Here is Craig Allen Conrad’s report on The Philly Sound weekend. 

Dear Ron Silliman,

there's something about you that really made The Philly Sound sound right Friday night. maybe it's the edges you flex in your lines, those very Philly-feeling edges. must be what you're made of, but man you gave it to us Friday night. gave it to us beautifully through the smoke, yeah. and anyone who wasn't completely absorbed with Jena Osman simply wasn't listening to her! it was a night of poetry we'll never forget.

 

however, it's really impossible for me to give you Saturday back. sorry you couldn't make it. "I wasn't bullshitting earlier when I said that Philadelphia is one of my spiritual homes," Eileen Myles said at the microphone. bet you 50 bucks she'd tell it to you herself if you e-mailed her.

 

i wonder, if you were to be given Saturday back, to listen, if you could actually say that you have ever had a day of poetry to compare? it was a bold day, showcasing what the Philly Sound has been working toward. All of us working very hard. Tom Devaney and Frank Sherlock's vision for the weekend was brilliant really, these short-short sets strung together. little tastes, leaves you wanting more, but then the next poet jumps up and you're hooked, and so on....

 

it was clear that many of the visiting poets were unprepared for the sustained levels of excitement. one just doesn't prepare for such things when a schedule of 50 poets is facing you. a couple of poets i've known for years said that they hadn't realized what has been quietly brewing here. and after such a long day, you just can't believe that you want to go home and write and write and want to never stop writing.

 

has Philly been ignored? well, if it has been, that's about to stop!

 

must admit that my live 9for9 panel wasn't as well attended as the rest of the day, but it's the early morning hour that can be blamed. when Tom Devaney and Frank Sherlock invited me to host this panel, HOW could i have possibly passed up the opportunity? OF COURSE i was going to do it!

 

the 9 poets on the panel were anything but shy, which was nothing short of compelling, but you'll have to wait for the written version to come out to understand what i'm saying here.

 

a couple of the questions annoyed some of the audience, like, "L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry arrives at your door in the form of a gift, what does it look like?" there's quite a bit of space in there, i think, to say just about anything that you really WANT to say.

 

funny HOW MANY poets over the years (mostly well educated poets) who say the silliest, wrong things about L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry. i'm not mentioning names (gossip is a waste of time), but i've had poets tell me they are "not into L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry, you know, like Alice Notley." ALICE NOTLEY!? AND YOU HAVE A PHD IN POETRY!? mark that degree RETURN TO SENDER i'd say!

 

but i'm curious about this ability to talk about a school of poetry with NO real knowledge about its rather well documented history, and so i created a question to literally get some pictures for us. not that i suspected any of the 9 on the panel didn't know, but it was interesting to SEE their feelings. well, actually, one poet didn't know anything about L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry, but she said she didn't know.

 

by the way, the few poets who confronted me about the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E question at the 9for9, claimed that i was attempting to create negative responses. saying that i was continuing to use L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry as a scapegoat. when i looked at the question with them, i hope i made it clear they were not paying attention to the space in the question, the room for discovery. there's SO MANY on the defense, why oh why? i also pointed out that they didn't know me well enough to make such a judgment, that they were inventing a history between us, which was falsely uncovering how i do or do not feel about such matters.

 

what is even funnier in some ways, is how, since i do not, and probably will never, write anything quite like the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E set, i'm not expected to want to study or read it. what the hell!? it's such an old conversation for you, i'm sure, but since i'm writing outside this created space, it's kind of always news to me that i won't like it, even though i've been reading it and been liking it for years now. is it really ONLY those who are writing it, or, in this case writing like it, who are EXPECTED to appreciate it?

 

when i arrived in Philadelphia as a teen, a poet who kindly took me under his wing tried to steer me away from what you and your peers were up to. so of course i wanted to check it out, like anyone SERIOUS about poetry would do. oh yeah, i recall this poet telling me that Gil Orlovitz was a L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poet when he saw me reading his book MILKBOTTLE H, which is funny now, but at the time, i thought it was true. Frank Sherlock and i were talking about how anything remotely experimental, or at least anything simply not in the usual forms gets tossed into the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E pile.

 

Gil Ott was the first poet who ever let me have an intelligent observation on the matter, and pointed me to your IN THE AMERICAN TREE. i didn't like the book, at first, because i wasn't yet capable of looking outside of what i was writing, or, rather, wasn't yet WILLING to look outside of what i was writing. it wasn't until i studied THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CENTURY anthology a few years later (Jonathan Williams had suggested i check it out) that i was able to go back to IN THE AMERICAN TREE with a clearer eye.

 

in the end, those who are threatened probably should be, and frankly, it wouldn't be too bad, if it gets them over into a wider read of all that's going on, been going on. there's power in being stupid and realizing it, and getting over it. i of course know this to be true, from experience.

what a meandering fucking e-mail this has become.

more later,

CAConrad

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p.s. last updated 8/05/03 CAConrad's Poetry Page

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and check out the 9for9 project:  http://poets9for9.blogspot.com/

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