, the propulsion of the language carries the reader ever
forward, ever faster. If the syntax does contribute to the onward motion of the
language, it never
really resolves up to the level of a sentence &#8211; those little moments of closure
are themselves deferred or displaced. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;arial&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">I&#8217;ve sometimes wondered if it is
a function of Raworth&#8217;s phrase-focus that makes his work so eminently
accessible to U.S.
audiences &amp; note, just to use these four stanzas as an index, that only
the spelling of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">colour
</i>marks his text in any way I think might be recognizable to a Yank as
British. Do the British really use phrases differently? I&#8217;m not enough of a
comparative linguist to know, although I&#8217;m aware of the stereotype propagated
by so many BBC dramas on U.S. PBS television stations suggesting that fully
formed sentences with many dependent clauses are &#8220;British&#8221; in a way that the
more telegraphic, interruptive mode of Yankee discourse is not. Of course
nobody in those dramas sounds like Linton Kweski Johnson either, or even
appears to have come from the north. Still, the complaint I once got from a
young poet with partly British heritage that &#8220;there&#8217;s waaaay too many
&#8216;experimental&#8217; poets who like to think Tom
Raworth is the only poet in England&#8221;
reflects, among other things, the enormous respect &amp; passion Americans
do have toward his work. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">



</span><br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;arial&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">Raworth&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/scripts/webguild/scribe.cgi?author=rawortht">Collected
Poems</a></i> is about to be issued from Carcanet in the U.K.
&amp; is already available for sale over its web site. Every single blurb
for the book is from a Yank.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;&quot; &quot;arial&quot; &quot;&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;;">***</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">It&#8217;s big. It&#8217;s yellow. It&#8217;s
beautiful. It, in this instance, is the </span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">Tom Raworth</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected
Poems</i>, just out from <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/">Carcanet</a>,
making an early bid for the &#8220;best book of 2003&#8221; sweepstakes. The volume has 557
pages of text, plus some 18 of &#8220;front matter&#8221; &amp; another 20 given to various
indices. At one pound, 13 ounces, it&#8217;s a brick. <span class="GramE">A brick with
a cover illustration by the late Franco Beltrametti.*</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">Not long ago, I had a
discussion with poet of my own generation whose work I&#8217;ve praised on this blog,
whom I informed that I longed to see a collected works of his poetry. He
argued, with surprising vigor, against the idea. His primary points were two &#8211;
first, that as a young poet he had not always known when works should be held
back &amp; not published. There was a lot of writing in his first books that,
in his opinion, were &#8220;not ready for prime time.&#8221;** But even more problematic
from his perspective was the way in which &#8220;<span class="SpellE">collecteds</span>&#8221;
eliminate shape. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">Shape is a question, I
agree, with any such gathering, as is detail. Perhaps the most notorious
example of how placement can alter &amp; undermine the implications of a text
in such terms are the poems from William Carlos Williams&#8217; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spring &amp; All</i> as they were included in his own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected Earlier Poems. </i>Thus did &#8220;red
wheel / barrow&#8221; become something it never could have been in context, coming as
it originally did 78 pages into a dense argument, leading directly to a discussion
of knowledge, categories, democracy, education &amp; <span class="GramE">confusion.</span>
There also is a distinction between collected &amp; complete with which all
such volumes must contend. Thus there are rumors afoot at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected Books</i> of Jack Spicer will some
day be supplanted by a much fuller edition. &amp; we have just seen how
radically different the new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected
Works </i>of Lorine Niedecker are from her two earlier &#8220;collected&#8221; poems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">T&amp;G </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Life by Water.</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">There also are discrepancies
in this vast edition of Raworth&#8217;s &#8211; moments that will stop a fond, familiar
reader short. For example, the stanza-per-page structure of &#8220;Defective
Definitions&#8221; in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://roofbooks.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=93780100080280">Clean &amp; Well
Lit</a></i> runs </span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">4-2-1</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">, though all are quatrains. In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected,
</i>the stanzas are run together. Raworth himself credits the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clean &amp; Well Lit </i>formatting to
&#8220;happenstance,&#8221; insisting that ultimately there is no such thing as &#8220;correct.&#8221;
Thus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.aerialedge.com/ace.htm">Ace</a></i> is a long thin poem*** in
a single column in the Edge Press edition I currently own, yet appeared in
double columns in the editions of </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">Tottering</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;"> </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">State</span></i><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;"> published by The Figures &amp; by Paladin. It
doesn&#8217;t appear at all in the O Book edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tottering State</i> &amp; is again in double columns in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected. </i>Indeed, the three editions of
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">Tottering</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;"> </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">State</span></i><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;"> all differ substantially. The provisional nature of
it all is enough to make one suspicious of a project that calls itself </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">Col</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">lected.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;">Which
might well be the point.</span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot;;"> As
impressively well-written as these works are &#8211; &amp; I&#8217;m one who could be
persuaded that we live the Age of Raworth &#8211; Raworth&#8217;s poetry itself argues for
a definition of verse as &#8220;what a poet does,&#8221; a condition that offers quite a
bit of latitude. But I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s latitude that Raworth is after, nor
does his stance have anything to do with an approach to the poem as &#8220;art
language&#8221; the way that David Antin&#8217;s performances do. Rather, the books like
the poems <span class="GramE">themselves,</span> are arguments for a perpetual
restlessness that amounts to constant attentiveness to the conditions of the
real. It&#8217;s in this sense that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected
Poems</i> represents an achievement of major proportion. These works are not
&#8220;the alps,&#8221; as Basil Bunting once characterized Pound&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cantos</i>, not because the accumulation is not massive, but because
there is not a sedentary moment in this book. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">* Far more
beautiful &amp; colorful than the washed-out thumbnail of it on the Carcanet
web site suggests. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">** I don&#8217;t
agree.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">*** I originally
typed &#8220;long thing poem&#8221; &#8211; it&#8217;s that too.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">

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<b><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Raworth"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Tom</span></a> <a href="http://tomraworth.com/"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: &quot;lumm=95000 lumo=5000&quot;; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 242;">Raworth</span></a><br />
<br />
</span></b><b><span style="color: red; font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.kswaudio.com/KSWaudio/readings/Raworth-Tom_whole-reading_KSW-Vancouver_17-11-98.mp3"><span style="color: red;">reading</span></a></span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;sans-serif&quot;; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />
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<br />
Vancouver, BC<br />
<br />
1998<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, June 28, 2011</span></h2>

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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, January 20, 2003</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">My copy of </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Raworth</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected</i>
came straight from Carcanet, which tucked in a bookmark that was, as these
things often enough are these days, an advertisement for another poet, one <a href="http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth187&amp;state=index=h">Sophie
Hannah</a>. It includes, on one side, a head shot of the poet and a poem
printed in red type, whose title (presented rather as though it were a
footnote) is &#8220;Occupational Hazard&#8221;:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">He has slept with accountants and brokers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">With a cowgirl (well, someone from
<span class="SpellE">Healds</span>).</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">He has slept with non-smokers and smokers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">In commercial and cultural fields.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">He has slept with book-sellers, book-binders,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Slept with auditors, florists, Pas,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Child psychologists, even child minders,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">With directors of firms and of
plays.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">He has slept with the stupid and clever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">He has slept with the rich and the poor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">But he sadly admits that he&#8217;s never<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Slept with a poet before.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">Real poets are rare, he confesses,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">While it&#8217;s easier to find a
cashier.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">So I give him some poets&#8217; addresses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt;">And consider a change of career.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Positioned directly below
the photograph, head tilted slightly, hair frizzed &amp; over-sized round
glasses, the poem is virtually an invitation (if not an incitement) to imagine
what it would be like sleeping with Sophie Hannah, all sort of a curious soft
porn approach to promoting the lightest of light verse. The photo apparently is
the official Sophie Hannah PR shot. A cropped version of it appears on her page
at the Contemporary Writers site linked at the top of this blog and the full
version can be found on <a href="http://www.gregoryandcompany.co.uk/pages/authors/index.asp?AuthorID=20">Hannah&#8217;s
page</a> at her agent&#8217;s site. Yep, this poet has an agent, as well as a long
list of books for somebody born in 1971, including fiction &amp; children&#8217;s
literature as well as light verse. The flip side of the Carcanet bookmark
contains quotes about her work, positioned next to thumbnail versions of the
covers of three of her collections of verse. One, credited to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetry Review,</i> declares &#8220;Shall I put it
in capitals? SOPHIE HANNAH IS A GENIUS.&#8221; Another, credited only to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Independent</i>, says simply, &#8220;The brightest
young star in British Poetry&#8221; (caps in the original).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Sleeping with Sophie Hannah
is apparently a theme. Googling around the web, I quickly found <a href="http://www.duffyandsnellgrove.com.au/extracts/Slenderex.htm">a site</a>
for one of her books that prints two poems, one of which announces <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I,
therefore, will expect<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Full
details of our sex life in the Sun.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">I will not sue you nor will I
object<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In any way &#8211; I&#8217;ll treat it as
good fun.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Like &#8220;Occupational Hazard,&#8221;
these works are rather long walks off short piers &#8211; a lot of verbiage &amp;
metrical padding given over to what are really one-line jokes. If these are
signs of the &#8220;brightest young star in British Poetry,&#8221; then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Benny Hill </i>is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Potemkin. </i>If you want to take &#8220;Occupational Hazards&#8221; seriously as
poetry, then you have to start asking questions like, why aren&#8217;t we told
anything about what &#8220;he&#8221; does, or what the value of such plodding form brings
to the occasion. You have to start treating decadence seriously, literally to
explore the pathology at the heart of this work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A few days before Edward
Hirsch profiled <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A973-2003Jan16.html">Wendy
Cope</a> in yesterday&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washington Post </i>column*,
<span class="SpellE">Nate</span> <span class="SpellE">Dorward</span> asked me about
the inroads that British new formalism is making in the United States &#8211; you are
hereby put on notice that someday soon we are likely to be seeing &amp; hearing
more from Ms. Hannah on this side of the water. The answer I think lies less in
the poetry of those small islands off the coast of </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Europe</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> than it does in a parallel phenomenon, the concept of amateurism in
sports. Amateurism, you will recall, came seriously into being in the 19<sup>th</sup>
century as a means of keeping the unwashed classes from competing with the
neo-macho boys of the elite. The poor could not devote the time needed to train
&amp; prepare without support, so the dividing line conveniently kept them out
without claiming that this was its true purpose<span class="GramE">.*</span>*
Every time I hear of some violation of the amateur rules of college basketball,
for example, I think back on what amateurism has always been all about &#8211;
setting up false boundaries to keep certain folks out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The idea of treating a
Sophie Hannah or Glyn Maxwell or Michael <span class="SpellE">Hulse</span> as
though they were serious writers &#8211; let alone &#8220;bright young stars&#8221; &#8211; functions
in a similar fashion. Claims as outlandish as that involve a willful
forgetting. It&#8217;s a mechanism for acting as if the likes of a </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Raworth</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> (or any of a hundred other British poets) doesn&#8217;t
exist. It&#8217;s very much like the newspapers that only review poetry volumes from
the same three or four trade publishers &amp; the &#8220;prestigious awards&#8221; that do
likewise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">One sees this behavior 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;">
rather often around </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Boston</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">, although there are outposts here &amp; there wherever
bad poetry is sold. I suspect that there must be people up there who still
adhere to the root word lurking behind the concept &#8220;</span><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">New England</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">&#8221; &amp; who live in perpetual fear that the world
will someday discover that the major </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Boston</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;"> poet of the 20<sup>th</sup> century was Bill
Corbett. As indeed it was, unless you want to make a case for John Wieners. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I think that the welcome the
British &#8220;new gen&#8221; poets receive &#8211; I tend to think of them instead as &#8220;funny
formalism&#8221; &#8211; has a great deal to do with how little good poetry is coming out
of its equivalent strain here in the States. So rather than look at genuinely
witty writers &#8211; Frank O&#8217;Hara, Anselm Hollo or whomever &#8211; these &#8220;amateurs&#8221; of
Official Verse Culture import second rate material whose only true value is that
it extends a British tradition its advocates would like to endorse &amp;
encourage. Only they have to pretend that it&#8217;s not moribund in order to make
their case. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That a Sophie Hannah
bookmark should be tucked into a volume of </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Raworth</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> underscores the fact that Carcanet has been
publishing her work since her early twenties, while it has only now deemed to
incorporate Raworth&#8217;s work into its list, part of the process of legitimating
its claim to represent poetry, rather than being what the trade publishing scene
appears to be in the U.K. as well as the U.S., just another small press scene,
but with great distribution. I certainly don&#8217;t fault Raworth any more than I do
Ginsberg, Koch or Ashbery for choosing distribution, knowing as they do its
limits &amp; compromises. Indeed, one wonders if a Jimmy Schuyler would ever
have met with the public recognition he was accorded had all his books been
published, say, by Black Sparrow or Adventures in Poetry. It makes one wish
that FSG would bring out a big Corbett volume, for example, just to see what it
would be like for a trade publisher to print good poetry from </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">Boston</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: Arial;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* The only
poet reviewed in yesterday&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York
Times Book Review</i> was a collection of work by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/books/review/19NANDN.html">James
Merrill</a> edited by J.D. McClatchy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** Rather
the way W &#8220;promotes&#8221; diversity while attacking affirmative action &amp;
appointing racist judges, &amp; &#8220;promotes&#8221; health care reform while cutting
benefits for seniors &amp; protecting the insurance &amp; pharmaceutical
conglomerates<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Sunday, January 19, 2003</span></h2>

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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It&#8217;s big. It&#8217;s yellow. It&#8217;s
beautiful. It, in this instance, is the </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Raworth</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected
Poems</i>, just out from <a href="http://www.carcanet.co.uk/">Carcanet</a>,
making an early bid for the &#8220;best book of 2003&#8221; sweepstakes. The volume has 557
pages of text, plus some 18 of &#8220;front matter&#8221; &amp; another 20 given to various
indices. At one pound, 13 ounces, it&#8217;s a brick. <span class="GramE">A brick with
a cover illustration by the late Franco Beltrametti.*</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Not long ago, I had a
discussion with poet of my own generation whose work I&#8217;ve praised on this blog,
whom I informed that I longed to see a collected works of his poetry. He
argued, with surprising vigor, against the idea. His primary points were two &#8211;
first, that as a young poet he had not always known when works should be held
back &amp; not published. There was a lot of writing in his first books that,
in his opinion, were &#8220;not ready for prime time.&#8221;** But even more problematic
from his perspective was the way in which &#8220;<span class="SpellE">collecteds</span>&#8221;
eliminate shape. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Shape is a question, I
agree, with any such gathering, as is detail. Perhaps the most notorious
example of how placement can alter &amp; undermine the implications of a text
in such terms are the poems from William Carlos Williams&#8217; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spring &amp; All</i> as they were included in his own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected Earlier Poems. </i>Thus did &#8220;red
wheel / barrow&#8221; become something it never could have been in context, coming as
it originally did 78 pages into a dense argument, leading directly to a discussion
of knowledge, categories, democracy, education &amp; <span class="GramE">confusion.</span>
There also is a distinction between collected &amp; complete with which all
such volumes must contend. Thus there are rumors afoot at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected Books</i> of Jack Spicer will some
day be supplanted by a much fuller edition. &amp; we have just seen how
radically different the new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected
Works </i>of Lorine Niedecker are from her two earlier &#8220;collected&#8221; poems, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">T&amp;G </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Life by Water.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There also are discrepancies
in this vast edition of Raworth&#8217;s &#8211; moments that will stop a fond, familiar
reader short. For example, the stanza-per-page structure of &#8220;Defective
Definitions&#8221; in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://roofbooks.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=93780100080280">Clean &amp; Well
Lit</a></i> runs </span><st1:date day="2" month="4" year="2001"><span style="font-family: Arial;">4-2-1</span></st1:date><span style="font-family: Arial;">, though all are quatrains. In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected,
</i>the stanzas are run together. Raworth himself credits the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clean &amp; Well Lit </i>formatting to
&#8220;happenstance,&#8221; insisting that ultimately there is no such thing as &#8220;correct.&#8221;
Thus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.aerialedge.com/ace.htm">Ace</a></i> is a long thin poem*** in
a single column in the Edge Press edition I currently own, yet appeared in
double columns in the editions of </span><st1:place><st1:placename><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tottering</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;">State</span></i></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> published by The Figures &amp; by Paladin. It
doesn&#8217;t appear at all in the O Book edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tottering State</i> &amp; is again in double columns in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected. </i>Indeed, the three editions of
</span><st1:place><st1:placename><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tottering</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;">State</span></i></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;"> all differ substantially. The provisional nature of
it all is enough to make one suspicious of a project that calls itself </span><st1:state><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Col</span></i></st1:place></st1:state><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">lected.</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Which
might well be the point.</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> As
impressively well-written as these works are &#8211; &amp; I&#8217;m one who could be
persuaded that we live the Age of Raworth &#8211; Raworth&#8217;s poetry itself argues for
a definition of verse as &#8220;what a poet does,&#8221; a condition that offers quite a
bit of latitude. But I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s latitude that Raworth is after, nor
does his stance have anything to do with an approach to the poem as &#8220;art
language&#8221; the way that David Antin&#8217;s performances do. Rather, the books like
the poems <span class="GramE">themselves,</span> are arguments for a perpetual
restlessness that amounts to constant attentiveness to the conditions of the
real. It&#8217;s in this sense that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected
Poems</i> represents an achievement of major proportion. These works are not
&#8220;the alps,&#8221; as Basil Bunting once characterized Pound&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cantos</i>, not because the accumulation is not massive, but because
there is not a sedentary moment in this book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">* Far more
beautiful &amp; colorful than the washed-out thumbnail of it on the Carcanet
web site suggests. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">** I don&#8217;t
agree.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">*** I originally
typed &#8220;long thing poem&#8221; &#8211; it&#8217;s that too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, January 11, 2003</span></h2>

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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In an email response to the
first of my two blogs on his work, </span><st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Raworth</span></st1:personname><span style="font-family: Arial;"> remarks &#8220;I&#8217;ve never thought I was reading fast,&#8221;
commenting also that &#8220;I see all those 14 liners as dependent clauses.&#8221; Yet in
ordinary speech, dependent clauses, precisely because they are usually
bracketed by their &#8220;independent&#8221; brethren, often invoke a slight acceleration
in speaking. The return to an independent (or, more accurately, dominant)
clause is then marked by a return to the slower pacing of speech.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There is an interesting
&amp; rather constant tension between how a poet reads aloud &amp; the text on
the page itself. In Raworth&#8217;s explanation, there is at least a cause &amp;
effect relation between syntax &amp; style. Listening to <a href="http://factoryschool.org/content/sounds/poetry/zukofsky/zuk-a12b.ram">Louis
Zukofsky</a> read aloud from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">&#8220;A&#8221;</i> &#8211; 12
on Joel Kuszai&#8217;s marvelous <a href="http://factoryschool.org/content/sounds/poetry/frontenac.html">Factory School</a>
website, I note that Zukofsky follows the start of his excerpt with a
relatively rigorous pause at every line break for about the first two stanzas
(starting with &#8220;The best man learns of himself / To bring rest to others,&#8221; p.
135 of the UC Press edition). Yet, only a few lines later, following Zukofsky&#8217;s
own pauses, I would transcribe one stanza as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The time would be too short &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Throw some part of your life
after birds &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Eat and drink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">What <span class="GramE">cry</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Tops older fame &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Far-sighted
not sure sense?</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Heart with mind quick to love,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Look to the real thing unfold
it within you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Turned there thru pleasure,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Bound
anew.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Sweet thing,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Merry thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Making your brow half an arch
of a bridge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So that all people there facing
round quicken their pace,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fleet and lean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Desire you but to thirst what
you have &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">On the page, this same
stanza appears more regular:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The time would be too short &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Throw some part <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Of your life after birds &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Eat and drink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">What cry tops <span class="GramE">older</span> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fame &#8211; Far-sighted <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Not sure sense? Heart <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">With mind quick to love,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Look to the real thing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Unfold it within you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Turned there thru pleasure,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span class="GramE"><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Bound
anew.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Sweet thing, merry thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Making your brow <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Half an arch of a bridge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So that all people there <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Facing round <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Quicken their pace,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Fleet and lean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Desire you but to <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Thirst what you have &#8211;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Lineated thus, some portions
of the text accelerate while others slow down. Zukofsky&#8217;s line breaks often
stress his Shakespearean phrasing. Read aloud, he mostly buries these little
twists mid-line, rapidly passed by. Thus the page maximizes the potential for
torque in Zukofsky&#8217;s language, whereas his voice, thin &amp; reedy as it is,
minimizes it. Whether this represents a conscious approach to reading aloud or
simply reflects Zukofsky relaxing into the moment of the reading itself is open
to speculation, but I&#8217;m really sure that such a distinction matters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Beginning in the 1950s,
there was some real effort to equate the line with voiced phrasing &#8211; &#8220;breath&#8221;
is what Olson called it, even though it is the need to breathe that stops,
rather than propels, the line. The poets of that decade found the more casual
&amp; seemingly arbitrary approach of some high modernists to the question of
the voiced linebreak almost startling to hear. The rather hard line approach of
these younger writers would reach its apotheosis in Robert Duncan&#8217;s readings
around 1970, when he literally whispered a voiced count of three between every
single line as he read aloud. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Today, I think most poets
treat the text much more as though it were a musical <span class="GramE">score,</span>
the typed line breaks a possible, but not necessarily fixed, index of pauses or
timing. Raworth, in focusing on a syntactic type, generates a style. <span class="GramE">Or does so at least in part.</span> The second longest poem from <span class="GramE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clean</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> &amp; Well-Lit</i>, &#8220;Emptily,&#8221; proceeds in a
rather different manner. On the surface, it appears to be a long centered poem
rather in the manner of Michael McClure. In fact, it contains 31 &#8220;units,&#8221;
unnumbered &amp; unseparated (&amp; visible as such only due to the formatting,
containing two such units per page, an approach that requires leaving a great
deal of white space in each page&#8217;s header). Each unit consists of three
stanzas, consisting of five lines, two lines &amp; one line, in that order.
Other rules are visible: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">the last line of
the first stanza consists of two syllables, which may be spread out over one
word or two<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">the first line
of the second stanza in each unit consists only of one single-syllable word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 1.25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 1.25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
&lt;![if !supportLists]&gt;<span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-bidi-font-family: Wingdings; mso-fareast-font-family: Wingdings;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">&#167;<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span>&lt;![endif]&gt;<span style="font-family: Arial;">the fourth line
of the first stanza, the second line of the second stanza &amp; the sole line
of the third stanza will be relatively long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It&#8217;s a curious fact about
the centered line that, by virtue of having its linebreak visibly marked at the
start as well as the end, linebreaks are thereby minimized &amp; any
variability in line length is muted, since the &#8220;overhang&#8221; now juts out only
half as far, albeit in both directions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Combined with the plasticity
of the lines themselves, this centered text can be read almost as rapidly as
prose &amp; certainly as rapidly as &#8220;Survival.&#8221; So while there are more
subject-verb combinations here than in &#8220;Survival,&#8221; they do little if anything
to slow the propulsion of the reader through the </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="font-family: Arial;">tex</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family: Arial;">t. Thus it&#8217;s no accident that Colin <span class="SpellE">MacCabe</span>, quoted on the <a href="http://www.obooks.com/anoz.htm">O Press site</a> in a blurb for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.obooks.com/tottering.htm">Tottering
State</a></i>, chooses terms such as &#8220;quickest&#8221; &amp; &#8220;mercurial&#8221; to
characterize Raworth&#8217;s writing. &#8220;As a reader,&#8221; <span class="SpellE">MacCabe</span>
writes, &#8220;his delivery is the fastest in the business.&#8221; </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="font-family: Arial;">Factory</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;"> offers evidence in the form of a <a href="http://www.factoryschool.org/content/sounds/poetry/raworth/raworth1.ram">Raworth
reading</a>, although of more recent work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<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>
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<h2 class='title'>Ketjak</h2>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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