I want to give a hearty Yes to No, the new book-sized journal from Lost Roads Publishers, edited by Deb Klowden & Ben Lerner. It’s a rich panoply of writing & visual art, packaged in a binding sturdy enough to go through the mails without a cover or package & arrive in perfect shape.*

 

No is also a reminder that pumping money into the design process isn’t the same as good design. The publication goes out of its way to make it hard to figure out who its contributors are. The pages containing their work list only the last names along the bottom – which is fine if your name is Armantrout or Lauterbach, but a problem if it’s Wright or Johnson or Nelson or even Waldrop. The table of contents only makes matters worse, listing works – with two exceptions – only by their titles, although – a test to see how unreadably busy a contents page can be  – putting contributor’s notes under each such listing.

 

The two exceptions to the no-name in the boldface table of contents listing belong to graphic artist Che Chen, whose work appears in four-color glossy format in different spots of the journal as well as on the Jasper John’s homage of a cover, and Keith Waldrop, whose booklength contribution, Songs from the Decline of the West, is published on gray chapbook stock quite different from the eggshell white of the rest of the journal.**

 

The editors would do well to take a look at Kiosk, noted here previously for an example of what elegance in publishing can be. But even Conjunctions, the publication that No most closely mimics in look & feel, stands as a perfectly good model of how a table of contents page ought to function. The self-indulgent cutesy approach undercuts the seriousness with which the rest of the issue is produced.

 

And the content, once you get past the packaging overkill, is terrific. Not too surprisingly for a publication that has its roots at Brown (even if the editors live in New York City), the core of No is ellipticist: virtually everybody associated with that term save for Jorie Graham – at least I couldn’t find any work by her in the issue – is represented. But, if ellipticism is it’s core, No extends outward in quite a few different directions, some of them surprising, to make what editorially is a significant argument for its literary vision. Thus we find John Taggart, Michael Harper, Jean Valentine & even Eliot Weinberger alongside Rae Armantrout, Nate Mackey & Frank Stanford, plus younger poets such as Jen Hofer, Lisa Jarnot & Michael Magee, amid the broader mix. As a statement of a coherent poetics, No could not be stronger.

 

One person whose work made me terrifically happy to read it here is Michael Davidson. Davidson doesn’t publish a lot of poetry & that has combined with his geographic distance from the rest of the literary scene to keep him from becoming nearly as famous as he deserves to be. His poem is entitled “Bad Modernism”:

 

“Suddenly all is / loathing”

–        John Ashbery

 

and there’s plenty to be unhappy about

if I can just get the reception area festooned

in time for their arrival, paper cups

and those little plastic whatsits so that,

gorged on meaning,

they troop through the glass doors

seeking interpretation, first floor

mildly historical, second door on the left

desire matrix, parents accompany

their indiscretions straight

to the penthouse and someone

hands them a phone, “turtles”

they’re called, heads bobbing

as though they had a choice

to be party favors, deep structure

on your left follow the clicking

to a white cube, we only work

part time the other part

we illustrate profound malaise,

I like these cream filled versions

so unlike what we get at home,

having said which

we rewind the tape,

slip it through a slot marked “aha”

and take the El home,

the smell you smell afar

is something boiling over.

 

Langpo historically is supposed to be a far cry from the New York School &, on those occasions when one sees a list of exceptions to that generalization, Davidson usually isn’t on it. So it’s fascinating to see the number of devices & little touches here that one could find not just in Ashbery, but in poets such as Bill Berkson or Larry Fagin as well. Davidson has always had a superb ear – his apprenticeship amid the Projectivists certainly must have helped – but he hardly ever has used it to such deft comic effect as the word “festooned” at the end of the second line. I can tell already that I’m going to be inserting that term into conversations wherever I can over the next several days as a result of this poem.

 

The title “Bad Modernism” is worth thinking through more carefully. The body of the poem itself is a full deck of postmodern devices, or at least of devices that get associated with postmodernism. I think it seems evident enough that Davidson’s own relationship to both text & title is significantly bracketed by layers of irony (i.e., I don’t necessarily believe he really does “like these cream filled versions”), but at what level does he appear to be saying that one definition of the postmodern might, in fact, be “bad modernism?” Davidson carefully doesn’t answer that, but rather leaves it for us to decode.

 

Ellipticism’s preferred New York School poet is Barbara Guest, included in the issue with one of her patented painterly poems. There are other ellipticists close to individuals & aspects of the NY School’s many generations, such as Marjorie Welish (included) & Ann Lauterbach (included), but as a whole the more raucous elements of the downtown scene around St. Marks aren’t visible in No, although Michael Magee offers a tremendous essay on Personism & Paul Gooman tucked way in the back. Also not visible in No are any of the Social Mark poets who recently gathered in Philadelphia. Of Brian Kim Stefans’ roster of Creeps, just Lisa Jarnot is included.

 

Is this a sign that literary formations are starting to gel for the first time in over 20 years? I still don’t see the evidence. Like Stefans’ theory of Creeps, Ellipticism has been more of a description of impulses than an engine of collective behavior. It may be, however, that No will have an impact on this. Younger poet/editors can do that at times. Tom Clark was far more militant in his advocacy – and border patrol – of the New York School when editing poetry for the Paris Review, first from England & later from Bolinas, than any of the first two generations of NYS insiders. *** It will interesting to watch how No evolves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Kenneth Warren, take note.

 

** Thus it’s Rosmarie who gets the “bottom of the page” last name treatment for her work. Actually, the clearest roster of who is included in the issue is the arty-but-alphabetical way they’re incorporated into the design of the rear cover.

 

*** Do you think George Plimpton realizes that the most significant thing he ever did in the poetry world was to hire Tom Clark? We suspect not.