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Showing posts with label <b>Yasusada Araki</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>Yasusada Araki</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 15, 2006</span></h2>

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<span style="color: black;"><img height="318" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/N3AFm7hF69RxZTQ3PfFu29T2Z__-kG_J6R8J5CpSTaCv-yKCxvEi8C_91Dvz65918-5MQf3401P-qrGX11Qxfs9n%3Ds0-d" width="250"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">I&#8217;m convinced that, for whatever reason, <a href="http://home.jps.net/~nada/johnson.htm"><span style="color: black;">Kent</span></a> <a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/bio/kent.html"><span style="color: black;">Johnson</span></a> just isn&#8217;t having <a href="http://www.webdelsol.com/Perihelion/p-verbatim13.htm"><span style="color: black;">fun</span></a> if he isn&#8217;t up to <a href="http://www.wildhoneypress.com/speech%20project/kent.htm"><span style="color: black;">mischief</span></a>. Fortunately &#8211; an adverb I use with some caution &#8211; <a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/04/ganderyasu.html"><span style="color: black;">Johnson</span></a> has <a href="http://www.litvert.com/miseriesofpoetry.html"><span style="color: black;">boundless</span></a> <a href="http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/2004/09/photo-kent-johnson-left-with-friends.html"><span style="color: black;">energy</span></a> when it comes to attracting same. First there was Araki Yasusada, mild-mannered </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Hiroshima</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> native &amp; fan of Jack Spicer, in some ways the most successful literary hoax since <span class="SpellE">Ern</span> Malley. Much about Yasusada was so evidently politically incorrect &#8211; aided none too subtly by having his name reversed as tho it were English (the Japanese would have called him Yasusada Araki, rather like bad-boy photographer <a href="http://www.arakinobuyoshi.com/"><span style="color: black;">Nobuyoshi Araki</span></a>). This project was followed by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Miseries of Poetry, </i>a series of collaborative &#8220;<span class="SpellE">traductions</span>&#8221; between <a href="http://www.litvert.com/KJ_Interview.html"><span style="color: black;">Johnson</span></a> &amp; the equally non-existent Alexandra <span class="SpellE">Papaditsas</span>. Published by the estimable <a href="http://www.skankypossum.com/pubs.htm"><span style="color: black;">Skanky Possum</span></a> in 2003, this book appears to be entirely out of print &amp; none of the usual rare book search sites show any copies available for sale. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Miseries</i>, which for some reason my imagination always hears as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Miniseries of Poetry, </i>is a 24-page chapbook with a 9-page intro and no less than 12-pages of <span class="SpellE">blurbism</span> purportedly written by everyone from John Ashbery to Alan Sondheim. The book is dedicated to Johnson&#8217;s first born with the admonition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Reject Poetry with all of your might.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Most recently, <a href="http://www.effingpress.com/"><span class="SpellE"><span style="color: black;">Effing</span></span><span style="color: black;"> Press</span></a>, the Possum&#8217;s cross-town (and friendly) rival in Austin, brought out <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.effingpress.com/books/aus.html"><span style="color: black;">Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz: Eleven Submissions to the War</span></a>, </i>a chapbook that is unique in Johnson&#8217;s endeavors &#8211; even including his relatively straightforward <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/102-7273639-6879352?tag=herecomesever-20&amp;keyword=Kent%20Johnson+poetry&amp;mode=books"><span style="color: black;">work</span></a> as anthologist &amp; literary translator &#8211; in that it is a book of poems Johnson claims to have written himself. This is the volume that Johnson compared to Eliot Weinberger&#8217;s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What I Heard About Iraq </i>as one of two books that <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">stand as full and open responses to the war</span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">That&#8217;s an interesting claim to contemplate, particularly since &#8211; like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Double Flowering </i>&amp; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Miseries </i>both &#8211; it is obsessed with poetry&#8217;s relationship to institutions in the global economy (and within that obsession, always the question of identity). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lyric Poetry</i> begins with an open letter to the <span class="SpellE">McCarthyite</span> thugs of Campus Watch, imploring them to turn their lights on Johnson (and the book&#8217;s verso notes that &#8220;All royalties are to be donated to Campus Watch U.S.A.,&#8221; even tho the initiated will understand that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lyric Poetry </i>will generate no royalties). This sort of overt begging for attention, especially in a meta-critical frame, is almost the signature Johnson move. Reading it always feels lurid like coming upon a friend in the act of masturbation, then pausing to watch. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">The book then proceeds through a series of nine works, followed by an afterword every bit as winsome and winning as the preface, a review of a <a href="http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0303&amp;L=poetics&amp;D=1&amp;O=D&amp;F=&amp;S=&amp;P=38171"><span style="color: black;">Charles Bernstein piece</span></a> read at an event for the anti-war anthology <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enough, </i>in which Bernstein &#8211; whose piece is referenced, but largely undescribed &#8211; is determined by Johnson to be &#8220;exclusivist and fundamentalist in his poetics&#8221; apparently because Bernstein has failed to produce the kind of instrumentalist anti-literature that characterizes Weinberger&#8217;s pastiche parallelogram. The argument is that if language poets aren&#8217;t writing <span class="SpellE">agit</span>-prop anti-war pieces, therefore their politics are corrupt. It&#8217;s a deliberately thuggish move on Johnson&#8217;s part, and he means it as such, essentially playing Denise Levertov to Bernstein&#8217;s Robert Duncan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">But this is not a condemnation of Johnson or his tactics in that piece, which I see less as an assault &amp; more as the perpetual Johnsonian plea for attention, leavened by a serious concern for the war AND a sense of the history of just such one-act morality plays over the past century. Indeed, instead of Levertov, Johnson could just as easily be playing Robert Silliman Hillyer to Bernstein&#8217;s Ezra Pound, condemning Pound&#8217;s poetics for its politics. Johnson knows, perhaps more than <span class="GramE">most, that</span> suborning one to the other would be the intellectual equivalent of suicide, an act we&#8217;ve seen played out on more than a few occasions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Further &#8211; and I almost want to put that word in caps as well &#8211; FURTHER, the nine works that come between these two deliberately falsified provocations demonstrate exactly the kind of knowledge about which his <span class="SpellE">postface</span> feigns ignorance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">The first, &#8220;Mission,&#8221; is an adaptation not of Archilochus, as Johnson claims, but from another 7<sup>th</sup> century Greek poet, Mimnermus. Thus Johnson:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">We decamped from <span class="SpellE">Pylos</span>, barbarian town smack in a boulder field</span></b><b><span style="font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">and set oar to lovely </span></b><st1:place><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Asia</span></b></st1:place><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">, making fair <span class="SpellE">Kolophon</span> our base. We gathered</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">our strength for a fortnight, writing poems and sharpening our swords</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">by the sea.</span></b></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"> On the morning the oracle spoke in tongues, the main column</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">followed the rushing river through the forest, while our unit of ten went upward</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">and west, along a tributary stream.</span></b></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"> At a small waterfall we stopped to rest</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">on some moss and gazed at our golden helmets and shields in reflecting pool.</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">We spoke in low voices of the beauty around us, of the dark, darting trout,</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">and of the strange, haunting songs in the towering trees.</span></b></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"> We spoke of time, and</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">friendship,</span></b></span><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;"> and truth. Then each of us drank deeply from the pool.</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Aided by the gods, we stormed </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">Smyrna</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal;">, and burned its profane temples to the ground.</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">And <a href="http://www.classics.uga.edu/courses/clas4010/workshops/workshop_4.htm"><span style="color: black;">Mimnermus</span></a>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">When we left the lofty city of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span class="SpellE"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Neleian</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> <span class="SpellE">Pylos</span></span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">, we came by ship to the pleasant land of </span><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Asia</span></st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">; and possessing overwhelming violence, we settled at lovely </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Colophon</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">, leaders full of terrible <span class="SpellE">hybris</span>. From there, we set forth from the <span class="SpellE">Asteis</span> river and by the will of the gods took Aeolian Smyrna.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Johnson follows with a poem called &#8220;</span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Baghdad</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">&#8221; whose unacknowledged (but patently obvious) primary source turns out to be <a href="http://www.margaretwisebrown.com/"><span style="color: black;">Margaret Wise Brown</span></a>, tho note along the way the swipes he takes at Williams &amp; <span class="SpellE">Vendler</span>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">O, little crown of iron forged to likeness of imam's face, <br />
what are you doing in this circle of flaming inspectors and bakers?<br />
<br />
And little burnt dinner all set to be <span class="GramE">eaten</span><br />
(and crispy girl all dressed with scarf for school),<br />
what are you doing near this shovel for dung-digging,<br />
hissing like ice-cubes in ruins of little museum?<br />
<br />
And little shell of bank on which flakes of assets fall<span class="GramE">,</span><br />
can't I still withdraw my bonds for baby?<br />
<br />
Good night moon.<br />
Good night socks and good night cuckoo clocks.<br />
<br />
Good night little bedpans and a trough where once there and <span class="GramE">inn</span><br />
(urn of dashed pride)<br />
what are you doing beside little wheelbarrow<br />
beside some fried chickens?<br />
<br />
And you, ridiculous wheels spinning on mailman's truck<span class="GramE">,</span><br />
truck with ashes of letter from crispy girl all dressed with scarf for school.<br />
why do you seem like American experimental poets going nowhere<br />
on little exercise bikes?<br />
<br />
Good night barbells and ballet dancer's shoes<br />
under plastered ceilings of </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Saddam</span></st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Music Hall</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">.<br />
Good night bladder of Helen <span class="SpellE">Vendler</span> and a jar from  </span><st1:state><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tennessee</span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">.<br />
(though what are these doing here in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Baghdad</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">?)<br />
<br />
Good night blackened ibis and some keys.<br />
Good night, good night.<br />
<br />
(And little mosque popped open like a can, which same as factory<br />
of flypaper has blown outward, covering the shape of man with it<br />
(with mosque): He stumbles up Martyr's Promenade. What does it <br />
matter who is speaking, he murmurs and mutters, head a little bit<br />
on fire. <span class="GramE">Good night to you too).</span><br />
<br />
Good night moon.<br />
Good night poor people who shall inherit the moon.<br />
<br />
Good night first edition of <span class="SpellE"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Das</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <span class="SpellE">Kapital</span>, <span class="SpellE">Novum</span> <span class="SpellE">Organum</span>, <br />
The Symbolic Affinities between Poetry Blogs and Oil Wells</i><span class="GramE">,</span><br />
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Koran</i>.<br />
<br />
Good night nobody.<br />
<br />
Good night Mr. </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Kent</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">, good night, for now you must<br />
soon wake up and rub your eyes and know that you are dead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">There is an elegance here that is quite apart from the structure of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Good Night Moon </i>&#8211; as there is in &#8220;</span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Mission</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">&#8221; &amp; almost anything Johnson writes in verse form. But Johnson&#8217;s question about Helen <span class="SpellE">Vendler&#8217;s</span> bladder is a good one? What is it doing here? And what is the point being made by equating a burned child (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">crispy girl</i>) with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fried chickens </i>with William Carlos Williams? Is Williams being equated here with Col. Sanders &amp; napalm? Like so much that is going on in these poems, these details are like free-floating improvised explosive devices salted throughout what is actually beautiful poetry. It&#8217;s a combination that Johnson has been perfecting since the earliest of Araki Yasusada &amp; here it&#8217;s particularly effective. But it&#8217;s also particularly irresponsible, which I suspect it actually has to be in order to be so effective. Johnson&#8217;s poems are like unchained pit bulls tossed into a school yard &#8211; somebody is going to get bit. But you almost have to admire all that taut muscle &amp; those unstoppable jaws.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">The next piece, &#8220;Poem Upon a Typo Found in an Interview of Kenneth Koch, Conducted by David Shapiro,&#8221; offers a parody of a particular side of the </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">New York</span></st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">School</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">, that uptown side both Koch &amp; Shapiro have always inhabited. As written, the poem is both loving &amp; spiteful:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">7. I remember those good old days, whilom it was me, and Will and Ben and Chris and the wholesome lads of the <span class="SpellE">laste</span> avant-garde.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">And, of course, a footnote crediting Shapiro for turning Johnson on to poetry,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">thus changing my life.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> (Whether I should thank Shapiro with all of my heart or send him a very powerful letter bomb is a question I often ask myself.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">That parenthetical sentence is the only one in this book I completely believe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">This poem is followed by what I take as partly a parody of Projectivist poetics, partly a satire on the current generation of poets: &#8220;When I First Read Ange Mlinko.&#8221; As with the </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">New York</span></st1:placename><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span><st1:placetype><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">School</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> piece, it is both loving &amp; spiteful. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">The next piece, &#8220;Forwarded Message Follows,&#8221; ostensibly is an email from one <span class="SpellE">Ossama</span> <span class="SpellE">Husein</span> at Sudan State University, addressed not to Johnson but to &#8220;Dear Mr. David Bromige,&#8221; inviting him to the Khartoum Translation Conference, where <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="GramE"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">We passion to invite another poet of </span></span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span class="GramE"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">America</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span class="GramE"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">, Mr. </span></span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span class="GramE"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Kent</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span class="GramE"><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">, who also is <span class="SpellE">credenced</span> in your two countries and perhaps others, to be a racist.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> (In his reply to our Central Council, he spoke: &#8220;I am honestly not sure.&#8221;) Still we are opened, and we have most little, but our flowing tents which appear (to all purposes and meanings) to be sailboats in the deserts, are yours. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">At one level, this is the crudest imitation of English as a Second Language imaginable. Yet soon we have embarked on a very credible translation <span class="SpellE">Leonel</span> <span class="SpellE">Rugama&#8217;s</span> most famous poem, &#8220;The Earth Is A Satellite Of The Moon,&#8221; whose very last line is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the moon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">After which the alleged author writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Well, in realness, I do not know why I give this poem, except that I know you very much like poems. Don&#8217;t you agree it was translated, without doubtfulness, by someone most self-congratulatory, <span class="GramE">so</span> angry at his own country, yet blind as Oedipus to the terrorisms of non-white peoples? (Forgive me. I am smoking opium from </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Afghanistan</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">. It betters my English, which you can tell is getting better as this letter, like a martyr, spills.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">The remainder of this book is every bit as masterful &amp; lame, almost always at the same time, as these pieces. My question here is this: is this a full and open response <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to anything, </i>let alone the war. It is worth noting at this point, as the reader who doesn&#8217;t see Johnson&#8217;s attack on Bernstein until the book&#8217;s end will almost inevitably sense, that Johnson himself has enacted consistently throughout this book the very same position that Bernstein himself advocated at that reading in 2003. <span class="GramE">Which is to say that Johnson is using Bernstein to attack himself.</span> An almost perfect Johnsonian move, that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">It is entirely plausible that this is major poetry. Is it major war poetry? Is it war or anti-war poetry at all? <span class="GramE">Hardly.</span> And I think that is the crux of what is so very hard to figure out about Johnson. At some level, he wants to be the next Richard Pryor of poetry, but it&#8217;s very hard to get props for using the N-word &#8211; and the blatantly racist parody of Sudanese English is exactly that &#8211; if you&#8217;re a Midwestern white boy. So what we end up with here is some superb writing, often penned completely without judgment &amp; filled with many nasty little moments therein. That doesn&#8217;t make this book bad, but it does make it very weird. At some level, it makes me long for the moral clarity of the <span class="SpellE">Fugs</span>&#8217; song, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kill for Peace. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Over the years since I first met Johnson in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Leningrad</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">, I have been both impressed &amp; appalled at his hijinx, often both at once, and will concede to having been the person who brought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.roofbooks.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=93780100949290"><span style="color: black;">Double Flowering</span></a> </i>to its eventual publisher, Roof Books. Johnson &amp; I are, I believe, equally appalled at the horrors of the war in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Iraq</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">, famine in </span><st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;">Africa</span></st1:place><span style="color: black; font-family: &quot;arial&quot;; font-size: 10.0pt;"> &amp; unprecedented oil profits here at home. We differ only in our idea of how poets might go about opposing it. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lyric Poetry </i>may be a remarkably polished tantrum, but it&#8217;s a tantrum nonetheless. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Kent%2520Johnson' rel='tag'>Kent Johnson</a>,
<a href='https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Yasusada%2520Araki' rel='tag'>Yasusada Araki</a>
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<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>
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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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<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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