========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:11:03 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: reading now In response to luigi-bob drake's request to mention what we're reading & enjoying now: Inventories of Cassiano dal Pozzo's collection of pictures; back numbers of Burlington Magazine; Johanna Drucker's Theorizing Modernism; Stephen Davies's ms on Cage's 4'33"; Thierry de Duve's Au Nom de l'art --pour une archeologie de la modernite which includes a thorough search through contemporary methodologies for saying what "art" might be all in vain! and Art as a Proper Noun; T de D's Resonances du Ready-Made; Robert Kelly's The Loom (a bedside book, for re-reading) Lacan The seminar bks I and II; Alan Loney's recent poems (ms) Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 15:14:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "B. Cass Clarke" Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Olson X-cc: jbrannen@infolink.morris.mn.us Dear Jonathan, I knew Olson through the eyes of those who loved him. "The ailing Buffalo herd" he once called them, and in fact, I'm not convinced they ever recovered from the loss his death effected and so I was moved to remind you, as others have noted, that these matters are not simply "dead matter" to be used, Thucydides be damned, for the current economy. Your post was not disgraceful nor did I intend to chastise you for your "wicked ways." It is a small matter to most - and in this forum folks are reaching for their delete keys. I welcome continued conversation by private mail. Cass Clarke B. Cass Clarke V080g6j3@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 17:00:37 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert A Harrison Subject: Call for work Call for work for Visual Poetry Show at Hermetic Gallery in Milwaukee, WI o All submissions must be in 8 1/2 by 11 format, camera ready. Contributors receive 1 copy of show catalog. Send submissions and SASE to: Bob Harrison & Nick Frank PO Box 11166 Milwaukee, WI 53211 o Deadline for submissions: May 15, 1995 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 17:04:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert A Harrison Subject: Re> Re: Jonathan Brannen's messages Actually, I just spoke to Jonathon Williams several weeks ago concerning a Mina Loy Jargon Book. He is living in North Carolina. Bob Harrison ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 17:24:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Olson In-Reply-To: <199503142017.PAA13389@terminus-est.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "B. Cass Clarke" at Mar 14, 95 03:14:36 pm I, for one, has not been reaching for my "delete" key where conversations on Olson have been concerned. What may be said in public I would look for eagerly. Thanks, Loss Glazier ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 15:55:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RSILLIMA Organization: Vanstar Corporation Subject: Books In-Reply-To: <6097DE5802BC0080> Mistah Luoma, Is that early modern or early modem? I find that I have a strong ambivalence to Spencer's new book, which is an ambivalence I have to much (tho not all) "visual poetry." It pushes the line between "reading" and "looking" in a direction I'm not that comfortable with (I'd rather go in the opposite direction, start close reading adverts in the mags). Spencer's "regular" poems are so terrific that I deeply want to "get" this work, but then feel pushed out again. It's a reaction I've had to other visual works by Bernstein, DiPalma and other poets who I'd easily count among my very favorite, so it's a reaction that puzzles me. Two notable exceptions to this seem to me to be John Byrum (see the work in Writings from the New Coast) and (from same book!) by Mark Mendel (might be misspelling that name, sorry). Mendel's work seems to me very influenced by Jenny Holzer, but with a sense of ear and compression that I find lacking in her skewed aphorisms. Both of these poets seems to take the visual to the written. Spencer's work in contrast seems to pose the idea that the visual is a mask for the written (or vice versa). The images appear "found" -- are the texts likewise? I'd love for somebody to close read this work and wake up my eyes. I'm ready to learn! Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 16:20:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RSILLIMA Organization: Vanstar Corporation Subject: Lost Classics In-Reply-To: <6197DE5802BC0080> Rather than just list what I've been reading lately (which consists of relatively little beyond recent books in the mail, such as Spencer Selby's, Snow Crash by Neil Stephanson and Watten's Under Erasure [which I read and reread the way Libyans read Khadafi's Little Green Book], then massive numbers of Information Week, CIO, PC Week, Byte and the like for work), I've been mulling over, rereading a series of "Lost Classics" that I wish were still in print. I've gone so far as to think about trying to package a series for a publisher. By and large, these are longpoems, mostly from the 1960s, that I think everybody should have and read because they're so wonderful: A particular example of this genre would be Robert Kelly's Axon Dendron Tree (which, with Finding the Measure & 20 Songs will always be the key Kelly books for me because they arrived at just the right time to help me with my own development as a poet, so that I have that deep love for them that goes beyond articulation). Another is Ron Johnson's two Norton books, Book of the Green Man and Valley of the Many Colored Grasses. Another is Frank Stanford's battlefield where the moon said i love you (writing from the job, so may have botched that title some). That may still exist, tho would be hard to find, as would be the case I should think with Grenier's Sentences (a "Chinese box" of 500 4x6 cards, the sort of impossible project that extends Jonathon Brannen's insights sort of toward a limit), a collection that I think all 1,000 subscribers to the T-AMLIT list should read. Not to mention everybody here. I think somebody could make the argument that the ideas in my own The Alphabet are a direct (if transformed) descendant of the conception of form implicit in Axon Dendron Tree and it still reads wonderfully today. Anyhow, this after that's what seems powerful & moving and worth mentioning Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 16:23:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RSILLIMA Organization: Vanstar Corporation Subject: John Hoffman? In-Reply-To: <6297DE5802BC0080> I remember reading somewhere that at the very famous reading at the Six Club (where Howl debuted in 1955), McClure (I think) read not his own work but that of the recently deceased John Hoffman. Given how icon-ized every other participant of that even has become, I'm surprised that I've never read any of this poet's work. Does anyone know where one could find samples? Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 21:08:16 -0600 Reply-To: quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: peter quartermain Subject: Re: Olson In message Tue, 14 Mar 1995 17:24:11 -0500, Loss Glazier wrote: > I, for one, has not been reaching for my "delete" key where > conversations on Olson have been concerned. What may be said in public > I would look for eagerly. To which I add my own hearty agreement. And take the chance to mention, for those who don't know it, Ralph Maud's _Minutes of the Charles Olson Society_ six or is it seven issues so far, all damn good stuff, available for a nominal cost (say $10 or so?) from 1104 Maple Street Vancouver BC Canada V6J 3R6. Well worth getting. Peter __________________________________________________________________________ Peter Quartermain 128 East 23rd Avenue voice and fax (604) 876 8061 Vancouver B.C. e-mail: quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca Canada V5V 1X2 __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 01:25:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Books (reply to Luoma & Silliman) {long!} In-Reply-To: <199503150334.UAA25313@mailhost.primenet.com> Dear Ron & Bill, There's nothing (besides holding down a regular job) at which I'm more inept than explicating people's--especially friends'-- works, but you learn by trying, so here's a take on Spencer's _Malleable Cast_. I'm going to try to stay away from a "close reading" approach, which has more to do with my inability to articulate, specifically, what interests me about this work than whether or not such a "close reading" (or mis-reading) might prove valuable. Much of Spencer's non-visual poetry has (my take only) to do with what I'd call "depolarization"--working with opposites (ideas, images, etc.) in an effort to work through apparent dichotomies, but doing so not toward a resolution so much as maybe a (this is going to sound silly) "shimmering effect." If you like longpoems, Ron, check out Gerald Burns' _Letters to Obscure Men_; it ends with thirty-six 21-line sections, placed two on a page, the second on each page "restating" the first. It's Gerald's belief that the resulting "poem" on each page is not the two poems actually there, but that which resonates "between" them. It's an effect I've yet to actually experience there, though this, to some extent, does seem to describe what I "get" from much of Spencer's work. Spencer's impulses toward the visual (& toward/through apparent dichotomies) come, I think, from having been a movie fanatic at a fairly early age, especially of film noir. His interests resulted in at least one published book, _Dark City_, a study of the film noir, published by St. James Press (a reissue of an earlier edition, from McFarland & Company) in 1984. The photographs Spencer chose to include in _Dark City_ (I'm assuming Spencer chose them) look very much like the raw material "founds" of some of his visual pieces--though he avoids using film stills in his visual poetry. My own take is that film noir as a rule seems to be, generally, a visually rich genre, lots of accentuated (even bizarre) camera angles, much dark/light contrast--the result, I think, of there having been at the time in Hollywood a lot of emigrated German cinematographers who'd done earlier work on German expressionist movies. (Spencer could tell you whether or not that's accurate.) Many of the "found" images in Spencer's work remind me very much of expressionist paintings & films, & I don't think that's an accident. Spencer's work isn't expressionistic, though it does use perhaps some of its elements. I said I wasn't going to "close read." Well, okay, so I'm a big fucking liar. Turn to the page in _Malleable Cast_ (no page numbers given) of the buckets on the stairwell, water flowing from the top bucket into the next on the next step down, overflowing & then into the next bucket down, overflowing there & down into the next. (Sort of looks like a Rube Goldberg detail, eh?) Now, read the words overlayed onto this image. I think that this ambivalence i found in art today. On the o sary to suspect that art's involv clean conscience to peo selves up [illeg.] erything else. O up and [illeg.] from the world warm [illeg.] here they doze o speration and [illeg.] that are sy their lives. As though art flew hard enough. But [illeg.] again iew that's present with [illeg.] nd possibility. We'd see artists bing what a truly creative life co nderstood as the making of an off hing as life understood as perm Of course, when you look at this, the buckets dissuade reading, at least initially, the text from left to right: what happened with me was that, after recognizing the buckets on stairwell & water flowing down via buckets, my eye caught certain words & phrases on the page: "art today"; "conscience"; "the world"; "they doze"; "enough"; "possibility"; "life understood." (What anyone picks up looking initially will obviously differ from person to person.) The buckets on stairwell create a waterfall, a human-created waterfall, something we might even recognize (given the verbal clues) as "art." The image--given the Rube Goldbergesque impracticability of moving water this way--might also strike one as funny. (It struck me so.) Spencer seems to be playing here with ideas about art ("Making of an off/ [t]hing as life understood as perm[anent]"), and the ideas & visual resonances I found I was picking up "reading" this piece seem to be if not mutually exclusive opposites, certainly nothing tidily pat. The *idea* of the buckets struck me as funny, but the image itself was actually, on second glance, quite lovely--a tension's created between that specific "idea" and (one of) the visual effects. We aren't "allowed" to read the whole text, it having been cut on both ends, and illegible in spots where the buckets've been placed over it. This gives a very "fluid" effect to the words on the page, certain words or phrases bob & rise as though afloat--again something reinforced for me by the image of water flowing down the page. Spencer has--at least in this visual poem--managed to (for this viewer) put everything into motion, despite the initial visual stasis of a block of words overlayed over a fairly static black & white line-drawing. Well, it's late & I'm out of cigarettes. I don't know if any of the above "explains" anything, or helps--but it's something, I guess. I'd like to hear what anyone else who's seen this book might have to say about it, or what Spencer might have to say about my "reading" of one of its pages. This type of book isn't for everyone, and even I think some of the pieces in it are more successful than others, but I do want to say that I've been picking it up at least once a day since I got it a week or so ago, & continue to be inspired by it. Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 08:47:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" Organization: University of NC at Greensboro Subject: Olson If Charles Olson really was a shy and gentle person, it is a shame that he is not alive to hire a lawyer, a public relations firm, and some radio time to rehabilitate his reputation. Seriously, if there was a side of Olson that does not get into the books about Olson, then it had better be convincingly recorded before those who know that side have disappeared too. To those not part of his flock he sounds pretty overbearing. It sounds as if Jonathon Williams (I now remember that's the right spelling, I think) is still alive--well, he struck me as an honest person and he knew Olson as well as anybody. Let J. W. speak! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 06:09:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Reading Selby Gary, That's a terrific reading! And I didn't know that we had more than one Dark City author on this list either. But I wonder how much of the concealment/revealment dynamics (a sizeable portion of your reading) don't actually reiterate themselves on every page in the book. What about the cole miners (on the cover and inside a few pages beyond the cascading buckets)? Or the blindfolded women? How do you read those pages differently? The horse playing a flute? There seems to be a deliberate irony set up throughout between these consciously retro images (in the same way that rubber stamp works all use iconography from the 1930s to early 50s) and the often philosophic texts that underlay them. So that in the man with a drill, in the most legible portion of the page, one reads: to the lack of more social than the overactivated by social Rather, it was a dream a violent form -- Communication. ferentiated opia Elucidate further, please! Ron ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 10:09:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Lost Classics In-Reply-To: <199503150028.TAA19121@sarah.albany.edu> from "RSILLIMA" at Mar 14, 95 04:20:52 pm Ron, I couldn't agree with you more re RK's AXON DENDRON TREE (& most of the others on your lost classics list). A couple years back I thought I had convinced Pat & Marla Smith (NOTUS & OTHERWIND PRESS) to reprint AXON DENDRON TREE -- only to find out that RK had convinced them to do his new longish poem MONT BLANC, a lovely work, btw. There exists thus an electronic version of ADT, as Pat had set the poem -- & I have mentioned to Loss that this wld also be the kind of work eminently suited to the purposes of the Poetry Archive. I haven't had time to talk to RK (hello Robert) about it, but will, & have done so herewith as he is a reader of this list. Except for Grenier's book, most all of your "lost classics" cld in fact be brought back into a electronic poetry archive, until some gutenbergian enthusiast is ready to reprint them. Or does that sound like some cyber-holding tank or some post-xtian limbo 'twixt pardiso of print & inferno of o.p.? Pierre ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | He who wants to escape the world, translates it. Dept. of English | --Henri Michaux SUNY Albany | Albany NY 12222 | "Herman has taken to writing poetry. You tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | need not tell anyone, for you know how email: | such things get around." joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| --Mrs. Melville in a letter to her mother. ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:46:28 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric pape Subject: Re: Books (reply to Luoma & Silliman) {long!} In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 15 Mar 1995 01:25:09 -0600 from Great reading Gary. This is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing more of, at least to my relatively unschooled mind. One of the things I deeply regret about being in Baton Rouge is the near impossiblity of finding texts from any but the more big name small presses (Sun & Moon, etc.). Thus I'd like to ask to list in general if they know of a better way of ordering than to use the friendly neighborhook book store. What we need is some type of archive of presses, something like the poetry center's, but perhaps more comprehensive? Maybe even an electronic distribution center, like spd, but electronic? Something like you send by e-mail a list of books and they can get it backto you? Does something like that exist? I ask that because I'm very interested in Spencer's book, as well as others listed here, but am not looking forward to a several months wait while various distributors try to find each other, as has happened before to me in B.R. Anyway, again, thanks to Gary and Ron for the readings, Eric. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 11:03:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Olson In-Reply-To: <199503151452.HAA25235@mailhost.primenet.com> Dear H.T. Kirby-Smith, Actually, Jonathan Williams' first name is spelled just like Jonathan Brannen's: with two "a"s. He's still alive, and still sending out manuscripts (while temping at a nonprofit press here in MN a couple of months ago "we" received a collection of some of his "bawdy" verk). He might well write about Olson, though you couldn't force him, of course. You COULD, however, "force" (or coerce) him to talk to YOU about Olson. Some of my favorite things to read are "oral histories," of people, places, "things." (For instance, Studs Terkel's _Work_, which I LOVE.) Maybe you might consider going to Williams w/tape recorder, getting him to talk about Olson. Then, moving on to others who knew him--document an "oral history" of the guy. It's probably something you could get published fairly easily. (Though doing it would be difficult, & require a lot of traveling.) You'd want to talk to Cid Corman probably, who I think's in Japan, not doing terribly well financially, I've heard. Here in MN there's an agency that funds nothing but travel expenses for various "critical/research" writings. Maybe there's such an agency in your area? Maybe worth looking into... Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 12:18:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Sherry Subject: Re: You can't make an omlet if you can't get your hands on the eggs X-To: Kenneth Goldsmith In-Reply-To: I have been working to compile all the Segue catalogs together into one document and I think the project is nearly done. I am trying to get a copy of each book in the catalog into an archive which I am compiling and obviously that takes a bit longer. Meanwhile I will try to get an electronic copy or at least a paper copy to you and anyone who wants to see it. Please let me konw if you do. James ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 12:19:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Olson In-Reply-To: <199503151453.JAA10980@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Mar 15, 95 08:47:31 am > If Charles Olson really was a shy and gentle person, it is a shame > that he is not alive to hire a lawyer, a public relations firm, and > some radio time to rehabilitate his reputation. > Seriously, if there was a side of Olson that does not get into the > books about Olson, then it had better be convincingly recorded before > those who know that side have disappeared too. > To those not part of his flock he sounds pretty overbearing. Dear TH Kirby-Smith: Yeah, that's a problem the dead have, especially when the living set out to sharpen their personal and poetical axes. If you are actually interested in this issue, there's two places to start. One is with Olson's poetry which, regardless of what anybody says about the man, speaks for itself. The second place would be Ralph Maude's newsletters, which Peter Quartermain mentioned in a recent post. Maude has taken it upon himself to deal with the hatchet job Tom Clark performed on Olson, through minute and careful examination of the record, especially as it is to be recovered in the documents. Come to think of it, there is a third place: Charles Boer's marvelous essay, *Charles Olson in Connecticutt*. Your notion of "flocks" seems to reveal a certain prejudice on your part. If you're willing to move beyond that, you might be surprised what you find, not just about Olson, but about yourself. Best, Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 12:41:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi Subject: "Lost classics," Jonathan Williams In-Reply-To: <199503151655.AA22557@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> Greetings all-- Jonathan Williams's address (still, I think): Box 110 Highlands, NC 28741 I didn't speak up earlier, but I am currently preparing a critical edition of Loy's poems. Its fate probably depends upon the demand (or lack of) for the forthcoming SELECTED by Roger Conover (from Farrar, Straus, Giroux); Conover doesn't want to "flood" the market, though I've got a zillion potential Loy projects on tap here. Would love to talk backchannel with anyone else interested in textual crit. or ML. The recent discussion about the textuality of the physical book was fascinating-- has anyone seen MY MOTHER'S BOOK, by Joan Lyons? It's very moving constructed as a double-hinged folio-- a twin-spined hug built in paper, which suits the text just fine. The discussions of close reading and textual aspects of book layout etc. dovetail nicely in my mind around the editing of Loy's work. I don't think it is "constraining" at all to consider "just" the text when so often editors misjudge the extent to which elements of textual presentation (down to use of ampersands, numbers of dashes, white space in medias line, and-- hardest of all to determine with Loy-- misspellings) are the "matter" of the work itself. Susan Howe's piece on Dickinson (in SULFUR and again in her book on American Lit) has been a big help. I think Loy was far more painterly and subversive than she "looks" in her last two poetry collections (Conover has come I think to agree)-- the SELECTED will reflect it. Thanks for the fascinating ongoing conversation-- Marisa (currently reading Alcott's journals, Anne Porter's poems, Padgett's translations of Cendrars, and LAMB baaa) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:29:49 -0600 Reply-To: quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: peter quartermain Subject: Re: Olson In message Wed, 15 Mar 1995 08:47:31 EST, "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" wrote: > If Charles Olson really was a shy and gentle person, it is a shame > that he is not alive to hire a lawyer, a public relations firm, and > some radio time to rehabilitate his reputation. > > Seriously, if there was a side of Olson that does not get into the > books about Olson, then it had better be convincingly recorded before > those who know that side have disappeared too. > > To those not part of his flock he sounds pretty overbearing. It > sounds as if Jonathon Williams (I now remember that's the right > spelling, I think) is still alive--well, he struck me as an honest > person and he knew Olson as well as anybody. Let J. W. speak! > Jonathan Williams is indeed alive and well, and has indeed spoken on Olson on more than one occasion. The best is his brief 1976 memoir / portrait "Am--O" reprinted in his collection of essays _The Magpie's Bagpipe: Selected essays_ San Francisco: North Point, 1982, 6-12. Peter Quartermain __________________________________________________________________________ Peter Quartermain 128 East 23rd Avenue voice and fax (604) 876 8061 Vancouver B.C. e-mail: quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca Canada V5V 1X2 __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 14:05:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Reading Selby In-Reply-To: <199503151520.IAA28812@mailhost.primenet.com> Long, long, long, this. (Forgive me, scrollers!) Eric Pape (& others interested in this and other Generator books), the address is at the end of the post. Dear Ron, Hey, many thanks for the kind invite to say more about _Malleable Cast_. As to the concealment/revealment dynamics, I think you're right, that's a lot of what seems to be going on here. Whether or not that's going on each page, I don't know. The coal miner would be a great one to talk generally about since, as you note, it's not only one of the images in the body of the book, it's also the cover, suggesting a "visual title," maybe. When I think of "mine" I think immediately of Coolidge's _Mine: the one that enters the stories_, a lovely metaphor-- though an odd way to put it, as you'd think he'd've used the one "WHO" enters the stories, not "THAT" (which seems to imply "inhuman"). "Mine" is a hinge word I hear frequently among poets who, like myself & Spencer, create a certain amount of our work using (directly or otherwise) found material. "Mine" as a verb (how one gets the material), and what it becomes, having done that (the "mined" becomes "mine"). I also think of this as a somewhat "hack" phrase: one "hacks" when mining, but it's also, as I say, a word that gets used a lot, with as much frequency among poets I know as "finding your voice" gets used in workshops. It's become a cliche, or is fast becoming one. Before I bring J.G. Ballard into this (in a moment), here's one of three epigraphs Spencer uses to preface _Malleable Cast_: "Our Fire Stone should be prepared and matured, like our food and all other medicines, by the corporal fire which reigns in the little world. Where the solar fire of the great world leaves off, there our corporal fire begins a new generation." --Basilius Valentinus Spencer has his own reasons for using that epigraph, but what I take from it ("mine" from it) is that sense of a "minor" literature (or art) that seems to be implied by "the little world." Note the distinction above between the fire of the "little world" and the "solar fire of the great world." &, where the latter leaves off, is where (so I'm understanding) a "minor" literature picks up. (Also note the homonymous nature of "minor" and "miner.") In J.G. Ballard's _Vermilion Sands_, a collection of some of his earliest published short stories there's a fabulous (in every sense) story, "The Singing Sculptures," about "sonic" sculpture. A gallery owner sells one to a rich art collector, a large statue that "sings" by virtue of the fact that there's a tape-player in it playing pre-recorded music. The collector seems to "fall in love" with the statue, the gallery owner seems to "fall in love" with the collector. (Seems to because my memory of the story is only so-so.) The gallery owner records his own voice singing, apparently love songs, to the collector. The collector ultimately moves, and takes everything with her, including (so the gallery owner thinks) the singing statue. It turns out, she'd actually hacked it to bits; the gallery owner stumbles onto fragments of it, embedded in the soil, actually *growing* now, and *literally* singing (in the gallery owner's voice, & not by virtue of tape recorder). I've always loved this story (my memory of it) as a kind of fluid metaphor for (a) the process of making art, & specifically art from "found" material, and (b) its seeming preferential attitude toward "minor" works of art. The collector couldn't bear being with the statue (the "major" artwork here) anymore, she was "so" "in love" with it, & so hacked it to bits & moved on. The singing sculpture, seductive as it was, was also (note, by virtue of the tape recorder) a sham. It's not until it's been hacked to pieces that it, genuinely, sings (if still in the voice of the gallery owner). (Note that the resulting singing "roots" were the result of a *collaboration*, which is what art created using found material is, even if the other collaborators aren't "present" during the final process.) Sentimental? Yes, maybe. Hackneyed? Certainly, & part of its (for me) charm. Ron, you point out the anachronistic nature of the visual material used, and the second (of 3) epigraphs seems to address that: The beginning, the awakening, offers itself only at the end as its inscription, by the writing of the remembrance, in its working out. --Jean-Francois Lyotard Another possible reason for Spencer's interest in the often (though not always) "anachronistic" imagery has probably to do with what was available when he was growing up, when he was young & impressionable, the things (ideas that images reinforced) experienced then. I remember at a slide show-reading of Bernadette Mayer's _Memory_ (I think it was), Barrett Watten asking of Bernadette: "Don't you feel that the cars, the clothing, the hairdos, the things you've captured on film here, "date" this piece?" Couldn't tell whether or not "date" was in the "bad" sense of this word. (Like, the way some people feel about Donald Barthelme's writing--"period" writing.) Well, Spencer's work, I think, uses so much of the iconography of the 40s & 50s because that's when he grew up (as Bernadette's piece was certainly a record of a specific time period), & the sort of "defining" characteristics, the negative ones at least, of that particular era are what he seems to be working against in these visual pieces. I'm going out on a limb with that because only Spencer can tell you whether or not this, indeed, has anything to do with his impulses. But, "hacking" and "mining" (drilling, too) are, for me, much of what's going on here (mining memory, personal and cultural, as well as Salvation Army-type stores for books with these kinds of images). Much of this work does seem self- referential--to me, at least. As far as a "close" reading of any more of these images, maybe I'll do that with a couple & send them to you by direct e- mail, or snail-mail. I think it can be done, I'd love to do it, but felt--given the public nature of this medium--it might be more interesting to those reading (w/out copies to look at) to talk more generally about the book. (Like, maybe I think it's "not fair" to talk specifically about something here since I can't reproduce the actual piece, given its visual nature.) Again, I'd really like to hear what Spencer has to say about this book. Thanks again, Ron, for asking. I can't hope to make a convert of you (or anyone else), & that's not my intention; in fact, as perverse as this sounds, I really appreciated getting to write about this as it made me think about my own interest in this sort of work, in "found" work, in "minor" work, & so on. So, again, many thanks. Anyone who hasn't left this post out of total boredom might be wondering: "Well, heck; how & where do I *get* this book?" _Malleable Cast_ was published by John Byrum's Generator Press 8139 Midland Drive Mentor OH 44060 U.S.A. It's $10.00 (not sure if you need to include shipping). Byrum's published numerous books & magazines over the year--most (maybe all?) being visual poetry in one form or another. Write and ask for a catalogue or list of "in print"s. I have to go eat something, Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 09:41:00 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Lost Classics One more on a different track from Ron Silliman's ------ [I'd likewise include the Grenier Sentences from which at random " saids " " muddy flavors tending off the horse couch button " " that's a sedate car now early to rise " like other Grenier poems forced some decisions for me, besides which his playing of continuous non-scoring table-tennis is also important, ((reminding me that Ben Nicolson's pastime was a table-tennis of a curious sort, with a block of wood instead of a net, from which he was expert at getting subtle bounces)). ] THE OTHER TRACK What ever happened to the collected O'Hara. It was out of print in hours or minutes, so it seemed. The Selected was all I ever got, in paper-back, with Larry Rivers drawing on cover. Has the collected ever been reprinted? [ the blue (faded) box of SENTENCES which remains like a fetish object in my office on campus because my wife Judi had the sense to buy it, 1983 ] Thinks: I've never even sighted the Axon-Dendron Tree! Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 13:28:46 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Reading Selby Gary Sullivan's doubts about the interest of what he is doing. Dear Gary, yr close/intinmate reading of Selby is fascinating to one who has not seen the book, imagining the images and text only from what is said -- as exciting as any 'ancient' ecphrasis for any renaissance painter. The pressure on exact indication turns the prose on I suppose. (I go searching for Ezra Pound's inistence on description, the tale of Prof Agassiz's fish) I am dis- appointed to think you won't continue with it on the Poetics List. Lucky Ron. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 18:44:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: bedside reading In-Reply-To: <199503141903.LAA00719@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Kenneth Goldsmith" at Mar 14, 95 10:51:29 am My guess is that responders re the question of bedside reading will cook the books. Not me, though. I'm rteading (it has been on my must-read-immediately shelf for years and years) Burroughs's _The Western Lands_. Verrrry relaxin'. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 22:17:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Lost Classics via Silliman & Joris In-Reply-To: <199503151525.KAA25783@eerie.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Pierre Joris" at Mar 15, 95 10:09:28 am Pierre, Ron, and others - > them to do his new longish poem MONT BLANC, a lovely work, btw. There > exists thus an electronic version of ADT, as Pat had set the poem -- & > I have mentioned to Loss that this wld also be the kind of work > eminently suited to the purposes of the Poetry Archive. I haven't had > time to talk to RK (hello Robert) about it, but will, & have done so > herewith as he is a reader of this list. I would, of course, argue that this is precisely the role of an electronic poetry archive. For those people really intent on reading the Many instrumental works branded with the o.p. stamp, there's little recourse, especially if they are not in the academic circles that allow funding to travel to special collections, or unless they know someone with an Extraordinary collection ... op prices are extremely prohibitive - and if one were to make an argument that electronic versions of texts don't help the author financially, I would leap in to say that op priced texts help even less, as the text moves from circulation to an object of fetishization. Of course, I have seen a number of postings here and there that electronic copies actually boost sales of print works when both are available. People in places not sporting comprehensive bookstores like to browse too... Further, the electronic "fascimile" of the work would offer the text but would by no means ever preclude its reissuance in print nor (if currently in print) eclipse a physical presence. I think the recent flurry of posts on physical parameters of texts would insist on this as well. > Except for Grenier's book, most all of your "lost classics" > cld in fact be brought back into a electronic poetry archive, until > some gutenbergian enthusiast is ready to reprint them. Or does that > sound like some cyber-holding tank or some post-xtian limbo 'twixt > pardiso of print & inferno of o.p.? So, not meant to me argumentative here in any way. Pierre and I have spoken and do agree, methinks, about the place of electronic versions of some texts. I mean, op only means one of two things in these cases - not commercially expedient - or - the publisher decided it was time to put food on the table again, rather than give it to the printers. (Unless they were also the printer, in which case they might have decided to cut back from forty hour weeks...) As I say, not to argue anything here but to throw my (not entirely unbiased) vote in for the electronic editions idea. I say, there are many many on the list for whom I've found citations for books but could not find an in print copy. I would guess that in this case for most interested readers, the text would not get read. As such, a kind of call to those who might be authors of these classics. Contact me or Ken Sherwood via the list or privately ... My feeling is that we've got a tremendous resource in the Electronic Poetry Center author library and I turn this "second" to Pierre's motion into a suggestion that one very productive development of these valuable discussions of "classics" might be to have them equally at our fingertips. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 21:57:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Re: Goya's LA, a play by Leslie Scalapino In-Reply-To: <199503150643.BAA20509@panix4.panix.com> Please take note of the following if you happen to be in NYC on March 24th. Jandova CoMotion Inc. and Drogue present a work in progress on scenes from Goya's LA a play by Leslie Scalapino at Context 28 Avenue A (between 2nd & 3rd) New York, NY 10009 on Friday March 24th, 1995 at 8:30 pm For reservations call 212 924 9026 Suggested donation $7 or reply to blairsea@panix.com Blair Seagram ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 22:31:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Lost Classics via RS & PJ (Minor correction) In-Reply-To: <199503160319.WAA27014@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Loss Glazier" at Mar 15, 95 10:17:35 pm though not a major point by any means ... that was meant to read _eighty_ hour weeks ... - lpg ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 23:20:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Colleen Lookingbill Subject: Re: My Reading Selby "Malleable Cast" can be read as a story, from first to last image. I took the Basilius Valentinus quote at the beginning to be an alchemical metaphor like "as above so below" or the transformative effect of spiritual fire creating and burnishing a soul (our philosopher's stone) into something more than the grossness of common reality, but at the same time "the ordinary of his commonplace." Reading the book as a story has you starting out with the young boy and his mother going up the metaphorical ladder (she is pushing/helping him) and ending with the young boy holding his tank or whatever that is in his hands out to the world. In between you have the magical creative and alchemical processes formed by word and image that lead to the smiling lad's "patience of the test of the world. longer passions of there is no" All the images and text as they appear seem to tell the story of the "remembrance, in its working out." the Lyotard quote at the beginning of the book. I agree with Gary the images are from the forties and fifties and operate on a subconscious as well as conscious level to evoke that time in this nation's world building that has us where we are today. The technology and the medical diagrams shown here are fascinating frightening and funny. A woman and young girl stand in profile blindfolded. I had to see this as the way woman were (still are?) when faced with survival in a culture that is antagonistic to the inner most value systems we possess. Words float up and then away as you try to read the poem and the image at the same time. This effect of this book feels very much like my own creative process where the words just seem to appear before me and then create an imagelife of their own on the page that is neither nature nor technology nor biography nor emotions but some other space wanting to get charted. Responding to this art/visual poetry takes place in the guts as well as brain - anything less will be pretty cold for this hot little black and white world. Colleen Lookingbill ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 20:21:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "thomas c. marshall" Subject: reading habits What the students are into here is clothes reading where style becomes content with itself by seeing how wrong everybody else's is. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 23:30:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Lost Classics Tony--Somehow I managed to get a copy of the hardcover collected at a BORDERS bookstore (of all places) as late as 1991--people told me that it was impossible--it's out of print--but i somehow "got it"-- Anyway, i've been reading through it--there are many poems circa 53,54 that are lyrically quite modest and very intense that didn't make it into the SELECTED--these don't get talked about much. People seem to think he grew beyond them--but there's something here that often gets eclipsed by the more public "i do this" kind of of poem....Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 01:07:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Re: Olson, Visual Poetry, Top Ten In-Reply-To: <199503150643.BAA20509@panix4.panix.com> My first question concerns Olson. Since I logged on here I have been catching bits and pieces about Olson, until tonight when I read lots of references to him. Has something happened recently that has provoked all this discussion? It's odd because a friend of mine recently pulled "Call Me Ishmael" from my bookshelf and got totally involved in quite a critical way. He totally rejected the book until the chapter on Shakespeare at which point he became enthusiastic. I don't really have a second question, rather a comment. I like the discussion on visual poetry, because that is more or less where I am coming from. This bulletin board, the way it is now configured, for me at least, is not what I would call visual. In fact I think it discourages visual presentation. Nevertheless it is extremely seductive. As far as the top ten go, Kenny , all I can say is music, radio, poetry. What is good about being part of a group of people without a rigid hierarchy is the spontaneous. The fact that important works of art have been lost is very disturbing. However, an idea can be passed from one individual to another. I am enough of an egoist to want people to know who I am, but I also know that great works of art have been produced anonymously by groups of people. Not an easy postion to take in an environment that stresses the individual, but one that might help us into the future. bs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 22:55:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Books (reply to Luoma & Silliman) {long!} Eric, Everybody should be on the catalog list for Small Press Distribution, 1814 San Pablo, Berkeley, CA 94720, leading distributor of poetry in the USA. Phone (510) 540-3336 All libraries should have a standing order for its books. (And someone should post this on the T-AMLIT list too.) Ron ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 08:37:29 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" Organization: University of NC at Greensboro Subject: Gregory Corso Next I wonder if anyone knows whatever happened to Gegrory Corso, and also if anyone knows why his poetry was cut out of the second edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Seems to me he was rather indifferent to reputation, like some other people I've heard of. He seemed a kind of comic Whitman to me. I keep him going with xeroxes. Oh it was good to hear about the Mina Loy revival. And I look forward to seeing Cendrars made available in English--"Blaise, est-ce que nous sommes tres loin de Monmartre?" (Song of the Trans-Siberian Railroad). Would you believe that Mina Loy was one of the poets most admired by Yvor Winters, at least when he was a young man--when he and Williams were still on terms of mutual admiration? Tom Kirby-Smith ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 09:18:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Sherry Subject: Re: You can't make an omlet if you can't get your hands on the eggs In-Reply-To: <199503152049.PAA16514@panix4.panix.com> In response to several messages and again to Kenny Goldsmith, the Segue Catalog which was published by Segue from 1981(?) through 1994 was a curated list of what I and a few others thought was each year's best new publication and the most important of the past few years. Usually books stayed on the list only three years, although some books, by their centrality were kept on longer. I also kept Roof Books on as long as they were in print. This then represents the list of books that the poets chose, primarily east coast writers, although the major west coast writers were polled every year by mail. Some responded regularly and some didn't. Since I don't remember all the names of the people who contributed to the list I will not mention names for fear of angering someone I forget. The list is pretty accurate in terms of how the material was collected. Over 100 publishers were asked for their list of books. People who are new to the poetry group would have been on the list had they been around as late as 1993 and actively going to readings. Someone like Kenny it has been pointed out might have received 5 or 6 copies. There were generally about 10,000 copies of the list circulated which made it the widest circulation publication in this poetry circle. Lists included were the Segue Foundation list, MLA selected lists, and library lists. When NEA defunded the list I asked people if anyone could help it to continue, but the $10,000 short fall was too much for anyone to bear to accommodate my taste and the taste of a few poets who were willing to donate their curatorial time. So 1994 was the last list. Again, I will send out the compiled list when it's completed. James ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 09:33:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Lost Classics In-Reply-To: <199503160152.SAA07637@mailhost.primenet.com> Dear Tony Green & other O'Hara readers, The _Collected_ was actually just reprinted by University of California (I think) in paperback, maybe a couple of months ago. I've already seen it in a couple of bookstores. Selling for something between $15 and $18 (U.S.). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 10:47:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bill Luoma Subject: Re: Reading Selby Tony, Do you have an explication of ecphrasis? Were there words on Achilles' shield? Bill Luoma ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 11:03:29 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: Alan Golding Subject: Re: Lost Classics In-Reply-To: note of 03/15/95 18:42 Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Tony (and everyone else): The Collected O'Hara is in fact just now back in print, in paper from the University of California Press. Got mine in the mail just 2-3 days ago. As a consultant on the project, I suggested that they try to price the book to make it competitive with the Random House (I think) Selected, hoping that for a couple of bucks more teachers, for instance, would be willing to order the Collected over the Selected for classes. So please consider that possibility if you're in the business of teaching O'Hara. And all interested parties who are not will hopefully want to have the book anyway . . . Alan Golding ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 10:52:07 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric pape Subject: Re: Books (reply to Luoma & Silliman) {long!} In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 15 Mar 1995 22:55:34 -0800 from Thanks Ron. I do get most of my stuff spd, but I know now to get the catalog list. What I'd really be interested in is something like spd on line, maybe just because I've become so instilled with the pace of e-mail, regular posts seem terribly slow. Does anyone know of an electronic poetry archive that is comprehensive and quick? Thanks again, Eric. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 11:10:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: Reading Selby In-Reply-To: <199503161621.JAA04165@mailhost.primenet.com> Dear Colleen, Tony Green & inbetween, Tony: okay, I won't hold out on you. Was very glad, Colleen, you posted about _Malleable Cast_--you're absolutely right that this's to be taken in thru the gut as well as the head. And what you say about the two blindfolded women in profile sounds absolutely right. (Note how the word "SHE" falls right there, on the taller woman's blindfold.) & Colleen, what you say about _Malleable Cast_ being read as a narrative sounds absolutely right, too. The book is, after all, squarish, one visual per page, sort of like a storyboard, or successive film stills. I wonder, though, about what's gained (vs. what's lost) reading the book from cover to cover, without considering other options. You're right; the two images opening & closing the book are closely related. But, note that the woman pushing the boy up the ladder (first image) is pushing him *out* of the book (to the left, against English-language reading, which goes from left to *right*). (& that's not something I thought about so much, but felt, in my gut.) Since Spencer's doing these things on transparencies, I'd imagine if he wanted to, he could easily have reversed this image so the boy was being pushed *into* the book, not out of it. (*That's* something I thought about.) Also, consider the title: _Malleable Cast_. Cast as in "cast of characters" (so narrative's right on here) or in the sense of something being cast (a line, as in "fishing"--what both you & I are doing writing about the work, as well as how Spencer put it together, physically) or, finally, in the sense of a cast, like a mould. But, it's "malleable"--thus working against the idea of characters in the workshop sense (w/traits that *determine* character), and also against a linear reading--from cover to cover--of this book. Sure, this (these images, in this order) is how it's been cast, but the impulse (suggested by "malleable" in the title) seems to be suggesting that the reader might work against that. Myself, first I read this book from the center out, as the images on both ends seem "exits" of a sort. But, it can be read otherwise, too. (I always remember Spencer as being the person who introduced me to Chaos theory, which seems to work against linearity.) This is not to suggest that there isn't a narrative element working here: I think you're right, Colleen; there is. And also, again, your reading of the epigraphs seem dead on, having much more to do with what's here than what I'd (first) taken from it. So, thanks for your splendid reading. Spencer? How come you've been silent through all this? Did you construct this book as a narrative? As a linear narrative? How do you feel about our readings--encouraged? Discouraged? These aren't rhetorical questions, my friend ... this seems a great opportunity to get an author's response to readings ... Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 09:48:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kit Robinson Subject: Books on My Table Reply to: Books on My Table Here is some of what I have been, am, or will be reading -- lately, currently, presently: Tom Raworth, Frames (Riva San Vitale: Giona Editions, 1994) Chris Tysh, In the Name (Hamtramck: Past Tents Press, 1994) Jessica Grim, Locale (Elmwood: Potes & Poets Press, 1995) Kenneth Rexroth, Bird in the Bush: Obvious Essays (New York: New Directions, 1959) Marguerite Duras, Four Novels (New York: Grove Press, 1965) Helmut Heissenbuttel, Texts, trans. Michael Hamburger (London: Marion Boyers, 1977) Etel Adnan, The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (Sausalito: Post-Apollo Press, 1990) Bruce Andrews, Strictly Confidential (Gran Canaria: Zasterle Press, 1994) Wystan Curnow, Cancer Daybook (Aukland: Van Guard Xpress, 1989) Rodger Kamenetz, The Jew in the Lotus (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994) John Yau, Hawaiian Cowboys (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow, 1994) The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (New York: Knopf, 1994) Regards, Kit Robinson kit@bando.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 08:49:01 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Achilles' shield Bill Luoma (et al) " Were there words on Achilles' shield?" The last word on Achilles's shield was Homer's, I believe. Seriously, as a proposal, why not a shield with words on it for Achilles? However, the series: words - rebus - image (or another series words-theatre-image?) allow transition from word-text to image to become comprehensible. Perhaps. Anyone have any ideas on this? But the Selby book sounds like it's mixed image and text, which makes the effort to ex-plain in it in order to convince Ron Silliman of it's value(s) stress the functioning of the image-in-the-text. Word-text would be simply reproducible/quotable on e-mail but the particular appearance of this book is "transmitted" (translated, betrayed) via word-text only. That's why I was fascinated by the resultant posts of Gary. Best wishes, Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 08:56:21 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Lost Classics Chris S and Alan G, Thanks for posts re- lost Frank O'Hara. I'm glad to know the collected is available again -- and that it's in use.... Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 16:18:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Spencer Selby Subject: Re: Two Poems For Ron In-Reply-To: <199503151520.HAA06183@slip-1.slip.net> Two poems for my ambivalent friend Ron. (One is for close reading, the other for misreading.) THE SENTENCE for R. S. I thought illusion belongs in a book words to living pink of life for whom the growth more native force is not my chance to draw forth curious feeling perpetual transit apparent feeling necessary light above gray sacrifice arm all promise nightly that I would speak more softly in a hush eternal loving to survive the tongue the body race in uniform newly washed dead weight through a swamp warning camouflage thought as jealous limits of capital back door horizon sensitive rub cost of production inheritance flaw to the living remembered reason curious word into matter for doing what keeps us alive THE SENTENCE for R. S. I thought reality belongs in a book words to living pink of life for whom the growth more native force is not my chance to draw forth curious feeling perpetual transit apparent feeling necessary light above gray sacrifice arm all promise nightly that I would speak more softly in a hush eternal loving to survive the tongue the body race in uniform newly washed dead weight through a swamp warning camouflage thought as jealous limits of capital back door horizon sensitive rub cost of production inheritance flaw to the living remembered reason curious word into matter for doing what keeps us alive ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 00:06:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: Bedside Books The only book by my bed for the last week and a half has been the new "Collected O'Hara." I've been sleeping very well after my 20-40 minute perusings. Though the book's a treasure here's one I keep passing through - POLOVTSOI (p 430) white blood dead when ate fear yes red scare pearl die gay black fit saturdaynight parse fend flame contend disperse Can anyone tell me what Polovtsoi is? Polovoi (with various endings) in Russian is in one meaning an adjective - sexual. But I'm not sure of this at all, particularly with the -tsoi ending. I could be way off the track. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 22:25:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: More Sixties Gold Thinking further of great books from the 1950s and '60s that definitely deserve to be preserved and put forward. When the Sun Tries to Go On by Kenneth Koch. This 113 page poem is one of the founding documents of the New York School. It was published in a little magazine called Hasty Papers and then released as a book by Black Sparrow in 1969 with a cover and 5 collages by Larry Rivers in an edition of 1500. It's never been republished and Koch chose not to excerpt from the poem in his Selected Poems in hopes of eventually having the whole again in print. It's the most spontaneous and surreal work of Koch's. Poem of the Cid, translated by Paul Blackburn. The goofiest publication of a major poem during that entire decade and maybe ever this appeared as a "Study Master Publication" in 1966, a competitor with Cliff Notes. It's an infinitely better poem in English than the Merwin (as anything by Blackburn is, even tho I admit that I admire some of Merwin's work. This was the source for Dorn's Gunslinger epic. 151 pages sans Spanish in the original. Others that come to mind include John Weiners' Hotel Wently Poems (the impact of that book, with the Robert LaVigne illustrations, gets lost in a larger gathering, as does Spicer s Language, for example; my copy of the Weiners originally belonged to Bill Bathurst during his heavy recreational pharmaceuticals period, bleary pen doodles everywhere; Keith Abbott tells me he s cleaned his act up and is now serving as a consultant to one of the post-communist countries in Eastern Europe), Joanne Kyger s The Tapestry and the Web, Phil Whalen's On Bear's Head (Norman Fischer is working on this as we speak), Kathleen Fraser's What I Want, Curtis Faville's Stanzas for an Evening Out, and possibly Tom Clark's Neil Young. There are some critical texts that also would warrant rescuing: David Ossman's The Sullen Art, the original Olson/Creeley Mayan Letters. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 01:25:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: close reading An open question--When people read (whether it's "close or not"--you decide what to call it), do you (plural) tend to mark up the margins alot? Do you sit there with a notebook? Do you find that you write more WHILE reading--(I i.e. do you read to write), or do you see these as discrete activities more often than not? If you do write in the margines alot does that have something to do with whether you like long-lined or short-lined poems? Does the kind of poem Spencer Selby just posted "turn you on?" By "kind of poem" I mean a certain kind of balanced lyric formal diction and tone that is not in much contemporary poetry I'm aware of...a refusal of gaudy gimmicks...a poem that "looks like a lyric" in a certain old-fashioned sense allegedly of "gem-like" White Buildings Crane--or at least the momeory of it, a certain modesty that is also authority...Personally I tend not to separate reading and writing much...I am interested in a discursive mode of close reading that doesn't exist until I do it...I am in academia now and am trying not to let that get in the way...or am trying to find a way NOT to let it get in the way...The great taboos surround seemingly in force...One could say they're only in "the mind."---Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 01:30:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: close reading Addendum:--When I say I am in academia now and am trying not to let that get in the way, I am aware that this statement can also apply to editors. There are several editors of magazines, journals and books here "on line," I am curious what they feel their involvement with contemporary poetry manuscripts is like...Partially because that is not as much what i'm reading now as dead people (though not just "white guys"), I mean IS dead people--I'm curious about other people's "balancing" between not just between "dead" and "alive" writers... but also about what they feel this does to their sense of poetry or writing or whatever...(you could talk about MUSIC too, do rock lyrics effect your writing sometimes more strongly, assuming you're VERBAL suggestive, if not quite STRICTLY referring only to other texts... Chris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 23:41:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 15 Mar 1995 to 16 Mar 1995 In-Reply-To: <9503170503.AA83858@aruba.ccit.arizona.edu> >Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville >Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu > >Tony (and everyone else): > >The Collected O'Hara is in fact just now back in print, in paper from the >University of California Press. Got mine in the mail just 2-3 days ago. As a >consultant on the project, I suggested that they try to price the book to make >it competitive with the Random House (I think) Selected, hoping that for a >couple of bucks more teachers, for instance, would be willing to order the >Collected over the Selected for classes. So please consider that possibility >if you're in the business of teaching O'Hara. And all interested parties who >are not will hopefully want to have the book anyway . . . > >Alan Golding > Alan-- bravo and kudos (and huzzahs!). will do, absolutely. I have a couple/few copies of the collected as first published, designed to be a big book that would look something like the Stevens Collected apparently. The cover on the Selected (the Rivers sketch w Frank's prick prominently displayed) was supposed to be the cover to the original hardbound and I THINK that there were a very few of those distributed (rather like a stamp w the flag upside down now....) before Random House chickened out (all this, baffled by several years [loss of] memory from David Shapiro); but the bowdlerized version has an absolutely beautiful photo of Frank on the cover. Did "Berdie" get restored to the index (it was in the table of contents but not the index in the Collected, and NOT in the Selected--a really beautiful poem)? There are a number of other amazing poems not in the Selected, so this is Good News Indeed! Tenney ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 22:49:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Bedside Books Books I'm either reading or about to that I forgot because I was scribbling my email at work (avoiding the completion of a white paper on "What is PC Asset Management?"): Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology, edited by Gretchen Bender & Timothy Druckrey (Bay Press' DIA series), with pieces by Stanley Aronowitz, Paula Treichler (Cary Nelson's SO) on AIDS and Identity, Langdon Winner, Laurie Anderson, Avital Ronell, and Andrew Ross. Anderson is the only one I didn't actively solicit for work when I edited Socialist Review. These other folks are all terrific, but I will be very curious to see if they actually understand what they're talking about in this terrain. If I had a dime for every bad piece of writing on technology meets culture, I'd never work again. New Left Review 209 (Jameson on Derrida & Marx, Stuart Hall on Carribean identity, Geras on Rorty, some other excellent looking pieces [meaning I haven't read them yet]). Looks like the best issue of NLR in about 5 years. Made to Seem, Rae Armantrout's new book from Sun & Moon. This is rereading really, since I see most of these poems in manuscript first (often in ten or twelve different versions with just one word or a line break altered). Seeing them in a book is always a curious experience for me since it means that they have now been "pinned down" in a way they seldom seem to be "in life." Here's my favorite this week: MY PROBLEM It is my responsibility to squeeze the present from the past by demanding particulars. When the dog is used to represent the inner man, I need to ask, "What kind of dog is it?" If a parasitic metaphor grows all throughout--good! Why stop with a barnacle? A honeysuckle, thrown like an arm, around a chain-link fence, would be far more articulated, more precisely repetitive, giving me the feeling that I can go on like this while the woman at the next table says, "You smell pretty," and sends her small daughter's laugh, a sputtery orgasm, into my ear-- though this may not have been what you intended. It may not be a problem when I notice the way the person shifts. Rae's poems often have the hallucinated clarity of a dream state (maybe in this case, with the decidedly incestuous undertone of the mother initiating the daughter's "orgasm," one of the dwarf dreams out of Twin Peaks). Behind that lucidity the "narrative frame" is often either unclear or unimportant compared with the rhetoric or structure of the argument at the surface (a particularly Lacanian view of content I suppose). I can't tell if the Bromige allusion in the title is intended or not. There's also a lengthy piece on Armantrout (the first that I'm aware of) by Jeffrey Peterson in the new Sagetrieb. I continue to be amazed that Rae hasn't been the "crossover" success of LangPo & G1 generally, but where some fall back on beauty, humor, or anger posed as satire, Rae never pulls punches in her work. The largest book to date is a selected published in France in French. Amazing! Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 02:03:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Books by my bed In-Reply-To: <199503170652.BAA22084@panix4.panix.com> > > Books by my bed: > > 1. Frederic Spotts "Bayreuth: A History of The Wagner Festival" (Yale > University Press, 1994). I heard Spotts speak to Stefan Zucker, host of > the now sadly defunkt "Opera Fanatic" show on WKCR, 89.9 NYC, for 4 hours > giving the real dish on the Nazification of the Festival (eg: Hitler's sexual abuse of the young Wieland Wagner). This book gets even diriter & > deeper and unlike most books I've read on the Festival, this is juicy > stuff. Wonderful read. > > > 2."The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna" by M (Vedanta Press, 1942) M was to > Ramakrishna what Boswell was to Johnson. Need I say more? This is a > permanent nightstand fixture. > > Next up: "The Tunnel" by William Gass. Anyone read it? > > > Peace, Kenny G > > Shoutouts to Blair, James, Charles A., Chris C., Gary, and Kit--thanx for > the responses > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 06:19:53 -0600 Reply-To: Mn Center For Book Arts Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: More Sixties Gold X-To: UB Poetics discussion group In-Reply-To: <2f692bb12281002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> This takes things from the sixties into the seventies and even eighties, but people on this list should also know that bp Nichol's The Martyrology has been re-issued by Coach House Press, Toronto (always difficult to find in this country, but perhaps SPD has them (at times they've had Nichol's work & Coach House titles, but not consistently, the fault, I believe, not being theirs, rather Coach House & the difficulty of dealing with customs, etc.). These works are 9 volumes in, I believe, 6 books. They are most definitely worth the read, although Nichol's other collections have a variousness I am often drawn to even more. (Thanks again, Joel K. & Bill H., for taking me to Toronto recently to see the concrete poem in the concrete on bpNichol Lane). As to reading, beside my bed are John Cage: Composed in America, ed. M. Perloff & C. Junkerman (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994), Robin Blaser's The Holy Forest (Coach House, 1993), How to Make an Antique (artist's book by Karen Wirth & Robt. Lawrence (pub. by the artists, 1989), Kevin Magee's Tedium Drum (lyric &, 1994). I'm carrying around with me Kit Robinson's Balance Sheet (Roof, 1994) and various books of poems by Emily Dickinson (I seem to do that periodically). I'm looking at Keith Smith's Non-Adhesive Binding, which gives fantastic ideas & instruction for real & possible book structures. And I'm reading Tom Peters's The Pursuit of Wow, which is very silly, but refreshes me on the need to be creative in managing & directing an organization and the people who work with me there. I'm also reading manuscripts by Anne Tardos and typesetting/designing manuscripts/books by Mary Margaret Sloan and Myung Mi Kim. A manuscript of sonnets by Tom Mandel is never far away, trying to figure its best way to become the astonishing book it needs to be. all best, charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 15:06:36 WET Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: anew strain? "the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the glass" 1. Anew strain. A new strain with the look of the mainstream. 2. Fragmentation. Is what most do, read a whole text that might challenge their values, but never be sobered by that, jump, hop, scotch. 3. Language. Making a fashion, shared agenda, purity, is exactly what those who write "communicative" poetry, with "images" and "feeling" do; and they feel we exclude them as we they do us - though they hold more money in the market. 4. Camp. Ashbery homage. As if one were Ashbery, imagining a political agenda for his work that John himself doesn't have; very simple politic "accept gays" and then lots of in-jokes, and exclusionary tactics for those not in the polari syntax. "Savour painting more", as well, perhaps. 4. Fragmentation. As indication that one had in fact read and loved the whole of Dante and Ovid, and one's own poem is a furthering synergy, overhearing the private and succinct conversation of Dante and Ovid knowing and loving each other utterly and planning a collaborative project. 3. Originary energy 1978-82. G1, not easy to take the pot calling the kettle over-boiled when both thin the paint for yet another go at a one-colour abstract canvas, G2. Re-feel a feeling? A fell, a high hill, re-fuel. 2. Derrida's Cinders. Cannot go back (to 1968-78), the furthering synergy says something of his carriage makes good pumpkin broth. 1. Fragmentation. One glimpses angel in one lost to routine. "the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in the glass" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 10:21:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: Re: "Berdie" and "Berdie, Berdie" The first line of "Berdie" is in the index, yes. Another poem, "Song of Ending," starting with "Berdie, berdie" has a particularly Rilkean feel to it, ending with: ...they disappear with one last cry, not echoing, and then the emptiness is full of light. Berdie, not to be sad and crazy, all birds hide what the have lost. compared to another ending: ...and distant calls of birds , while in the sky the starry nights of another, sweeter country blossomed above them and would never close. from Rilke's "Tombs of the Hetaerae." In all likelyhood this is just chance, or a habit of mine of forcing pieces of the puzzle together. It would be interesting to find out, if anyone knows, O'Hara's feelings toward Rilke and whether he'd ever been known to carry around a copy of "New Poems." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 10:41:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: bedside manners Currently I am re-reading/re-viewing the bp Nichol collection "An H in the Heart". Taken before beddy-byes, this book will allow you to have two to three dreams at once. Or so it seems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 14:16:42 MST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Fred J. Wah" Subject: Doug Messerli If anyone knows Doug Messerli's email address, could you post it to wah@acs.ucalgary.ca. -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 16:16:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: "Berdie" and "Berdie, Berdie" Dear patrick--interesting question--I always had this hunch that early Rilke, such as "Tombs" is more like O'Hara, whereas Duino Elegies is more like Ashbery. Perloff, I think, links Three Poems to Notebooks of...Brigg...and in her book on O'Hara claims some Rilke influence on him, but this is a question that could be looked into further...Chris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 16:22:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Doug Messerli on recent visit here to albany, he told me he doesn't have email. Chrisz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 16:00:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Spencer Selby Subject: Re: Reading Selby In-Reply-To: <199503162015.MAA14227@slip-1.slip.net> Thanks to Ron, Gary, Colleen, Bill and others for their interest and thoughts about _Malleable Cast_. I am flattered by this discussion, which I have hesitated to enter because I believe the work does best on its own and because I don't believe my ideas about it are more valid than others. If not for Gary, I would probably leave it at that. But he has persuaded me to say more, to overcome my hesitation and share a few of my thoughts about the book. Reactions to this work vary quite a bit. Some people think the writing is too fragmentary, interrupted or concealed, and that the images predominate. Others are able to derive a lot meaning from the words and phrases that appear and the way they play off or interact with the images. I prefer the latter approach, but that does not mean I think there's anything wrong with the former, or with just treating these pieces as visual. I believe the words have an effect whether it is consciously recognized or not. (Providing you can read English, which has not always been the case, as these pieces have been published in many foreign countries.) As Gary has pointed out, the title can be a very good place to start. Malleable cast metal and a malleable cast of characters are primary for me. The malleable cast of characters is what is presented in this work. Malleable cast metal evokes a process that is both industrial and that reaches back before modern industry. It evokes a process of fusion thru heat, which is both metaphorical and one of the foundations of modern society. The idea of fusion underpins the entire book and the many linkages that are made or attempted. Central among these are science, alchemy and the quotidian. Searching, building and striving are balanced against disease, blindness and the static normality of American life, which is graphically (and humorously) portrayed by these images from the 30's, 40's and 50's. Many of the images contain their own antithesis, as when this normality appears more bizarre than anything else. Strange juxtapositions abound which link past with present, and which link the social threads with the more immediate issues that center on the nature of this work as art that fuses image and word. This fusing is a kind of alchemy in which the characters and pieces are definitely malleable. The malleable cast that has a historical foundation is thus integrally related to the malleability of the works themselves. The work is both private and public, mirrorlike and a kind of social biography. Word and image interrogate the relationship between word and world. And that again involves questions about the reader or viewer's relationship with the art or medium which makes the interrogation possible. All of these questions are open-ended, but they also have answers which are embedded in the work. The reader/viewer may pick up a shovel and acknowledge identification with the miner on the cover of the book. In doing that she should be able to tap into more of the ore and treasures that this world/work may offer. Spencer Selby P.S. I did not construct the work as a narrative, at least not at first. The sequence was determined for the book, which was a year after the pieces were completed. There may be some narrative idea behind the sequence. It seems to me a valid way of approaching the work, though not at all necessary. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 21:22:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: ? In-Reply-To: <199501241817.KAA26678@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ryan Knighton" at Jan 24, 95 07:24:20 am I was just looking at a message from you in late January' and I was thinking that's 3 weeks ago, but really it is 2 months, isnt it? Well, anyway, I heard that you were so amusing when you came home last weelk from the pub that Joanne turned off the movie andwatched you run into things. Anyway, in that Jan. message, you were arguing with something you think I said about gold and black things; and I cannot remember what trhe hell you thought you were talking abouit, and maybe you had me mixesd up with some villain in a dream. And just right now it is 9:21 on a Friday night and you and Reg will be your most charming and Willy will be sitting with his chin on his chest. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 21:38:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Achilles' shield In-Reply-To: <199503162312.PAA25750@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at Mar 17, 95 08:49:01 am Well, even if we could find out that there were words on Achilles's shield, I am pretty sure that we would find out that they were foreign words, so what would be the use? Or maybe we would find out that he used words AS shields, the way so many of us do, Language poets and shy fellows. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 21:40:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Books by my bed In-Reply-To: <199503170717.XAA02555@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Kenneth Goldsmith" at Mar 17, 95 02:03:08 am Kenneth Goldsmith mentuioned Gass's _The Tunnel_ Does this mean that that damned book is out as a book at last? Like a lot of people, I have been reading it for 15 or 20 years, the pieces available here and there, wondering whether it woiuld be publioshed in my lifetime. And now it wd appear that this monster is published to no fanfare? Is this possible? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 21:45:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: More Sixties Gold In-Reply-To: <199503170632.WAA00418@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ron Silliman" at Mar 16, 95 10:25:24 pm Silliman had some beauties on his list. Is Michael Rumaker's _The Butterfly_ out of print again? My, that was a nice piece of prose at the time. It was so much UNlike what you were reading in your U.S. Lit course. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 21:45:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Reading Selby So, Spencer, what is the PROCESS by which you construct one of these pages? What tools do you use? Physically, I mean. Describe the temporal sequence perhaps. This has been a great discussion and I hope it's not over. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 23:25:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 16 Mar 1995 to 17 Mar 1995 In-Reply-To: <9503180502.AA40509@aruba.ccit.arizona.edu> Patrick: this is prolly like the blind trying to lead the one-eyed (pardon my ablism) but in my scrawled notes on "A Step Away from Them" (in the margins I mean) some made recently but this one made in David Shapiro's amazing seminar about twenty years ago now, I have, laeding out from the beautiful "where the sign / blows smoke over my head, and higher / the waterfall pours lightly," this: "cf. Rilke, /Duino Elegies,/: "And higher, the news atars in the land of pain." The problem is that David, too, heard echoes everywhere, so who knows? Like Douglas (in this respect though not in many others) he's presumably not on email. As presumably not, too, is Kenneth, who just came up again via Ron Silliman. Apparently there's still time to send on birthday greetings for the 70th birthday celebration mentioned by Marisa Januzzi on this list a couple weeks ago--in c/o her, perhaps, being one possible route. "ah well, it's a young tree's privilege to climb...." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 23:28:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 16 Mar 1995 to 17 Mar 1995 In-Reply-To: <9503180502.AA40509@aruba.ccit.arizona.edu> oops!: "the news atars in the land of pain"? undoubtedly. nevertheless, "the new stars in the land of pain" is what Rilke (translated) wrote. and that's all they wrote.... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 10:50:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: Re: the news atars in the land of pain I think you've written a interesting line there Tenney Attar is the perfume/fragrance obtained from a flower and a Persian poet whose major work was "the conference of the birds." Pat ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 13:15:13 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: call for reviewers ________________ > > > > > > > > > > CALL FOR REVIEWS < < < < < < < < < < ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ folks-- TAPROOT REVIEWS provides access to a wide variety of writing and language-art publications, with short reviews of hundreds of titles in each issue. This is a periodically updated call for submissions. The following titles are among those available for review: Bruce Andrews Divestiture--E Guy R. Beining To Far to Hear John Brandi Shadow Play Laynie Browne One Constellation Marten Clibbens Sonet Clark Coolidge Registers (People In All) Milo De Angelis Finite Intuition Sally Doyle Under the Neath Peter Ganick Cafe Unreal No Soap Radio Susan Gevirtz Linen Minus Catherine Harris Sylvan Delta Barbara Henning The Passion of Signs Emmanuel Hocquard Theory of Tables Lisa Houston Liquid Amber Laura (Riding) Jackson Lives of Wives Paol Keineg Boudica Kevin Killian Santa Cynthia Kimball Omen for a Birthday Tom Lafarge The Crimson Bears A Hundred Doors (crimson bears pt. 2) Denise Lawson Where You Form the Letter L Stacy Levine My Horse & other stories Ira Lightman Psychoanalysis of Oedipus Lori Lubeski Stamina Kimberly Lyons Rhyme the Laker Kevin Magee Sea/Land Tom Mandel Letters of the Law Friedericke Mayrocker Heiligenanstalt Sianne Ngai My Novel Jena Osman Amblyopia John Perlman Exuviae The Natural History of Trees Randall Potts Recant: (A Reviesion) Kristin Prevallet from Perturbation, My Sister Elena Rivera Wale Kim Rosenfield Two Poems Joe Ross Push Leslie Scalapino Defoe Ron Silliman Jones J. Spahr et.al. A Poetics of Criticism Cole Swenson Walk Elizabeth Willis Second Law Magazines: Avec Vol.8, 1994 CB #1, fall 1994 Exile Vol.2 #4, fall 1994 House Organ #8, fall 1994 The Impercipient #6, November 1994 North American Idiophonics Annual 1994 Situation #8 -& this is just a small sampling... WE WOULD WELCOME short (100-200 word) reviews of any of the above titles, other publications, or related language-arts work: spoken word recordings, artist's books, intermedia, etc... We also run longer "feature" articles (1000-2000 wd.), focusing on particular authors, titles, publishers, or tendencies (Leave Books would be a prime candidate...) The emphasis remains on _access_ to publications. Query first. Samples of TapRoot Reviews Electronic Edition (TRee) can be found at the Electronic Poetry Center, and additional "writer's Guidelines" are available from this address. luigi-bob drake Burning Press/TRR au462@cleveland.freenet.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 15:06:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi Subject: Koch's Birthday//THE TUNNEL In-Reply-To: <199503181550.AA18308@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> Yes, it's true that anyone who wants to convey birthday messages to be read at KK's birthday celebration can e-mail them to me at . We're asking that the messages not take more than 3 minutes to read. If anyone plans to be in NYC, the time and place are: 7PM Thursday March 23, Maison Francaise, Columbia University, 116th and Broadway. For more specific info or directions, of course feel free to contact me. Ron Padgett will coordinate various readers and readings and theatricals and confessions and home movies, and we will have cheese. Gass gave a reading with Gaddis at the 92Street Y a few weeks ago; don't know if that counts as fanfare for his new book, but it was a good reading with Gaddis acting very grumpy about the whole thing. If anyone gets through the entire TUNNEL I would be very curious to hear about the cumulative effect. --Marisa Januzzi (very heartened to know so many of you are interested in Mina Loy-- thanks to all for your messages) PS: "beddy-byes"?! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 15:40:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: bed riddence Ryan, i read, and have been reading for the past long while, Leonard Cohen's BOOK OF MERCY before going to sleep at night, because, you see, i never know if i'm going to wake up on th' other side. wtch is interesting. i dont really like Leonard Cohen Carl ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 16:25:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Poetry and the Page In-Reply-To: <199503121646.IAA26963@whistler.sfu.ca> from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Mar 12, 95 11:01:35 am H.T. Kirby-Smith mentioned poetry in the 1500s that tried to accomodate appearance on the page to content. Now, I have a lot of trouble with that concept--the idea of poetry's containing something. I know that it is a term long in use, but ever since I first heard it I have wanted to have it explained to me. What is the "content" of a poem. How can a poem be a container? Isnt it words that dissapewar as sound into the air and down people's earholes? As written how will it contain. What would be an example of something contained in a poem-container? I am not fooling here. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Mar 1995 18:31:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: what i'm reading i like to know what people are reading; it's entertaining and instructive. i'm reading or have recently read cb's a poetics; louis, a book abt. louis armstrong; a ms by lew ellingham about jack spicer's life and circle; ammiel alcalay's after jews and arabs; marilyn halter's between race and ethnicity (a book about cape verdean immigrants to southeastern new england) in connection w/ research on steven jonas; pat shipman's the evolution of racism, a popular-ish history-of-science account of the relationship between darwinism/physical anthropology and ideologies of race and racism (not especially recommended) in connection w/ a project on jewish social scientists, esp. anthropologists. charmed by the discussion of malleable cast so might add that to my list. have ordered some of hannah wiener.--maria damon ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 01:20:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: what i'm reading Maria--did CLINT BURNHAM write a book called "a poetics"--I'll be damned...cs. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 10:29:52 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: call for reviewers friends-- response to yesterday's call for reviewers has been quick & generous; many thanks to all. mindful of past discussions (and past issues of TRR), i notice that all offers so far have been from men. before i give the boys first pick, i'd like to enter a plea to women on the list to consider contributing... as mentioned, in addition to titles listed in the post, current poetry/lit/language/intermedia releases from any small independent presses would be welcome (tho best to check first, in order to avoid duplication). the aim of TRR is to help connect readers to a variety of new work--a variety of perspectives is essential in reaching that goal. &, tho i'd _not_ want to see exclusively gender-correlated reviewers, i'll point out that almost half of the authors on the initial list are women. again, _many_ thanks to the folks who've offered so far--i'm sure you'll understand this as no slight... sincere luigi TRR/Burning Press au462@cleveland.freenet.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 11:43:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: maria damon's "what I am reading" In-Reply-To: <199503190040.QAA26449@whistler.sfu.ca> from "maria damon" at Mar 18, 95 06:31:05 pm maria-- in your reading list you mention lew ellingham's book on jack spicer. I am currently writing on spicer (or, at least on the cusp of writing) and am interested in hearing what you have to say about ellingham's book. I think I have read more anecdotes than insights on spicer. Ryan Knighton (knighton@sfu.ca) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 14:32:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: what i'm reading X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu who's clint burnham? i'm not so deeply immersed in this POETICS world that i'd know if i were slighting someone,etc.--maria In message <2f6bce3a2f2e004@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Maria--did CLINT BURNHAM write a book called "a poetics"--I'll be > damned...cs. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 14:49:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: maria damon's "what I am reading" X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu In message <2f6c89831860002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > maria-- > > in your reading list you mention lew ellingham's book on > jack spicer. I am currently writing on spicer (or, at least > on the cusp of writing) and am interested in hearing what > you have to say about ellingham's book. I think I have > read more anecdotes than insights on spicer. > > Ryan Knighton (knighton@sfu.ca) ryan: there are 2 versions of ellingham's ms --one a rich and lively (though over-long and unfocused) set of oral histories centered on spicer but addressing the entire gay/beat/bohemian/poetic scene of north beach in the 50s and 60s in much particularity --lots of thumbnail portraits of folks like russell fitzgerald (whose beautiful journals are copiously quoted), bob kaufman (on whom fitzgerald had a mad crush), paul alexander, joanne kyger, etc. the other version is a biographical distillation of the longer ms.--i'm only on p 100 or so of that one. what this version gains in brevity and focus it loses in intensity; there are fewer readings of poems (spicer's and other's) and less in-depth discussion of poetics. what u say about the rich anecdotal lore on spicer outweighing the serious consideration of his poetics is interesting; i think this often happens with "cult figures"; one way of looking at this is to grant that analysis might be embedded in these anecdotes and could be teased out --that these anecdotes are part of the poetics relevant to whatever poet seems to end up being talked about this way. because the layering of legend around a "poet" and his "poems" becomes part of the context that determines the meaning and substance of his/her oeuvre, just as clifford geertz's "thick description" is part of the ethnography the anthropologist generates. what "cultural work" is accomplished by these anecdotes and the need to tell them? whaddya think?--maria ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 08:30:58 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: close reading Dear Chris Stroffolino, Can you identify what in academia appears to prevent you from sharing your reading-writing practice without let or stay or looking over the shoulder for hindrance? Is there a conflict between poetry as a practice and academic demands? Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 16:26:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Samuels Subject: poetry v the sharp mind dear Tony Green -- your question about poetry is addressed to Chris S., but i couldn't let it go. there is, anyway here where i am a dissertator & instructor, zero encouragement to do anything other than these 2 things. & i sense, often, that people who write poetry while they are pursuing academics are seen as double-dippers, can't quite make up their minds, poor things, & after all the creative act can have a kind of dulling, happifying effect on them, when they ought to know it's best to use all one's mental energy to think sharply & clearly, to reach objectivisms of the mind, to EXPLAIN without sievey effect certain small truths about certain pre-written arenas. pardon the tone, perhaps. but i think i found your question remarkable, & i wonder if there is not this division in NZ? let me add: as academic expands it seems there are some people & places where this conflict is not so evident -- i felt this at the Louisville conference -- & that change makes me more content to be, as it were, institutionalized. & so i continue to write poetry, too. Lisa Samuels ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 10:32:30 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind Dear Lisa, NZ has much the same noxious divisions as pretty well anywhere else in English speaking academia -- of the kind you write about. I'm interested in resistances, cross-overs, infiltration strategies. Hence my question on this list ( to Chris and anyone else). Charles Bernstein's A Poetics is a point of resistance for me. Looking for professional philosophers to back up an idea I had about Descartes's narrative of doubt and certainty, I found, on Friday, Dalia Judovitz "Subjectivity and Representation in Descartes" C.U.P.1988 (writing that goes back to early 1980's) , proposing to cross frontiers, with: " ...the foundation of subjectivity as a philosophical construct is inseparable from its literary representation as an autobiographical, historical and narrative entity". Sounds promising (intro.p.3) Who made the division (and when) between literary and philosophical? The questions get to beg for Foucaultian answers pretty fast. Best wishes Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 19:22:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Groovy Books An extension of the "Sixties Gold/Classic O.P." discussion: TEN GROOVY BOOKS KEY: Groove Factor 1-3 = "Groovy" Groove Factor 4-6 = "Very Groovy" Groove Factor 7-9 = "Totally Groovy" Groove Factor 10 = "Oh My Fucking God That Is Like Totally *Beyond* Groovy" Call me a fetishist, but what *I* like are "groovy" books. "What the hell does that mean?" "By what measure--'grooviness'?" "Does the work *in* the book have to be 'good' for a book to be considered groovy?" "Can a 'fine print' edition of something be 'groovy'?" Hey, thanks for asking. Well, first of all, *obviously* everyone's going to have different ideas as to what's "groovy." For me, "groovy's measure" is something I feel first in my gut then, later, spend hours on the phone with friends, "verifying." I'll describe the book, after which point I'll ask, "So, is this groovy, or what?" A "yes" answer from more than 1/2 of all queried friends "verifies" grooviness. Level of queried-friend enthusiasm determines Groove Factor. A "no" answer from more than 1/2 can either (a) lower Groove Factor, or (b) annul said book's "groovy" status. (Book becomes "just-a-book.") No, the work doesn't *necessarily* have to be any good. But, it helps. Lastly, "groovy," like "campy," is a value attributed more by audience member, than maker. Most "fine print" editions--lovely though they might be--are not "groovy." (It's a distinction that admittedly still needs work.) (Chris Stroffolino, as someone in academia who's also interested in contemporary rock music, you might be the perfect person to--perhaps as a thesis?--hammer out the above admittedly "foggy notion"s of "grooviness" into a "sharp" essay.) So, in no particular order, here are 10 randomly chosen "groovy" books ... Alfred Tennyson, _Lover's Tale_, Walton Press, no copyright date. This hardcover (library binding?) of Tennyson's poem includes three "found" photos by Bern Porter. I gave this book 1 Groove Unit for each photo. Three photos x 1 Groove Unit ea. = GROOVE FACTOR 3. Chris Mason, _Click Poems_, Shabby Editions, 1982. "The Click Poems were inspired by and are dedicated to the click language of the Bushmen in South Africa, and the Ameslan sign language of the deaf community of the United States." A beautiful mini-chap w/extraordinary work (can't reproduce here; poems use "fermatas", illustrations of lips &etc., scribbled out text) found used in MPLS. GROOVE FACTOR: 5. Hey, wait! The address says "c/o Cris Cheek"! And Cris is on this list! I've "talked to" Cris! GROOVE FACTOR: 7. Jack Spicer, _After Lorca_, (picture of cone = press name?), 1974. A reprint (pirated?). Blue ink. The verso of the title page says: "This book has been typed on an IBM Selectric blah, blah, blah, by Robin Cones and printed by Marco Polio for the Government, with a cover from a photo by blah, blah, blah, in March, 1974." Anyone know who made this book? Delicious! GROOVE FACTOR: 10. Patti Smith, _Seventh Heaven_, Telegraph Books, 1972. Patti's first book, I think. GREAT cover photo: looks like Patti hasn't bathed since 1966, struggling to keep eyes open. Dedication: "this book is dedicated to/ Mickey Spillane/ and/ Anita Pallenberg." How groovy? GROOVE FACTOR 8. James Sherry, _In Case_, Sun & Moon Press, 1981. Great lurid pulp cover, text pages printed on *pulp stock paper*. Jonathan Brannen (a frequent Groove Consultant) mentioned that he'd seen a review of this book that actually *criticized* the book for having been printed on such "cheap" paper. (Critic obviously didn't "get" it.) GROOVE FACTOR (including Brannen's anecdote): 6. Maxine Chernoff, _A Vegetable Emergency_, Beyond Baroque Foundation, 1977. This 8-1/2" x 11" printed on cheap stock was published in an edition of EIGHT THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED copies. *Tell* me that's not groovy. Bonus Groove Unit as I got it signed by Chernoff in '93, who explained the high press run: "Yeah, they, um, they printed an awful lot of these." GROOVE FACTOR: 6. James Haining (editor), _Salt Lick_ Vol. 2, Nos. 1-2, 1972. Every issue of _Salt Lick_ is groovy, but this one particularly so. Includes Gerald Burns' _Boccherini's Minuet_ as a make-it- yourself chapbook insert (!); also includes poems by Robert Slater, Robert Trammell's "George Washington Trammell," poems by Ann Darr, Stephen Leggett, Bruce Andrews' "Getting Ready To Be Frightened" ("go Gandhi go"), poems by James Haining, drawings by Wilton David, and essays & reviews by Burns, Michael Lally, Al Drake, Andrews, Victor Contoski, Darr, Ron Silliman, Daniel Castelaz, and Haining. Reading this, you get the sense that, in 1972, anything might've happened. Incredible list of Books & Mags received. GROOVE FACTOR: 10. J H Prynne, _Kitchen Poems_, Grossman/Cape Goliard, 1968. Top o' the line poetry, *beautiful* edition (great two-page "trig" drawing in red on title & facing pages). GROOVE FACTOR 9. (Docked one point from perfect score only because I found two copies in the same used bookstore.) (Groove "aura" loss.) Robert Gluck, _Marsha Poems_, Hoddypoll Press, 1973. Instead of stapling this 8-1/2" x 11", the publisher bound it with red string. Also, "Marsha"--the cartoon woman on the cover--has red flowers felt-tip penned onto her dress. GROOVE FACTOR: 5. Tom Weatherly, _Maumau American Cantos_, Corinth Books, 1970. The title? *Way* "seventies." Includes subtitles like: "roi rogers and the warlocks of space." You know what I'm thinkin'? I'm thinkin': GROOVE FACTOR 8. That's ten. Groovy. Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 21:07:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: To you Hi Gary. You did not mention that you, yourself, Gary Sullivan, have a "groove factor" of about 11 or 12. And even those numbers are too pubescent to describe the full engorged groove factor you walk amidst, like an angel in a cloud. Thanks--for being you. Kevin Killian 1995 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 18:10:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: maria damon's "what I am reading" In-Reply-To: <199503192057.MAA00131@whistler.sfu.ca> from "maria damon" at Mar 19, 95 02:49:35 pm maria--in response to your response re spicer and that "the layering of legend around a 'poet' and his 'poems' becomes part of the context that determines meaning". Thanks for your thoughts on both versions of Ellingham's book. As for your ideas on anecdotes, it raises an interesting problem. It seems to me, in the reading I have done around Spicer, that anecdotes are the preferred critical point of departure because there isn't really an easily and accessible language to discuss his work with/within. I'm thinking of Blaser's essay at the end of the collected works as perhaps the closest example of writing which comes as close as it can to Spicer's writing against the poem as "container" (to quote another e-list topic). It seems to me that because much of his poetry occurs in dis- ruption, in the space between form/referent, original/translation, world/poem (Lorca's lemons, for instance or the necessity of resonance in the serial poem), a stable, critical discourse is the wrong bone to pick with. Or, maybe not. Any thoughts? Ryan Knighton P. S. -- reading my message over I noticed "easily" should be "easy". Feel free to exchange them. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 21:44:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rae Armantrout Subject: Re: Groovy Books I think someone should say that Carla Harryman's Memory Play (O Books) is amazing. I guess it will have to be me. Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 22:01:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind Dear Tony and Lisa--I guess it's a question of "finding a niche" or questioning what is allegedly considered "marketable" out there--I may be "naively" "deluding" myself--but I wonder about what is considered "fashionable" in academia today and how many people (whether as poets or not) seem to be cowering under these dimly perceived "demands of the marketplace"--As a student, I have no answers but hunches at present about such "ways and means" and 'strategies of subversions"--However, the division between "philosophy and literature" I do not see as a problem Foucault has answered--in fact, Foucauldianisn may be part of the problem itself (not that there isn't "value" in Foucault)...the question in some ways is perennial--depsite the generational specificity one could appeal to in terms of academic and economic realities... This is probably too vague... but, for the most part, unlike Lisa, I have suspended my so-called "poetic" activities in my first year here as a graduate student...(though that my change)...Chris S. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 15:48:22 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind Hi Chris, The question is not quite so easy: If your practice with texts is margin writing, how far does that notion of writing figure in what you do elsewise in the setting of the academy? Is this a fair statement of a position that some people might hold: "Much of what I am interested in doing as a writer would fit better with some rather different academy than the one I'm actually in --- but I persist. This brings with it some conflict, but in the long term this produces pressure on the academy to change." (Wystan Curnow said something like this in a post a few months ago in a discussion of the academy. It can harbour difference, sometimes.) In the end, the academy cannot do without a renewal of productive activity. The funny thing about the Descartes book by Judowitz is that so far I can't see it taking advantage of the possibilities of narrative or autobiographical or fictional strategies itself: it remains expository discourse of a familiar enough kind. But Susan Howe's writing on Emily Dickinson, that's a model that not too many academic readers will happily endorse, and recommend to their students as models....?... (I hope I'm wrong on that). So Foucault, and what ever else by way of theory, may show where the problem lies, but doesn't necessaril;y change anything in practice. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 15:58:49 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind P.S. I've misread you, Chris. Foucault is part of the problem? Oh, I was thinking of the Archaeology of Knowledge and the analysis of the how writing is controlled and authorised by institutional set-ups. So I was seeing the problems of writing in the academy in terms of what is permitted and what is not by the institution. I also think now of the evident difficulties that occurred when Charles Olson delivered his Beloit lectures (No theme sentences!) or the account of the last days of Olson by Charles Boer. Olsonian practice looks as remote from academic respectability as ever...raising the question, just how "serious" is he as a historian?....(How many writers on history or mythology cite his views as support?.....) Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 18:30:14 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind In-Reply-To: <9503192124.AA04045@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> I do like Lisa's comparison between the demand to think clearly and objectively (a la science perhaps? or a la someone's misconception of science?) and the fuzzy poor thing double dippers who write--what, for enjoyment? I have hardly written a poetic or fictional word since I came to begin this Fddd. Am finally doing so again because taking a class on surrealism where the prof actually believes in writing like to learn about. But sometimes I feel as though I'm having my bones pared down in an effort to get me to think in a way that don't come naturally. Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 00:11:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind Dear Tony, Lisa, Gabrielle, etc.-- When Tony writes "If your practice with texts is margin writing..." I wonder IF my practice with texts IS margin writing, and I distrust what i will call my own tendency to introject and/or employ such academic/professional buzzwords...and I'd like to think thatin academia the "use" of such terms does not automatically imply a too eager attitude towards "marketability"--etc. I don't think it's just true at my school, (though i may be overgeneralizing--especially in this age of Newt gingrich and Allan Bloom), that there is a lot of discourse that announces itself as "margin writing" because it is fashionable to do so...Whether this really is margin writing of course is a more interesting question because it allows one to see the OLD IN THE NEW and the NEW IN THE OLD...This does not mean that I do not wish my dissertation to "explode academic discourse" as much as MY EMILY DICKINSON does...But I do not want to be self-congratula tory about how "unigue" and "new" and "progressive" either "I" or "my people" are--I guess I see such posturing as "getting in the way of the real issues" (as James Sherry read me months ago), and by "real issues" I just mean the possibility of COMMUNICATION of a more intimate sort occuring in institutional contexts....though I also think what is central here is that there is a need to be challenged intellectually as well...It is not a mere question of "new" and "old" or "margin writing" but of a desire to learn as well as teach and to actually not be one of those who, burdened by professionalism or scarred by academia, can not be fueled or excited by their involvement with it. As if one can play a role one hates in hopes it will catch the ear without killing it...and only then FEEL COMFORTABLE ENOUGH TO BE ITSELF (if it knows what it likes anymore---and no I'm not necessarily "privileging" "humanist essentialism" here)....For there is not only McPoetry but McAcademic Discourse it seems to me, and it wants to have the house surrounded, blaring Eddie Cochran's "get to the top I'm too tired to rock," of which this impatience of mine to "correct" myself in public is no doubt part (but smile). Chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 00:13:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind So, Gabrielle, what SURREALISM are you reading? I'm sure others would like to know too...I'm reading some too--Soupault is getting to me more now....Chris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 20:00:17 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind In-Reply-To: <9503200515.AA11068@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Hi Chris. Reading Lautreaumont's Les Chants de Maldorol On Sun, 19 Mar 1995, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > So, Gabrielle, what SURREALISM are you reading? I'm sure others would > like to know too...I'm reading some too--Soupault is getting to me more > now....Chris > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 00:28:14 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: New Lally Reprint Since the publisher's not on line, I hope you all won't mind my plugging this new reprint of: CATCH MY BREATH, Fiction/Poetry/Autobiography from 1960 -1974 by MICHAEL LALLY Salt Lick Press; 86 pages; perfectbound; $13.00 Order direct from Salt Lick Press (add $2.00 shipping) 2107 NE Multnomah Street * Portland, OR 97232-2119 * U.S.A. (502) 288-6952 Originally published in 1978, the first edition of this selection of Lally's early writing went out of print in three months, and has remained o.p. until this 1995 reprint. Lally is the author of two dozen books, and edited the anthology _None of the Above_ in 1976, which included work by Bruce Andrews, Alice Notley & Ron Silliman, among others. He may or may not have been the editor of O Press (my copy of Blaise Cendrars' _At the Heart of the World_ ((GROOVE FACTOR: 7)), trans. by Annabel Levitt & published by O Press in 1978, lists its address as "c/o Michael Lally"). (Anyone who knows who *did* edit O Press -- not to be confused with Leslie's O Books -- let me know.) (BTW: Rae, is that Harryman O Books book new? Can you tell us more about it?) BLURB-TYPE MATTER: "Lally's 'autobiographical' work is not confessional -- no catharsis, either on his part or the reader's is called for. Less obvious is the structural function of Lally's continual insistence on anchoring himself (chronologically, geographically, politically, sexually): being up-front about his perspective and his prejudices. ... Lally, the narrator, does not transcribe 'raw material' but formally organizes a written story as if it were a spoken one -- with all the personal digressions and asides this implies. ... Lally aims for separation, judgment, the division of reader's intelligence from his own, the active direction of it to his work. It is what his 'anchoring' is all about: here I am, there you are, we are not the same ..." -- Jane DeLynn, from the Afterword. EXCERPT (from "Empty Closets"): No more annexing the gris-gris. Me they generally call THE SHELF. They call him DRY the way your balls feel when you been put away AGAIN. She forgives the future when we take out each others eyes to fill in the blanks. Blue gorges. "Way uptown on a hundred, hanging from my action back, you're supposed to watch tv." Once a year the sharks would come to singular execution of snow fields, o, in piles behind the early fifties. On top of that we move around, gored silver following ourselves. Getting fucked. Now, obviously, if you could get the *original* edition of this book, that would be *way* groovy. The reprint isn't what I'd call "groovy," but is a wonderful book nontheless. Kevin, thank you so much for that thoroughly flattering groove assessment, but the research I've done puts me (a mere "groovetaster") way, way below a Lifetime Achievement Groovemaster like Lally. Did you see him last week on "NYPD Blue"? Most poets, you give them a bit part in some TV cop show, they fuck it up. (I think history has proven *that* much.) When Marta & I watched Lally's "NYPD Blue" performance, we had stacked up all of his books on the floor, "just in case" he started to get "embarassing," in which case we'd've been forced to read one of his poems over the realer-than-life TV dialog. That never happened. He's not only a wonderful poet, but a stunning TV-cop-show-bit-part-actor, to boot. What am I saying? GROOVE FACTOR: 50. Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 10:15:28 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk" Subject: Walsh / Scully Forget the politicians' handshakes, PIG PRESS has just published two of the most exciting of the younger Irish poets: CATHERINE WALSH : PITCH "The writer might be a stone cast into cast into life recording narrative ripples and disturbed reflections of a zoetrope memory... PITCH is worth reading, not least to watch thought select which part of itself to display in language." Tom Raworth 48pp / Five Pounds Ninetyfive / Twelve Dollars Ninety MAURICE SCULLY : THE BASIC COLOURS Writing with what one critic has called a "lightfooted rage", Scully chronicles the language shifts of wanderings in Dublin, Lesotho and Ennis. Peter Quartermain writes: "Who but the pained alert could be nightwatchman in these ruins of the future where we dwell?" 60pp / Six Pounds Ninetyfive / Fourteen Dollars Ninety Also new: ROY FISHER : IT FOLLOWS THAT 20pp / Two Pounds Ninety / Six Dollars All Pig Press books are available in the USA from SPD, 1814 San Pablo Ave, Berkeley, CA 94702 - and you can get a sneak preview of these in the "British Poetry Supplement" of NEW AMERICAN WRITING 8/9, 1991. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x x x Richard Caddel, E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk x x Durham University Library, Phone: 0191 374 3044 x x Stockton Rd. Durham DH1 3LY Fax: 0191 374 7481 x x x x "Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write." x x - Basil Bunting x x x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 12:13:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rae Armantrout Subject: Re: New Lally Reprint Dear Gary, Carla's book, Memory Play, is recent but not brand-new. Copyright 1994. It's a real play which has been performed several times. It's from Leslie Scalapino's O books in Berkeley. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it. Sometimes it seems books just fall into oblivion. As someone with a book just out, I'm concerned about that. Aren't we all? Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 15:09:08 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: bedside reading A slightly more English list of what's balanced (sometimes toppling) from an upturned and suprisingly robust cardboard box by the bed. I sometimes go to bed in the afternoon so this isn't always night-time reading or pre-sleep induction. Also just becasue they're there doesn't mean they'll all get read soon. Some are started, some up for occasional visits and some hot. The piles change over about a six weekly cycle. Iain Sinclair - Radon Daughters Roger Griffin - The Nature of Fascism Kathy Acker - My Mother: demonology, a novel Jon Rose - Violin Music in the age of SHOPPING Eric Mottram - Double Your Stake Tom Leonard - Reports from the Present Homi Bhabha - The Location of Culture William Burroughs - The Letters of 1945 to 1959 Bernadette Mayer - Midwinter Day Allen Fisher - Breadboard Alan Bullock - Hitler and Stalin, parallel lives Art & Design Magazine - 'Performance Art Into the 90s' Macintosh Hypercard User's Guide this list posting is obviously a trend disguising a stronger fascination with who's reading what. It seems to be an intriguing way of finding out what's just out and coming up? To echo Eric Pape's point about information - little comes this way. Almost only one bookshop stocks any recent U.S. editions and those by only a handful of 'names'. As a small publisher here I'm beginning to sort out swaps through this list. Seems like one useful way forwards. I increasingly value the inter-continental aspects of this list. Ancillary question would be, who aprt from SPD might be worth approaching for distribution Stateside of recent English Poets? Any ideas / interest? best cris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 12:24:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind Having hung around academe for many years without managing to buckle down to much "real" scholarship, I feel I have something to contribute to this thread. (Any excuse not to work on the dissertation . . . ) Lisa Samuels well describes academic culture's supercilious attitude toward the artist-as-academic. Here at U-Buffalo things are supposed to be different: it was a great place to be a writer-professor 10 or 20 yrs ago. Nowadays, though, the tide turns toward a button-down hyperprofessionalism that increasingly regards poetry as perhaps an interesting object of analysis but not as a strong way of thinking in its own right. I don't see Creeley getting the respect he deserves, for example; it would be most interesting to hear from CB (no, not Clive Barnes) and Susan Howe on this topic. Chris Stroffolino is right, too, to say that Foucauldianism (tho 'haps not Foucault himself, precisely) contributes as much as anything else does to the hostile atmosphere around here. Its undeniably powerful critique seems to delude some followers into regarding themselves as above reproach--as revolutionarily pure (oddly, since the theory would tend to indicate otherwise). I call 'em the "without sin" crowd (and then I duck and cover because they throw hard.) But, though there are too many of those people about, they are not the main causes of the problem under discussion. I trace it to, not a misunderstanding, but a misapplication of scientific method. Science gets a great part of its explanatory power from its insistence upon tackling nature one well-formed question at a time. Poetry doesn't and shouldn't work this way. Art in general (yes, there is such a thing) deals with knots of inseparable questions. Tease these all the way apart and you get much less than you start with. Academic disciplines could cope with this, but in the main they do not. That is why academic disciplines understand a lot about nature in terms of necessity, in terms of power--but they do not understand human freedom at all well. (One small tragedy in this mess is that gradstudents' worries about conforming to theoretical fashion for the sake of marketability are probably misconceived. Here, for instance, faculty often laments the fact that we don't have enough young faculty in the supposedly hot new areas, and so gradstudes are deprived of accreditation in the more marketable perspectives. Trouble is, what's hot changes too fast for us to effectively anticipate it. "Ohmygod we have nobody in Queer Theory!" Well, guess how many noteworthy publications there have been "in" Queer Theory in the past few years: like Stein's Oakland, there's not much of a there there either.) An adage from the sixties: the only way out is through. Let me suggest some texts that might be useful as ways to fight back--to critique the academic folkways that oppress us: Charles Bernstein, "What's Art Got to Do With It . . ." , etc. John Dewey, _Art as Experience_ Larry Hickman, _John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology_ Ronald deSouza, _The Rationality of Emotion_ Mark Johnson, _The Body in the Mind_ (for the basic idea, not the interminable Kant-quibbling) Peter Sloterdijk, _Critique of Cynical Reason_ Bruno Latour, _We Have Never Been Modern_ Jacques Derrida, _Specters of Marx_ . . . many of whom, of copurse, contradict one another completerly . . . (Sorry these are all boys. I wish I had a good explanation for that. I'd add Donna Haraway to this list except I have some fundamental objections I'm still trying to work through. I doubt it's accidental that my favorite women writers are all poets!) --Jim the Scrivener ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 12:31:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Groovy Books so good to read gary's groovey. am so tired of all the humble mumble that should stay in university classrooms. thanks, gary. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 13:37:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "OZZIE J. PEREX" Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: bedside reading the question is : are there any bookstore's informally (if not officially) "on line" (whether here on this list or in general?) a friend at Powell's in Portland Ore. told me that they spent a million dollars on the software to go "online" in order to do mail-order book sales. perhaps we should tell Steve Dickison at SPD to pick up the phone as it were (perhaps he is here listening, even) a million dollars. then he said they spent 20,000 at one little bay area warehouse called serendipity and that they were buying up whole bookstores in north amercia only recently rejecting an offer to move into Prague... so what, we little xroxers are supposed to submit that that ordering structure to make it "easier" suddenly I wonder if that's the point ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 14:04:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: "The Tunnnel" by Wm. Gass George inquired about the availability of "The Tunnel". The beast has arrived from Knopf, weighing in at 652 pages. It's full of visuals, both typographical and color maps and "doodles." It lists @ 30 bucks and got a front page NY Times Book Review article a few weeks ago. I cracked it for the first time this weekend and it looks good--although it's weird to think that the opening pages were written thirty years ago... If anyone else has checked this monster out, I'd be interested in yr inital reaction. Peace, Kenny G ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 20:39:36 WET Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: New Lally Reprint I utterly concur with Rae Armantrout that Carla Harryman's Memory Play is very good writing; a lot like Lorca, with reservations. It was a limited edition, though, or so Carla told me when she sent me a copy. I'd love to chat it over, if others have read it. Or with you, Rae, if you've time; for example "memory" of what? Of genre, I think, and thus very interesting as combatting expectations of readers of language writing, taking on the reader... Ira ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 09:11:15 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind Dear Jim, RIFFLING THRU SLOTERDIJK BACKWARDS "Sapere aude!remains the motto of an enlightenment that, even in the twilight of the most recent dangers, resists intimidation by catastrophe. Only out of its courage can a future still unfold that would be more than the expanded reproduction of the worst of the past. Such courage nourishes itself from the now faint currents of recollection of a spontaneous ability of life to be-in-order, an order not constructed by anybody....." Sloterdijk, Critique,p.546 "Art is the real Gay Science: It stands, as the last guarantor of a sovereign and realistic consciousness, between religion and science." Ibid. p.179 "Politics is not only the art of the possible, as has been siad, but just as muich the art of seduction. It is the chocolate side of power that assumes first, that order must prevail and, second, that the world wants to be deceived." Ibid. p.147 Questions: Do "education" and "culture" go their present way because the principle is in force, that only learning that leads to immediate cash benefits is to be emcouraged? Is that why "poetry" (or any of the arts asking for funding by The State) are likely to get trashed at all levels? Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 17:15:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert A Harrison Subject: Fwd> EZLN Communique Mar.12 (English) I thought some might be interested in seeing the following EZLN communique. If you want to see more on a regular basis (10-50 messages a day) send the following command to hmcleave@mundo.eco.utexas.edu subscribe chiapas The guy who runs the list is Harry Cleaver. bob harrison ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This posting has been forwarded to you as a service of the Austin Comite de Solidaridad con Chiapas y Mexico. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 13:19:18 -0500 (EST) From: BS6492@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU To: chiapas-l@profmexis.dgsca.unam.mx Subject: Communique from the CCRI - English Dear friends - Normally I would try for a more graceful and natural English, but this time I was trying to keep the structure and rhythm of the original, as far as possible, as it reflects, in Spanish, the way Mayan people would express their thoughts in their own languages. If I knew any of the Mayan tongues I could have done a better job, but since I haven't seen any Maya linguists volunteering, I went ahead. !Que vivan el corazon y la voz de nuestros hermanos indigenas! - Que viva un man~ana de paz entre el EZLN y todos los hermanos. Desde las montan~as del Sureste de Estados Unidos -- Bonnie. ***************************************************************** Zapatista National Liberation Army Mexico, March 12 1995 To the people of Mexico: To the peoples of the world: Brothers: With old pain and new death, our heart speaks to you so that your hearts listen. Our pain was in being, hurting it was. Becoming silent, our voice was passing away. Our voice had been of peace, but not of yesterday, not of old peace that was death. Of peace was our voice, of tomorrow's peace. The fire had stayed behind, kept in the days gone by, the fire that spoke for our race when all were deaf to death. Another way our tears asked for, still lost in the arroyos of the mountains. So spoke our dead. The oldest ones then counseled us to look where the sun walks, to ask other brothers of the race, of blood and hope, where our hurt pain should walk, our tired step. This we did, brothers. The silence arrived to put out the fire and there was no arrogance in the word of the true men and women for those who, in other lands and other races, shared the pain and wishes for a tomorrow. We opened our heart, brothers. We learned to see and to listen to other, different brothers. We listened to their word and saw in their heart. And we saw in their step the same longing that put the fire in our hands, that broke up our face until it was nothing but a gaze, that hid our name and erased our past: the struggle to command, obeying; to leave free, the free word and heart; to give and receive what is deserved. The struggle for democracy, freedom and justice. No more, never less. The word of these brothers, your word, asked us to try another path, to leave pending and waiting the fire that armed the breast. To talk, and that through the words, would come the destination. It was they, you, the others. Like us, the always forgotten. The always humiliated, like us. The brothers. This we did. Our voice spoke with the powerful lord. Obeying, we sent our word to the great house of money. We spoke and we listened. We were following that path when the treason, again, put arms above words. Our voice was silenced all at once by the noise of the cars of war. Terror was unleashed again in the Mexican lands. He who from arrogance and power looks at us with contempt, denied our name and gave death as a response to our thought. It wasn't enough for him to deny us a face and life, he wanted to humble our step of dignity, trample our just demands, take truth from our song, sink our flag in oblivion. With the complicity of the big monies and the foreign vocation, he wanted to impose humiliating conditions on us, just to speak. Turning backward the wheel of history, he wanted to force us, by the power of his bayonets, to deny our history. Our women suffered the harassment and the humiliation of the machines of war. Our children grew with bitterness and impotence between their hands. Some, the ones who didn't die. In the men hate sharpened the breast. The greatest grandparents looked again to the earth and asked counsel of the first dead. They spoke. The dead of forever. We. They said this: "Our hand did not rise armed to listen, kneeling, to insults and humiliations. Our step did not rise so that he who is double in his face and in his word could humiliate us, filling hope with lies. "For justice our hand was armed and our step raised. And justice is only a false promise that the powerful dresses himself with. "For freedom our hand was armed and our step raised. And freedom is sold for a fistful of coins to the foreign skin. "For democracy our hand was armed and our step raised. And democracy is still absent by the work of he who cynicism, crime and lies carried into government. "Everything, brothers, but dignity trampled again. "Everything, brothers, but lies again on our table. "Everything, brothers, but to forget once again tomorrow. Thus they spoke. This our dead said. The war came. Then again we saw the brother come in other clothing. He came to kill. To die. Our hand did not want to again confront he who was sent to kill and to die among the same. For that reason, our past ones went to the mountains; to the caves of those before, we went. Death cornered us and pursued lives that always passed away obscurely, shades of death and of the shadow of a forgetful country. Death came to wield again its knife-edge of oblivion. To kill memory it came. Now our hand filled again with fire to avenge the pain of our own, animals again eating earth, dying persecuted and forgotten. Now the drums called to war again. Now the bat men and women prepared again their flight of mortal death. Now the night of pain came again to cover the vengeance of the true men and women. But there came, from where the sun walks, another voice that was not of death. It came great, with the wind it came. Our hurting heart waited and heard what that voice spoke. That the war not go on, it said. That death wait. That the heart of the true men and women not be, yet, a mirror of pain. This we did. The bitterness was put away in the caves and our pain waited for that voice to shout. The voice spoke strongly. How could we not hear it! Many steps was that voice. Great, the song of its drums. Only the arrogant closed his heart. Without fire, with a name and face, that voice raised again the banner of human dignity. For that voice, we were not animals. Men and women again, we were. From other lands came walking that voice. From far away. From the heart of other lands, from other mountains, from other hopes, sisters to ours. It became strong and great. It is a voice. Relief came to our pain, and the waiting harvested hope. A seed, was that voice, in the collective heart that walks in our step. Brothers: A name, that voice gives us. No more are we the unmentionables. A name have we, the forgotten. Now our flag can cover, not hiding itself, our dead and our history. We have now a place in the heart of our brothers, - you - and a small corner in the history that really counts: that of the struggle. Having now a collective name, we discovered that death shrinks, and ends up small on us. The worst death, that of oblivion, flees so that the memory of our dead will never be buried together with their bones. We have now a collective name and our pain has shelter. Now we are larger than death. We have also the hope that just as we received a name, these brothers, - you - will give us tomorrow a face; finish by putting out the fire that lives in our hands; and, instead of the past, give us a future. They smile, these lives of tomorrow and dead of forever. They dream, the bones of the men of wood in the mountains. They dance, the men and women of corn. Joyful is our heart, although the body hurts. A light lights up these shadows that always dance with death, the true men and women, those of forever. We are named. Now we will not die. Come, brothers, we cannot go. Great is the the strength of you all if you make yourselves one. Come, there will be no fire to receive your step, nor will our heart be closed to your word. Come. A name we have. Now we will not die. Let us dance. Now we shall not die. Named are we. Health, brothers! Death to Death! Long live the EZLN! Democracy! Freedom! Justice! >From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee - General Command of the EZLN. ------------------ RFC822 Header Follows ------------------ Received: by CTGshare.Corp.JCI.Com with SMTP;20 Mar 1995 15:58:56 -0600 Received: from INTERNET.CORP.JCI.COM by mhub.corp.jci.com; Mon, 20 Mar 95 15:56:02 -0500 Received: from eco.utexas.edu (mundo.eco.utexas.edu) by interlock.jci.com with SMTP id AA15428 (InterLock SMTP Gateway 3.0 for ); Mon, 20 Mar 1995 15:56:44 -0600 Received: by eco.utexas.edu (4.1/1.34/ECO 1.1) id AA20424; Mon, 20 Mar 95 15:56:37 CST Date: Mon, 20 Mar 95 15:56:37 CST From: hmcleave@mundo.eco.utexas.edu (Harry M. Cleaver) Message-Id: <9503202156.AA20424@eco.utexas.edu> To: "Robert A Harrison" Subject: EZLN Communique Mar.12 (English) ------------------ Nested Letter Follows ------------------ This posting has been forwarded to you as a service of the Austin Comite de Solidaridad con Chiapas y Mexico. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 13:19:18 -0500 (EST) From: BS6492@WCUVAX1.WCU.EDU To: chiapas-l@profmexis.dgsca.unam.mx Subject: Communique from the CCRI - English Dear friends - Normally I would try for a more graceful and natural English, but this time I was trying to keep the structure and rhythm of the original, as far as possible, as it reflects, in Spanish, the way Mayan people would express their thoughts in their own languages. If I knew any of the Mayan tongues I could have done a better job, but since I haven't seen any Maya linguists volunteering, I went ahead. !Que vivan el corazon y la voz de nuestros hermanos indigenas! - Que viva un man~ana de paz entre el EZLN y todos los hermanos. Desde las montan~as del Sureste de Estados Unidos -- Bonnie. ***************************************************************** Zapatista National Liberation Army Mexico, March 12 1995 To the people of Mexico: To the peoples of the world: Brothers: With old pain and new death, our heart speaks to you so that your hearts listen. Our pain was in being, hurting it was. Becoming silent, our voice was passing away. Our voice had been of peace, but not of yesterday, not of old peace that was death. Of peace was our voice, of tomorrow's peace. The fire had stayed behind, kept in the days gone by, the fire that spoke for our race when all were deaf to death. Another way our tears asked for, still lost in the arroyos of the mountains. So spoke our dead. The oldest ones then counseled us to look where the sun walks, to ask other brothers of the race, of blood and hope, where our hurt pain should walk, our tired step. This we did, brothers. The silence arrived to put out the fire and there was no arrogance in the word of the true men and women for those who, in other lands and other races, shared the pain and wishes for a tomorrow. We opened our heart, brothers. We learned to see and to listen to other, different brothers. We listened to their word and saw in their heart. And we saw in their step the same longing that put the fire in our hands, that broke up our face until it was nothing but a gaze, that hid our name and erased our past: the struggle to command, obeying; to leave free, the free word and heart; to give and receive what is deserved. The struggle for democracy, freedom and justice. No more, never less. The word of these brothers, your word, asked us to try another path, to leave pending and waiting the fire that armed the breast. To talk, and that through the words, would come the destination. It was they, you, the others. Like us, the always forgotten. The always humiliated, like us. The brothers. This we did. Our voice spoke with the powerful lord. Obeying, we sent our word to the great house of money. We spoke and we listened. We were following that path when the treason, again, put arms above words. Our voice was silenced all at once by the noise of the cars of war. Terror was unleashed again in the Mexican lands. He who from arrogance and power looks at us with contempt, denied our name and gave death as a response to our thought. It wasn't enough for him to deny us a face and life, he wanted to humble our step of dignity, trample our just demands, take truth from our song, sink our flag in oblivion. With the complicity of the big monies and the foreign vocation, he wanted to impose humiliating conditions on us, just to speak. Turning backward the wheel of history, he wanted to force us, by the power of his bayonets, to deny our history. Our women suffered the harassment and the humiliation of the machines of war. Our children grew with bitterness and impotence between their hands. Some, the ones who didn't die. In the men hate sharpened the breast. The greatest grandparents looked again to the earth and asked counsel of the first dead. They spoke. The dead of forever. We. They said this: "Our hand did not rise armed to listen, kneeling, to insults and humiliations. Our step did not rise so that he who is double in his face and in his word could humiliate us, filling hope with lies. "For justice our hand was armed and our step raised. And justice is only a false promise that the powerful dresses himself with. "For freedom our hand was armed and our step raised. And freedom is sold for a fistful of coins to the foreign skin. "For democracy our hand was armed and our step raised. And democracy is still absent by the work of he who cynicism, crime and lies carried into government. "Everything, brothers, but dignity trampled again. "Everything, brothers, but lies again on our table. "Everything, brothers, but to forget once again tomorrow. Thus they spoke. This our dead said. The war came. Then again we saw the brother come in other clothing. He came to kill. To die. Our hand did not want to again confront he who was sent to kill and to die among the same. For that reason, our past ones went to the mountains; to the caves of those before, we went. Death cornered us and pursued lives that always passed away obscurely, shades of death and of the shadow of a forgetful country. Death came to wield again its knife-edge of oblivion. To kill memory it came. Now our hand filled again with fire to avenge the pain of our own, animals again eating earth, dying persecuted and forgotten. Now the drums called to war again. Now the bat men and women prepared again their flight of mortal death. Now the night of pain came again to cover the vengeance of the true men and women. But there came, from where the sun walks, another voice that was not of death. It came great, with the wind it came. Our hurting heart waited and heard what that voice spoke. That the war not go on, it said. That death wait. That the heart of the true men and women not be, yet, a mirror of pain. This we did. The bitterness was put away in the caves and our pain waited for that voice to shout. The voice spoke strongly. How could we not hear it! Many steps was that voice. Great, the song of its drums. Only the arrogant closed his heart. Without fire, with a name and face, that voice raised again the banner of human dignity. For that voice, we were not animals. Men and women again, we were. From other lands came walking that voice. From far away. From the heart of other lands, from other mountains, from other hopes, sisters to ours. It became strong and great. It is a voice. Relief came to our pain, and the waiting harvested hope. A seed, was that voice, in the collective heart that walks in our step. Brothers: A name, that voice gives us. No more are we the unmentionables. A name have we, the forgotten. Now our flag can cover, not hiding itself, our dead and our history. We have now a place in the heart of our brothers, - you - and a small corner in the history that really counts: that of the struggle. Having now a collective name, we discovered that death shrinks, and ends up small on us. The worst death, that of oblivion, flees so that the memory of our dead will never be buried together with their bones. We have now a collective name and our pain has shelter. Now we are larger than death. We have also the hope that just as we received a name, these brothers, - you - will give us tomorrow a face; finish by putting out the fire that lives in our hands; and, instead of the past, give us a future. They smile, these lives of tomorrow and dead of forever. They dream, the bones of the men of wood in the mountains. They dance, the men and women of corn. Joyful is our heart, although the body hurts. A light lights up these shadows that always dance with death, the true men and women, those of forever. We are named. Now we will not die. Come, brothers, we cannot go. Great is the the strength of you all if you make yourselves one. Come, there will be no fire to receive your step, nor will our heart be closed to your word. Come. A name we have. Now we will not die. Let us dance. Now we shall not die. Named are we. Health, brothers! Death to Death! Long live the EZLN! Democracy! Freedom! Justice! >From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee - General Command of the EZLN. ------------------ RFC822 Header Follows ------------------ Received: by CTGshare.Corp.JCI.Com with SMTP;20 Mar 1995 15:58:56 -0600 Received: from INTERNET.CORP.JCI.COM by mhub.corp.jci.com; Mon, 20 Mar 95 15:56:02 -0500 Received: from eco.utexas.edu (mundo.eco.utexas.edu) by interlock.jci.com with SMTP id AA15428 (InterLock SMTP Gateway 3.0 for ); Mon, 20 Mar 1995 15:56:44 -0600 Received: by eco.utexas.edu (4.1/1.34/ECO 1.1) id AA20424; Mon, 20 Mar 95 15:56:37 CST Date: Mon, 20 Mar 95 15:56:37 CST From: hmcleave@mundo.eco.utexas.edu (Harry M. Cleaver) Message-Id: <9503202156.AA20424@eco.utexas.edu> To: "Robert A Harrison" Subject: EZLN Communique Mar.12 (English) ------------------ End of Nested Letter ------------------ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 17:21:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Letter from Alan Loney (preface) I invariably, or at least variably, call O Books (Leslie Scalapino's press) O Press (Michael Lally's lively press of the 70s). I think O! Press, but Leslie notes "oppress". In an separate post, to follow immediately, I am sending a longish letter to the editor by Alan Loney, a terrific poet from New Zealand. I thought the letter might be of interest "here" even in the absence of the review to which it responds. Alan Loney has been a subscriber to the Poetics List, but has recently signed off. He is the author of two recommended books: Missing Parts: Poems 1977-1990 (Christchurch, NZ: Hazard Press, 1992) and The Erasure Tapes (Auckland University Press, 1994), which Loney describes in the Preface as "an autobiography in which I refuse to tell the story of my life." I am not sure how people outside New Zealand can get these books, or the (also highly recommended!) book by Michelle Leggott, _DIA_ (egad! another poet-scholar, the self-same author of the awesome study of Zukofsky's 80 Flowers from Johns Hopkins a few years back (_Reading 80 Flowers_). But I think that Wystan Curnow and Tony Green, who should be reading this message "now", might be able to help out? Charles Bernstein ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 17:27:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Loney c/o Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Letter to the Editor (longish): The Panic of Jane Stafford Alan Loney The Panic of Jane Stafford Re: "The panic of O", Jane Stafford, New Zealand Books, Vol 4 No 3, September 1994. For the past 25 to 30 years some of "us", i.e. writers who have generally been considered to be working somewhere on the margins of New Zealand literature, have been on the receiving end of a number of, shall I say, negative adjectives attached to our work and the work of others that we respect, by "mainstream" authors and critics in book reviews. It is an impressive list, and maybe it would be best to start by exhibiting it, in all its glory, just so that we know clearly what is being discussed. Here are some of the more frequently applied: solipsistic, elitist, pretentious, obscure, empty, cognoscenti, private reference, no discernible thought, resistance to interpretation, provocative, smart-arse, clever, wilful, self-indulgent, contempt for the reader, ivory tower, writing for a coterie, intellectual, pseudo-intellectual, so-called postmodern, so-called "Language Poets", excluding the average reader, void of meaning, inaccessible, etc etc etc. Jane Stafford's review of Murray Edmond's The Switch and Michele Leggott's Dia , both recently published by Auckland University Press, contains the first fifteen of these. They are now, after all these years, nothing more nor less than a set of cliched insults, and their purpose is invariably to provide excuses for refusing to actually engage with the work being so characterised. Jane Stafford's review of the Edmond and Leggott texts is argued, detailed, and attempts to get beyond the mere name-calling exercise that I have nevertheless stated that it includes. It is therefore to be welcomed as providing a genuine opportunity for reply in ways that the mere name-calling procedure does not. But these negative terms are so repeated and familiar in New Zealand poetry reviewing that it seems less a matter of deja vu, than of a kind of ventriloquism - where the dummy keeps on producing its lines long after the operator has vacated the premises. Credentials and allegiances Ms Stafford is at pains to establish a kind of credibility for herself, one that is based on credentials - "I teach a second year university course etc". Ordinarily, such candour is to be welcomed. But one can easily compile other paragraphs, one of which might begin : "Murray Edmond is a lecturer in Drama at the University of Auckland, is convenor of the post-graduate Diploma in Drama programme, and lectures in a stage 3 American poetry course. He is the author of 6 books of poetry (several of them out of print) and so on". Another such paragraph might start with :"Michele Leggott is a lecturer at the University of Auckland in New Zealand poetry, in American poetry, in Australasian Women's Literature, with a PhD from University of British Columbia at Vancouver. She has published 3 books of poetry (the first is out of print), and her major study "Reading Zukosfky's 80 Flowers " was published by Johns Hopkins University Press on the recommendation of Hugh Kenner etc etc". It's not my purpose to pit credentials against each other here (that would at the least be silly), but to make the more important point that we all have credentials of one sort or another. In a field like "literature" such credentials do not automatically confer guarantees of appropriate information, approach, or judgement. We are all contestable when discussions about values are taking place. Whatever else one thinks of the work of Michele Leggott, Murray Edmond, and, let's be clear, Alan Loney and any others with whom we are perceived to have some sort of allegiance, what one cannot say is that they all write in the same way or that the works of each are easily able to be confused with each other's - by any attentive reading. And yet the 'critical' reception of them by most 'mainstream' authors and reviewers is so familiarly uniform that, instead of getting genuine differential readings of these authors in reviews, we're getting the homogeneous operation of an agenda, a false ideology which specifies these authors as a 'them' which can therefore, according to the normal functioning of 'us and them' patterns, be blithely treated by the same unexamined, unsupported and negative terms and gestures. What that agenda is I don't much care. What I do care about is the pretence that genuine critical reading is taking place; the pretence that those critics have some sort of 'ownership' of the scope, purpose and condition of poetry in New Zealand; and the presumptive judgment that their reviled authors are not serious about their life's work as poets or writers; that they lack integrity and competence of almost any kind whatever; that they have no respect for the work and works of others who work outside their own writerly project (my respect for John Keats and for Mary Ursula Bethell for instance would not even be conceded as possible); and that they have no other apparent motive for writing but to demonstrate to a small group of people who are equally despicable that they are cleverer than anybody else. These assumptions, running throughout Ms Stafford's review, and through hundreds of reviews of poetry in this country in the last 25 to 30 years, are as cheap and unwarranted as anything she or anyone else directs at such writers as Murray Edmond and Michele Leggott. A personal disposition or two Ms Stafford's review begins in a mode of reasonableness and with a proper pedagogical concern for students of literature who are having to learn to engage with unfamiliar texts. It reads like the kind of introduction that might prepare one for the reviewer's own engagement with the work of the authors under discussion. Alas, it does not. What it leads to, almost inexplicably ('almost' as, one tends to expect this sort of response by now), is this: "Which is why I feel angry...". Anger? Why? What business has a professional academic to be 'angry' about texts to be discussed? Are they advocating the pleasures of child abuse? Are they suggesting people would feel better if they beat the hell out of someone rather than having all that pent up feeling floating around? Do they propose ethnic cleansing in their suburb? Wherefore anger? Ms Stafford establishes credentials, I would have thought, for being able to discuss these works. What she actually says is: "I'm trying to make a connection with it. I can't." So. The reviewer's credentials, i.e. her education, her qualifications, her personal predilections, her teachers, her colleagues, her peers, and her reading, have not at all prepared her for the works under review. One could very well be angry about that. Instead of acknowledging her situation however she has chosen to pour scorn on the poets, as if somehow they are to blame for it. To take this point a bit further, there are other, telling, phrases that support my concern. Ms Stafford sees "a more sinister possibility"; "no discernible thought here"; "so old- fashioned"; "smart-arse elitism"; "got a nasty feeling"; "I'm damned if I'm going to"; "I have this nasty feeling"; "I find these two collections depressing" and so on. Why, exactly, is all this nastiness and bad feeling supposed to function as a proper basis for, or condition of, the elucidation of contemporary poetry for what Ms Stafford deigns to call "the less enlightened reader"? We are not told. It is assumed that the reviewer has these bad feelings in good faith. Ms Stafford has given no one any reason to buy such a proposition. The ventriloquist's dummy Does this sub-title merely trade one harshness for another? Perhaps. But it points to a view of things, an agenda, a false and unquestioning ideology. This ideology asserts itself by using a body of cliches, shibboleths even, in order to obscure the meanings of others, and to deny their actual differences. Before I elaborate on this specifically, I want to expose a few carelessnesses and contradictions in Ms Stafford's text. Keats's poem is "Ode to a Nightingale", not "Ode to the Nightingale"; Sterne's book is "Tristram Shandy", not "Tristan Shandy"; and "Morgenstern" refers directly to the work of Christian Morgenstern, and his wordless piece "Fisches Nachtgesang" (1905) (and no, I did not have to ask the poet for the reference). It is, additionally, usual for assistance from others - "A kind and more literate friend" - to be identified in academic writings. And rather than ask how much less literate is implied by that "more", I would rather know who is doing the talking here? Or, to put it another way, who's the ventriloquist in this instance? A not uncommon kind of contradiction that appears in negative reviews is exhibited in Ms Stafford's aside (to whom, exactly?) "a little Saussurian reference for the cognoscenti?". It's hard to take seriously the notion that such a statement is directed to "the less enlightened reader". If it is, how do they, outside of, say, an academic environment, understand "Saussurian"? This aside is also, I'm afraid, directed at a "cognoscenti", and a clear distinction is therefore implied, like it or not, between the author's 'cognoscenti' and the poet's 'cognoscenti' - ours and theirs, us and them. But if she is, say, talking to me (and, after all, I too am a 'reader'), then I would say that she is not at all up with the play, either with Saussure (who dealt with spoken, not written language), or with Heidegger (who said "It is in language that things first come into being and are" (Introduction to Metaphysics), or with Charles Olson's reliance on the work of Jane Ellen Harrison for his assertion that myth (the stories that cultures, oral and literate, tell themselves about themselves) comes first from the mouth. I introduce these other writers here, not to show off my naturally immense erudition, but to signal that we all have such reading lists behind and operative within what we say. For all of us they are different of course, but we all have these alliances, allegiances and engagements to one degree or another. They are not the same kind of thing as 'credentials'. If our 'reading lists' are too different, and I am suggesting that this is likely to be the case as between Ms Stafford and the poets she reviews, then little wonder that the reviewer finds it hard to connect with the work. However, it is the outright refusals that I find the most interesting aspect of Ms Stafford's review. First, the refusal to be (indeed the specific injunction not to be) literal - "Don't be literal". If the literal is the first thing to be denied of unfamiliar writing, then it's understandable that a reader might find a grasp of its metaphorical content hard to come by. If, as Ms Stafford maintains, "a metaphor should expand meaning" (tho I don't accept this formulation myself) then it's possible that the literal is one of the places from which metaphor can "expand". It is, in any case, a perfectly reasonable place to begin. That it should be precluded, requires more explanation than a list of other options, especially when, for instance, my own teaching experience suggests that it is wise counsel to keep the options open until they falter - in any given instance. A further type of refusal is performed in the review when, in discussing Leggott, the reviewer writes that a particular passage "would be fine if I knew what the last two words meant". Those two words are "HYDROPHILE PURLING". It is not I think too churlish to propose the use of a dictionary in such a circumstance. 'Hydrophile' is derived from 'hydrophilic', a chemical term meaning 'having a strong affinity for water'. 'Purling' has, as one of its meanings (and the others are pertinent to the poem) 'flowing with a curling or rippling motion, as a shallow stream over stones'. According to Ms Stafford, she should now be in a position to regard the poet's line as "fine". But by refusing to even admit meanings that are accessible to her, she has paved the way for yet another insult to be attached to the work, yet another opportunity for the ventriloquist's dummy to steal the show. Another line of refusal is the refusal to give the poet the benefit of the reviewer's own insight as exhibited in the review itself. It is this extraordinary strategy that clinches my claims about ventriloquism. Two examples will do. In considering Edmond's poems 43 and 44, Ms Stafford interrogates (properly) the text for meaning. Among her initial notes are language play, sexual content, parallels with other texts in the book, the presence in English of a large number of homographs - all good places to start in establishing a field of meanings for the poems. But just when this beginning is noted she cuts off the flow of elucidatory reading by saying "And it gets worse". Worse? How does a series of valid insights (tho preliminary ones, to be sure) add up automatically to a bad thing? In considering Leggott, the reviewer states that Elizabeth Barrett Browning is "an obvious figure" in the poem Dia, yet notes that the reference to "the Portuguese/wind" etc "may be an allusion", and asks us to note her (Stafford's) "tentativeness" in making the suggestion. Well, what I've already noted is the strength of the phrase "an obvious figure". The most blatant refusal however is the reviewer's refusal to even consider the poem "Micromelismata". 'Concrete' poetry is historically a particular moment, largely in Europe, but extending to Britain and the United States also, within a wider context of shaped poetry, going back to the work of George Herbert (died 1633) in England. Herbert himself knew of at least one predecessor for his work, an edition of The Greek Anthology, Theocriti Idyllia, printed by P. Brubacchius, Frankfurt, 1545. To insist that it is legitimate to reduce this tradition to a mere fashion of c.1972, to which no critic need return in order to speak of newer writing is, I am sorry to say, no more than an excuse for one's own ignorance, and an attempt to blame the poet for the critic's failure of nerve in the face of the material reality of the text. One is of course under no obligation to like or admire any given text, but one does, in public, have to deal with it in an open engagement. What I am bothered about in these refusals is that just at that point when a genuine critical reading looks about to be achieved, Ms Stafford throws in the towel. Again, an opportunity to assist the "unenlightened reader" to deal with a strange looking text is waved away in favour of the agenda that requires that these poets must be belittled and insulted rather than read critically. And of course the problem with reading attentively, generously and critically is that there is the severe danger of having to change one's opinion as the result of reaching genuine findings. The news about elitism As a lecturer in English at a university, Ms Stafford is a member of a small band of elite, specialist readers of literature. As an academic, she can claim uncommon status as an expert, and as a professional worker in the field of literary criticism. The number of people who get paid a salary in New Zealand for teaching literature at tertiary level is, in relation to the population at large, very small. Now, books of poems in New Zealand are typically published in editions of between 500 and 1000 copies, and are very rarely (except in the case of anthologies used for teaching purposes) ever reprinted. There are some exceptions above and below these figures, but 500 to 1000 copies is the typical range. There are, at least, 1.5 million literate adults in New Zealand. A thousand copies (let's be kind to the argument) as a percentage of 1.5million, is 0.066% of the literate adult population. Anyone who thinks this constitutes the democratization of poetry in relation to the literate population at large has, in my view, a lot of explaining to do. If that percentage was closer to 66% for so-called "mainstream" poets and 0.066% for the likes of Edmond and Leggott, I'd have to admit there was a point to be made along these lines. But, it isn't, and there isn't. What it means is that poetry is an elitist proposition per se, at any level at which anyone reads any of it. It also means that 'the general reader' or 'the general public' is not the target group for any publisher of poetry in New Zealand. Those of us who are involved with poetry in any way are all splashing about in the elitist pot together. The subjectivity at the end of the world The last comment made by Ms Stafford denies that 'subjectivity' is an interesting issue. What I have attempted to show here is that it is primarily the poets' 'subjectivity' that has been on trial throughout her review. The list of insults given in my first paragraph says it as well as anything I can end with. They are nearly all solely applicable to people, rather than to texts. If poetry needs anything at all from critics these days, it is close reading, clear and attentive critical analysis. One of the characteristics of, as they say, 'our time', is that there are many more and various backgrounds - cultural, geographic, intellectual, and personal and so on - than can be neatly fitted or reduced to some monolithic sense of "mainstream", to which we are all supposed to conform. This does not mean, in my view, that anything goes. What it does mean is that a greater degree of care, of openness, and of courtesy needs to be operating in the field of public letters, if we are not to simply sit back on 'us & them' perches and merely hurl insults at one another under the privilege of having access to print. -- Alan Loney ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 15:24:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Spencer Selby Subject: Re: Reading Selby In-Reply-To: <199503180615.WAA09947@slip-1.slip.net> Dear Ron, Yr question here has held me up for the past several days. If I am averse to framing or self-interpreting my work, I am even more averse to going into detail about my process. To put it bluntly, I don't believe that this would be helpful to people as reader/viewers of my work. I will try to elaborate a little on that if you or others want me to. Spencer On Fri, 17 Mar 1995, Ron Silliman wrote: > So, Spencer, what is the PROCESS by which you construct one of these > pages? What tools do you use? Physically, I mean. Describe the temporal > sequence perhaps. > > This has been a great discussion and I hope it's not over. > > Ron > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 20:02:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: "Radiant Textuality" (Announcement) FYI ... **************************** Announcement ************************************* West Virginia University Summer Seminar in Literary and Cultural Studies presents RADIANT TEXTUALITY: HUMANE STUDIES IN VIRTUAL SPACES Seminar Leader: Jerome J. McGann Commonwealth Professor of English University of Virginia June 8-11, 1995 West Virginia University Morgantown, WV For seminar rates and more information, contact: Dr. David C. Stewart Department of English West Virginia University PO Box 6296 Morgantown, WV 26505-6296 304-293-3107 WVSSLCS@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 19:37:44 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: 11 distributors for Cris Cheek & others Dear Cris: Yes, I know of at least 11 other small press & "small press friendly" distributors in the States besides SPD. Some of these places only distribute magazines, but most, I think, do distribute small press books, even chapbooks: Anton Mikofsky (magazines, I think) 57 West 84th Street, #1C New York, NY 10024 Bernhard DeBoer, Inc. (again, mostly magazines) 113 East Centre Nutley, NJ 07110 Bookpeople (I don't have address info. Anyone? They're in the Bay Area, I think) Faxon (mags, maybe chaps, too) 15 Southwest Park Westwood, MA 02090 Fine Print (books, mags, chaps) 6448 Highway 290 E Austin, TX 78723 Flatland (books, chapbooks, audiotapes, esp. anything even vaguely "political") P.O. Box 2420 Fort Bragg, CA 95437-2420 (707) 964-8326 Inland Book Company (some small press books, not sure about chaps) P.O. Box 120261 East Haven, CT 06512 Last Gasp (specializes in small press & chaps, somewhere in the Bay Area, maybe Oakland? Anyone with info?) The Segue Foundation (you know about this one) 300 Bowery New York, NY 10012 Ubiquity Distributors, Inc. (mags, maybe books?) 607 DeGraw Street Brooklyn, NY 11217 Word Products (mags, maybe chaps) P.O. Box 8766 Portland, OR 97207-8766 I haven't dealt with most of these places, so can't tell you much more about them than the above. Maybe some of the other publishers on this list might give you the low-down ... Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 18:38:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Groovy Books In-Reply-To: <199503200126.RAA12742@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gary Sullivan" at Mar 19, 95 07:22:06 pm Here is my nomination for utter you got to kiss the middle of your own back groovesville: Well, it is called _2 Poems by H.D._ beautiful colourful sewn little tyhing by the amazing and historical Wesley Tanner in an edition of 226 (200 + 26) in 1970. (1971). Remember the imprimateur ARIF? yes. Not a pirate trove as some H.D. things were at the time. Even the peper of this item feels like thick ice cream made with real cream on the tongue. Andrew Hoyem handset the beaut. Oh, Lord, and the poems are Blakean, as they say, from the 20s. Phew. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 21:57:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: Groovy Books X-To: UB Poetics discussion group In-Reply-To: <2f6dda141a32951@maroon.tc.umn.edu> On Mon, 20 Mar 1995, Edward Foster wrote: > so good to read gary's groovey. am so tired of all the humble mumble that should > stay in university classrooms. thanks, gary. > Ed, it's not the "humble mumble" that wears on me, rather all the "unhumble mumble." But Gary is hoovey groovey, and probably does the hokey cokey pokey, perhaps even with his whole self. I'm not certain who the editor of O Press was in 1978. But it's interesting that the translator of the book in question, Gary, was Annabel Levitt. Annabel had a press, I believe, in the late 70's/early 80's. I think it was at the 1982 NY Small Press Book Fair that I met her. I never knew her well, but I remember she was making some exceptional books. I don't remember if her press was O Press, but I'll try to find out. all best, charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 22:24:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: Groovy Books X-To: UB Poetics discussion group In-Reply-To: <2f6e3c61503c002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> I don't know how Wesley Tanner would think of being characterized as AMAZING and HISTORICAL. He is alive & well, now in the midwest, but I'm not certain if he's continuing to publish literature via ARIF imprint. charles alexander On Mon, 20 Mar 1995, George Bowering wrote: > Here is my nomination for utter you got to kiss the middle of your > own back groovesville: > > Well, it is called _2 Poems by H.D._ > > beautiful colourful sewn little tyhing by the amazing and historical > Wesley Tanner in an edition of 226 (200 + 26) in 1970. (1971). > Remember the imprimateur ARIF? yes. Not a pirate trove as some H.D. > things were at the time. Even the peper of this item feels like thick > ice cream made with real cream on the tongue. Andrew Hoyem handset > the beaut. Oh, Lord, and the poems are Blakean, as they say, from the > 20s. Phew. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 17:15:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu In message <2f6dd5f11a32635@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > I trace it to, not a > misunderstanding, > but a misapplication of scientific method. Science gets a great part of its > explanatory power from its insistence upon tackling nature one well-formed > question at a time. Poetry doesn't and shouldn't work this way. An interesting discussion all around, which i'll save and print out for some of my first-year grad students in culture shock. when u mentioned science i was reminded that, in the strong and large research institutions, which tend to be the prestigious schools where educational paradigms are hegemonically formed, the humanities are always subordinated to the sciences, which are the moneymakers. thus humanists feel under constant pressure to prove that we, too, do "research" etc -- a constant legitimation crisis. among the humanities, the creative and expressive arts are embarrassing evidence of multiple modes of inquiry and apprehension that threaten the hegemonic mode of the production of knowledge --so they have to be repudiated, or, at best, tolerated with a kind of arm's-length condescension by their more analytic discourse-cousins. this is, of course, a simplistic overview. i don't think foucauldianism has anything to do with this --if it weren't foucault's name that were being invoked in the name of some discursive orthodoxy, it wd be someone else's. i myself actually had a rather pleasant graduate experience, in a program that was initially set up to bridge that constructed gap --but then, i keep my "poetic" enterprises pretty private.--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 09:55:27 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric pape Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 20 Mar 1995 17:15:12 -0500 from This is a discussion that will not go away (various manifestations of which has show up at least three times since I joined the list in Dec.) Some notes towards thoughts about the ethics of poets remaining in the academy: First: both sides depend on a rather simple opposition of real work, vs. work that is unimportant. In that the classroom emphasizes critical work and talks of "creative" work as something resembling a hobby, or play. Depends on the assumption that real work is productive of wages, your critical work pays your bills, thus its your real work. The workshop (an academic sub-genre we can no longer forget) emphasizes "creative" work as real work in a sort of romantic cult of the genius manner: critical work pays the bills, but creative work releases the inner genius of the poet and allows for real change and is thus real work. At this point, Tony's point about the somewhat specious seperation of creative and critical needs to be made. Certainly this seperation was/is historical? Maybe you've encountered this as well: in the workshop (whether officially sanctioned by the academy and made a class, or whether a group of folks who meet at the local coffee shop, or some mixture ofthe two, like this list) offers the only real resistance to the various discourses called theory I've experienced. One must not taint the sanctified ground of the workshop with theory. Also, though, the rather typical CW student may find him/herself somewhat patronized in the classroom as rather cute but not all that important, as has been noticed previously. It occurs to me that the strict separation of theory with poetry may have come about as poetry moved into the academy and was the result of academic positioning? Perhaps a little off chronologically. Why stay in the academy? The answer has to be in my mind economic and political. In here, you have the possiblity, however faint, of helping students jump classes, as I did. Get them out of the ghetto/ tenant farm. Has been so, I think, since the GI bill. Also to allow them participatein the formation of the, for lack of a better term, canon, the standards of knowledge, thus the multi-culti wars. This seems to me very positive, but as economic conditions change, and pell grants and such fall away to pay for patriot missiles, all over again, this justification may well go the way of the trade union. What then do we do then, all of us academics? Thanks, Eric. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 16:04:07 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Memory Play X-To: Rae Armantrout Hi Rae, You aren't alone. I completley agree with you about Memory Play and am planning to publish some of it, and other work by Carla upcoming, this side of the pond. In that performance series I recently posted a Call for submissions to. It's a terrific work. Have you seen a performance? I saw a video of There's Nothing Better Than A Theory (back on that discussion again) when visiting Carla and Barrett four years back, so I've got some points of reference for spaciality, movement, scenography. Can you describe it, aspects of the performed version ? Energies, interfusional textures ? Voices ? I've got an interest in producing a version here with Carla in the next couple of years. We're talking here about how to make it possible. Be very interested in your response. best cris ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 18:19:11 WET Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor (longish): The Panic of Jane Stafford I have just re-read Alan Loney's long and fascinating letter and would like to respond to it a little. My own perspective on New Zealand writing, different from Tony Green or Wystan Curnow's, is as an ex-resident of Wellington, at the other end of the North Island from Auckland, where Tony and Wystan are, and where the best NZ collection of Language Writing and other post-war American poetry is, where the American avant-gardists tend to be invited and welcomed. I lived in Wellington for 2 years, and indeed taught on the same 2nd year poetry course as Jane Stafford, who in my recollection was one of the best and warmest of the twenty or so staff at Victoria University there. It's true that, like a lot of people I've met all over the university world, she doesn't understand or like much avant-garde work; but she does teach a lot of very good but formally conservative poets very well, and quite gratefully took on some of the twenty or so poets I tried to introduce to the course, and to my knowledge is still teaching them, poets like Louise Bogan and Carol Ann Duffy. Given that, as Alan suggest, few people seem to read poetry, and a lot are put off in school, I myself used Bogan and Duffy to meet and then stretch my students' expectations, as part of a long slow process of warming them to all the things Alan and I both love about currently marginalised work. Jane may well not do this with her teaching, but she at least has Bogan and Duffy in her handouts, and that might inspire some students. What I want to say about Alan's post is that it seems to me that no-one who isn't already a paid lit worker or academic gives a damn about reviews, and they only care about teachers' opinions in so far as the teacher cares about knowing where they're at - which, in the larger context of the dumbing of people by school & state & church, seems fair to me. Students *fear* teachers for their grades, and care about their opinions usually only for that reason, and therefore with an underlying short attention span (the length of the course-unit) and underlying contempt. I get as angry as Alan does about these reviews, but I don't think they matter very much. I have to say that one reason poetry goes unread, in what seems even more shocking proportions even than England or parts of the States, is that *all* the NZ scene is corrupt, not just the mainstream. I like to think I'm a good acquaintance of Michele Leggott, and I'd be the first to praise her efforts in getting 80 Flowers into print again - by writing the book about it, and by very brilliant diplomatic work with Paul Zukofsky. And the book itself is full of great reference-tracking and research. But I feel less impressed by the writing on the poetics, and by the bulk of her poetry that I've read. The Auckland American Poetry course that friends of mine took is in just as much danger as any Wellington course, or any other course, of telling you to agree and preaching self-evident quality or cool in its own favoured writers. And the effect may mean that some writers I admire more with the Aucklanders than with my Wellington colleagues get onto bookshelves, yet alas they remain unread or read badly, just as most of the Plath and Heaney required on Wellington courses does. These unviersity courses all fail, in my opinion, to nurture the love of *whatever poetry each reader could learn from and progress with*. The ideal would be that teachers give skills in finding poetry and trusting your own reactions to it (I myself *hated* a lot of writers I liked later, that doesn't make me a bad person, as they say). What usually happens is you wind up with a book of poems you've had a class about, and you can repeat what the teacher said about it, but couldn't put forward your own opinion, nor could you engage with another poetry student who has a different favourite book, each opening each to each. I'd like to see more emphasis on finding work you love, among students, and *students* learning by teaching each other; instead of *teachers* finding work they love and teaching it to thirty students at once, with very little reciprocation of student teaching teacher. The rare university teacher, or person, is the one you can come to with your own project, wanting not expertise but an open mind and encouragement. The sad thing about this for me, who's never met Alan though loves his art-letterpress limited editions, is both Jane and he are better than most people I've met at engaging personibly with students, with the ideosyncractic mind; and this disagreement masks a potential alliance between people who are both really good *teachers* - in a way that is much more important, for me, to the future of poetry than badly written "house-style" reviewing. (I also think every interesting New Zealand poetry person I met or heard about is short-sightedly dismissive about all the British poetry, avant-garde included, that I ever tried to mention..., but that's another story) Ira Lightman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 08:48:01 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Letter from Alan Loney (preface) Dear Charles, Posts re- Alan Loney's books will be forwarded. Add to his bibliography: 1 dear Mondrian. (with drawings by Robin Neate). published by Alan's hand-set press: Hawks Press, Taylors Mistake, 1976, a classic now o.p. 2 Shorter Poems 1963-77. Auckland University Press/Oxford University Press, 1979. O.P.?? 3 Missing Parts poems 1977-1990 Hazard Press 1992 He also made some small edition publications with elaborate colour block printing. Squeezing the Bones (of which I don't have the biblio details) and Swell which I have here published under his imprint Black Light 1987. His fine printed books can be found in major collections, e.g. the Bodlean Library, Oxford. & Buffalo, I guess? Add to that an essay & The Ampersand Black Light Press 1990 (the poet Denis Glover once dubbed him Ampersand Alan, because of his regular use of the ampersand in print) His hand-set edition of Robert Creeley's "Hello" (the New Zealand section only) is a particular fetish of mine. It goes back to Creeley's first visit to New Zealand of 1976 (200 years after Cpt. Cook), which was momentous for many here. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 09:13:01 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind " First: both sides depend on a rather simple opposition of real work, vs. work that is unimportant. In that the classroom emphasizes critical work and talks of "creative" work as something resembling a hobby, or play. Depends on the assumption that real work is productive of wages, your critical work pays your bills, thus its your real work. " Dear Eric, Your drift is interesting. The problem I start from is not "Creative Writing", but academic arts practice in Art History. The opposition you cite (useful and useless work) hits this practice, by fastening it to pseudo-scientific projects and to pseudo-scientific expository discourse, to make it "useful", i.e. Academically Approved for Publication in Refereed Journals. This tends to exclude (I'm simplifying like crazy all the way today) narrative structures and close-response writings, or even speculative commentary and ecphrasis, all of which are included in classroom and privaste study work with any artwork. But the opposition you cite is also precisely the one most at issue in attempts to silence academic and intellectual institutions under the guise of bottom-line economic measures. Last Saturday's New Zealand Herald (18 March)had a full page story on current attempts to destroy the independence of the Auckland Institute and Museum, a major resource for anthropology, geology, life-sciences etc in the Pacific region. The politics ultimately goes back to your opposition: if it don't earn a quick buck it is not going to get money from the public purse. Carry the argument over into Information instead of Tangible Product and you get very differnet answers to its use. But worst of all, whenever an institution is forced into direct control of local body politicians, it immediately loses its independence of statement on social issues (in this case on environment and social issues, such as race relations). Resistance in the classroom by any means available has to combat some pretty deeply ingrained notions brought in by students, as regards the uses of education and the discourse systems and the direction and control of intellectual efforts. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 14:08:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Robertson Subject: survival of the quickest? "therefore I give the boys first pick" Dear Boys, How do I rate this container? Sievey, real sievey. Or simply spent bait? Maybe Red Rover would be a better model for editorial methodology than musical chairs--if we persist with schoolyard tactics. But perhaps a close reading of editorial practises would be a more pertinent issue than the accusative sexing of results? At least that's my notion of how we might come to understand the ways we reproduce power and its statistics. Cheers, Lisa R. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 20:48:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind so why teach? in bronk _the new world_: "We tire of the forms we impose upon space and the restricted identities we secure from them. We tire finally even of the act of imposition itself." ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 14:00:38 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor (longish): The Panic of Jane Staffo X-To: I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK Dear Ira, Thought I ought to respond some but first to follow through on Charles' ask: Auckland University Press, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, NZ is the publisher of Michele's, Alan's and also Murray Edmond's book SWITCH which was the other work under review by Jane Stafford and which I recommend to the list. Ira when you say *all* the NZ scene is corrupt, not just the mainstream, and as though giving evidence you express reservations about Michele's work, and suggest that our teaching here is as liable to fail as teaching of poetry anywhere, I really don't follow. Even if the quotes were supposed to be around *corrupt* rather than *all*--were they? The other comment I can't really let go by was 'no one who isn't already a paid lit. worker or academic gives a damn about reviews.' I can't agree. To begin with the poets concerned, and all poets in my experience, *give a damn* and so they should. Your comments are more about teaching, and you do mention the teaching we do do at Auckland. I just thought to say a couple of things about it since you seem to suggest that your general comments about the failures of poetry teaching can be readily applied to practices at Auckland. The course which is liable to be mentioned is our 3rd year,full-year course in contemporary American poetry which begins with the l950s. Of course, each course constructs a canon, and it is the case the course has one which is more or less the common ground of this list. However, its attention span is longish (24 teaching weeks) and it is seldom one poet is taught more than a week. Many poets are offerred, through lectures, through a course library and reading room, tapes of all the poets and some videos, and students are expected to develop enthusiasms, tastes of their own, through a workbook-reading journal (although we're moving away from this toward a portfolio idea at the moment). The course is team taught by three of us, more or less alternating; each has a different approach, some students responding more to one of us than the other two. We teach Wilbur, Lowell, Sexton, Poet's Theatre (O'Hara-O'Harryman), Holzer, MacLow, Kerouac, in and amongst the mix. But it is better not to talk about the one course because the student chooses what the department more broadly offers and you'll perhaps be reassured to know that Plath and Heaney are both taught here. It is true Auckland's strength is in American rather than British poetry and that was the case even when I was a student here. It is possible to study 20th American poetry at all levels and 8 members of the department do some of their teaching in the field. It's not my impression that poetry readers procuced by the department here are the victims my taste or anyone else. But then I would say that. I'm *corrupt*. It would be good to have some Wellingtonians on the net. When were you in the Windy City, Ira? There's too little contact between the two cities, I have to say. Best Wystan Curnow ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 18:47:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dodie Bellamy Subject: Re: Memory Play Dear Cris Cheek, I'll jump in & give my 2 cents worth on Memory Play, I am an American actor who was trapped inside the darn thing for ten months in a workshop production here in San Francisco, and I'll tell you, it took me eight and a half months before I figured out what it was "about." Harryman, the author, and Philip Horvitz, our director, were always mum whenever any of us actors asked, two Cheshire cats sitting there creamily on the sidelines, always replying only, "You decide." So finally I did. Hope you're familiar with the film "Mildred Pierce," because "Memory Play" is "Mildred Pierce" with a happy or at any rate conciliatory ending. However I may be wrong about this. Years ago I wrote a review of Harryman's book "Vice" and stated forthrightly my belief that "Vice" must have been influenced by CH's constant viewing of the US cop show "Miami Vice." Two minutes later the phone was ringing and she denied it, saying she had never watched MV in her life! Consequently I know a little bit about "Memory Play" but don't go by me. I played the "Miltonic Humilator" and had a wonderful costume, designed by John Woodall, a kind of Worth gown and a huge Merlin type hat. I had to sing and dance in several production numbers, and taunt all the other characters; finally, defeated by my own love for the Pelican, I succumbed to a kind of Madama Butterfly swoon and killed myself-off stage. It was great, and Cris, you can see it on video if you have the VHS format over there. All the other actors were good, and I was a bit abashed because CH and PH, realizing that the Miltonic Humiliator doesn't really have very many lines in the published script, and perhaps not wanting to waste my talents, allowed me, no, ordered me, to make up my own lines. I remember initially during our first workshop version of "Memory Play," that Kathy Acker was playing the part of the "Pelican,"-I suppose CH couldn't secure Kathy for the ten months it took us to rehearse and present the play. But think of her saying those lines, her great, scabrous energy melting the proscenium. Thanks for letting me put in my two cents on "Memory Play." So long now- Kevin Killian ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 01:37:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Spencer Selby Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind In-Reply-To: <199503220543.VAA15915@slip-1.slip.net> Thank you Ed for one of the best quotes, one of the best, most pertinent statements I've heard since I first signed onto this List. Bronk's statement applies to a lot more than the discussion at hand. The problem isn't just teaching. The problem is how much people seek, crave and demand every conceivable type of imposition. On Tue, 21 Mar 1995, Edward Foster wrote: > so why teach? in bronk _the new world_: "We tire of the forms we impose upon > space and the restricted identities we secure from them. We tire finally even > of the act of imposition itself." > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 08:48:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: EPCNEWS, No. 2 ____ ____ ____ / / / / / / EEEE PPPPP CCCCC _________________________________________ EE / PP PP CC C/ | | EEE PPPPP CC / | URL=http://writing.upenn.edu/ | __EE /_ PP |__ CC C __|__ | / EEEE/ PP/ CCCCC/ /| internet/library/e-journals/ub/rift | /__________________________/ |______________________________________| |--------------------------| | | Electronic Poetry Center | / |__________________________|/ ... that the idea of an electronic forum for emerging poetries not only possible but present ___________________________________________________________________ E P C . N E W S No. 2 (March, 1995) ___________________________________________________________________ Contents -------- 1.0 Intro: Some Dynamics 2.0 Projects: Author "Home Page" Project 3.0 What's New: News of the EPC 4.0 RIF/T: RIF/T Notes 5.0 Stats: Poetry and the Electronic Place 6.0 FAQ: About the EPC 7.0 Access: How to Connect ___________________________________________________________________ 1.0 Intro: Some Dynamics How does an electronic resource differ from an electronic list? Importantly, the information is there, but _YOU HAVE TO SEEK IT_. This active participation on your part is an important aspect to the workings of the Center. Enter the web, follow links, send comments. Wouldn't it be more convenient to have material mailed to your e-mail account? In some cases this is preferable, but given the large amount of material at the Center, your account would soon overload. There is also so much material here that few people could store it in their accounts. It's available 24 hours a day, 365 days a week (except for system "down" time), an electronic all-night literary bookstore? Also, unlike material that may be sent to your account, EPC material is loaded with *hyperlinks*, i.e., connections to other places, other times, other texts. Aren't books preferable? In some cases, this is true, however, the book is a _fixed object_, i.e., electronic documents can changed, updated, move in time to what is actually happening. The EPC makes available a wide variety of material. The description of Internet information provided by the _Internet Services Frequently Asked Questions And Answers_ (Version 1.7 - 4 February, 1994) states: >The type of information you're likely to find on the Internet is >free information, such as government documents, works with expired >copyrights, works that are in the public domain, and works that >authors are making available to the Internet community on an >experimental basis. Conversely, some types of information you are >not likely to find on the Internet, most notably, commercial works >which are protected by copyright law. The EPC is testament to the fact that Internet resources do not have to be "throw-away" information. As a working site for _active_ poets, the material here is a good faith exchange of original and current texts (along with literary "classics") provided to you as part of the current conversation that makes poetry and poetics immediate and interactive. These texts, in many cases, are more current than available through any other source. No one in the Center is waiving any copyrights but has trusted you with these emerging texts in the spirit of free exchange that defines the our efforts. ___________________________________________________________________ 2.0 Projects: Author "Home Page" Project One of the newest developments at the Electronic Poetry Center is the development of the author library. The goal of this project is to provide authors related to or of interest to the EPC with a "home page," that is a single access point to electronic texts by and about the author. These author home pages offer access to electronic files by and about the author, bibliographical information about the author, as well as, where available, photographs and other "documentary" information about the author. We welcome inquiries from authors about allowing us to host your home page. For authors who maintain their own home pages, do let us know so that we might possibly provide a link to your own site. ___________________________________________________________________ 3.0 What's New: News of the EPC 3.1 News Congratulations to Luigi Bob Drake, editor of TREE: TapRoot Electronic Edition, which was listed in an article on ten select electronic journals on the Net in the February, 1995 issue of _Online Access_. Also to Michael Joyce, a RIF/T and EPC contributor. Joyce's photo appears in "Of Texts and Hypertexts," a Feb. 27 _Newsweek_ article on "Computers and Creativity." 3.2 New Additions Many recent additions have been made to the EPC. These include: * A "what's new" feature that links directly to new resources * A facility for EPC visitors to send comments or a contribution to a collaborative poem in progress directly from the Center * Hypertextual versions of RIF/T (in progress) with "literary" links! * Information on the Basil Bunting Poetry Centre / Durham, England * Peter Quartermain's review of Charles Olson's Selected Poems * Charles Bernstein's paper, "Warning Poetry Area: Publics Under Construction" * New graphics for the EPC, RIF/T, and other "pages" * New graphical page for Bernstein and Glazier (others forthcoming) * NEW ELECTRONIC JOURNAL (Albany): _Passages_: A Technopoetics Journal ___________________________________________________________________ 4.0 RIF/T: RIF/T Notes RIF/T's Transpoeisis issue, a multi-faceted and multi-format approach to the presentation of translations, has been edited and will be released shortly. RIFT especially seeks reviews, as well as creative material and essays. These may be submitted to e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu ___________________________________________________________________ 5.0 Stats: Poetry and the Electronic Place > Current RIF/T subscribers: 1000 > Recent activity at the EPC: Month Root Total Connects Connects --------------------------------- Feb 1995 1283 8083 Jan 1995 1079 6798 --------------------------------- Dec 1994 746 Nov 1994 573 Oct 1994 429 Sep 1994 367 Aug 1994 348 Jul 1994 614 --------------------------------- Jun 1994 110 > EPC Directories with the most traffic for February, 1995: Connects/Directory ------------------ 1283 rift (EPC Home Page) 304 rift/authors 298 rift/rift 217 rift/documents 203 rift/.epc.gif 197 rift/journals 189 rift/.hotlist 183 rift/poetics 178 rift/resources 168 rift/journals/selected 141 rift/about 126 rift/about/about 117 rift/rift/rift01 115 rift/sound 111 rift/documents/conversations 110 rift/rift/rift03 102 rift/authors/more 101 rift/documents/documents _____________________________________________________________ 6.0 FAQ: About the EPC The Electronic Poetry Center seeks to provide a central _place_ for Internet resources for poetry and poetics. The Center continues to provide access to the electronic poetry and poetics journal, RIF/T, and the archives of the POETICS List. Needless to say, the EPC provides quality archival materials for these resources, including search features to allow keyword searching of the Center. The EPC AUTHOR library offers texts and/or information about contemporary poets in a variety of formats. A number of electronic JOURNALS are archived and distributed by the EPC. Journals distributed through the EPC differ from other e-journal archives in a significant way: the texts presented here have been checked and verified by their issuing agency thus at least getting to you versions of electronic journals in collaboration with their source. These journals include: DIU / Albany Experioddi(cyber)cist / Florence, AL Inter\face / Albany Passages: A Technopoetics Journal / Albany Poemata - Canadian Poetry Assoc. / London, Ontario (Info)/ RIF/T: Electronic Space for New Poetry, Prose, & Poetics Segue Foundation/Roof Book News / New York TREE: TapRoot Electronic Edition / Lakewood, Ohio We Magazine / Santa Cruz Witz / Toluca Lake, CA / via Syntax For RESOURCES outside the EPC, we have written links to make seamless connections to these resources. The Center also provides information about contemporary print little magazines and SMALL PRESSES engaged in poetry and poetics. Look here also for Selby's List of Experimental Magazines. The Poetry & Poetics DOCUMENT Archive provides access to a number of documents of use to poets, teachers, and researchers. Here you will find essay material and recent obituaries. The EPC also presently offers GALLERY, SOUND, EXHIBITS, and an ANNOUNCEMENTS area. _____________________________________________________________ 7.0 Access: How to Connect The Center is located at http://writing.upenn.edu/internet/ library/e-journals/ub/rift (Alternatively, you may gopher to writing.upenn.edu. And use the "Search Wings" feature to locate the EPC. Web access is, however, recommended.) Check with your system administrator if you have problems with access. Also ask about setting a "bookmark" through your system for quick and easy access to the Center when you log on. If you have comments or suggestions about sites to be added to the Center, do not hesitate to contact Loss Pequen~o Glazier, lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu or Kenneth Sherwood, e-poetry@ubvm.cc. buffalo.edu _____________________________________________________________ The Electronic Poetry Center is administered in Buffalo by E-Poetry and RIF/T in coordination with the Poetics List. Loss Pequen~o Glazier for Kenneth Sherwood and Loss Glazier in collaboration with Charles Bernstein ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 13:44:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: what does it do? It occurs to me that it might be useful to frame more directly a question that has been skirted by previous threads on the relations between poetry and experiment, poetry and politics, poetry and theory etc. Namely, what does, or should, poetry do? I wldn't want to skew discussion irrevocably toward the classroom, but my students, it seems to me, bring to their reading of poetry strong, but not particularly well-examined assumptions on this count. The dominant idea seems to be that poetry is written "from the heart," with the purpose of expressing emotions. Now, i wldn't want to discount the importance of emotion, but, as i'm sure we've all encountered, this sort of definition often results in the writing/reading of a lot of "Hallmark verse," as well as in the establishment of a sort of poetry-as-therapy paradigm. So, if these widespread views of what poetry does are inadeuate, are we up to formulating more valuable meta-statements? Is there any point in such an attempt? And how wld these meta-formulations be tied to the sorts of delightful microdynamics on display in the recent close-reading thread? As for the big question, i suppose my own preference tends toward the Blakean notion of cleansing the doors of perception... steve shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 13:35:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: what does it do? X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu Now, i wldn't want to discount the importance of emotion, but, as i'm sure > we've all encountered, this sort of definition often results in the > writing/reading of a lot of "Hallmark verse," as well as in the > establishment of a sort of poetry-as-therapy paradigm. > > steve shoemaker I'm interested in this recurring formula, the hallmark-card verse, invoked as anathema to all serious modernist/postmodernist sensibilities. when i ask students to research "micro-poetries," i include greetingcard verse as an example of a micro-poetry. how can these despised, commercial fragments --or the paradigm of poetry-as-therapy, as in psychiatric-ward workshops --be understood in terms of the "cultural work" they perform? rather than dismissing them out of hand as trite and derivative, how can we use them to understand, as shoemaker suggests, the multiple "purposes" of poetry.--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 14:07:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: Re: what does it do? In-Reply-To: <199503222001.AA25624@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> from "Steven Howard Shoemaker" at Mar 22, 95 01:44:35 pm Steven Shoemaker -- Of course, as Auden wrote on the death of Yeats, "poetry makes nothing happen....". A question to all engaged in the academia/non-academia discussion ... has anyone else found the academic experience driving one away from words? I found in my first quarter of graduate school that I wrote about 10X the words I had written in 10 years of adult life completely devoted to the written word, and remember with horror the day I couldn't locate something in a document using computerized word search because there was no language being used unique enough -- in fact, it often seems the academic task to bring our language into conformity, which to my mind runs directly counter to the poetic task of always trying to use first speech.... My own response has been to move into visual work... Anyone else? Sandra Braman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 19:09:33 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Subject: Re: Call for (regular) work > Visual Poetry Show > >o > >All submissions must be in 8 1/2 by 11 format, camera ready. Triple sheesh! Talk about dancing in chains. What about a 3.5" format? Even. PS: BTW of contrast, I've just been asked to contribute to a new London-based magazine (_Engaged_) which has been published as: issue 1: a T-Shirt issue 2: a 35"x52" full-colour poster (supplied with packet of wallpaper paste) Forthcoming: issue 3: a CD (yawn) issue 4: a tin of alphabet spagetti (and other found objects) issue 5: a video (zzzz -- However, this is ? the cheapest form of colour publication) future issues will be published as live performances. [Remember the Fluxus?] ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 14:54:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Groovy Books In-Reply-To: <199503210434.UAA20740@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Mn Center For Book Arts" at Mar 20, 95 10:24:02 pm When I said that Wesley Tanner is historical I was not saying that he was not alive and well. History does not mean death, at least not in my view. Maybe I have a Special View of History. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 15:00:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: "The Tunnnel" by Wm. Gass In-Reply-To: <199503202317.PAA17842@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Kenneth Goldsmith" at Mar 20, 95 02:04:18 pm Thanks for info, Ken. I checked Books in Print, and they had an edition listed for 1992! I guess it was pulled then. It was listing at something like $24 then. Oh, I am looking forwards to this monster, nfd also for some time when I can read. Anything. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 18:50:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: Re: what does it do? In-Reply-To: <199503222009.AA00853@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> from "maria damon" at Mar 22, 95 01:35:38 pm Re Maria Damon's question about the cultural work of Hallmark cards -- I learned what was to me a revelation about this a few years ago when I came to understand that for some folks I met through doing martial arts who are not verbally articulate in any way, hallmark cards -- and popular songs on the radio -- are significant speech. One fellow, in particular, would get enormously upset if he felt that the new hit of each week wasn't expressive of his own perspective, thoughts, and feelings -- like they'd "gotten it wrong" .... This fellow and others used the songs and the cards to speak FOR them, felt intimately connected with them, etc. Sandra Braman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 17:00:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: what does it do? In-Reply-To: <199503222009.MAA00170@whistler.sfu.ca> from "maria damon" at Mar 22, 95 01:35:38 pm In response to Steve Shoemaker's question, maria daemon writes: > > I'm interested in this recurring formula, the hallmark-card verse, invoked as > anathema to all serious modernist/postmodernist sensibilities. when i ask > students to research "micro-poetries," i include greetingcard verse as an > example of a micro-poetry. how can these despised, commercial fragments --or > the paradigm of poetry-as-therapy, as in psychiatric-ward workshops --be > understood in terms of the "cultural work" they perform? rather than dismissing > them out of hand as trite and derivative, how can we use them to understand, as > shoemaker suggests, the multiple "purposes" of poetry.--maria d > The value of these forms of writing goes beyond, perhaps, poetry. Grice, for example, used psychiatric-ward writings and taped dis- cussions in his research. This research yielded the expansion and adaptation of Kantian maxims to discourse analysis (i.e. the Cooperative Principles of "relevance", "cohesion", "manner", etc...). His findings are very political insofar as they disclose another relationship between power and language (i.e. rights of passage into discursive communities). As far as Hallmark goes? Who knows? Ryan Knighton ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 19:03:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: what does it do? X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu In message <2f70c6063f3a002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Re Maria Damon's question about the cultural work of Hallmark cards -- I > learned what was to me a revelation about this a few years ago when I > came to understand that for some folks I met through doing martial arts > who are not verbally articulate in any way, hallmark cards -- and popular > songs on the radio -- are significant speech. One fellow, in particular, > would get enormously upset if he felt that the new hit of each week > wasn't expressive of his own perspective, thoughts, and feelings -- like > they'd "gotten it wrong" .... This fellow and others used the songs and > the cards to speak FOR them, felt intimately connected with them, etc. > Sandra Braman in relation to this, there's a scene in the movie Chicks in White Satin, which I didn't see but heard quite a bit about, and which is about the marriage of two women, a "trite" greeting card becomes a focal point of emotion, and, said the friend describing the scene to me, what would otherwise have been laughable became quite transcendently moving and convincingly "authentic." what made the card a conveyor of "authentic" feeling,i believe, was the women's reaction to it --their feelings. these are the kinds of saturated moments that compel my attention. so thanks for your comments above about your acquaintances who you identify as not verbally oriented --can you say more about how their feelings of identification, of being spoken for, were conveyed? if they were convincing to you, what was it that convinced you? the vehemence of your martial arts colleagues' expression? the astuteness of their analyses? --maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 20:05:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sheila Murphy Subject: Re: what does it do? Steve's question about what poetry should do makes me think immediately of reframing the question to something on the order of "How might poetry surprise us?" or "What COULD any particular entity BECOME?" I think that precalling this would likely phase out (prior to conception) many possibilities. Of course, I understand that this question relates to levels of truth. At a certain level of consciousness (that of the students to whom Steve alluded), we have to address from square one the expectations of people for whom much of what we suspect ourselves of being fluent in is brand new. SEM ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 13:32:21 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Coercive teaching Dear Yesterday afternoon I said in a tutorial (Art History Stage III): "I heard a discussion recently [in fact Ira Lightman's comments about American Poetry as taught in Auckland] in which someone claimed that every department teaching poetry made students agree with their views, because otherwise they'd give them poor grades". Three students agreed that at St I and II they felt themselves subjected to some pressure, though one said: "it depends on who you're tutor is" . Another student denied it hotly, saying that in her experience it was not like that at all, she had been encouraged to find out for herself what she thought and what she pursued. She went on to say that this was the Contemporary American Poetry class she was talking about. I've sat in on Roger Horrocks's and Wystan's classes and I've never thought that they were imposing a canon or criteria or opinions on their students. I can't see what the personal warmth of Jane Stafford or the supposed corruption of all New Zealand teaching of poetry has got to do with Alan Loney defending himself as a writer from continuing undermining by largely unsympathetic readers. It is a not insignificant fact that the review that Loney objects to is in a magazine that has public money supporting it, while the attempts to get a magazine published with more supportive attitudes has been rebuffed. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 00:04:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: Re: what does it do? In-Reply-To: <199503230456.AA12058@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> from "maria damon" at Mar 22, 95 07:03:45 pm Maria Damon asks what was so convincing about those folks who used hallmark cards and popular songs as their own expression -- These folks in general had their intelligence largely in their bodies -- the one fellow in particular looked like Baryishnikov when he moved -- more than in their brains, so to speak, so it sure wasn't astuteness of analysis.... I was convinced I guess because of these things: - constancy of attention to and use of popular songs and cards over time as a means of expression - some anxiety each week waiting to see what the hits were on the radio, and discussion as soon as they were known as to their accuracy and appropriateness. when songs weren't appropriate, genuine gut level concern and response -- stomping about, going over and over what was wrong, etcetera -- really upset - in thinking back, one manifestation that should seem particularly familiar to poets -- a fair amount of time spent trying to copy out greetings or write down words to songs in a way that had to be accurate from beginning to end -- one mistake and the paper is crumpled, have to try again - incorporation of words from cards and songs into daily speech, and some dependence upon those sources of words, which constituted a fair percentage of language used in either oral or written forms Ultimately I understood that while these folks had all the same emotions as we, they had no original means of verbalizing those emotions and thus relied entirely on the language of mass culture as exhibited particularly in these 2 forms, resulting in a complete identification with mass culture. I've come to understand language use on a spectrum of originality, with poets at one extreme attempting always first speech, and folks such as these at the other extreme, completely mapped onto the most mass of mass culture, with varying degrees of embeddedness in the culture in-between. Academic writing, it seems to me, is writing engaged always in the process of attempting to bring new ideas -- now make sure not too many at one time, or too original -- into embeddedness in the culture through coercion of language use into one might say dogmatic forms. The impact of exposure to these folks -- and let me emphasize this is of course not everyone involved in martial arts, but a particular group I encountered in a particular place at a particular time (St. Cloud, Minnesota, mid-1980s) -- certainly I've met many, many other folks involved in martial arts of one form or another who are extremely articulate. In fact, I think Daphne Marlatt was the first person to talk to me about Tai Chi, which is what I was studying.... -- anyhow the impact on me of exposure to these folks was to have a completely different appreciation of the role of mass culture. And I have the sneaking suspicion that there are more folks like the ones I'm talking about than there are folks like "us".... When I say St. Cloud I should also point out that the folks there came actually from all over the country; the one fellow in particular from rural upstate New York. We were all gathered around a brilliant master, the fellow who brought tai chi to this country, Master T. T. Liang, who was then in his late 80s.... and I hear is still teaching, now in Minneapolis, those of you who are there.... Sandra Braman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 08:41:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Re: Goya's LA, a play by Leslie Scalapino In-Reply-To: <199503230713.CAA16265@panix4.panix.com> A reminder that on Friday March the 24th - Jandova CoMotion Inc. and Drogue present a work in progress on scenes from Goya's LA a play by Leslie Scalapino at Context 28 Avenue A (between 2nd & 3rd) New York, NY 10009 on Friday March 24th, 1995 at 8:30 pm For reservations call 212 924 9026 Suggested donation $7 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 08:49:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: Why Teach? (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 21:25:10 -0700 (MST) From: mnamna@imap1.asu.edu To: UB Poetics discussion group Cc: Multiple recipients of list POETICS Subject: Re: Why Teach? Because I have been absent so long: On Tue, 21 Mar 1995, Edward Foster wrote: > so why teach? in bronk _the new world_: "We tire of the forms we impose upon > space and the restricted identities we secure from them. We tire finally even > of the act of imposition itself." To which Jeffrey Timmons replied: Perhaps "teach" is no longer such a good description of the activity I increasingly find myself interested in. I prefer, however inadequately theory matches practice, a notion of "shared inquiry." I don't feel I have so much that I can "Teach" others--even those with less experience in academic forms of knowing/saying--as much as I feel competent in asking questions and provoking others to ask their own questions. This is only an initial stage of forming positions, of course, but a more productive location than "teaching" or "professing." For me. So, why teach? If that term covers the sort of activity I've just described than I would have to agree to eric pape's earlier comments to this issue and add only that there seems a responsibility to encourage those younger than ourselves (or less familiar with the ways of the institutions we work within) to take up--in their own way--their own inquiries. There needs to be those individuals who can provide models of something other than the productions of media personalities that pass for such at present. Perhaps there are other reasons--and I'd be more than happy to hear these--but there seems no other real reason to teach than this: giving opportunity. Jeffrey Timmons ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 11:11:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sheila Murphy Subject: Re: what does it do? I keep thinking of the permissible shorthand (code) in place within mass culture. In response to Sandra's thoughts, I'll add a concern that I've watched: people molding their emotions to a set of five or so listed on the multiple choice test implied by, say, country or whatever songs. Learning to feel what the song says. And if a Hallmark card misses, well, why not just adjust a little to the right and then claim/learn to internalize (or whatever verb might be right) THAT emotion. All of this linked to whatever level of empowerment. This may be ONE of the challenges we face if seeking to share more unusual (relatively speaking) forms of writing. People have no place for it, on account of their having been trained and eventually submitted to a system of simplification which rules out first thoughts and therefore causes blending, shaving, saming (not unlike what happens when construing a "movement"). Well. Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 09:45:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Watts Subject: Poets' addresses for purposes of notification of the Blaser conference and renewal of old acquaintance i'm hoping to get addresses for Bill Corbett, John Wieners, Charles Boer, Chuck Stein, George Quasha, thanks for any and all help. Billy Little c/o Two Tone House, 5050 Happy Ave, Nowhere, B.C. Canada V0R 1Z0 Charles Watts on the list will forward all messages thanks again, namaste ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 12:57:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: what does it do? In-Reply-To: <199503230713.CAA129302@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> from "Automatic digest processor" at Mar 23, 95 00:05:56 am Maria Damon writes: "I'm interested in this recurring formula, the hallmark-card verse, invoked as anathema to all serious modernist/postmodernist sensibilities. when i ask students to research "micro-poetries," i include greetingcard verse as an example of a micro-poetry. how can these despised, commercial fragments --or the paradigm of poetry-as-therapy, as in psychiatric-ward workshops --be understood in terms of the "cultural work" they perform? rather than dismissing them out of hand as trite and derivative, how can we use them to understand, as shoemaker suggests, the multiple "purposes" of poetry.--maria d" I think you're right, Maria, that this kind of poetry can do useful cultural work. And also right that my schematic formulation risks a too easy dismissal of that work and participates in a history of such dismissals, which have, importantly, often been strongly gendered (e.g. Pound and "Amygism"). But what i was objecting to was not the existence of this kind of poetry or its uses, but the *dominance* of that sort of definition of poetry in mainstream culture. That dominance often precludes "serious" considerations of other sorts of poetry (i guess we shld watch out for too exclusive definitions all along the spectrum). There are, for ex., always some, often many, students who, with the poetry-as- personal-expression in place, initially resist any in-depth consideration of the *form* of the poetry, on the assumption that such considerations are too ingenious, too self-conscious, not-what-the-author-was-thinking- about. It's that sort of reductive approach to poetry that i often find myself needing to work to move beyond by suggesting other goals and possibilities. This movement "beyond" usually involves some intensive "close reading," but a larger sense of other possibilities-for-poetry seems to be necessary for such reading to take place.... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 18:37:31 WET Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor (longish): The Panic of Jane Staffo Dear Wystan, Thanks for your friendly and thoughtful response. You're right that I didn't include the poets is my "no-one gives a damn", I was trying to address Alan's remarks about the effect of reviews on *readerships*. In Britain, one seldom gets any reviews at all, and then only hurtful ones, in any bigger funded periodicals, but I don't know one should expect them. Reviewers are hurtful and thoughtless about the poets, just as Alan's letter was hurtful to me as an aquaintance of Jane Stafford, both she and Alan (to my knowledge ) were wrong in their character assessments of each other's motives. On other points, I was in Wellington in the early Nineties, I actually *hate* Plath and Heaney and Lowell myself (which I hoped I'd indicated in my post before, emphasising that Alan and I *both* share the love of similar "currently marginalised" work, as I said), and I would like to see other Wellingtonians and Aucklanders on the list, who weren't themselves a bit nervous of offending the Aucklanders already on the list and thus blowing their publication and reading chances - a problem also in existence for the Apex, G2 poets generation in America. I was hoping to flush them out, at least privately, by my posting. I hear yours and Tony's optimism for the course - it doesn't match however the detailed accounts I've had of it from a good ten or fifteen people I met who had the potential of being great poetry lovers, of avant-garde work especially; that is to say, the ten or fifteen really exciting minds I met. It's, of course, great that your course exists, and it does do good. But what I said I still hold by. I mentioned Michele Leggott's work not because I don't know the scene thoroughly - I do - but because she is the poet I have the most hope for in NZ, and yet she has stayed only good, when she could have been brilliant - but perhaps the new book proves me emphatically wrong, and I am stereotypically seeing her on a typical decline. Surely it is *very* important that poets be able to take criticism that is hurtful, that is sometimes designed to ask them to win me over, to be really astounding (by which I don't mean mainstream). It is when feelings get hurt too quickly and without discrimination (on the part of the reviewed as well as the reviewer) that there can be corruption, and nobody can be honest, and that is what I meant. Very best Ira ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 13:27:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Eric M. Gleason" Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) In-Reply-To: Jeffrey Timmons "Re: Why Teach? (fwd)" (Mar 23, 8:49am) I think Jeffrey hit on a key point: good teachers give opportunites to students that they possibly would not have had. Whether it's leading the student towards good (interesting, important, usefull) reading, introducing them to others with similar interests, or going through some form of a shared inquiry, any little bit helps. Especially so when it opens students to new ideas or communities. Without teachers/writers here like Joe Amato and Andy Levy, I would still be a hyperactive, frustrated engineering student attacking my neighbors with my voice and a copy of "Fox in Socks" Eryque -- ________________________________________________________________________________ "I was a teenage monkey wrench" Eryque Gleason gleaeri@xtreme2.acc.iit.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 15:02:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X Comments: Resent-From: Alan Golding Comments: Originally-From: TBBYER01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU From: Alan Golding Subject: Fwd: Newt poll Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Just a little something for your communal amusement . . . ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- To: ACGOLD01--ULKYVM Alan C. Golding From: Tom Byers Department of English, University of Louisville Phone: (502)852-6770 or (502)852-6801. Fax: (502)852-4182. Subject: Fwd: Newt poll FYI. bitnet tbbyer01@ulkyvm; internet tbbyer01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Thomas B. Byers Department of English/University of Louisville Louisville KY 40292 *** Forwarding note from ANDY --CMSNAMES 03/23/95 11:03 *** Received: from ULKYVM by ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU (Mailer R2.10 ptf000) with BSMTP id 1419; Thu, 23 Mar 95 11:03:53 EST Received: from usia.gov by ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Thu, 23 Mar 95 11:03:48 EST Received: from NetWare MHS (SMF70) by usia.gov via XGATE 3.01.b16C MHS to SMTP Gateway; Thu, 23 Mar 95 11:02:08 -0500 Message-ID: <3D79712F01C6B2AA@usia.gov> In-Reply-To: Date: Thu, 23 Mar 95 10:48:38 -0500 From: "Lakritz, Andrew" Sender: "Lakritz, Andrew" Organization: USIA To: tbbyer01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Subject: Fwd: Newt poll X-mailer: XGATE 3.01.b16C MHS to SMTP Gateway Dear Tom: I thought you might have some fun with this thing. Enjoy. love andy ~ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ~ Andrew Lakritz US Information Agency Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Division for the Study of the United States 301 4th Street, SW Room 252 Washington D.C. 20547 (202) 619-5951 (202) 619-6790 FAX ~ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ~The following is an e-mail that John Michael Scalzi, II (scalzi@cris.com) sent to Newt Gingrich, in the wake of the discovery of his comments on the biological urge of men to "hunt giraffes" and to wallow in ditches "like little piglets": Dear Mr. Gingrich: My name is John Scalzi, and I am a columnist for the Fresno Bee in Fresno, California. In the days since the unearthing of your comments about men, women, combat, and the biological drive for men to hunt giraffes, I have taken it upon myself to conduct a poll to see whether that innate giraffe-hunting urge (and the little piglet wallowing urge) is in fact alive and well in the average American male. While the sample polled is statistically small (50 men, basically whomever was handy at the time) and largely comprised of white, college- educated, gainfully employed males, I nevertheless feel that the information gleaned from this poll will be of some value to someone, somewhere, some time. Perhaps you yourself, should the subject of instinctual giraffe slaughtering come up again. Certainly for me, as it takes up the bulk of my column, to be published this Wednesday, January 25. Thank you for your time, and happy hunting and/or wallowing, whichever the case may be. 1. Have you ever hunted a giraffe? Yes: 0% No: 100% 2. Have you ever had the urge to hunt a giraffe? Yes:4% No: 96% 3. Provided the right tools and the time, would you hunt a giraffe? Yes: 8% No: 92% 4. If not a giraffe, would you hunt another African savannah animal? Yes: 20% No: 80% 5. If you had to hunt an African savannah animal, which of the following would you choose? a) Zebra: 2% b) Rhino: 6% c) Meerkat: 12% d) Boar: 42% e) Any creature that appeared in "The Lion King": 36% 6. Do you think giraffe would taste like chicken? Yes: 38% No: 62% 7. Might it not make more sense not to hunt giraffe, but rather to set up giraffe ranches? Yes: 92% No: 8% 8. When you see Geoffrey, the Toys 'R' Us giraffe, do you ever get the urge to stick him with a spear? Yes: 40% No: 60% 9. Do you expect that Newt Gingrich has ever had the urge to hunt a giraffe? Yes: 74% No: 26% 10. If Newt Gingrich were to hunt a giraffe, would he use tools, or simply his own mouth? Tools: 48% Mouth: 52% 11. Would you rather hunt a giraffe, or wallow in a ditch like a little piglet? Hunt: 30% Wallow: 70% 12. Would you generally describe yourself as a little piglet? Yes: 22% No: 78% 13. Would you describe Newt Gingrich as a little piglet? Yes: 54% No: 46% 14. If you could, would you hunt Newt Gingrich? Yes: 58% No: 42% 15. Would Newt Gingrich taste like chicken? Yes: 18% No: 82% ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 15:32:04 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kali Tal Subject: Re: what does it do? Maria Damon (hey, are you the Maria Damon who wrote "MIAs and the Body Politic?) asks how can >> the paradigm of poetry-as-therapy, as in psychiatric-ward workshops --be >> understood in terms of the "cultural work" they perform? rather than >>dismissing them out of hand as trite and derivative, how can we use them to >>understand, shoemaker suggests, the multiple "purposes" of poetry.--maria d And Ryan Knighton notes: >The value of these forms of writing goes beyond, perhaps, poetry. >Grice, for example, used psychiatric-ward writings and taped dis- >cussions in his research. This research yielded the expansion and >adaptation of Kantian maxims to discourse analysis (i.e. the >Cooperative Principles of "relevance", "cohesion", "manner", etc...). >His findings are very political insofar as they disclose another >relationship between power and language (i.e. rights of passage >into discursive communities). I am preoccupied with these questions, working, as I do, primarily with soldier poets and other authors of what I call "literature of trauma." In my forthcoming book, _Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma_ (Cambridge, October 1995), I spend a lot of time making connections between poetry and power, therapy and politics. I've done a lengthy study of the work of poet W.D. Ehrhart (probably almost unknown in this crowd), who is one of the most prolific of the Viet Nam veteran poets and who has also, by his editorial efforts and grand collegiality, made it possible for a generation of Viet Nam veteran poets to flourish. The poetry of these veterans is inseparable from their politics, from their strong antiwar stance, from their rage at stupid death and needless destruction; the best of them match Sassoon and Owen and Jarrell and all the other veteran poets who get so little play these days. The same organization (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) which acted as a catalyst for Viet Nam veteran writing was also the birthplace of veterans' "consciousness-raising" groups--a politicized form of therapy in which the power relation of the therapist and the veterans was deliberately restructured so that all were equal participants in the process of political growth and concommitant healing. It must be emphasized, though, that the healing was believed to come out of political action and that artistic work was political work. The first anthologies of Viet Nam Veteran writing (_Free Fire Zone_ and _Hearts and Minds_) were published by activist poets as basement editions. _Hearts_ was publshed by First Casualty Press, and all three foundesr are still working as poets and writers today: Wayne Karlin, Basil Paquet and Larry Rottmann. But the invisibility of these poets in the academy is an interesting problem. Of the Viet Nam vet poets, only John Balaban, Bruce Weigl and Yusef Komunyakaa have received much praise in literary academic circles and these three are probably among the less *activist* of Viet Nam vet poets (though they are all unabashedly antiwar and "political") and (unsurprisingly) more connected to the writing workshop circles. Those few academics familiar with the field, however, are just as likely to value the work of Ehrhart or Gerald McCarthy, Horace Coleman, D.F. Brown, Jan Barry, Basil Paquet, or Leroy Quintana, and/or the related work of Viet Nam vet "cowboy poets" Rod McQueary and Bill Shields. (Did you know that cowboy poetry readings in the west can draw crowds of thousands?) There are a couple of "pop" Viet Nam war poets, like Steve Mason, who have done well on the trade market, but Ehrhart, for example, has a hard time getting publishers for his poetry although the critics who write about Viet Nam war literature write well of him. (For a good summary of this field of poetry, check out Vince Gotera's _Radical Visions_ [Univ of GA Press, 1994].) I would not, of course, put "Hallmark poetry" and "poetry-as-therapy" in the same class. It's my guess that most poets find the writing of poetry "therapeutic," and that the confessional/testimonial impulse is at the heart of a great deal of the poetry we read. It makes sense to me that some folks who have experienced trauma (like some Viet Nam combat veterans, rape and incest survivors, and Holocaust survivors) have a passionate committment to convey their experience in a potent form--to make, quite literally, world-changing fictions/poems. There is "Hallmark" confessional poetry (in which class I'd put Steve Mason, for example), and then there is the work of skilled craftsmen like Ehrhart or Quintana (who is best known as a "Southwestern/Chicano poet"), which equals in power and beauty the work of any of the "best" poets of the day. Somehow, though, these survivor-poets are rarely fashionable, tend not to be studied in the academy, or anthologized regularly. (Who reads Primo Levi's poetry now?) I'd argue that they're buried specifically because they *are* political, because their work forces us to confront events-in-the-world and allows no retreat, no relief. Kali ____________ Kali Tal Sixties Project & Viet Nam Generation, Inc. 18 Center Rd., Woodbridge, CT 06525 203/387-6882; fax 203/389-6104 email: kalital@minerva.cis.yale.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 15:35:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: what does it do? It's funny, Sandra (Braman)--unlike your "kung fu friend" (if I may so take liberty)--I tend to get "enormously upset" when a pop song DOES express my most intimate feelings--Yet, despite our "pomo" "sophistication" they DO sometimes....No? Chris S. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 17:50:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: what does it do? what should poetry do? should? huh? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 17:59:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) why teach? because you get to talk and think about things you like and maybe find students who like those things, too. that, and cash. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 09:02:40 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: what does it do? Steven, the old old question, F%O^R*M ?? Is that what high art's got, that Hallmark cards ain't? Sandra Braman-Maria Damon-Sheila Murphy are talking about the social uses of song/text: I was enjoying that conversation and hoping they'd go on further, without having to get caught up in chestnuts like The Form (don't we read Best Bets or Turf Digest for the Form?) While I'm at it, and to go on with the "they who use pop and Hallmark" as against "we who could once use Wallace Stevens but who now have learned to use Gertrude Stein etc etc" -- aren't we talking some social distinctions? Maybe contemporary poetry is for people who've learned to read every other kind of text available (including academic expository prose) and are still looking for kicks. Where do any of us go in the field: classical- modern classical concert-contemporary jazz-bepop- big band jazz-trad jazz-soul-blues-rock-pop-easy listening-classical-.....? Is the question how many of these can we handle ? Sandra's martial arts people have got a small range? Sandra has a cultivated large range? And steady on, where did you get "your" language, Sandra, if it wasn't out of reading texts, texts other than Hallmark Cards? If that is so, where's originality come in? Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 14:56:34 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: what does it do? In-Reply-To: <9503232251.AA26727@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> On Thu, 23 Mar 1995, Edward Foster wrote: > what should poetry do? should? huh? > Yes... I was kind of thinking the same thing. What dis should? What does poetry do? A short message from a short person. Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 08:42:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Hallmarks and What They Do In-Reply-To: <9503230712.AA16676@isc.sjsu.edu> Maybe this will link the "academia" question to the "what does it do" question. Some years ago I was asked to give a talk at the MidWest Modern Language Association. They met that year in Kansas City, which happens to be the world headquarters of Hallmark. There was a panel on the subject of Hallmark verse. The subject of the subject was not mentioned. Greeting card verse offers greetings, plain enough. It also generates sales. (Remember the verse by the side of the road? The micropoetics of Burma Shave?) I prefer Lenin's question, "What is to be done?" Poetry _can_ do just about anything, except perhaps disappear. Asking a poet what poetry "does" is a bit like spraying cat repellent on a cat. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 20:57:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: what does it do? X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu tony green points out the problems with the "they who use pop and Hallmark" as against "we who could once use Wallace Stevens but who now have learned to use Gertrude Stein etc etc" model of critical inquiry. I agree. I'm uncomfortable with we/theys that imply either monolithic wes & theys or dichotomized wes vs. theys. i love pop songs as i suspect most of the ultra-groovoids on this list do, or have done. "originality" is not the sole purview of modernist poets, though it's their rallying cry. i hesitate to get into this turf here, but i think academic people who are passionate about poetry can only gain by expanding their embrace of other people's definitions of poetry. Isn't the person who waits anxiously to find out what the pop hits were, or copies greeting card verse into a notebook, just as passionate about poetry as someone who peruses Pound for hours on end to grok his prosodic mastery? --as someone who, until my book came out, thought i was a "cultural studies person" with a private love of poetry and now has a public/professional profile as a "poetry person" with a cultural studies orientation, I feel caught between two discourse communities when previously I didn't personally experience any discontinuity between them. --maria d ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 20:00:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) X-To: Edward Foster In-Reply-To: <9503240248.AA20399@imap1.asu.edu> On Thu, 23 Mar 1995, Edward Foster wrote: > why teach? because you get to talk and think about things you like and maybe find students who like those things, too. that, and cash. Yeah, sure (and I'll even qualify that...), but the only . . . (dare I say MORAL) reason to teach has nothing to do with self-satisfaction (unless it is derived from the MORAL) or with cash (though that is necessary). Perhaps MORAL is not the right word and I suspect its geneaology. Nevertheless, sometimes we take what we can get. I agree with Edward Foster, but beyond that? Doesn't there need to be that MORAL responsibility to do more than just earn cash. Isn't that what it's about? Please . . . though, I use moral only to suggest the idea. I'd gladly exchange it with another terms. Any ideas? Jeffrey Timmons ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 19:03:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: what does it do? In-Reply-To: <199503232353.PAA07227@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at Mar 24, 95 09:02:40 am Tony Green writes: > > While I'm at it, and to go on with the "they who use pop and > Hallmark" as against "we who could once use Wallace Stevens but who now have > learned to use Gertrude Stein etc etc" -- aren't we talking some > social distinctions? Maybe contemporary poetry is for people who've > learned to read every other kind of text available (including > academic expository prose) and are still looking for kicks. > Who but Creeley could write the lines "one and one two three" and call it a poem and have it revered as such? Is not the "sophistication" in this poem the reader's? Maybe, to turn Tony's phrase a bit, contemporary poetry is necessarily for people who've learned to read every other kind of text. This poem occurs because of the weight and pressure of a reader's knowledge of poetry. If it anonymously occurred as a Hallmark ditty, would it resound? (I suppose the occasion being "On your fourth child,or birthday or something...) I guess i'm asking, in my ignorance, could any one else have written this and made it the same? (if we are going to make social distinctions) Ryan "tad" Knighton ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 20:11:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: what does it do? X-To: maria damon In-Reply-To: <9503240301.AA21004@imap1.asu.edu> On Thu, 23 Mar 1995, maria damon wrote: > Isn't the person who > waits anxiously to find out what the pop hits were, or copies greeting card > verse into a notebook, just as passionate about poetry as someone who peruses > Pound for hours on end to grok his prosodic mastery? I'd agree here, but also--though the division between high and popular culture is problematic to the extent that it denies any validity to the study/appreciation of the latter--note that there is quite a difference between Hallmark and Pound. Though I'll leave that for others to account for. There are differences, certainly, and I, for one, would not want to obscure those--though I am highly interested in why it is that someone would find such fascination with Hallmark or whatever. How about the hullabaloo about The Brady Bunch? I mean, why? Because . . . . Jeffrey Timmons ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 19:15:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: what does it do? (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 19:11:28 -0800 (PST) From: Lindz Williamson To: poetics@ubvn.cc.buffalo.edu Cc: Lindz Williamson Subject: what does it do? I question the usefulness of asking what should poetry do. Recently in class we were discussing the threatening power of language and poetry was by far the most reckless and endangering of all the genres. Utopian/distopian literature ( We, 1984, Handmaid's Tale, The Republic) Recognizes this immediately. Plato points out that in a perfect world there would be no poetry. There would be nothing to challenge and no tortured artist feeling the unquechable desire to express their emotion lyrically. it is during times of repression or upheval that poetry flourishes. Some of the finest examples of the written word have emerged from areas where the mere act of placing pen to paper would sentence the writer to a life of secrecy. An excellent present day example is Cuba, where writers are drooling over donated Ray Brabury paperbacks and the American Lit. display sponsered by the US Embassy. Sources such at this network seem incredibly overwhelming when you realize authors in Cuba hand stitch and bind their works together, often using olf cloth as paper. I then ask not what does poetry do but why do you feel the need to read or write it? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 21:10:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: what does it do? X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu In message <2f7202266712006@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > (hey, are you the Maria Damon who wrote "MIAs and the Body > Politic?) > > >>how many maria damons can there be, i hope none others yes' i'm she/her; shout out to kali tal, michael bibby and other workers on the viet nam era poetry front, the language and trauma front, and the frontal embrace of beauty pain and the dark beast of the dawning night, > > I am preoccupied with these questions, working, as I do, primarily with > soldier poets and other authors of what I call "literature of trauma." In > my forthcoming book, _Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma_ > (Cambridge, October 1995), I spend a lot of time making connections between > poetry and power, therapy and politics. I've done a lengthy study of the > work of poet W.D. Ehrhart (probably almost unknown in this crowd)-- yes, he's a fine and committed poet -- > > But the invisibility of these poets in the academy is an interesting > problem. See Michael Bibby's article on Viet Nam era poetry in College English of a few years ago --as you know he addresses this very problem. > > I would not, of course, put "Hallmark poetry" and "poetry-as-therapy" in the > same class. It's my guess that most poets find the writing of poetry > "therapeutic," and that the confessional/testimonial impulse is at the heart > of a great deal of the poetry we read. It makes sense to me that some folks > who have experienced trauma (like some Viet Nam combat veterans, rape and > incest survivors, and Holocaust survivors) have a passionate committment to > convey their experience in a potent form--to make, quite literally, > world-changing fictions/poems. There is "Hallmark" confessional poetry (in > which class I'd put Steve Mason, for example), and then there is the work of > skilled craftsmen like Ehrhart or Quintana (who is best known as a > "Southwestern/Chicano poet"), which equals in power and beauty the work of > any of the "best" poets of the day. Somehow, though, these survivor-poets > are rarely fashionable, tend not to be studied in the academy, or > anthologized regularly. (Who reads Primo Levi's poetry now?) I'd argue > that they're buried specifically because they *are* political, because their > work forces us to confront events-in-the-world and allows no retreat, no > relief. Yes indeed, it's nice to hear a sstrong voice, thank you. I bought primo levi's translated poems just the other day and was only partly sorry, actually. sorry that i had to pay so much for just a few compelling lines.--I'm looking forward to your book coming out --and to bibby's from rutgers up. -bst --maria d > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 00:08:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: what does it do? At that time in the province of pleasuregiving prosody some people were neurally programmed to dig the referential & some people were neurally programmed to dig the unreferential. The former tended to use hallmark cards (influenced in part by the fact that hallmark promoted strongly proreferential TV specials) & the latter tended not to send cards or make their own or send blank cards or send referential cards that sounded unreferential ("season's greetings") Some people who were innately predisposed to dig the unreferential became anti-referential after they majored in "english". When they began to notice the strongly referential quality of hallmark they also became anti-pro-referential. & some people who were innately predisposed to dig the referential became strongly anti-anti-referential after majoring in "english". Oh, in the same province there were some people who were innately neutral between reference and unreference. After some of them majored in "english" they began to question why other people who may or may not have majored in "english" valued hallmark card writers over non hallmark writers like gertrude stein or ezra pound, or the other way around. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 22:40:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind In-Reply-To: <199503200414.UAA21037@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at Mar 20, 95 03:58:49 pm I am here picking up on a three-day-old item from Tony Green, wherein he asks two questions, onbe after the other. First, how serious was Olson as a historian, and then, how many historians cite him or his views in support. As a person now writing history, but with only a BA in history as any credentials, I would like to suggest that Tony not see his two questions as two ways oif saying the same thing. All thru history we have had serious historians who are not supported or consulted by people who teach history, for example, in a university. In class today (on Susan Howe) I told my students they could do themselves a great favour by reading Olson's _Special View of History_. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 02:33:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: Re: what does it do? In-Reply-To: <199503240504.AAA91346@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> from "Automatic digest processor" at Mar 24, 95 00:02:44 am Tony Green writes: "Steven, the old old question, F%O^R*M ?? Is that what high art's got, that Hallmark cards ain't? Sandra Braman-Maria Damon-Sheila Murphy are talking about the social uses of song/text: I was enjoying that conversation and hoping they'd go on further, without having to get caught up in chestnuts like The Form (don't we read Best Bets or Turf Digest for the Form?)..." I hadn't meant to fetishize, uh, F%O^R*M, but mentioned it as one example of what i had a hard time getting students to talk about when they were too in thrall to a poetry=emotion equivalence. That presumed equivalence often seems to carry with an assumption of radical transparency that threatens to make the "words themselves" (whatever exactly that means) invisible, and leaves out all sorts of possibilities for what poetry might do/be/seem/seam/dream... It's interesting that Sandra Bramn brings in Auden because, even tho' i've never been that into his poetry, i cldn't resist picking up (actually putting on "hold" so it's not right in front of me) for cheap from a used bookstore here a dusty 5 vol set of Poetry in the English Language (or something like that) edited by Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson (I think) & published by Viking in the '50s. I'm not sure that qualifies as a groovy find, BUT ANYWAY I've always found it interesting that everyone always quotes that Auden line "poetry makes nothing happen," but they don't quote the rest: For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its saying where executives Would never want to tamper; it flows south From ranches of islolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. So, speaking of close reading, anyone have any idea what he "meant" by that? steve shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 21:25:43 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) X-To: mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU Dear Jeffrey, As perhaps the person who destroyed the best minds of Ira Lightman's generation I am now hesitant of offer an answer to the question. (are you out there,Ira? What can I say?) But for my money yes there has to be I'd say a POLITICAL reason for teaching. Aiming to make people passionate about poetry, or passionate about anything come to that doesn't do it for me. Passionism is too close to consumerism, as is Hallmark poetry. Teaching has to do with the dissemination of ideas, and that includes poetry. Teaching takes place in a culture that is shaped by ideas. The politics comes about through the relation of the ideas taught to the ideas that shape the culture ( a student may well bring just those ideas to the class room). Either the teaching of poems confirms the culture, or it resists it in some fashion. Either act is political. My interest is in the second of the options. How do we distinguish between consumerism and dissemination? Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 11:00:39 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: WILLIAM NORTHCUTT Subject: Re: what does it do? Poetry affirmeth roughage. Sour Philip Shidney ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 06:07:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: what does it do? X-To: UB Poetics discussion group In-Reply-To: <2f71de7d5a1d005@maroon.tc.umn.edu> Yes those pop songs do sometimes express "our" feelings, Chris & Sandra. I'm not so sure about the Hallmark verse, but I find the discussion of such possibilities and inclusions into personal speech marvelous. I certainly find that my family members (I am child of parents who each had eight or more siblings, leaving an extended family mostly in Oklahoma) use such cards quite seriously, not just as a convenience, and that I am sometimes considered odd for sending blank card with longish notes I have written -- odd but welcome. I think also we take ourselves too seriously in considering our poetry to be "first thoughts" (Sheila Murphy used this term, perhaps not so intentionally moving from the "first speech" Sandra had proposed). I've always liked Robert Duncan's various assertions that he was a "derivative" poet, taking from a great variety of sources (many of which were also derivative). While the linguistic substance/forms we use may have some chance of being original, the thoughts therein have been thought before, I would imagine, more often than not. I'd probably be just as upset or uplifted if another poet captured my exact feelings as if a pop musician did. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 06:47:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: Auden and happening In-Reply-To: <199503240734.AA15678@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> from "Steven Howard Shoemaker" at Mar 24, 95 02:33:33 am Steve Shoemaker -- At 20 I had that entire Auden poem on yeats up on my wall; the year before it had been Gary Snyder's poem about work; perhaps an effort even in the hubris of youth (this now long ago) to seek humility as a goal.... And always took from the Auden the notion that one keeps on doing poetry because it is a way of being, NOT because it makes something happen... Although even at 20 that was, I confess, colored by acceptance of the notion of Rav Nachman of Bratslav -- the great Hasidic storyteller -- that one never actually knows to whom one is speaking -- one might be answering not the person standing before you, but a question asked by someone else hundreds of years ago.... I like Tony Green's sense that wherever we are on the poetry scale, Hallmark or Olson, we're moving ahead of the language we know, the difference being the range to which the individual has already been exposed.... I think that captures it fairly, without value judgments and in acknowledgment of that entire range as validly poetry.... Sandra Braman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 09:10:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Marshall H. Reese" Subject: CONTRACT WITH AMERICA UNDERWEAR CONTRACT WITH AMERICA UNDERWEAR DEBUTS!!! Center for Book Arts 626 Broadway, 5 Fl, New York, NY 10012 (212) 460-9768 Pillars of the Clean Order on view for one week only: March 28 through April 4, 1995 OPENING RECEPTION: Wednesday, March 29, 6-8 PM CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS is proud to present, for one week only, an installation by artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese. The exhibition incorporates recent publications by leading conservatives, as well as the artists' own limited edition version of the Republican's Contract with America. Ligorano/Reese's recontextualized Contract, however, has the tenets of the Contract printed on the seats of men's and women's pure cotton briefs. The face of Newt Gingrich adorns the crotch. The Ligorano/Reese Contract with America underwear is published in an edition of 120 signed and numbered copies. These special artists' works will be for sale throughout the run of the exhibition. On the opening night of the exhibition, they will be on sale for a special price. After the opening, they can be found at Exit Art's Apartment Store. The installation at the Center for Book Arts comments on the overabundance of trade books authored by conservatives. Oliver North, Dan Quayle, Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, John Danforth, and Barbara Bush, to name a few, have all penned major trade publications promoting conservative thought. The gallery space will be dominated by heaps of dirty laundry overflowing from hampers. Rising from the hampers, classical columns will display the recently published books by John Danforth (Resurrection), William Bennett (Book of Virtue), and Oliver North's (One More Mission). On a clothesline strung above the hampers and stretched throughout the gallery will hang Ligorano/Reese's underwear version of the Contract. There will also be a point of purchase display video highlighting the underwear. The video recycles imagery from Ronald Reagan's 1984 "Morning In America" spots combined with fashion shots of models wearing the underwear. The Center for Book Arts is located at 626 Broadway, 5th Fl., between Bleecker and Houston. Gallery hours are 10 am - 6 pm, Monday through Friday, and 10 am - 4 pm on Saturdays. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 09:46:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert A Harrison Subject: Re> Re: Call for (regular) work John Cayley, In response to your response of my request. >Triple sheesh! Talk about dancing in chains. What about a 3.5" format? Even. I don't like chains any more than you seem to. Thought it was a reasonable request considering I wanted to have a catalog of the show available soon. Why don't you send me something in gaseous form? Not too challenging though. bob harrison ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 11:14:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) has anyone out there looked into the origins/history of the word "responsibility." it's a pernicious term, i think; allows you to run other people's lives (for their own good, of course) without having to admit why. destroys poetry, too, except m. arnold. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 11:51:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karlyn Y-Mae Koh Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) In-Reply-To: <199503240955.BAA19345@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Wystan Curnow" at Mar 24, 95 09:25:43 pm The question "why teach," for me, begs the question "why learn." A pedagogic practice that only takes into account the shaping of another's (the student's) mind, without the concurrent awareness of power (the teacher's) in a class as well as the willingness (of the teacher) to learn, serves to create institutional clones. That one enters a space with certain assumptions, agendas, positions etc. indeed makes the act of teaching a political one. What is more crucial is whether one teaches to learn, whether one can unlearn the habit of always hearing only what one already understands. On this point, I have to say that I have been a student in Wystan Curnow's now (in)famous course, some years back (team taught, as he pointed out)--and it was marked with an openness not common in many university (poetry) courses. It is the recognition of the power that goes with the privilege of disseminating knowledge, as well as the effort to hear and learn from students (too often seen as blank slates onto which one can inscribe one's cemented ideas) that distinguishes "good" teachers; something I appreciate (as a student--still!) from former teachers like Peter Quartermain, as well as certain profs. here at SFU. Karlyn Koh (long time lurker) Simon Fraser University, Canada ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 15:11:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: Alan Golding Subject: Re: what does it do? In-Reply-To: note of 03/23/95 22:08 Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Ryan: "Could any one else have written this and made it the same?" Funny that this formulation should come up in the context of Creeley, who has an essay (if I'm remembering right) called "Was that a real poem or did you make it up yourself?" Shades of Pierre Menard's Quixote. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 20:32:15 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: what does it do? >Poetry affirmeth roughage. Sour Philip Shidney Shidney is an unknown poet to me (or is it he who rote 'The Furry Coin'?). Is the suggestion that Roughage Factor and Groove Factor are equitable? If so what are their derivatives? cris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 20:31:45 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Why Teach? X-cc: EFOSTER@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu >has anyone out there looked into the origins/history of the word >>"responsibility." it's a pernicious term, i think; allows you to run other >>people's lives (for their own good, of course) without having to admit why. >>destroys poetry, too, except m. arnold. Ed - respond - from Latin 'respondere' meaning 'promise in return'. The spondere or promise is source of sponsor and spouse. According to my dictionary of origins (Bloomsbury) the notion of 'obligation' survives in the derivative 'responsible'. But i've always liked Duncan's take from 'The Law I Love Is Major Mover': 'Responsibility is to keep the ability to respond.' from the country where Major has no groove factor whatsoever cris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 20:32:22 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: what does it do? X-cc: Steven Howard Shoemaker re the Auden quote posted by Stephen Howard Shoe >For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives >In the valley of its saying where executives >Would never want to tamper; it flows south >From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, >Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, >A way of happening, a mouth. I asked my teacher about this piece today. She assured me that he originally drafted it as part of a bulk commission for Hallmark cards to comfort those who had to make (should that be pay) a visit to the Dentist but Hallmark's response was that (and I quote): '1) the overall tone is too obtuse for our readers 2) percentage flossers among executives is highest per capita of the population. These being the very people who can afford to afford private health care and are therefore already partially pyscho-economically-comforted the target marketing is way off beam 4) double emphasis on 'it survives' might unnerve some purchasers 5) the appeal to oral forms of poetry is inappropriate given the state of the average gum or jaw post dental surgery / cosmetics - when sitting quietly in a darkened room with a 'good' read is the more urgent option.' Unfortunately this debriefing doesn't develop the obvious paradox of reading in a darkened room. Nor does it sufficiently explicate the 'tongue in cheek' factor required. I believe Auden's next attempt went some way into the rich territory afforded by such. Whatever, the results failed to sell, unlike his rhyming couplets of 'The Night Train' for the Royal Mail service and being quickly withdrawn from the market his most, arguably, niche work has been lost to us. Or have I been reading the subject heading all wrong. Is it a rhetorical question that is restricted by the e-format, when it should it fact read "what does?" "it do" love cris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 20:31:57 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: A REAL Political Poet (longish post) How are we doing in the Panamerican games? Too bad I couldn't attend. I'm sure I would have done very well in the "cross-country race." You should see the training I've put in since February 10th! Go on. Health and may the spring in the blood have an addressee. >From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Insurgent Subcommander Marcos. Mexico, March of 1995. P.S. That, in mourning, cries. I was listening on the little tape-player to that one by Stephen Stills, from the album Four Way Street, that goes: "Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground. Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down.." when my alter ego comes running and tells me: It looks like you got your way... - Could it be the PRI has already fallen? - I ask with hope. - No way! ... They killed you - says my alter ego. - Me! When? Where? - I ask while I go through my memories of where I've been and what I've done. - Today, in a confrontation... but they don't say just where -, he responds. - Oh, good!... And did I end up badly hurt or really dead? - I insist. - Completely dead.. that's what the news says - says my alter ego and leaves. A narcisistic sob competes with the crickets. - Why are you crying? - asks Durito while he lights his pipe. - Because I can't attend my burial. I, who loved me so much... P.S.: That tells what happened to the Sup and Durito in the 12th day of the withdrawal, of the mysteries of the Cave of Desire, and of other unfortunate events that today make us laugh, but at that time took away even our hunger. - And if they bomb us? - asked Durito in the early morning of the 12th day of the withdrawal. ("What kind of withdrawal, a pure run," says Durito.) It's cold. A grey wind licks with its icy tongue the darkness of trees and earth. I'm not sleeping, in solitude the cold hurts twice as much. Nevertheless I keep quiet. Durito comes out from his sheltering leaf and climbs up on top of me. To wake me up, he starts tickling my nose. I sneeze with such emphasis that Durito ends up, tumbling over himself, on my boots. He recovers and gets back to my face. - What's up? - I ask him before he tickles me again. - And if they bomb us? - he insists. - Yes.. well.. well.. we'll look for a cave or something like that to hide ourselves in... or we'll climb in a little hole... or we'll see what to do -, I say with annoyance, and look at my watch to insinuate that it isn't the hour to be worrying about bombings. - I won't have any problems. I can go anywhere. But you, with those big boots and that nose... I doubt that you'll find a safe place -, says Durito as he covers himself again with a little huapac leaf. - Psychology of terror -, I think, about the apparent indifference of Durito regarding our fate... - Our? He's right! He won't have problems, but me... - I think, I get up and speak to Durito: - Psst... Psst... Durito! - I'm sleeping -, he says from under his leaf. I ignore his sleep and begin talking to him: - Yesterday I heard Camilo and my alter ego saying that there are a lot of caves around here. Camilo says he knows most of them. There are small ones, where an armadillo would barely fit. And there are big ones like churches. But he says there is one no one dares to enter. He says there is a ugly story about that cave. The cave of desire, he says they call it. Durito seems to get interested, his passion for detective novels is his ruin. - And what is the story of that cave? - Well... It's a very long story. I've heard it myself, but that was years ago now...I don't remember it well-, I said, making it interesting. - Fine, go on, tell it - says Durito, more and more interested. I light my pipe. From within the aromatic smoke comes the memory, and with it... The Cave of Desire. It happened many years ago. It is a story of a love that was not, that was left just like that. It is a sad story... and terrible - says the Sup sitting on one side, with his pipe in his lips. He lights it, and looking at the mountain, continues: "A man came from far away. He came, or he already was there. No one knows. It was back in other times long past and however that may be, in these lands people lived and died just the same, without hope and forgotten. No one knows if he was young or old, that man. Few are those who saw him the first times. It was like that because they say that this man was extremely ugly. Just to see him produced dread in men and revulsion in women. What was it that made him so unpleasant? I don't know, the concepts of beauty and ugliness change so much from one age to another and from one culture to another.. In this case, the people native to these lands avoided him, as did the foreigners who were the owners of land, men, and destinies. The indigenous people called him the Jolmash or Monkey-face; the foreigners called him the Animal. The man went into the mountains, far from the gaze of all, and set to work there. He made himself a little house, next to one of the many caves that were there. He made the land produce, planted corn and wheat, and hunting animals in the forest gave him enough to get by. Every so often he went down to a stream near the settlements. There he had arranged, with one of the older members of the community, to get salt, sugar, or whatever else the man, the Jolmash, didn't obtain in the mountains. The Jolmash exchanged corn and animal skins for what he needed. The Jolmash arrived at the stream at the time when the evening began to darken and the shadows of the trees advanced night onto the earth. The old man was sick in his eyes and couldn't see well, so that, with the dusk and his illness, he couldn't make out the face of the man who caused so much revulsion in the clear light. One evening the old man didn't arrive. The Jolmash thought that maybe he had mistaken the hour and arrived when the old man had already gone home. To make no mistake, the next time he made sure to arrive earlier. The sun still had some fingers to go before it wrapped itself in the mountains, when the Jolmash came near the stream. A murmur of laughter and voices grew as he approached. The Jolmash slowed his steps and came silently nearer. Among the branches and vines he made out the pool formed by the waters of the stream. A group of women were bathing and washing clothes. They were laughing. The Jolmash looked and stayed quiet. His heart became only his gaze, his eyes his voice. It was a while since the women had gone and the Jolmash stayed on, looking... Now the stars rained down on the fields as he returned to the mountains. I don't know if it came from what he saw, or from what he thought he saw, whether the image that was engraved on his retina corresponded to reality or if it existed only in his desire, but the Jolmash fell in love or thought that he fell in love. And his love was not something idealized or platonic, it was quite earthy, and the call of the feelings that he bore was like a war drum, like a lightning that becomes fierce rain. Passion took his hand and the Jolmash began to write letters, love letters, lettered delirium that filled his hands. And he wrote, for example, "Oh, lady of the wet glimmer! Desire becomes a proud leaping colt. Sword of a thousand mirrors is the yearning of my appetites for thy body, and in vain rips the double edge of the thousand pantings that fly on the wind. One grace, long sleeplessness! One grace I ask thee, lady, failed repose of my grey existence! Let me come to thy neck. Allow that to thy ear climbs my clumsy longing. Let my desire tell thee, quiet, very quiet, that which my breast silences. Do not look, lady so not- mine, at the poor mess which adorns my face! Let thy ears become thy gaze; give up thy eyes to see the murmurs that walk within me, longing for thy within. Yes, I wish to enter. To walk thee, with sighs, the path that hands and lips and sex desire. Within the mouth, she wet and I thirsting, to enter with a kiss. On the double hill of thy breast to run lips and fingers, to awaken the cluster of moans that in it hide. To march to the south and to take prisoner thy waist in warm embrace, burning now the skin of the belly, brilliant sun announcing the night that below is born. To evade, diligent and skillful, the scissors on which thy grace goes and whose apex promises and denies. To give thee a tremor of cold heat and arrive, whole, to the moist stirring of desire. To secure the warmth of my palms in the double warmth of flesh and movement. One slow first step, a light trot next. After that the runaway ride of bodies and desire. To reach the sky, and then fall. One grace, promised tiredness! One grace I ask thee, lady of the quiet sigh! Let me come to thy neck! In it I am saved, far off I die.." One night of storms, like his passion burning his hands, a bolt of lightning burnt down the little house of the Jolmash. Wet and shivering, he took refuge in the neighboring cave. With a torch he lit his way in and found there little figures of couples giving and receiving, the pleasure worked in stone and clay. There was a spring, and little boxes that when opened, spoke of terrors and marvels that had passed that and would come to be. The Jolmash now could not or would not leave the cave. There, he felt the desire fill his hands once more and wrote, weaving bridges to nowhere... "A pirate am I now, lady of the longed-for port. Tomorrow, a soldier at war. Today, a pirate lost in trees and lands. The ship of desire unfolds its sails. A continual moaning, all tremor and wanting, leads the ship between monsters and storms. Lightning illuminates the flickering sea of desperation. A wet salt takes the command and the helm. Pure wind, word alone, I navigate seeking thee, among sighs and panting, seeking the precise place the body sends thee. Desire, lady of storms to come, is a knot hidden somewhere by thy skin. Find it I must, and muttering spells, untie it. Free then shall be thy longings, feminine swayings, and they will fill thy eyes and mouth, thy womb and innards. Free one moment only, as my hands already come to make them prisoners, to lead them out to sea in my embrace and with my body. A ship shall I be and restless sea, so that in thy body I enter. And there shall be no rest in so much storm, the bodies moved by so many capricious waves. One last and ferocious slap of salty desire hurls us to a beach where sleep arrives. A pirate am I now, lady of tender storm. Don't await my assault, come to it! Let the sea, the wind, and this stone become ship be witnesses! The cave of desire! The horizon clouds over with black wine, now we are arriving, now we go..." So it happened, they say. And they say that the Jolmash never again left the cave. No one knows whether the woman to whom he wrote the letters existed in truth or was a product of the cave, the Cave of Desire. What they say is that the Jolmash still lives in it, and whoever comes close becomes sick with the same, with desire... Durito has followed the whole story attentively. When he sees I have finished, he says: We have to go. - Go? - I ask, surprised - Of course! - says Durito -. I need literary advice to write to my old lady... - You're crazy! - I protest. - Are you afraid? - asks Durito ironically. I waver. - Well.. afraid, really afraid...no.. but it's very cold... and it looks like it's going to rain... and.. yes, I'm afraid. - Bah! Don't worry. I'll go with you and I'll be telling you where. I think I know where the Cave of Desire is -, says Durito with certainty. - All right -, I say, giving in. - You'll be in charge of the expedition-. - Great! My first order is that you march in the vanguard, in the center nobody, to disconcert the enemy, and I will go in the extreme rearguard-, indicates Durito. - I? In the vanguard? I protest! - Protest denied! - says Durito with firmness. - O.K., soldier to the end, I'll go along. - Good, that's what I like. Attention! This is the plan of attack: First: if there are many, we run. Second: If there are a few, we hide. Third: If there isn't anyone, forward, for we were born to die! - dictates Durito while he prepares his little pack. For a war plan it seemed too cautious for me, but Durito was the chief now, and given the circumstances, I had no reason to object to prudence marching in the vanguard. Above the stars started to be smudged out... - It looks like it's going to rain-, I said to Durito, excuse me, to the chief. - Silence! Nothing will detain us! - shouts Durito with the voice of the sergeant in that Oliver Stone film called Platoon. A gust of freezing wind and the first drops... - Haaalt! - orders Durito. The drops of rain start to multiply... - I forgot to mention the fourth point of the plan of attack.. - says Durito with doubt. - Oh yeah? And what is it? - I ask insidiously. - If it starts to rain... Strategic withdrawal! - The last words are said by Durito now in an open run back to camp. I ran behind him. It was useless. We got soaked, and shivering, we reached the little plastic roof. It rained as if desire had, at last, been unleashed... Go on again. Health, and that the hunger for tomorrow be a desire to struggle... today. The Sup, inside, far inside, of the Cave of Desire. It's March, it's early morning, and for being dead, I feel verrry well. -- translated by bonnie schrack please advise of errors. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 19:50:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 22 Mar 1995 to 23 Mar 1995 In-Reply-To: <9503240503.AA10276@isc.sjsu.edu> What does it do too? It's not quite, as Lindz put it, that Plato "points out that in a perfect world there would be no poetry." Book Ten of the Republic argues that there should be no poets in the ideal republic. Plato, in the end, and speaking thru Soc., invites poets to refute his arguments, in verse, and allows as how he's prepared to relent. Here, then, is at least one project for poets! As Plato knew, we won't leave, even if invited. As a former resident of the District of Columbia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the U.S. Congress, I take the question of poets in the Republic rather seriously. We probably don't have to look to far for the reasons that the Library of Congress changed its poetry reading schedules so that most residents of D.C. would no longer be able to attend. Most of our recent U.S. Poet Laureates have made an insistence upon not moving to D.C. a condition of their accepting the position. One thing that D.C. poets try to do, even when living in California as I do, is to render the problematics of langauge and representation as literally as possible. Newt plans to make D.C. a "lab" for the Republican third wavenewworldordercontractmoralrecission. It is not too hard to imagine the place of D.C. poetry in his vision, just watch him on Empowerment Television. Since Creeley's name has been mentioned much in this correspondence, here's something else poetry can do: the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it . . . but I stray ,,,, greetings to all in Elision Fields ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 00:16:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "B. Cass Clarke" Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Sidney Dear Aldon: As Sidney's name has been bandied about and you challenge the poets to respond to Plato, I thought a taste of Sidney's _Defense of Poetry_(c. 1580) "But now indeed my burden is great; now Plato's name is laid upon me, whom, I must confess, of all philosophers I have ever esteemed most worthy of reverence, and with good reason: since of all philosophers he is the most poetical. Yet if he will defile the fountain out of which his flowing streams have proceeded, let us boldly examine with what reasons he did it.... And a man need go no further than to Plato himself to know his meaning: who, in his dialogue called _Ion_ giveth high and rightly divine commendation unto poetry. So as Plato, banishing the abuse, not the thing, not banishing it, but giving due honour unto it, shall be our patron, and not our adversary. For indeed I had much rather (since truly I may do it) show their mistaking of Plato (under whose lion's skin they would make an ass-like braying against poesy) than go about to overthrow his authority; whom, the wiser a man is, the more just cause he shall find to have in admiration; especially since he attributeth unto poesy more than myself do, namely, to be a very inspiring of a divine force, far above man's wit, as in the fornamed dialogue is apparent." For those not satiated by this sound bite, see "A Defense of Poetry," in _Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney_ edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan Van Dorsten, for Sidney's full argument, the first of its kind in English. B. Cass Clarke V080g6j3@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 08:35:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: erase this message, which is a test But you didn't... the system is rejecting posts from me occasionally, depending on ... well, that's what I'm testing! Tm ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 08:49:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: bedside books The week of March 6 was so busy for me that I had no time to check in here. Then was away for the next week. Result? Over 200 messages -- worse yet, the discussion was quite interesting! I missed lively topics, too bad for me (tho I'll probably reach back opining in the coming days), but do want to contribute now to the "current reading" query: I'm in the middle of _Intimate Letters_, Janacek's correspondence with Kamila Stosslova. Also reading _Penser, Classer_ by Georges Perec. This is a collection of short and occasional essays and is wonderful (but untranslated -- don't miss _Avoid_ however the translation of La Disparution, GP's novel without e's: it shd be out just abt now). Adin Steinsaltz's _The Long Shorter Way_ Laura (Riding) Jackson's _Lives of Wives_ Ron Silliman's N/O Harry Mathews' _The Journalist_ are stacked up, and I'm waiting for the new books by Rae Armentrout and Carla Harryman (mentioned here w/in the last week; but I'm not near my booklist and alas can't remember the names) as well as Jessica Grim's Locale. Also eagerly awaiting the new (18th) volume in Patrick O'Brian's ongoing series of novels about his twin characters Aubrey/Maturin and their lives and adventures in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars. Again, I ccan't recall the name of this not-yet-here volume. Tom Mandel ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 09:01:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Re: Hallmarks and What They Do re: what does it do, and Al Nielsen's cat-repellant-on-the-cat metaphor: how did the painter of vir heroicus sublimis put it: "aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds" all the poets I know have been poets since very early in life without knowing why doing something useless, that is discovering something not devoted to use, is useful too. For one thing, it opens that area up to use (this is called "culture" or "Hallmark"), for another a turn away promotes a turn to. Bending your verse to use, or a sense of use, where this does not mean calculating the reader, may be rephrased as "getting serious." Tom Mandel ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 09:31:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Re: what does it do? Kali Tal writes that... "...the confessional/testimonial impulse is at the heart of a great deal of the poetry we read. It makes sense to me that some folks who have experienced trauma (like some Viet Nam combat veterans, rape and incest survivors, and Holocaust survivors) have a passionate committment to convey their experience in a potent form--to make, quite literally, world-changing fictions/poems. There is "Hallmark" confessional poetry (in which class I'd put Steve Mason, for example), and then there is the work of skilled craftsmen like Ehrhart or Quintana (who is best known as a "Southwestern/Chicano poet"), which equals in power and beauty the work of any of the "best" poets of the day. Somehow, though, these survivor-poets are rarely fashionable, tend not to be studied in the academy, or anthologized regularly. (Who reads Primo Levi's poetry now?) I'd argue that they're buried specifically because they *are* political, because their work forces us to confront events-in-the-world and allows no retreat, no relief." This is terrifyingly interesting territory. The intersection and differences of "confession/testimony" and the intention of poetry to "force us to confront events-in-the-world" (perhaps one shd simply say that poetry actually presents events in the world and that this is something that other traditions of expression are not organized to do. Sometimes this is being forced to confront, sometimes it is being allowed, or even enabled/aided to confront) must account - at least in part - for its persistent recurrence (tho it is also an example of recurrence, a form of recurrence a practice organized around recurrence) and for the obsessively recurrent hold this practice has from an early age on those who go on to spend (in the most generous senses of the word) their lives on it. And explain our interest in such work of testimony (for what else sustains the presence of work such as that, lets say, of John Wieners, or other poets NOT the subject of manufactured conferences) as tends to unique instance of language, a testimony as in Primo Levi or in Celan, surely not "buried." Tom Mandel ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 10:54:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: the hallmark of a great card re intention of poetry to ****confront**** X in the world i remember fondly a hallmark card designed for a sister-in-law. the message [at the end] was the sender wanted the addresse to know that the in-law part was of no consequence (& it rhymed) the memory of that continues to give me a lot more pleasure than reading about anybody's trauma. [my club dread membership expired a few years ago] ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:02:12 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kali Tal Subject: Re: the hallmark of a great card Jorge Guitart writes about a hallmark card: >the memory of that continues to give me a lot more pleasure than reading about >anybody's trauma. > >[my club dread membership expired a few years ago] Which, of course, brings into question why we read poetry that is not "pleasurable". Anybody have any ideas what *that* is all about? Kali Kali Tal Sixties Project & Viet Nam Generation, Inc. 18 Center Rd., Woodbridge, CT 06525 203/387-6882; fax 203/389-6104 email: kalital@minerva.cis.yale.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:06:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: the hallmark of a great card X-To: UB Poetics discussion group In-Reply-To: <2f74598f6897002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> Kali Tal wonders why we read poetry which is not "pleasurable." But do we? What is pleasure? (the pleasure of the text, the pleasure of the senses, the pleasure of the unknown . . . Is language pleasure? my mouth & ears both believe so, in a fairly uncomplicated sense the intellect and emotions, too, but not in any simple sense at all and altogether now (all together now . . . Is content any more pleasure than the lingering physicality of language? or is it, in part, the same pleasure? A round of fiddles plays Bach and I am listening reading charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:31:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: the hallmark of a great card In-Reply-To: <199503251915.MAA04288@mailhost.primenet.com> Dear Kali: I don't think that anyone reads poetry--and by that I mean *really* reads it (more than skimming it, or simply noting its presence)--that is not "pleasurable" in some sense. I think people who say that they do read (allegedly) "non-pleasurable" poetry actually derive pleasure from doing that (as well as from thinking/talking/writing about it--"it" being both the poetry & the act of reading it). A poem may well have been written with the intention of "writing against" a reader's pleasure, but the moment one takes that (or anything else the poem brings up directly or indirectly) into consideration, begins *thinking* about it, one begins experiencing pleasure...no? Admittedly, my definition of "pleasure" (which includes thinking, considering--a general term might be "engagement"--Charles Bernstein, why don't you--or, do you?--consider *engagement* with a text a kind of absorption?) might be so generalized and/or inclusive as to be ultimately meaningless. Semi-related to this: This idea of "consumerism/ dissemination." (Can't remember now who brought this up! Please re-identify yourself!) My sense is that consumerism with respect to *anything* disseminated is unavoidable. If I send out copies of a poem to three or four friends (which is what I do with a certain portion of my work), then I and my three or four friends are engaging in an act of consumerism as well as an act of dissemination. I have almost a whole bookcase devoted to manuscripts I've received, some from friends, some from others, & these are no different to me (in essence) from the "published" things I've got on other bookshelves. (The only reason the mss. are separated is because they're too tall to fit on the other shelves.) I've even written and had published a *review* of one manuscript someone sent me to read, & plan to continue doing that when & as possible. What is the difference between paying (say) Station Hill to publish your manuscript and making photocopies of the ms. & sending it out to friends & others potentially interested in reading it? Or, for that matter, what's the difference between finding an editor of a small press to publish your book (including paying for it--& do editors w/out family money, rich friends, or successful nonprofit orgs *do* that anymore?--not a rhetorical question, btw)--well, what's the difference between that & sending your work around, in whatever form? As a reader, I have to say I appreciate, even prefer, books w/out blurbs, blurb-like matter, ISBN numbers, LOC info, bar codes, etc. I have more respect for "lower key" magazines like _Mirage_, _lower limit speech_, _Situation_, _North American Ideophonics_, and _Talisman_ than I do magazines like _Zyzzyva_, _Sulfur_ and _Conjunctions_. (I also tend to be more interested in the work the former examples publish.) But, I'm also aware of the notion that you might want to sell a few books or mags, especially if you're paying production costs. & bookstores these days are increasingly unwilling to stock books or mags w/out all of the "bullshit." The books my wife Marta & I publish include all of the "bullshit," *despite* my sense that it somehow "cheapens" the things. Dissemination--almost all of it, at any level--involves some degree of compromise. It helps, I think, if you can be consistently aware of that, know beforehand what you are or are not willing to do. If you simply want the work out there, in whatever form, available for people to read it, you'll likely be willing to do just about anything to make that happen, including saying things you don't believe, or (just as bad) withholding your real thoughts in fear of offending someone who could "fuck up your career." So, while I do think there's no such thing as dissemination free from consumerism, I don't think consideration of either is pointless. Would like to see more on this topic, actually. Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 14:37:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: Re: what it do? (essay question) In-Reply-To: <199503250500.AAA107529@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> from "Automatic digest processor" at Mar 25, 95 00:00:19 am Since the question of what poetry does is a difficult one, I thought it might be useful to provide you with a writing model to guide your responses. So, here is an excerpt from the introduction to Vol 4 of my groovy new/old Poets of the English Language set: "What is man? How does he differ from the gods on the one hand and from nature on the other? What is the divine element in man? A different set of answers to such questions, or a shift of emphasis in the old answers, changes the style and subject matter of poetry and the poet's conception of his [sic] function. For example, in the age of the heroic epic the difference between gods and men is that the former are immortal and the latter must finally all die like the beasts. In the meantime, however, some men are made godlike and separated from nature by the favor of the gods, becoming heroes who do great deeds. The poet, that is, the man inspired with the gift of tongues, celebrates the hero and his acts. In the Middle Ages, the quality which man shares with God and which the creatures do not have is a will that can make free choices. What separates man from god is sin: that he can and does choose wrongly, love himself, act selfishly. The function of the poet is to exhibit the human soul tempted by competing loves, and to celebrate the ways in which she [sic?] can be redeemed. In the neoclassical period, the divine human quality is reason, the capacity to recognized general laws, and the function of the poet is to celebrate the Rational City and to pour scorn on its enemies. Toward the end of the eighteenth century--Rousseau is one of the first symptoms--a new answer appears. The divine element in man is now held to be neither power nor free will nor reason, but self-consciousness. Like God and unlike the rest of nature, man can say "I": his ego stands over against his self, which to the ego is a part of nature. In this self he can see possibilities; he can imagine it and all things as being other than they are; he runs ahead of himself; he forsees his own death... [omitted citation of Holderlin's Der Mensch]. If self-awarenss and the power to conceive of possiblity is the divine element in man, then the hero whom the poet must celebrate is himself, for the only possible consciousness accessible to him is his own..." That brings us up to the Romantic Period. With this model before you, it shld be a relatively easy matter to define the function of poetry for the modern and contemporary periods in 75 words or less. Additional points will be awarded for effective deployments of such concepts as "postmodernism," "pop culture," and the "death of the author." Points will be deducted for scatalogical puns on the word "function" (tho' references to "eschatology" are welcome). steve shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 12:55:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 23 Mar 1995 to 24 Mar 1995 In-Reply-To: <9503250459.AA01429@isc.sjsu.edu> I'm three hours behind most of you, and reading the predigested POETICS -- _but_ To: Dr. Menard Re: "Could anyone else have written this and still . . ." RERE: "Funny that this should come up in the context of Creeley . . ." Did any of y'all see that egregious piece on the Poetry Scene and Readings in the New York Times Book Review a few weeks back? The hack who wrote it reported the "Was that a real poem or did you write it yourself?" question as having been put to another poet at another time, post-Creeley -- indicating to me (unless it was the case that the questiner was alluding to Creeley and the dimwit poet who retells the story didn't get it) that Creeley's anecdote/title has entered the anecdotage of the MFA/AWP contingency as apocryphal text without attribution,,,rather like hearing Rosa Lopez report, through her interpreter, that O.J. had once told her that "poetry makes nothing happen." Am I the only one who reads Auden's emphasis this way? that if we want to make "nothing" happen, we should write poems. A neat trick to confound philosophy. Where would we be without that nothing that is so difficult to produce? Thank Allah for the Arabic mathematicians. Sincerely, The Mark of Zero ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:25:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "thomas c. marshall" Subject: the hallmark of art Art is form extending content. Many greeting cards, by Hallmark and other corporations, make use of this. "Greeting" comes from a web of roots with a current usage showing at the surface in Scots dialect, expressing the idea of weeping or lamenting - mostly loudly. Poems have a range of registers. "Turn that TV down while your sister reads her cards; then, you can have some cake." A Hallmark is not always a verse; is it? And I would be proud to have written the works of Irving Mills, even when they don't express my sentiments exactly. "Doo wop doo wop, doo wop doo wop, doo wah." ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 13:43:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dodie Bellamy Subject: Mystery Slasher From today's San Francisco Chronicle: Mystery Slasher Gutting Books in South Bay by Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer A mysterious literary critic, well versed in poetry, is slicing his way through libraries in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, chopping out the contents of volumes of modern poetry. Armed with a razor or matte knife, the unknown slasher has gutted books by such well-known modern poets as Philip Levine, David Shapiro and Philip Booth. The slasher leaves the books' spines and covers on the shelves, but takes the pages. "Obviously, this is somebody with a problem," said Dave Fishbaugh, director of library services at West Valley College Library in Saratoga. "It's the most outrageous example of book mutilation I've seen." Fishbaugh said that whoever is doing this has cut up about 150 titles at more than a dozen libraries in Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Los Gatos and other South Bay cities. No suspect has been identified. About two-thirds of the books that have been destroyed are out of print, Fishbaugh said, and are effectively irreplaceable. Fishbaugh and other librarians say the slasher typically cuts out all the pages and then replaces the book on the shelf. The first case of vandalism was discovered at the end of January at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills. "One of our shelvers-that's a person who puts books back on shelves--came to us and was very alarmed at finding a stack of covers and spines on the shelves," said Karen Gillette, Foothill's public services librarian. "The books were gutted and then put back on the shelves, but they weren't in the right place. That's how we found out about this." In addition to cutting up books, the slasher also carved up three years' worth of a monthly publication called Poetry Magazine. So far, library officials have no motive for the vandalism. Some librarians think the slasher may want to steal the verse without triggering alarm systems that work off magnetic codes in book spines. Others think the thief may be scanning the poetry pages into a computer and creating a home-made poetry database. Poets whose works were mutilated were perplexed and frightened. One hesitated to talk, thinking the slasher might cut up more of his books. Another said the culprit might be jealous over being rejected for a poetry anthology. In Castine, Maine, poet Philip Booth-who had some of his nine books slashed at Foothill College-said, "It certainly seems strange to me that a reader of poetry would do this. If this person is going around the country doing this-hitting Levine and me in every collection-than maybe someday Philip Levine and I ought to check and see if there's someone in our deep past who is common to both of us." At Poetry Magazine in Chicago, managing editor Helen Klaviter said, "The poetry world attracts people on the fringes, and one can never tell exactly what's going to happen. It could be someone who's not getting published or someone who disagrees with the way these people write. Maybe this person thinks these poems should be in a different style or form, or wants them to rhyme." Asked how she felt about somebody slashing up her magazine, Klaviter said, "I'm floored, I'm speechless. But part of me is very grateful that it's my magazine that's being cut up and not me." ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 16:52:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) X-To: Karlyn Y-Mae Koh In-Reply-To: <9503242021.AA27630@imap1.asu.edu> I want to than Wynston Curnow (hope I got that right), cris cheek, and especially Karlyn Y-Mae Koh for their posts. Koh's post said all I could have hoped to have said on the matter and would defer to her on this matter--particularly as she articulates what it is I could only vaguely allude to with words like "MORAL" and "RESPONSIBILITY." I meant to be somewhat provocative with them and hoped to avoid being seen as advocating a role of Teacher/Prof as source of info into which it is poured into the student--accompanied by all the power/authority relations therein. My primary motivation--well-intentioned I assure you--was to confront what I see around me in teachers/profs of an attitude of cynicism about the endeavor they are engaged in. If (and this is not directed at any one in particular) teaching and, especially, "teaching" literature is only about making a living (or other narrow purpose) it would seem to me to be a major injustice not only to self but student. Quite simply, "teaching" (and I prefer shared inquiry") is and should be political--but political precisely to the extent that it challenges the process that produces what Koh refers to as clones. And, further, political to the extent that power/authority in the classroom is shared. These are vague remarks, but I hope their imperatives are clear: responsibility is not ... domination; and moral is not my values are better than your's. Jeffrey Timmons "My mother is a fish." ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 17:44:13 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Dr L.A. Raphals" Subject: Joseph Needham (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 17:45:13 -0500 (EST) From: Nathan Sivin To: East Asian Science list Cc: Early East Asia list , Nakayama Shigeru Subject: Joseph Needham A little over an hour ago, Joseph Needham died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Cambridge, England, at the age of ninety-four. Until this last day, he maintained his habit of going to his office in the Needham Research Institute every day. It is too soon for an obituary, but many of those who receive this message will have received his always generous help with their scholarship, and will remember him not only for his enormous contribution to our understanding of Chinese culture, but for his wit, his imagination, and his sympathetic interest in everyone he met. -- Nathan Sivin History and Sociology of Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia PA 19104-3325 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 18:16:44 WET Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor (longish): The Panic of Jane Staffo Dear Wystan, Just to say (and in case this seems like just a personal, best backchannelled, NZ chat, I hope others might have seen some of addressing of the teaching issues we've all been discussing, in this discussion of a specific case), that I appreciated your witty "I who have destroyed the best minds of my generation", laughed aloud, in fact, and I appreciate the openness to discussion. I wasn't, in fact, attacking you personally at all, nor any of the persons I mentioned; as I said, I think you do do a really good thing. I was just saying the whole system you and I work in could be better, and perhaps "corruption" was an overly melodramatic word for "missed chances", and the fact that it always galls when it appears that someone one's own age is being preferred, either for classroom attention or publication, because they have honed themselves into a perfect disciple (which is always flattering for a teacher, and it remains, perhaps, the teacher's greatest responsibility to resist it), when their discipleship ultimately fossilises the past (reflecting on what was good about the teacher and his/her favourites) and doesn't release the present (the potential combination in the student of all the things she/he thinks will impress and all the other things she/he is editing out of her/himself). This is a complex issue, since sometimes it is the best thing one can do with one's life to insist on the greater relevance of a neglected past writer over all the writers currently living, eg the rehabilitation of Stein in the eighties. But such a sacrifice is often not what's involved in the teacher/student "missed chances" I'm describing, and usually happens precisely because there is no teacher to impress with one's passion from the past. One might see in this tortuous bad description of mine a way of explaining one kind of inheritance of a national or indigenous experimental or otherwise tradition, and what can go wrong with it. I really think that one of the very best young poets of New Zealand is a Wellingtonian called Max Anderson, who had three poems a few years ago in Landfall, and who I tried to encourage, as a friend not a teacher; as soon as I left Wellington, he gave up poetry completely, and moved to London, pretty much wholly out of lack of encouragment. He was into John Ashbery, Thom Gunn and Allen Curnow, and his own work was just wonderful, but he kept getting told he was too British, despite that being a third of his total influence. And of course in Britain he's not going to start up again, because he keeps getting told he's too kiwi. So it's not you in particular I'm attacking, because it's a kind of pack behaviour that is common all over - I could give examples from this university too, of a student who was the best pop culture theorist, taught me buckets, but who got discouraged and downgraded solely for his choice of subject matter and theoretical bearing (the equivalent of influence for a poet?), and is now a bitter and spiteful man -as he couldn't get funding to continue research without good grades. So what I mean by "corrupt" is exactly what Alan means by corruption in the mainstream, kneejerk phobias and pack behaviour, with really talented individuals discouraged over people who can recite back the formulae but, since they never had to do the work you yourself did (and I love Cancer Daybook!) to set your own bearings. What a lot of avant-gardists think they're doing, in my experience, is trying to make it easier for the kind of rebel they were when younger, but they in fact don't. But I hope this isn't perceived as a monochromatic attack, just some reservations and criticisms; as i said before, the Auckland library collection is great, and was vital in my own researches and (exhausting, as yet undefeated) attempt to make my own way. Best, Ira ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 19:48:49 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: What does it do? The crunch of this question as Kali Tal has focussed it lies in: >work [which] forces us to confront events-in-the-world and allows no retreat, >>no relief. There are multiple ways through which poetry 'allows no retreat, no relief'. But here I feel disadvantaged as, being a limey, I've no idea what Hallmark cards really project. Am I right in thinking that they contain pretty much cliche sentiments to suit 'occasions of passage' or just express goodwill messages in ahandy 'off the peg' fashion? 'The President would like to say She hopes that you have a nice day' If I'm generally at least in the environs of the Hallmark Ballpark then aren't these poetries intended to offer at the least 'relief' if not necessarily 'retreat'? I'll stop there, in case I'm way off with my projected assumptions re Hallmark. Anybody help me out? cris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 13:21:08 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric pape Subject: Re: What does it do? In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 26 Mar 1995 19:48:49 +0000 from Cris, I think you're dead on. The problem as I see it of Hallmark cards and other such genres (I can't think of anything else to call it) is that their primary function seems to be affirmative. Things aren't as bad as they seem, in fact they are pretty darn good. This is not a problem only related to Hallmark but kid's cartoons (care bears;barney) and sitcoms (where Johnny's anti-social acting out by throwing water balloons off the balcony are resolved when dear old dad turns the hose on his) and talk shows (have a problem with incest, let the expert andthe audience help you!). The function of all of these is to provide pseudo-solutions. This isn't to say that there is not he possibility of finding accurate criticism in these. Beavis and Butthead can be quite critical, and Oprah and Salt and Pepa have provided forums for issues most of us would like to suppress as deeply as possible. But it would be a mistake as I see it to forget their primary purpose which seems clearly to me to reassure. Thanks, Eric. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 13:29:31 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric pape Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor (longish): The Panic of Jane Staffo In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 26 Mar 1995 18:16:44 WET from Maybe the problems we've all been addressing, that of teaching, and what poetry does, can be said to be problems of mastery. Which is how we avoid the "bad faith of the professor," or the assumption that all can be known about anything. Whether we are teaching or writing, thinking can never stop; you can't ever pretend you got it all down. WHich means sometimes that our students know more than us, in moreways than one.Which means when we are writing, its not always us who is writing, eh? Some thoughts, Eric. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 20:48:40 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor / Why Teach? X-To: "I.LIGHTMAN" >What a lot of avant-gardists think they're doing, in my experience, is trying >>to make it easier for the kind of rebel they were when younger, but they in >>fact don't. Posted listwards as there are some general issues here although one or two of the characters are probably anglo-specific. Ira are you only a rebel when you're younger - have you seen the Tony Hancock movie 'The Rebel'? I'm uncertain as to the applicability of terms such as avant-garde and rebel these days. I'm curious as to what you're suggesting - if you have a positive suggestion in respect of what you appear to articulate as an impasse for teachers as well as peers. Or are we caught in the hoollowed walls of academe here? 1. I remember Jeff Nuttall once telling me of how, when he was Head of Department at Liverpool School of Art (or close) there were many students who had astounding facility with a line (drawing) - they could, in his sense, make a line do whatever they wanted. These were, in his view, highly skilled draughtspeople. BUT, he said, the ones with the 'natural born talent' (almost a saleable film title there I think) were often not those who went on to become 'professional artists'. Maybe, you could say, they just had more sense. But his point was that the people who became artists were those who 'wanted' to become artists and who pursued that - . 2. Eric Mottram was one of the poets with whom I made initial contact as a young, nineteen year old (sort of average undergraduate age) would-be poet. I learned a great deal from him and yet he was downright discouraging to my work for about two or three years. He was a useful poet to develop resistances against. 3. Poets who actively encouraged and promoted my emergent practices at that time, Bob Cobbing, Allen Fisher, Ulli Freer among others I considered to be both 'teachers' and 'peers' - although admittedly I never felt myself to be in a formalised teacher-pupil relationship with them. It would be my contention that anybody who enters the institutionalised education system (thereby syllabus, curriculum and government ideology) deserves everything that they get - and I say this as somebody who is now twenty years later enrolled as a student and bugging the hell out of my own 'teachers'. 4. This whole confrontation of being perceived and buttoned as too 'kiwi' or 'brit' and so on astonishes me. I find it difficult (i know I find everything difficult) to understand how anyone can take criticism articulated on such a basis with anything other than the utter contempt it deserves. At the very least such resistances should be sufficient encouragement. 5. The desire for repetition (to hideously paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari) is the beginnings of the recognition of a need to mutate. The actual citation reads: 'Repetition is not the law, the finality of something; on the contrary, it marks the [I would say 'a'] threshold to "deterritorialization", the indication of a desiring mutation.' Seems like this begins to propose an approach to the question Why Teach? 6. I do recognise the pack or clique behaviour you mention, the potential claustrophobia of prevalent 'taste' (the 'canon' of any consensual given moment) - happens again and again, particularly among male poets propping up the bar around reading series' notable for 'almost' cover to cover beefcake programming. love cris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 15:10:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: someone gets a kick out of hallmark texts people who read work of the`confront-events-in-the-world-&-allows-no-retreat-&-no-relief' type do so either because it makes them feel good [aesthetically or ethically or both] or because they are forced by others. The latter case includes people who are majoring in 'english' (as a nonforeign language?) & must read that type of work when it is 'required reading' whether or not it makes them feel good. Not being able to retreat or experiencing relief (even thinking of those situations) makes me feel bad, so i always want to find out which works fall into the no-retreat/no-relief category so I can avoid them. i am convinced that hallmark poetry belongs in the no retreat/no relief category. Many times it makes you confront events in the world (e.g. birth, death) and there is no retreat & no relief from sending or receiving them. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Mar 1995 20:22:10 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind In-Reply-To: <9503200515.AA11068@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Phewph. My phone lines keep sending stuff off before I'm ready to send it. You may have noticed. Anyway, Maldoror and Le Poet Assassinee/ Apollinaire. Nadeau's History of Surrealism and The Road to the Absolute by I forget. Some Breton. We're attempting a collage novel and several breath poems and begin cut ups. So I'm being ordered to write again. Sigh of relief. I'm taking the class, which is an undergrad one, for no credit which makes it mostly just a joy. Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 09:09:06 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 23 Mar 1995 to 24 Mar 1995 Dear Aldon, O.J. reading John Cage's Silence makes transposition from music theory to poetry theory. Good call! Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 09:38:34 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Who teach? Dear Eric Pape, How about going further. Students know lots, but poets, painters, musicians also know things. So who teaches who is an interesting question. "I am teaching Michelangelo to-day" should read I'm finding out what looking at X or Y or Z by Michelangelo has got to offer? Ergo,"Michelangelo teaches me"? Or you-name-it teaches. This is a problem of positioning of the subjects, -- whose roles in the class room are defined as teachers and students. Teaching is gross when it gets to be indoctrination, isn't that the issue? Cheers Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 09:50:55 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind Dear George Bowering, I cd check on "copies to self" for what words I used etc, but my point would be not my view of Olson as historian (I reread the Special View book [lacunae? and all]) every now and again) , but the public perception among "bonafide" publishing historians in the history trade of Olson or his views. I love in Maximus the writing where the I of the book is reading over manuscript documents in a library: ever catch anyone else doing this in a history book? Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 15:59:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: hallmark and elite art Here in what, at least up until recently, used to be the center of cultural studies-land in the US, one actually feels quite beleaguered if one prefers Olson to Hallmark, or oil paintings to TV. The editor of the Journal of Communication, for which I edit the book review section, was considering doing a special issue of all those pieces that we'd love to write but are forbidden in today's climate. I proposed a piece on tolerating those who love elite art forms as acceptable deviants in a popular culture world focused on "difference".... A question to those who run the list -- it seemed to me that while we were discussing whether or not to break the list up into different categories in order to reduce the amount of mail and produce more focused discussions, you've also much expanded the list in terms of numbers, without comment. Comment? Sandra Braman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 17:01:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Conte Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 22 Mar 1995 to 23 Mar 1995 With regard to the subject of teaching and writing: In an APR interview from 1989, Donald Hall stated that he deplored the separation of creative writing programs from the teaching of literature (to grads or undergrads) because: "If you teach great literature you live among the great models. You make your living reading Moore and Pound and Hardy and Marvell and Yeats! Incredible. Students ask you questions, and when you answer you discover that you knew something you didn't know you knew. Instead of living with half-baked first drafts by narcissistic teenagers [in workshop classes], you live with the _greatest art_. What could be a better way to spend your spare time--when you're not competing directly with Wordsworth--than be reading Wordsworth." Other than the fact that I find teaching to be more than a "spare time" activity (if it's done well), I find Hall's rationale for the presence of the poet in the English department quite reassuring. Joseph Conte ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 10:11:13 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: making it up yrself Yes, Ryan, anyone, in so far as the text consists of simply readily available words for numbes and a well-known conjunction. But only at a given place in a given situation would anyone think that that was a poem, for Pete's sake! Is that what you are saying? Do you read Thierry de Duve, whose intricate and rich meditations on this problem occur in English in "Pictorial Nominalism". Ready-made are the words, but their positioning, that's something else. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 10:22:31 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Hallmarks and What They Do Dear Tom Mandel, Months, it seems years ago, I asked what you meant by use in poetry and your recent post comes close to making something clear. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 20:40:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David McAleavey Subject: DC Poets etc. X-To: "Aldon L. Nielsen" In-Reply-To: <199503250353.WAA09141@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> Hi Al! Welcome to see you here. In your post last Friday you said something which I've puzzled over, but haven't gotten clear: that DC poets "try to render the problematics and language and representation as literally as possible." I'm not sure I have much stake in the question, since I'm a resident of Arlington VA, but what =is= a literal rendition of the problematics of language and representation? Maybe you're suggesting that DC poets, close to the realities of political action, sense they need to be more straightforward in order to have an impact in the world? That's an interesting idea, and may be true of many poets around here (but not perhaps so true of those DC poets I know who are actually on this list). But I think I just failed to catch the sense you intended to convey. As for the LC readings, I wonder if you're representing the situation around here accurately -- it's true that most of the readings are held at 6:45 pm, instead of 8 pm. The announced logic for this change (which still corresponds to the closing-for-repairs of the grand Coolidge Auditorium in the old, main Jefferson building of the Library) is that now people who want to attend after work before going home may do so. Apparently it was felt that people wouldn't come back to town, because of the logistics involved in commuting. And most folks who work in the District who have any interest in attending the kinds of readings sponsored by the L.C. face at least some commute, even if only to outer areas of the District. I guess I don't see how a 6:45 reading precludes DC residents from attending the readings. Of course someone may be worried that some people would be reluctant to come to "dangerous" Capitol Hill so late as 8 pm at night, and there would doubtless be some racism involved in such a hypothesis; but 6:45 is nighttime around here during a significant part of the poetry season anyway, and even the 6:45 readings don't get finished till close to 9 pm, cetainly dark during the spring and fall portions of the LC schedule. I don't know why we have a poet laureate -- I should say, I don't think we ever should have had to employ that honorific title. But lots of the Consultants in Poetry, like the current Laureates, kept their residences elsewhere. Some did spend a lot of time here in DC, and were locally admired for it. But the truth is the gig doesn't pay that well -- last I heard it was maybe $20K-- but that's just a rumor whose truth I can't verify. Not much to live on here in DC -- though OBVIOUSLY more than many poor folks here have to survive on somehow. But if Rita Dove wants to spend a lot of time in Charlottesville, two hours away, that doesn't seem horrific to me. On Fri, 24 Mar 1995, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > > As a former resident of the District of Columbia, a wholly-owned > subsidiary of the U.S. Congress, I take the question of poets in the > Republic rather seriously. We probably don't have to look to far for the > reasons that the Library of Congress changed its poetry reading schedules > so that most residents of D.C. would no longer be able to attend. Most > of our recent U.S. Poet Laureates have made an insistence upon not moving > to D.C. a condition of their accepting the position. One thing that D.C. > poets try to do, even when living in California as I do, is to render the > problematics of langauge and representation as literally as possible. > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 16:11:19 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: poetry v the sharp mind In-Reply-To: <9503262106.AA15871@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> Amazing, I just received on this list the message I sent out on the 19th. No wonder I have a weird sense of time. Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 18:17:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: making it up yrself In-Reply-To: <199503262239.OAA14426@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at Mar 27, 95 10:11:13 am > Yes, Ryan, anyone, in so far as the text consists of simply readily > available words for numbes and a well-known conjunction. But only at > a given place in a given situation would anyone think that that was a > poem, for Pete's sake! Is that what you are saying? Yes this is the question but I'm not sure if that is what I'm saying. In fact, I only posed a question. But I don't know if I agree that "ONLY at a given place in a given situation " do words become poems. I whole-heartedly endorse found poetry: too much rhymes when you mind your prospects. And no I haven't read "Pictorial Nominalism". Should I? Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 15:09:31 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: 1 & 2 3 Dear Ryan, Reading could speed up discussion of the "ready-made" aspect, [not that speed is everything]. And the situation in question in the Creeley poem you introduced in here supposes a cultural situation in which that particular "piece" comes to be interesting, as much as anything for its seeming simplicity, and consequent confusion of the field of "what poetry is". It still has that effect, I guess. Anyways, Thierry de Duve is a good read. I offer that as a recommendation of something pleasant and interesting for someone who raises the interesting questions you ask (not as some awful academic Duty.) Cheers. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 23:22:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Re: politics and poetry In-Reply-To: <199503260501.AAA16973@panix4.panix.com> I like what Gary Sullivan said to Kali. I know he was talking about reading for enjoyment but the message hits me in the following way. Political statements can be poetry or propoganda or both. Propoganda can be the truth in a political context. But if it is poetry, the residue that is left will be regarded more for its aesthetic content than its political. Because politics has a way of being current and art has a way of being eternal or out of time. Some artists or poets or whatever get to their essence by virtue of their politics and others stand outside it. I think someone like Joyce stood outside it but dealt with it continually. Someone like Virginia Woolf had to deal with it more directly, or maybe more personally, because she had a stake in changing a system she considered an injustice to herself and other women. Joyce didn't need to deal with that basic issue. All he needed to do was prove he was the greatest writer of the English language since Shakespeare! Someone like Gertrude Stein, who I studied pretty heavily my 1st year of college and who gave me my lead into the world of visual arts, got around the women's issue by identifying with men as a man. However she looked down on women for the most part. Virginia Woolf liked women, she held on to that in her writing. It seems to me she is a woman writer. Gertrude Stein wasn't really gender oriented in her writing. I like her audacity, her assurance and her love of artists and writers. Then I think their are people who live what might be called poetic lives. In a large sense people like Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela are such people. bs ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 21:34:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Pop will eat itself (fwd) I've been lurking and mulling this whole thing over for a couple of days. I've always been a fan of Popism, Warhol has been my hero since I was a preteen. Howver I've never been a fan of Hallmark (I like far side cards) but I do see its place in the Forrest Gumpville, USA that has become ever so annoying and popular. But packaging and selling that warm fuzzy feeling is an aspect of Western culture that i look at as a very precise art form. HAllmark has to be given credit for that atleast. Playing off our guilt enough to convince us that Secretary's Day is viable holiday is pretty impressive. I think the reason we can't swallow Hallmark as art is because it masquarades itself as true sentiment. It's sells love and apologies. It prostitutes what is supposed to be near and dear for $2.50 and seals it in a red envelope. Another amazing and similar consumer frenzy is going on in the long distance phone business, yet we aren't quite as threatened by that surge simply because it doesn't come to us in the form of verse. Idon't know I'm sort of babbling, but Hallmark is Hallmark and poetry is . . . well I don't know, but I do agree with Warhol, i like my art with mistakes. The canvas never looks right unless it has streaks and smudges, that's how you tell its authentic. Lindz Williamson What I'd like to know is what is with the revial of the Western? I've noticed three definite themes reappearing in poetry, fiction and film using the western genre. 1) The wise old Indian stereo type, return to nature and the mother earth spirit. 2( The independent I am a cow girl so don't mess with me female empowerment in the Wild West, yet I will throw myself down to the one man that can tame me. 3)And finally the its ok white boy your not all that bad, not all of you are blood sucking colonialists, some of you can read keats and castrate a bull all in a days work. Can anyone give me any insight? Lindz Williamson ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 21:54:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: politics and poetry In-Reply-To: <199503270424.UAA26315@unixg.ubc.ca> I really like the idea of Hallmark as propaganda. It's a secure medium of which everone is familiar, a perfect place to hide enforcements of proper social behavior from Middle america. Who knows maybe it's a plot? Or am I just becoming paranoid? Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:16:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Espouse NOW! The following message is from the American Arts Alliance: URGENT ACTION ALERT URGENT SENATE BEGINS DEBATE ON THE PROPOSED FY 95 RESCISSIONS GRASSROOTS CONTACTS NEEDED ISSUE: The Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR), just announced that it will consider the FY 95 rescission package this Friday, March 24, with floor consideration anticipated as early as next week. Like the House bill, which passed last week, the Senate proposal is expected to contain $17 billion in spending cuts -- over $5 billion to pay for California emergency aid and $11 billion for deficit reduction. The House bill also contains a $5 million cut to both the NEA and NEH. (The House NEA cuts are targeted: $1 million from its administrative budget and $4 million from unobligated program funds, most of which is directed at individual fellowships.) Last week, arts advocates scored a victory when the House defeated, by a vote of 260 to 168, an amendment that would have tripled the NEA funding reduction in the House bill from $5 to $15 million. Defeat of the NEA amendment is significant because sponsors Phil Crane (R-IL) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) implored conservative House Democrats and Republicans to support deeper cuts in the NEA's budget. SENATE ACTION NEEDED: To register broad based support for cultural funding, we need you to get in touch with your Senators and urge them to oppose any funding reductions to the NEA and NEH. WE URGE YOU TO CALL YOUR SENATORS BY FRIDAY MORNING, MARCH 24. Express your opposition to NEA funding cuts by using the sample message below. The congressional switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. SAMPLE MESSAGE The Senate soon will be considering a rescission package to this year's (FY 95) budget. Please oppose any attempt to cut NEA and NEH funding. The NEA already has suffered budget cuts over the past several years. In fact, the NEA's budget has lost nearly 50 percent of its purchasing power over the past 15 years. The agency is playing its part in deficit reduction. Such cuts have limited the agency's ability to serve the American public. Both the NEA and the NEH are wise investments that merit national support. These cultural agencies help your constituents. These agencies' investments help generate jobs, create a competitive labor force for the future, revitalize communities, improve education, enhance tax bases and stimulate economic growth, increase tourism, and improve the development and growth of auxiliary services. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 15:29:19 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Geraets ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 15:30:32 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Geraets Subject: Letter to the Editor (Longish) re- Q: What's the difference between a good langpo and a tree? A1: Nothing. A2: Everything. A3: The Answer, like the Question, is beside the point. A4: The tree, unlike the langpo, isn't preoccupied with defining its position. It occupies it. Take your pick. I like A4 (& not just cause it's longer). Does theorize mean think about or write about what you think about - or maybe do these things in specific contexts or forums - as per this LIST. If I ask, what makes me feel welcome here, what's my qualification being here (apart from the gender and de-lurker invitations, which are lovely and help), I'd say it's cos I'm interested in intellectual discussion, specifically langpo-type speculations. This of course means I like the company, very much, even if I don't know the quality of your social or other lives. Right now, don't care. So, it's a kind of community - I mean, there are commonnesses operating huh, of interests, of reading, of a pleasure in theorizing. Of stimulation and the pleasure - yeah maybe power too - of expression. Poetry and its theorizing I think don't have social or political or what have you functions. Maybe the sense of responsibility comes from the feeling that we owe our patrons, now that our patrons/the market are in good part the state, hence society. I mean, it's opportunity and proclivity that connects us. What are the personal costs agains the pleasure of being on the LIST - does it come down to being a university-sponsored, mail- (oops, male-) dominated thing. The loop that leads back from such theory to its sponsoring society must necessarily get mediated beyond recognition, it's dishonest to claim responsibility for ourselves. At most, such responsibility is an indirect thng. Now maybe it's the processes of mediation running too & from langpo and its theorizers, job appointments, books published, conferences, earnings, what have you. But theory has to do with what it theorizes, in this case literary stuff (&itself). It seems to me typically literature doesn't do well patronizing the patron. By the way, Tony, with the place you give sound/voice in poems where do you leave someone who just happens not to have heard poetry aloud, or a deaf someone. I can't see the disadvantage. Surely one sensitivity being blocked serves well to open others? John Geraets frank@dpc.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 22:30:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: NEA Appropriations Hearing The House committee on appropriations will hold a meeting to consider '96 funding for the NEA on April 5 at 10:00 AM in Rayburn B308. As noted previously, getting the House to authorize and appropriate are the two most critical steps in saving the NEA. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 15:53:00 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Geraets Subject: re Letter to the Editor (Longish) (oops just sent off the wrong post, bloody unix system, sent this one friday w/o success, here goes again..) Hi Alan, Wystan, Tony (especially).. Got to say I feel supportive of Alan's Stafford rebuttal - same time can I push at the side of it rather than just forming a scrum with you guys. I'd like to speak as a friend and someone with aligned writing intersts. I'm uncomfortable with indignation as a form of literary address. I think it already assumes a mandate and is too affordable. It knows better than what it addresses. I can't see the writers involved haven't fully adequate resources available. Alan, Wystan, Michele, Murray, Tony, Roger, Alex, all teach at AUckland University. All have texts published, most by reputable publishers. AUP recently published Michele, Murray, Alan. All the writers above have been involved in editing NZ literary magazines - Parallax, And, Splash. I've seen good serious reviews of all writers. I reviewed Alan I think appreciatively in Landfall. You guys - we guys - have surely been given some chances and taken many more. Marginalism is as much self-induced as conferred, surely. How do Wystan's demolition job on modernism (in Parallax) and Alan's on CK Stead (in Island) differ from any other attempt to get the high ground? We've gone harder at discrediting other literary practices, at least as hard, I think, as they us. I'm saying these things cause I'm currently writing on NZ literary practice/s. Also, cause this is something I've talked/mailed about with Wystan and Alan. Also, cause I submitted a proposal for public funding in early '93 for a magazine which involved most of the names above (yes, that was turned down, and wrongly I believe - another story). Also, I've been writing poetry in and out of this group over several years and while I've felt tremendous personal support it has not been (for me) an endorsement of my achievement as such. How such endorsements work is subtle and of course often sensitive. My books have been self-published and hand-sold. They've been read in public and sometimes reviewed. A brief postcard I received from Charles Bernstein after sending him a copy of Itsan meant maybe more than other responses I got. People support what they like (and what likes them too, which is natural), I like my work so who should I ask to write seriously about it? My sense is, of the people I've mentioned, maybe Tony has had least mainstream recognition of his work/s? Would you care to comment on your experience visavis the mainstream, Tony? Who's allowed to complain, who's allowed to insist on being read let alone read a certain way? I don't think the values appealed to in the name of poetry have and superior merit. In fact, the ethical dimension of writing as it stands is, I believe, illshaped and outdated. Charles and I both say Alan's a 'terrific' poet: in our game, how does one weigh the sayer with the said? So, I support Alan but I don't go with the dialectic it espouses. It's too proper an idea of writing and writing's public for me. I place this response here because I'm interested in literary practices and want to say something personal, as a friend and fellow writer, from Japan, thru a computer based in Buffalo (where?) across the screens of a no. of Americans and others (what would hold them to read this far?) to my mates in Auckland. John Geraets frank@dpc.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 08:19:05 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: westerns >What I'd like to know is what is with the revial of the Western? >I've noticed three definite themes reappearing in poetry, fiction and film >using the western genre. >1) The wise old Indian stereo type, return to nature and the mother earth >spirit. >2( The independent I am a cow girl so don't mess with me female >empowerment in the Wild West, yet I will throw myself down to the one man >that can tame me. >3)And finally the its ok white boy your not all that bad, not all of you >are blood sucking colonialists, some of you can read keats and castrate a >bull all in a days work. > >Can anyone give me any insight? > >Lindz Williamson a book i'm always ready to recommend: Richard Slotkin's _Regeneration Through Violence_, on the ambivalent american relationship to nature/ wilderness/"savage", and its expression in AmLit. also, Annette Kolodny's _Lay of the Land_, w/ a feminist analysis of some of the same issues... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 10:37:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Who teach? yes: WHO teach? and when the teaching is by those who are strictly readers/critics, what's taught? mostly ways to read and criticize, in my experience. lots of theory says its all the same game: reading/writing. sure, and the moon is a pumpkin. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 10:50:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Why Teach? cris: computer acts weird today, so i repeat, differently once more, just in case other message didn't travel: responsibility's become "i respond even if you don't ask," which is arrogance, it may be, of teacher, poet, etc. who is (yr sense) responsible. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 11:12:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Wot Dey Doo Discussion here has come to an interesting pass-- step back, observe the weave of many threads: One set of voices asks what poems/pages/teachers/students/ greetingcards/cowboymovies can/may/should/must do. Literally: "what's the use?" The correct answer to these, taken together, is "many things: too many to count on the off-hand." This is a vague answer, thus not very popular in academe. Too bad. Many here voice this position, at least by implication, to which chorus I add my own. I won't tell poets what to do. And I have found, sadly, that academic description all too often turns into prescription. (I have no such compunction, though, against telling critics what to do or where to go.) But another set of voices, which shares some membership with the first set, answers according to academic habit by specifying one or a few possible uses as if those few were the only correct or worthy ones. Another, only slightly better way of doing this is to rank the potential uses on a seemingly vertical scale, high as opposed to low (and "cultural studies"' bouleversement of that scale does nothing to remedy the fundamental authority problem inherent in academic habitude--a rank order turned upside-down is, as has been observed by others here, still a rank order and still dependent upon the criteria that ranked the *old* order). Walk to the front of a classroom and you walk into a role in the imaginary drama each student writes for you--that is, ten, twenty, fifty different roles at once. You'd better believe you're not always going to play the good-guy. Regard yourself as a co-investigator and soon you'll be sued by students who believe they're paying good money to have facts force-fed to them; go the opposite way and you're unjust toward those who would have thriven on co-operation. Sorry: no amount of tips can help you totalize this one. But it's okay. Some of my best teachers were my worst ones: the ones who motivated me to show that bastard a thing or two. Happens all the time. You cannot control the student's reception of your efforts by applying some particular technique. You (we) can, however, try to respond openly and flexibly to the multiplicity of students' wants and needs. (Again vague, this is as precise a formulation as the problem affords.) Political responsibility does not amount to either going along with or else opposing a cultural hegemony. It amounts to exercising one's share of power in group decision-making: far more of a gray (grey, for you Kiwis) area than the either/or of hegemony theory. I don't use greeting cards because I would consider it lazy *for me* to do so, not necessarily for my neighbor. (I also think Hallmark markets their product in an unethical way by inventing occasions on which my friends and relatives will feel hurt if I don't plunk down my couple of bucks on the right sort of card, but this has nothing to do with the verses per se.) The sentiments they express can support, oppose, or take any number of more complex positions toward "the culture." Generally the funny ones ironize our common problems, which can assuage bad faith or spur good faith efforts to change things; once again, the effect is not and cannot be totally controlled. And that's a good thing. --Jim the Scrivener ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 13:05:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Mar 1995 to 26 Mar 1995 In-Reply-To: <9503270503.AA25458@isc.sjsu.edu> Now that Kato's tesitmony has been interrupted for the day, I want to respond quickly to a number of disparate postings: Help? Bob Kaufman's poem "The American Sun" includes a ref. to "Arthur Farnsworth Television." Haven't been able to ID this -- Can anybody tell me who Arthur Farnsworth is/was? Maria or any other Kauman readers?? I'd hate to see such a binary opposition as Olson v Cultural Studies gain currency. Some of you may recall the amusing episode in Olson studies when his ref. to "Durante" was misread till somebody wrote in to the Olson journal to point out the obvious, that Olson's ref. was to the Schnoz himself. I don't happen to find Hallmark verse engaging myself, but it is certainly an interesting cultural phenomenon -- And how will we write those pesky Norton Anthology footnotes if we don't know about this stuff? Now, in answer to David MacAleavey (who others on the POETICS line will not know was one of my dissertation readers long ago). Will have to give you a fuller reponse elsewhere, as I'm on a machine that does not belong to me this week (one that makes it nearly impossible to correct anything!) -- but quickly -- as to point one -- cf, maybe "Can the Subaltern Speak" and _What Comes After The Subject_ -- as to the other points (don't have the posting [or posstage] in front of me] -- Well, yes, I will admit to hyperbole (this will hardly surprise you) -- but I suspect that the rationale you mention for the change in reading schedules at the Library of Congress, that people could attend on their way home from work, is the sort of thing that seems sensible to a group of people meeting on the Hill before going home to the suburbs. I am prepared to find that I am horribly wrong about that -- I imagine that rationale might hold true for the early shift at the Government Printing Office, but I doubt that this move has demonstrably increased the participation of DC residents in the series. And no, there's nothing particularly horrific in Rita Dove's decision to live at home in C'Ville with her family & near her tenured position -- Things are a bit different (though still not horrific) when the poet lives, say, in a noncontiguous state & makes a point of repeating slighting remarks about the local literary culture to the national press. (For those not familiar with the odd history of such things, one quickly learns not to make predictions about the matter based on the published verse. William Meredith (who comes in for brutal treatment in an Olson poem) was one of the LOC Poetry Consultants most supportive of area poets. & No, I see no reason for us to have a Poet Laureate either,,, but I see that as no bar to my interpreting the remarks of Brodsky, Strand and a few others as somewhat shortsighted -- This is in the nature of a symptomatic reading -- We can judge Professor Newt by his first appointment of a House historian, and I think we can derive lessons about governmental attitudes towards the literary arts from the history of the LOC -- anyway, as the unmatched parentheses above confirm, I can't backtrack on this compture to correct anything, and so will speak more directly of these things in person -- will be there in June! Good to hear from you after all these years. Now, my additions to our group reading lists: _Dictee_ by Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha -- just reissued by 3d Woman Press & available through SPD -- this one is a must! & from the land of the still out of print -- _Dunford's Travels Everywhere_ by William Melvin Kelley -- a real surprise -- check your local university library for a copy. Lastly, I don't know why the list of participants was expanded without comment, but I will confess to having added myself to the list without comment -- Sorry -- I don't know what came over me -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 16:38:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: The List Itself Sandra Braman asks about any increase in the number of people on this list. As of today, there are 200 subscribers to Poetics. So, yes, the list grows by a few people every week. The policy on new subscribers has remained the same all along, and there are no plans to change it: the list is private, but anyone who finds out about it (usually through another list member but also through discovering the list by browsing EPC) is free to subscribe. I continue to see the advantage of keeping the list to a smallish scale, but then I don't know what smallish means in an environment as big as the internet. (In a talk on Friday, at UB's conference on the internet and related issues, Loss Glazier quoted some remarkable statistics on the day by day growth of the internet; perhaps he will post those here.) The paradox is that in an attempt to be open and nonexcluding one can end up excluding those who are unable to handle the volume: people are drowned out rather than kept out -- until Dreamworks Interactive, Inc., guides us and we asphyxiate. If people on the list have thoughts about this, please let me\us know. ** A reminder that if your server is down or your "disk quota" is exceeded you may find yourself automatically unsubbed from Poetics; should this happen, just resubscribe yourself. Some subscribers have changed their user IDs, often from initials or numerals to full names; the listserv program evidently can't recognize the old and new addresses as the same and this may cause difficulties in setting options, unsubscribing, and posting. If you do change your ID, unsub with the old and resub with the new (?!). If you want to temporarily stop getting Poetics mail it may be easier to send a message to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu: set poetics nomail & later: set poetics mail than unsubbing and resubbing. If you get the Digest: if possible, try to send any replies to the list without using the "reply" function so that you can write in a specific subject head; otherwise the subject reads "Digest". On my vax system, the only information I have about a message from the directory is that it is from Poetics, the date, and the subject; other systems, as I understand it, give more or different information. There is some snare in the "automated" archiving of Poetics files, so that we don't have monthly compilations for the last three months. I have requested that this be fixed and hope it soon will be. ** Once again, let me encourage those of you out there who edit magazines or publish books to send information to the list on new publications as well as complete backlists. Also welcome: information on new and recent books and publications by list participants (I have been tempted to put together a recommended reading list just of recent books and publications by people on this list, many of which have not been cited here, but the job is too extensive for me just now.) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 23:24:58 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: plus A to Z minus Interpretation Eric, Jorge and Lindz - hope you don't mind. I love it. Thanks I quite agree and somehow understand >The problem as I see it of Hallmark cards and other such genres (I can't think >>of anything else to call it) is that their primary function seems to be >>affirmative. Things aren't as bad as they seem, in fact they are pretty darn >>good. This is not a problem only related to Hallmark but kid's cartoons (care >>bears;barney) and sitcoms (where Johnny's anti-social acting out by throwing >>water balloons off the balcony are resolved when dear old dad turns the hose >on >his) and talk shows (have a problem with incest, let the expert and the >>audience help you!). >The function of all of these is to provide pseudo-solutions. >i am convinced that hallmark poetry belongs in the no retreat/no relief >>category. Many times it makes you confront events in the world (e.g. birth, >>death) and there is no retreat & no relief from sending or receiving them. >I really like the idea of Hallmark as propaganda. It's a secure medium >of which everone is familiar, a perfect place to hide enforcements of >proper social behavior from Middle america. respect cris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 19:17:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bill Luoma Subject: Re: westerns I was obliged by your baked beans. They measured out to ten tumbleweeds. You also bought new fangled bedrolls and employed them against the coyote sounds of the night. I called you my little insulite pad. The prairie gives off long when we roam. You built a fire to warm our socks. Grateful night critters blinked at the shadows. The buttes got mangy. Your horse sense kept you away from the strip mining contracts. You got nuggets in the pan at Trinity Center. The mountain folk didn't no ways stand you off. Your pockets were full of gold. Barkeep, take my gun for safekeeping. I wish to bathe the trained longing of my whipper snapper. I played with the fur trappers while you were on the trail. I struck it up with one of the lonely girls from Abilene. She spoke highly of your playing habits. I want to crouch around your merry mack. Zoom Zoom says the rider. My strums are for you, saloon girl. Fanciful flouncing is your game. I reckon only your bosom is level headed. Give me a kiss before high noon. The cook returns the ladle to the chuck wagon. O friendly ground, tonight you'll substitute for my lover. The gray puffy clouds roll in the afternoon. We don't yield as much to the gracious outline of the sun. I've seen you holding the rifles. You learned about animal sex from hunting. You can empty shells. Our horses break the sod. Buzzards circle the roundup. I wear a Stetson in Kansas City to impress you. This is how I go about courting. The paper fan delivers sweet air to the back of your neck, my angel. Your cowboy wings fan the drafts of the Southwest. I present to you my newly-oiled chamber. Are you ready for the back country of my love. You continuously build such campfires. And you announce your greed. I am all tied up by your silks. The big night pretends to put it out. You wear a leather mantle against the dust. You make coffee in the morning. You make the range a reflection in your golden spurs. Please draw that six and squeeze me off a few rounds. You can leave your chaps on, partner. But that gunbelt is in the way. The rifleman is a strong emotion. We left shotgun pellets behind us. We left groves of trees wondering. We left coyotes trying to join our love yelps. You old horny toad, wait till after I cook up the rabbit on a spit. To stay up with the moon and you and tequila. I kept feeding the fire. The corona broke and we saw the sage. You said you saw everything. Wolves were howling. Remember the buffalo bread you baked? I've never met a better baker. You sure can shoot, too and throw a steer on its side at the rodeo. We needed to water the horses. You sniffed it out. The leaves stroked the water in its hidden places. The animals drank. The creatures don't protest our take over of this spot. Not if we deal them in, the cicadas, the prairie skeeters and the vast distance of it all. My bedroll is wet with morning dew. I must find my breakfast. Nuts and berries are plentiful, but the brush is rustling with animal sound. I started cooking over the fire. I put in a few irons too. I may do some touch-up branding of your rustled cattle. Sing me a song about the range, my love. I've heard a few sad ones about the Big Valley and the Grand Canyon. Please, seduce me again with your sad songs. You panned for gold in Placerville. Do you still have that burning pain? I know what happened in the mining accident wasn't my fault. I turned on the high- pressure hose out of love. I would be careful of that branding iron if I were you, in your 501s and sheepskin collar jean jacket. The irons are hot now. They'll be blackened any minute. The marks of your territory stand guard against the squatters. Everyday hands are mending your fences. I don't mind the barbs. I'm your ranch hand. I do the job with pride. The rushing river ends up slow and brown in the prairie. I am completely in love with your profile against the mountains. Your head moves up and down with the horse. Last night I ate mushrooms in honor of the time we tripped over the range. I stepped in a cow patty that reminded me of your hat. Diamondbacks were hanging from the scrub. You dowsed the earth and made the heavens roll. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 19:39:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: low? Sandra, here's some Olson for you t'make you feel better: "...unlike India, the soil, here, is most shallow, a few inches, & only occasionally, in drift pockets, 6 inches or more. So the struggle of the roots is intense. But a long time ago the boys beat it this way. It's grass that is the big enemy of maize, the only real one, for they burn off the bush, before they plant. But grass keeps coming in. And in the old days, they were able to stand it off - for as long as seven years (the maximum life of milpa) - by weeding out the grass by *hand*. But then came the machete. And with it, the victory of grass in *two* years. For ever since that iron, the natives cut the grass, and thus, without having thought about it, spread the weed-seed, so that the whole milpa is choked, quickly choked, and gone, forever, for use for, maize (grass is so tough it doesn't even let brush or forest grow again!) "One curious corallary, that, the Communist future of this peninsula will have to reackon [sic] with: that, the ground is such, and its topography so humped & rocked, that, still, the ancient method of planting - with a pointed stick, and sowing, with the hands - is far superior to any tractor or planter or whatever." (_Mayan Letters_) So odd, I think, someone (not you, Sandra) complaining weeks ago about this list "degenerating" to discussions re: "crop rotation." Discussion of crops not beneath Olson; why so beneath his readers? Felt similarly w/respect to your "high" vrs. "low" culture complaint/post. Were "sports" beneath Pindar? Tenth century Japanese "correct" vs. "noncorrect" behavior (read: "gossip"--& her pillow book's filled w/it) beneath Sei Shonagon? Whaling beneath Melville? Sappho, Catullus..."vulgar"? _I Remember_ and _My Life_ wonderful because about things seen in the Louvre? How much "high" art is, in fact, excusively *about* "high" art? Even Joyce wrote lovely little bits about farting. (The topic for two solid weeks on an e-space list devoted to Joyce.) I love Olson, Sandra, but've found the discussions on this list re: Hallmark much more interesting than the solemn "Achievement of Olson"- acknowledgments here a week or so ago. Just 'cause Olson's name's dragged into the discussion doesn't mean the talk's gonna be all that lively or informative. I know of no interesting writing that hasn't, specifically, addressed the civilization in which the writing was done. TV & Hallmark (or Hallmark-equivalent) are part of contemporary civilization. Seems natural they come up as topics of discussion here. The rich will make temples for S'iva. What shall I, a poor man, do? My legs are pillars, the body a shrine, the head a cupola of gold. Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers, things standing shall fall, but the moving ever shall stay. --Basavanna 820 Dust or flesh--to use Dahlberg's distinction--, Sandra? Gotta run, now. Academy Awards start in 15 minutes & I'm popcorn boy. Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 20:02:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: Re: low? In-Reply-To: <199503280142.AA10734@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> from "Gary Sullivan" at Mar 27, 95 07:39:33 pm Gary Sullivan -- Enjoyed your post and I completely agree with you. Was only meaning to say in my recent high/low comment that it shouldn't have to be that one is laughed out of town if one enjoys Pindar and Olson as well as sports and Hallmark. I'd let ALL flowers bloom.... In fact, I about got thrown out of graduate school my first semester in when, as I say in a poem about Rodin's mistress, "never was socialized well," I screamed out "bullshit" in an auditorium full in response to a professor trying to sell the high/low distinction....The guy wouldn't talk to me for two years, and it didn't do much for my effort to get support, either.... There's no dispute between us on this point, Gary. Sandra ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 22:49:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: Bill's westerns In-Reply-To: <199503280328.TAA13309@unixg.ubc.ca> Thank you your poem expressed the exact elements of the "Wild West" that I was discussing. I don't want to be mis interpreted, I do like westerns and even more I adore horses. I'm just interested in how the Mythical cowboy has emerged once again in the decade of the politically correct. Not that I want to discuss that nightmare. I just finished Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" and was puzzled by its mass appeal. I found it varying and inconsistent in content and style. I was equally swept away and disappointed. The langauge of the west is poetic as it combines old world English with New world experience, but being a history major I feel it takes far more than a few catch phrases to represent an era. Historical the representation of the western is very problematic. There are sensitive issues or race, sex, religion and properity ownership to be addressed. The western of the 50's and 60's never bothered to address these concerns and that is what has become the stereo type of the perception of the west. Ondaatje has written a excellent docupoem about Billy the Kid, but it content it reinforces the mythology of the Wild West. I'm not sure if this is good, bad, or accurate but it concerns me. Possibly this is because I've been reading Ovid, Tacitus and Virgil, and I've been wondering how much of their poetry, histories and accounts are actual history or gossip or poetic mythology. I spoke once with George Bowering and he told me of a discussion he had with Ondaatje about writing a western without all the "Hoo-ha". Ondaatje replied writing a western without the "hoo-ha" would be total hoo-ha. If this is possible then does that mean the stereotypes are so ingrained in the genre that to remove them would create something entirely different? Yippe-kay-ya Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 01:53:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: low? In-Reply-To: <199503280537.WAA11799@mailhost.primenet.com> Dear Sandra: Yes, we're definitely in agreement. Great of you to yell bullshit, when most'd only think it, in a crowded room. Reminds me of an anecdote a poet in Hoboken, NJ, Joel Lewis, told me. He was teaching a poetry class (at the Y, I think) and relating an anecdote to his students about the first time he'd seen Sapphire read (or was it lecture?). Sapphire'd started in on some apparently anti-Semitic spiel, and a woman in the audience stood up and started yelling as loudly as she could, no one could figure out what she was saying, just standing there yelling at the top of her lungs. Well, as Joel's relating this anecdote to his class, he notices one woman growing more & more uncomfortable, wanting to say something, and finally she blurts out: "I *was* that woman!" She goes on to explain to Joel & the class that she had been so horrified by what Sapphire'd been saying, she'd had to drown it out, but couldn't think of anything to say, so she just "lost it," stood up and began shouting SENTENCE FRAGMENTS off the top of her head to block out the offensive spiel coming from the stage. But, back to the point. Yes, no one should be laughed at for preferring wonderful poetry to drivel. I haven't been in a university for 10 years, so don't know what the climate's like, but it's true enough that poets are often seen, when seen at all at large, as clowns. There's a wonderful bit in _The Sullen Art_, I think the interview with Rexroth, where Rexroth's complaining about how Ginsberg (this is early 60s) plays into this, by giving magazines like _Time_ ample opportunity to cast him (&, I guess, other living poets, by association) in the role of village idiot. (Having just seen his performance yesterday in _Poetry in Motion_, I've no problem following Rexroth's logic. Ginsberg's no moron, but man can he play one on TV.) Do you know Gerald Burns's book, _Shorter Poems_? Gerald's on the cover, in clown make-up & bowler-- he wrote me about it once: "Writers are not just ignored. We are laughed at. We're a joke, wear big shoes and red noses." But, given that this is an e-space of POETICS, I don't think you need at all be worried about being laughed out for your "elitist" preferences. I'd *hope* not, anyway. Beleaguered on occasion, maybe, & if I've contributed to that, I'm sorry. The only reason I responded to your post as I did was because I'm by nature admittedly paranoid, get a little spooked when people mention anything smacking of "list management." That probably wasn't even on your mind, & in any case, want to apologize for overreacting. Anyway, Sandra, no big whoop, & best w/your article. (You'll post it when you're through, yes?) Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 03:40:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: no big whoop Gary -- Was referring to Champaign/Urbana, not this welcoming e-space, in my post about feeling beleaguered. Despite the Cary Nelson's of this world, or in some ways because of.... By the way, on the gender issue -- just read that only 5% of net users are women, so it seems to me this list is doing just fine.... Which article is it you wanted to see posted? Sandra ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 03:44:23 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: The West Surely, Lindz, you know George Bowering's fabulous CAPRICE, a novel in which all the stereotypes of the West are turned on their heads, and of course Ed Dorn's SLINGER, the epic poem upon which some of us were raised and that does the West the way the West was meant to be done.... And then, if I may, I would recommend Douglas Woolf's WALL TO WALL, a novel which depicts the West as it really was/is.... Sandra B ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 21:17:28 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: low? X-To: gpsj@PRIMENET.COM Dear Gary, Re-Poetry in Motion and Ginsberg being no moron but playing one on TV. I didn't read it that way. I thought he was great. And THAT suggests something of what's involved in moving across borders between 'high' and 'low'. It's one thing to have the attitude...its another thing to do the hi-lo shuffle. (there was a singing group called the Hi-Los once) It's a good while since I last heard AG perform, but over the years I have greatly admired his risk-taking. Again and again he would prove that someone who won't be embarassed doesn't embarass. A deep confidence that will prove itself. I don't know how long that sort of thing can sustain itself nor what exactly are the conditions which enables to be achieved. Let's imagine a reading of Hallmark verse, what would that be like? Wystan. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 08:13:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Bill's westerns In-Reply-To: <199503280651.BAA12846@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "Lindz Williamson" at Mar 27, 95 10:49:21 pm Dear Lindz: Just caught your latest post after getting back from a matinee of *The Wild Bunch* after rereading C. McCarthy's *Blood Meridian*. I guess I think it's just too simplistic to speak of some singular "western" of the ninties (as it is to speak of this as "the politcally correct decade"--somehow I don't think that's Newt's agenda). It was wild seeing Bill Holden and the bunch again all these bloody years later, and the ways in which the movie (which seemed so outrageous 25 years ago) is so deeply infused with the romance of 60's "outlaw politics"-- (this on the day after the EU accused Canada of Wild West politics and piratery off the grand banks--yahoooo, get out yer wire cutters, Bri, ain't nobody nettin' us in--the iconographic problem here being, are we the ranchers or the sheepherders?). Compare it with McCarthy's *Blood Meridian* (which is much less sentimental than *Horses*) or for that matter Eastwood's *The Unforgiven* and you begin to approach the complexity of the issues here. I don't think it's ever been a question of simply deploying "stereotypes" (for the ultimate of that cynicism, see F. Gump). Compare, for instance, *Wyatt Earp* with *Tombstone* which came out within six months of each other, and which treat all the mythologems of the Earp myth differently (especially the famous shootout story where the Earp gang gets pinned down by the Clantons at the river and Wyatt gets up and walks into a hail of bullets blasting away unscathed. *Tombstone* has it as a kind of divine intervention, where Kevin, to give him his due, portrays it as a kind of mindless, desperate luck--but now we're into *Pulp Fiction*). Which is the "nineties" version? Anyway, all this by way of saying, yeah, yahoo, but whose yahoo, and yahoo how? Best, Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 06:06:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Bob Kaufman & Hallmark >Help? Bob Kaufman's poem "The American Sun" includes a ref. to "Arthur >Farnsworth Television." Haven't been able to ID this -- Can anybody tell me who Arthur Farnsworth is/was? Maria or any other Kauman readers?? > My posts from work seem not to be getting out to the net. So if you see a second answer to this in the next few days, it's only because some systems engineer has toggled a switch somewhere.... But, Philo T. Farnsworth (a great name) was one of the early inventors of television, did much of his work in SF and has a plaque to his achievements on a wall on Sansome Street in North Beach, just across from the large Hunan Cuisine. Kaufman would have walked past that plaque on a regular basis. Don't know where the Arthur comes in, tho.... Also, back to another post I made that never got out, Darrell Gray worked for Hallmark in the late 60s or early 70s, right after MFA school, and gave me the impression that some of the other Iowa City grads did likewise. When I was in KC two years ago, I stayed at the hotel right next to the big mall that Hallmark "sponsors," and noted that their corporate tagline read: "Hallmark, America's largest producer of greet cards and social expression products." Productizing social expression does seem to be what it's all about. Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 09:31:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: The West X-To: UB Poetics discussion group In-Reply-To: <2f77db262ca4002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> I'd also recommend Dorn's Captain Jack's Chaps, or HOUSTON/MLA, which brings the West into the contemporary Modern Language Association context, Hyattexture, and more. Also bp Nichol's version of billy the kid , THE TRUE EVENTUAL STORY OF BILLY THE KID, in Nichol's CRAFT DINNER (Aya Press, 1978), is marvelous. charles alexander On Tue, 28 Mar 1995, braman sandra wrote: > Surely, Lindz, you know George Bowering's fabulous CAPRICE, a novel in > which all the stereotypes of the West are turned on their heads, and of > course Ed Dorn's SLINGER, the epic poem upon which some of us were > raised and that does the West the way the West was meant to be done.... > And then, if I may, I would recommend Douglas Woolf's WALL TO WALL, a > novel which depicts the West as it really was/is.... > Sandra B > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 11:06:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Mar 1995 to 26 Mar 1995 aldon: philo taylor farnsworth invented the tv, first working model c. 1927. established farnsworth television and radio (research org.) later. don't know the source for "arthur" -- naybe kaufman misremembered. maybe "arthur" made better sound/music. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 09:21:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Thanx pardner In-Reply-To: <199503281319.FAA24330@unixg.ubc.ca> I agree to dismantle the stereo type the genre is too simplistic, but what I think I'm hung up on is the aspect that this medium is full of myth that a lot of people take as the truth. ( Out of 1000 Americans polled around 49% thought F Gump was a documentary, but after the Oscars last night I will now go into convulsions if I hear one more Gump quote) I suppose part of the building of the west was a dream, the last frontier and all that but it makes me wonder about how I am represented by this. My father grew up along the Oregon trail, living on reservations as his step father built the rail line. The way he describes it there was no romance to this lifestyle. He spent lonely summers in the hills cooking for the sheep herders and to this day he will not ride a horse again. This was no Wyatt Earp world. My ancestors hailed from Norway and Scotland settling in Utah to do the homestead thing and then pushed on to Central Oregon. What I would give to know how they lived. Looks like I have a western of my own to write. And for my recommended reading list Howard O'Hagon's *Tay John*. This novel is epic tale of Western myth. However, it has been critiqued for slight misogynist undertones, but personally I haven't found one that doesn't find women contemptable. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 09:45:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: The West In-Reply-To: <199503280948.BAA12183@whistler.sfu.ca> from "braman sandra" at Mar 28, 95 03:44:23 am I agree with Sandra that there are most definately examples of contemporary gunsmoke engaged in a shootout with the genre. In fact, I wuld go so far as to say that the genre is becoming the story in works like CAPRICE and SLINGER. I suppose its the differnce between writing about the wild west and The Wild West. Lindz, you might also want to take a look at Nichol, Spicer and McClure's *Billy the Kid*s. Ah yes, "Billy had a short dick but they did not call him Richard". You card. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 15:59:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: To Sandra & Wystan Dear Sandra & Wystan: Sandra, in your original post you'd mentioned an editor asking you & others to write about something "forbidden," and you'd mentioned possibly writing about the intolerance of elitism. That's the article I'd meant. Would love to read it if you do it. Wystan, I like what you say about Ginsberg's proving time & again that someone who won't be embarrassed doesn't embarrass--I think that's accurate w/respect to his intentions, and I think in some cases he even proved as much; though, I do wonder how much of that gets used as an excuse to sluff off responsibility. I guess I know one too many younger poets he's aggressively hit on, casting-couch style, to give the guy complete benefit of the doubt w/respect to his "good" intentions. W/respect to his performing his "rock music" as "risk taking"--no difference between that & the first-time open-mike-nighter, up there reading the first thing s/he's scrawled to paper. Nothing wrong with it, but can't help but think that if it were anyone but Ginsberg up there being that incompetent, no one'd give him the time of day. My idea of risk-taking involves something more than exercising one's "star power" (a great song by Sonic Youth, btw) and, while I do have a lot of respect for Ginsberg as a poet, I guess I don't see the value in everything he does, myself. Would never ask (or even want) him to "stop the madness" so to speak, but reserve the right to hit the VCR's "mute" button & put on (say) something by the Hi-Los when he gets tedious. Or to question anyone's "Just Do It" approach when it involves (say) sexual harassment. Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 17:01:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: The West In-Reply-To: <199503282107.QAA28832@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "Ryan Knighton" at Mar 28, 95 09:45:06 am To paraphrase Ryan Knighton, west is west and West is West and never the twain, etc. I think Wyatt Earp's got more to do with Enkidu than Oregon. Onward . . . Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 16:38:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: To Gary In-Reply-To: <199503282221.AA15113@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> from "Gary Sullivan" at Mar 28, 95 03:59:29 pm Well, Gary, of course it's just the problem with forbidden topics that they remain forbidden, and as far as I know that Journal of Communication issue never got beyond pipe dream stage.... Sandra ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 15:08:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Chapbooks at EPC This is a call for your out-of-print chapbooks / books that you might like to put in the EPC author library. Here's the scoop, the UB libraries have received authority from the US Dept. of Educ. via OCLC (a library consortium) to catalog Internet resources. We are very lucky that they are considering some of our EPC texts for full-scale cataloguing. What this means is that texts will be noted through a lot of library catalogs. SO send me a note if you are interested in this. It's a terrific opportunity! Loss ____________________________________________________________________ << Loss Pequen~o Glazier >> . << lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu >> Co-administrator, Electronic Poetry Center >> http://writing.upenn.edu/internet/library/e-journals/ub/rift Co-editor, RIF/T: An Electronic Space for Poetry and Poetics >> e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu ____________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 17:38:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Mar 1995 to 26 Mar 1995 aldon: re: "arthur" in "arthur farsworth television," i'm wondering if that's arthur godfrey, who was sort of mr. television in the fifties. just a guess. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 12:25:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Letter to the Editor (Longish) re- X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu to john garaets: this multiple-choice thing reminds me of wole soyinka's famous dismissal of the negritude movement: "the tiger doesn't announce its tigritude, it just pounces." this (which he later qualified to the point of retracting) has always seemed to me disingenuous, in that phatic self-declaration --and indeed self-reflectivity and -reflexivity --are not only a major part of human cognition and expression, but also of non-human animal behavior (the "mating dance," etc --highly ritualized self-representation). how do we know that trees, too, do not exist in the main to announce their tree-ness? best --maria d In message <2f765b5b2a03002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Q: What's the difference between a good langpo > and a tree? > > A1: Nothing. > A2: Everything. > A3: The Answer, like the Question, is beside the point. > A4: The tree, unlike the langpo, isn't preoccupied with > defining its position. It occupies it. > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 13:00:06 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: mainstream avoidance? Dear John Geraets, That question might well be private, but you've asked me on this list, how I've fared with the mainstream : so briefly, I have not been anthologised in NZ (Michael Morrisey asked me for a piece of fiction, I sd no; nobody else has asked me). Three little books were published offset from my old Sharp electronic typewriter (a machine that was subsequently near demolished by my kids). "Software" was published by Splash, but I was an editor and typed it, photo-copied and designed cover from my own photos. Distribution of the first three was by hand, knocking on doors and sales at readings. Software went thru the Splash distribution list, assisted by Segue. Most sales "by hand" or exchanges. One piece in "Landfall" only because Michele Leggott edited a special number. The "her axolotl" poem (20 years ago went where?....)in a magazine. Graham Lindsay gave me space in Morepork, Alan Loney in Parallax, , otherwise that's about it. I never wanted,don't particularly want, a literary career. The record for art history is about the same. I edited the Bulletin of New Zealand Art History (with Michael Dunn) for about nine years) and when there was a shortage of copy I wrote more to fill it. The two little Poussin books are in photocopy, A5, off my typewriter, but in the NZ General Assembly for copyright purposes. These were distributed as gifts mostly, or sold to students by the department of art history for $1 each, cost. What I have had printed in quantity here is art criticism and art journalism and essays for catalogues. That's pleasant enough, and what the Mainstream thinks I'm useful for. John Byrum, in Ohio, was hospitable and included pieces in Generator I and 2. That was through the friendship of Tom Beckett (who introduced me to the extraordinary work of Frank Fecko, and later to Frank, when I visited him in 1987 0r 8). I have done very little about trying to publish poems etc otherwise. And I don't work at writing poetry that much anyway. I have always though my most interesting relation with text is in the classroom esp in seminars. U.S. readers of this all know by now where the delete button is....but that is about right for the info you asked for. Best, Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 22:38:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: hallmark and social expression we poets are social expressions of social expressions. we consume poetry and are consumed by it hallmark users consume hallmark cards but are not consumed by them: they just use them. hallmark poetry is applied poetry. nonhallmark poetry is theoretical poetry except for the kind that allows no relief & no retreat which is also applied poetry. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 14:45:48 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: The West X-To: mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA Dear Mike. I thought that was Hyatt Earp? Could be wrong--it's not my culture. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 21:35:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 21:11:09 -0700 (MST) From: mnamna@imap1.asu.edu To: EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) On Tue, 28 Mar 1995 EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU wrote: > problem here is suggestion that politics is prior to poetry or that poetry should be used to engender political activism. when poetry is used to illustrate politics or fulfill it, then you don't have poetry but politics. > Oh, you're roping me into territory I'm not responding to directly. I was just taking issue with . . . --god, what was it?--a characterization of teaching as being simply about earning money or some other equally vulgar end (as necessary and nice as earning cash for our labor in that underpaid enterprise is). And now that I think about it perhaps what the real problem is is people who continually try to divorce politics and the classroom and, even poetry from politics (now that you've lured me here), because that seems to me to "aestheticize" aesthetics to the point of triviality that simply reinforces the marginality of the arts to culture and society so that not only are they not studied but continue to fall away from any sense of having to do with people's lives. Separating the areas of life you suggest is the problem. It only reinforces the view that art is art and has nothing to do with anything else. If there were a pernicious "political" view it is this. I hope you don't mind me posting this to the list . . . Jeffrey Timmons ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 00:39:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH Subject: I'm a loser, baby / so why not delete me . . . Blame Charles Bernstein who in Buffalo friday asked there be in this space a reminder of the presence of D I U , _descriptions of an imaginary univercity_, an electronic "poetry" journal assembled by the logic of snowflakes newest issue featuring ( orange flowers of ) yes! * * * a communique from Subcommander Guantanamo Bey * * * ! of the anti-hegemony project ! ! !!! & other delicacies Sub via cf2785@albnyvms.bitnet also , 2 issues of _Passages_, a recently birthed "technopoetics" (that's anti-copyright, share-ware to-the-max) "magazine," Conceptedited by Chrissy Funk Funkster advisorily edited by Jellie Belle , Burnin' Beano & Donald Jaybird is available at your computer now. cf2785@cnsvax.albany.edu tootles m t c h s t c k m n > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Mar 1995 22:21:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: The West & The rest of Us In-Reply-To: <9503290504.AA27580@isc.sjsu.edu> Actually, this is a test, late night on the West Coast, of the reply function with a revision in the subject line. Thanks to Ron & Ed for the PhiloFacts -- Couldn't find "Arthur" in my wife's Television Encyclopedia, and missed Philo all together. Soyinka will be speaking in L.A. April 13 & 14, in all his tigritude, for any of you in the area who might get there -- UCLA -- check with African Studies Program for info. Just finished reading Cesaire with mostly white and Asian-American students at San JOse State; found the students interestingly interested in "negritude," far more so than I would have expected in these days of the California Civil Rights Initiative. Lastly, a title I forgot to include in my brief addition to our reading lists. There's a great chapbook from Chusma House by Alfred Arteaga, titled _Cantos_. Here's a taste from the first section: X antecanto: the xicano sign These cantos chicanos begin with X and end with X. They are examples of xicano verse, verse marked with the cross, the border cross of alambre and rio, the cross of Jesus X in Native America, tha nahuatl X in mexico, mexicano, xicano. It is our mark, our cross, our X, our sign of never ceasing being born at the point of two arrows colliding, X, and at the gentle laying of one line over another line, X. It is the sound we make to mark one and other. August 29, familia, raza, as well as to exclude ourselves from the patterns of death imposed from without. We sign the X each time we speak we cross at least one border. And because it is our sign andamos cruzando cruzados, naciendo siendo xicanos otra vex, cada vez, esta vez. I am the point of my own X but the arms, los brazos vienen de lejos, and the arms reach far. Nacido, East Los X3; Escribo, San Jo X4: AA -------- remember Edgar Poe xing his paragraph? Might also look at a collection of essays Arteaga edited, for Duke University Press, titled _An Other Tongue_, which includes a good essay by Arteaga. Charles, you know Alfred, tell the Buffalo contingent about him! xxxx a.l. nielsen (Al-Don X) _not_ Dan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 00:38:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: back to poetry Blair stated "Political statements can be poetry or propaganda or both. Propoganda can be the truth in a political context. But if it is poetry, the residue that is left will be regarded more for its aesthetic content than its political. Because politics has a way of being current and art has a way of being eternal or out of time." I dont believe that I can agree that art or poetry is out of time or eternal. True western culture worships the written word enough to transcribe and save texts, yet so much is lost too. I love the phrases and glips of poetry left behind by Sappho, but I do not know her true intention in writing unless I study the time in which she has written these verses. Her words have lasted time, but has her context? In English lit we are blessed with an abundance of writers that annoy and study each other so it is easier to preserve the implied connotations or the motive of the writing. In that sense politics of the era, the social mood are essential to eternalizing the "art". Words are words and only become poetry when they have meaning. Cultural aesthetics are needed to appreciate and render something into art, but these are not eternal and definitely not universal. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 05:21:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Arthur Godfrey, Allen Ginsberg X-cc: rsillima@vanstar.com The Arthur Godfrey suggestion (re Kaufman & Farnsworth) is interesting. It set off some loose associations... I was surprised at how thoroughly Godfrey in particular and his generation of music in general dominated Ted Berrigan's 1959 record collection (see appendix to Padgett's wonderful _Ted_) and how much rock and its various protoancestors were NOT represented there. It made me wonder about musical influences on the poetry. I've heard both Bernstein and Watten wax quite eloquent on the subject of the influence of Bob Dylan on their work. Me too. Meeting Dylan at Newport in '64 was once the highpoint of my life. And certainly several members of my G1 generation have fantasized themselves as rock stars at one time or another, ranging from the successful (Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, Laurie Anderson) to the whistfully silly (Serpent Power w/ Coolidge & Meltzer). Burroughs collaborating w/ Anderson does seem to show what's possible. And lets not forget the Fugs. Ginsberg on the harmonium reminds me simultaneously of Bly and his idiot dulcimer, but also of the peculiar problematics of being Allen Ginsberg as well (if I were feeling more generous, I might imagine that Bly faces similar issues). Ginsberg is perpetually confronted with reading to large audiences that have very little knowledge of his genre, his generation, his anything. His performance works of the past 15 years or so seem to me to address precisely that conundrum. They don't work on the page at all, but they aren't really intended to. The Don't Smoke piece (don't even know if this is in print) is a terrific piece of theater, which is really what it is. On the other hand, Ginsberg is at heart a satirist (this he shares w/ Bernstein & perhaps Perelman also) rather than an epic poet, say, or a lyric one. I've been struck in the past 6 months how much the performance model for both Ginsberg & Bernstein seems to be, say, Lenny Bruce (or George Carlin or Andy Kaufman or Lord Buckley) rather than who? Dylan Thomas? Paul Blackburn? The model seems to propose very difference functions for a text in the setting of performance. McClure once told me that his generation "missed the boat" when it failed to convince the 60s rockers (thinking, I think, explicitly of the Grateful Dead & the Doors) that they needed to get their lyrics from the poets. All those royalties.... On the other hand, Robert Hunter (who IS the Dead's chief dramaturg) has been a very sympathetic reader of many people on this list & has read in public with the likes of Palmer, Hejinian, Watten, Harryman & Yrs truly. Go figure. Ron Silliman Rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 08:58:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin Subject: Buffalo talk In-Reply-To: <199503291326.AA29330@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> List members in Buffalo-- No, it doesn't star Rock Hudson and Doris Day, alas, but my "Wallace Stevens and the Pragmatist Imagination" will come to you live at 2:00 Friday, March 31, at 309 Clemens Hall. To repeat what I've back-channeled some of you, it's adapted from my book-in-progress on pragmatism and American literary modernism (largely, in the book, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Stevens). Hope to see some of you there. Jonathan Levin NYC ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 09:23:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Why Teach? (Jeffrey Timmons) (fwd) no, it's not art for art's sake, but a question, literally, of what comes first.no one these days could argue, i trust, that aesthetics are sufficient, but one might argue that the poem is such insofar as it fulfills its own necessities. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 14:30:26 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC >This is a call for your out-of-print chapbooks / books that you might >like to put in the EPC author library. Here's the scoop, the UB >libraries have received authority from the US Dept. of Educ. via OCLC >(a library consortium) to catalog Internet resources. We are very >lucky that they are considering some of our EPC texts for full-scale >cataloguing. What this means is that texts will be noted through a lot >of library catalogs. SO send me a note if you are interested in this. >It's a terrific opportunity! >Loss Hi Loss, yes I'm very interested in this. Can I be naive and ask how do I get involved - I'd be keen to do two things, and they might require completely different approaches. 1. To submit a kind of selected of my own work for an author site, would include visual work, text work and sound work - sometimes all three interlinked versions under the same title. 2. To have some old chaps both by myself and others I've published - Allen Fisher, P.C.Fencott, Chris Mason and others - catalogued. But you might be confined to U.S. authors or publishers. Just curious, as always If you are then in what format would I submit? Who does the formatting? respect cris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 09:41:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Call for submissions In-Reply-To: <199503290302.UAA28537@mailhost.primenet.com> Sandra, that's a total bummer about the Journal of Communications. But, if you want to consider writing & publishing such a piece somewhere, here's an address for you: EXILE Curt Anderson, editor P.O. Box 1840 St. Paul, MN 55101 Curt's always looking for material for this quarterly newsletter-style journal, & frankly, as I'm the first person he hits up for work when he (inevitably) finds he needs more material, you'd be doing me a favor writing something for it. That goes for anyone on this list, by the way. The magazine's mostly made up of book reviews & satirical pieces, but Curt wants to publish more "serious" things if he can. Anyone interested in seeing an issue of the thing can write to the address above, or e-mail me w/your snail-mail (I've got a few extra copies of the last issue sitting around.) Subscriptions are $2.50 for 4 issues, or the equivalent in stamps. Also, if anyone'd like their books or MANUSCRIPTS reviewed, send 'em to the same address above. (Curt's especially looking for manuscripts to review.) Yours, Gary PS: Tony Green & other NZers: Worry not about us in the States hitting "delete." Of the posts over the last couple of weeks, I've most enjoyed the NZ stuff, myself. Keep 'em coming. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 10:05:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Ginsberg, Sorrentino Returned to my copy of _The Sullen Art_ to check who'd said what about Ginsberg & discovered it wasn't Rexroth but Gilbert Sorrentino who'd been talking about him. Here's the quote for anyone interested: "Allen has always annoyed me because, of all that group of so-called Beat poets, his is an outstanding intelligence, and it constantly annoys me that he allows himself to be used. Certainly not used by other poets, but by the people who have always hated poetry--the vested interests, the commercialists, the buyers and sellers. Ginsberg can talk for an hour about how he loathes _Life_, _Time_, _Fortune_, money, banking, and _Life_ and _Time_ will spread-eagle him on the wall with his own words. His words don't have the power to destroy _Life_ and _Time_. That's why he gets so much space in them and one of the reasons he is so used by them. He's not an enemy of _Life_ and _Time_--he *is* an enemy in his own heart, as every poet must be--but they're not afraid of him and they make the fool of him. "It's very peculiar. It's a reversion to Romanticism. It's the Romantic scream against the watered-down principles of Locke, which controlled the 19th century. As the Romantics screamed against Locke, they made Locke righter. The more they said 'Down With Locke,' in so many different ways: 'I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed,' et cetera, the more they continually made Locke seem right. Locke was wrong. But they didn't prove it so. He said, or was taken to have said, when his philosophy was watered down a hundred years later, as philosophies always are for the people, 'Poetry is junk--evanescent, something to curl up with on a winter's evening. It has nothing to do with life.' The old cry of the businessman. So the Romantics said, 'That's right, Locke, you bet it is.' And they just kept screaming about the wild blue yonder. It wasn't until the 19th century Frenchmen that poetry once again became what it is--something having to do directly with life, something that can be used to control your life, something that can be used to make your life a better thing. They got back to the concrete, they got back to the world that Locke accused them of rejecting." Don't know how much I agree w/the above, especially as I was born after the interview took place so don't know what, specifically, was going on re: _Life_ and _Time_ and Ginsberg's words being "used against him." Would welcome elaboration or repudiation of what Sorrentino says by anyone who was there at the time. Yours, Gary ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 08:00:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Mar 1995 to 26 Mar 1995 X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu is't possible that "arthur farnsworth television," while being semi or two-thirds historical (minus, apparently, the "arthur") is also an extended anagram for both "art" and "fart"? from kaufman the satirist i'd believe it...--m damon by the way, who was "elissi landi"? i know elissa landi was an italian film actress, but why would kaufman use her name? anything special about her? In message <2f78c45e1b7a002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > aldon: re: "arthur" in "arthur farsworth television," i'm wondering if that's > ar > thur godfrey, who was sort of mr. television in the fifties. just a guess. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 08:01:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: hallmark and social expression X-To: POETICS%UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU@vm1.spcs.umn.edu lovely!--md In message <2f78d67d535e002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > we poets are social expressions of social expressions. > we consume poetry and are consumed by it > hallmark users consume hallmark cards but are not consumed by them: they just > use them. > hallmark poetry is applied poetry. nonhallmark poetry is theoretical poetry > except for the kind that allows no relief & no retreat which is also applied > poetry. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 12:36:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Waples Subject: Re: Ginsberg's "Don't Smoke" In-Reply-To: <9503291326.AA18657@dept.english.upenn.edu> from "Ron Silliman" at Mar 29, 95 05:21:03 am According to Ron Silliman: > > Ginsberg is perpetually confronted with reading to > large audiences that have very little knowledge of his genre, his > generation, his anything. His performance works of the past 15 years or > so seem to me to address precisely that conundrum. They don't work on > the page at all, but they aren't really intended to. The Don't Smoke > piece (don't even know if this is in print) is a terrific piece of > theater, which is really what it is. > Ron and others, I'm enjoying this thread immensely. And I think Don't Smoke -- the real name is "Put Down Yr Cigarette Rag" -- is superb. I believe it's a great way to introduce Ginsberg to students, bringing in political concerns and improv/open field type ideas at once. Even the frat boys in their baseball caps look impressed... The text is printed in _First Blues_ (Full Court Press, 1975). I haven't sprung for the CD box set yet, but I do know you can get the performance on cassette from the Smithsonian's Folkways series. Call (202) 287-3262 to order or for free Folkways catalog. Tim Waples twaples@english.upenn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 08:52:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kit Robinson Subject: West Reply to: West Pardners, Don't forget Clear the Range, a western novel by Ted Berrigan, written using the cross-out method on a dime paperback. It's hilarious, stately, and strange. Like Bill Luoma's campfire songs, it says something about formality, loneliness, and wide open space, key elements of the western ethos. Berrigan also speaks often of The Code of the West in his Sonnets. For a contemporary working out of neighboring thematics, check out Merrill Gilfillan's Sworn Before Cranes (Faber & Faber1994). It's a beautiful book of short stories set on the High Plains mostly among Indian people the author has known or visited. See you round the ridges, Kit Robinson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 11:20:45 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric pape Subject: Re: Thanx pardner In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 28 Mar 1995 09:21:34 -0800 from I too feel a kind of personal stake in both the mythicizing (word?) and de-mythicizing of the American west. Up 'till my great grandmother died a few years ago, I heard much of the journey west, but more of what happened once they settled in the California desert. What's interesting for me is that most of these stories fit fairly comfortable within the myth. Hardship overcome and all that. But there have always been disturbing hints of things that might not fit, at least to my family. Hints about family being hung somewhere, a picture of an old man dated 1878 with something scrawled on the back that may be "almost hung," plus a lot of hints about major drinking problems. Further and most disturbing to my grandmother, were thehints of racial mixing. Before GG died, she used to tell stories about being ostracized in her community. When my mother asked why she replied that she was Indian, but no one else in the family talks about this, and most of us are blonde and blue eyed. Also, once when I showed my great uncle a picture of my great great grandmother, his mother, he chuckled and said (please excuse the language but I am only quoting) "nigger in the wood pile."Hints betray both attitude and uncertainty. My point isthat I think there is a reason for a lot of this mythmaking, a lot of the tall tales, and that is to disguise. Disguise exactly what is not the myth: the crimes, the banality. The everyday nature of the murder of native Americans and Chinese, and Mexican Americans, certainly in CA, where it was probably the worst in the country.In my family, the myth certainly had this function.Diguise that the West is still a secret. Two books I would recommend :Richard Drinnon's _Facing West:The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building_(Meridian, 1980) and Lillian Schlissel _Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey_ (Schocken, 1992) Drinnon's seems a little obvious now, but still interesting, the Diaries are incredible. Thanks, Eric. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 12:04:27 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric pape Subject: Re: Who teach? In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 27 Mar 1995 09:38:34 GMT+1200 from Absolutely Tony. Basically all I was saying is that indoctrination is "gross." But I like what you've done with this kind of triadic structure of the classroom (at least as I see it). You've got a text, which is assumed to be known, you've got a teacher which is assumed to be knowing, and you've got a student which is assumed to be unknowing. It's basically an analytical situation of the early Freud years (funny how that works), ie, ucs, analyst, analysand. The problem with this in the classroom is that it is static (and here we are talking about a worst case kind of thing). There seems little room for interaction, and above all for resistance (of the text of the master of the student). It's so darn structural! This is what I think we have to get rid of, perhaps by team teaching, perhaps by more radical methods. It seems to me that to be a teacher means always to be a student of the resistance of the text to interpretation and of the student to indoctrination, and of above of our own resistances to the fact that we aren't masters of the material and that the material cannot be mastered. Thanks, Eric. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 14:34:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: Alan Golding Subject: Arthur Godfrey, Allen Ginsberg In-Reply-To: note of 03/29/95 08:29 Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Ron: Maybe your associations re Allen Ginsberg aren't so loose. Just this past semester a student in my contemporary poetry seminar wrote a paper on Ginsberg and Lenny Bruce as urban Jewish performance poet satirists . . . Alan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 08:49:23 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC Ditto to some of Chris Cheek's qs -- + correct snail-mail address Thanks Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 09:14:37 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Thanx pardner Dear Eric, An NZ equivalent cd be the stories of Spanish ancestry going back to the Spanish Armada of 1588, accounting for dark eyes and colouring among Anglo-Scottish families. One woman that I know who has a Maori grandmother said that that was the story in her family for a long time. My wife's family maintain the same story about themselves, which leads to, as you say, a kind of interesting "uncertainty".... Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 16:32:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: thesis humor? ha, ha (fwd) Teachers, students, grads: Thought some of you might enjoy this... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 11:18:50 -0600 (CST) From: Tommy S Kim To: englgrad@maroon.tc.umn.edu Subject: thesis humor? ha, ha something i received from a friend. thought i'd share since, as Barney says, sharing is caring. >148 THINGS (NOT) TO DO OR SAY AT OR FOR YOUR THESIS DEFENSE > >Written by Master Peter Dutton > contributions by Jim Lalopoulos, Alison Berube, and Jeff Cohen, > Patricia Whitson and a few others. > >1) "Ladies and Gentlemen, please rise for the singing of our National > Anthem..." >2) Charge 25 cents a cup for coffee. >3) "Charge the mound" when a professor beans you with a high fast question. >4) Describe parts of your thesis using interpretive dance. >5) "Musical accompaniment provided by..." >6) Stage your own death/suicide. >7) Lead the specators in a Wave. >8) Have a sing-a-long. >9) "You call THAT a question? How the hell did they make you a professor?" >10) "Ladies and Gentlemen, as I dim the lights, please hold hands and > concentrate so that we may channel the spirit of Lord Kelvin..." >11) Have bodyguards outside the room to "discourage" certain professors > from sitting in. >12) Puppet show. >13) Group prayer. >14) Animal sacrifice to the god of the Underworld. >15) Sell T-shirts to recoup the cost of copying, binding, etc. >16) "I'm sorry, I can't hear you - there's a banana in my ear!" >17) Imitate Groucho Marx. >18) Mime. >19) Hold a Tupperware party. >20) Have a bikini-clad model be in charge of changing the overheads. >21) "Everybody rhumba!!" >22) "And it would have worked if it weren't for those meddling kids..." >23) Charge a cover and check for ID. >24) "In protest of our government's systematic and brutal opression of > minorities..." >25) "Anybody else as drunk as I am?" >26) Smoke machines, dramatic lighting, pyrotechnics... >27) Use a Super Soaker to point at people. >28) Surreptitioulsy fill the room with laughing gas. >29) Door prizes and a raffle. >30) "Please phrase your question in the form of an answer..." >31) "And now, a word from our sponsor..." >32) Present your entire talk in iambic pentameter. >33) Whine piteously, beg, cry... >34) Switch halfway through your talk to Pig Latin. Or Finnish Pig Latin. >35) The Emperor's New Slides ("only fools can't see the writing...") >36) Table dance (you or an exotic dancer). >37) Fashion show. >38) "Yo, a smooth shout out to my homies..." >39) "I'd like to thank the Academy..." >40) Minstrel show (blackface, etc.). >41) Previews, cartoons, and the Jimmy Fund. >42) Pass the collection basket. >43) Two-drink minimum. >44) Black tie only. >45) "Which reminds me of a story - A Black guy, a Chinese guy, and a > Jew walked into a bar..." >46) Incite a revolt. >47) Hire the Goodyear Blimp to circle the building. >48) Release a flock of doves. >49) Defense by proxy. >50) "And now a reading from the Book of Mormon..." >51) Leave Jehovah's Witness pamphlets scattered about. >52) "There will be a short quiz after my presentation..." >53) "Professor Robinson, will you marry me?" >54) Bring your pet boa. >55) Tell ghost stories. >56) Do a "show and tell". >57) Food fight. >58) Challenge a professor to a duel. Slapping him with a glove is optional. >59) Halftime show. >60) "Duck, duck, duck, duck... GOOSE!" >61) "OK - which one of you farted?" >62) Rimshot. >63) Sell those big foam "We're number #1 (sic)" hands. >64) Pass out souvenier matchbooks. >65) 3-ring defense. >66) "Tag - you're it!" >67) Circulate a vicious rumor that the Dead will be opening, making sure that > it gets on the radio stations, and escape during all the commotion. >68) Post signs: "Due to a computer error at the Registrar's Office, the > original room is not available, and the defense has been relocated to > (Made-up non-existent room number)" >69) Hang a pinata over the table and have a strolling mariachi band. >70) Make each professor remove an item of clothing for each question he asks. >71) Rent a billboard on the highway proclaiming "Thanks for passing me > Professors X,Y, and Z" - BEFORE your defense happens. >72) Have a make-your-own-sundae table during the defense. >73) Make committee members wear silly hats. >74) Simulate your experiment with a virtual reality system for the > spectators. >75) Do a soft-shoe routine. >76) Throw a masquerade defense, complete with bobbing for apples and > pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. >77) Use a Greek Chorus to highlight important points. >78) "The responsorial psalm can be found on page 124 of the thesis..." >79) Tap dance. >80) Vaudeville. >81) "I'm sorry Professor Smith, I didn't say 'SIMON SAYS any questions?'. > You're out." >82) Flex and show off those massive pecs. >83) Dress in top hat and tails. >84) Hold a pre-defense pep rally, complete with cheerleaders, pep band, and > a bonfire. >85) Detonate a small nuclear device in the room. Or threaten to. >86) Shadow puppets. >87) Show slides of your last vacation. >88) Put your overheads on a film strip. Designate a professor to be in > charge of turning the strip when the tape recording beeps. >89) Same as #88, but instead of a tape recorder, go around the room > making a different person read the pre-written text for each picture. >90) "OK, everybody - heads down on the desk until you show me you can behave." >91) Call your advisor "sweetie". >92) Have everyone pose for a group photo. >93) Instant replay. >94) Laugh maniacally. >95) Talk with your mouth full. >96) Start speaking in tongues. >97) Explode. >98) Implode. >99) Spontaneously combust. >100) Answer every question with a question. >101) Moon everyone in the room after you are done. >102) "Laugh, will you? Well, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at > Einstein..." >103) Hand out 3-D glasses. >104) "I'm rubber, you're glue..." >105) Go into labor (especially for men). >106) Give your entire speech in a "Marvin Martian" accent. >107) "I don't know - I didn't write this." >108) Before your defense, build trapdoors underneath all the seats. >109) Swing in through the window, yelling a la Tarzan. >110) Lock the department head and his secretary out of the defense room. And > the coffee lounge, the department office, the copy room, and the mail > room. Heck, lock them out of the building. And refuse to sell them > stamps. >111) Roll credits at the end. Include a "key grip", and a "best boy". >112) Hang a disco ball in the center of the room. John Travolta pose optional. >113) Invite the homeless. >114) "I could answer that, but then I'd have to kill you" >115) Hide. >116) Get a friend to ask the first question. Draw a blank-loaded gun and > "shoot" him. Have him make a great scene of dying (fake blood helps). > Turn to the stunned audience and ask "any other wise-ass remarks?" >117) Same as #116, except use real bullets. >118) "Well, I saw it on the internet, so I figured it might be a good idea..." >119) Wear clown makeup, a clown wig, clown shoes, and a clown nose. And > nothing else. >120) Use the words "marginalized", "empowerment", and "patriarchy". >121) Play Thesis Mad Libs. >122) Try to use normal printed paper on the overhead projector. >123) Do your entire defense operatically. >124) Invite your parents. Especially if they are fond of fawning over you. > ("We always knew he was such an intelligent child") >125) Flash "APPLAUSE" and "LAUGHTER" signs. >126) Mosh pit. >127) Have cheerleaders. ("Gimme an 'A'!!") >128) Bring Howard Cosell out of retirement to do color commentary. >129) "I say Hallelujah, brothers and sisters!" >130) Claim political asylum. >131) Traffic reports every 10 minutes on the 1's. >132) Introduce the "Eyewitness Thesis Team". Near the end of your talk, cut > to Jim with sports and Alison with the weather. >133) Live radio and TV coverage. >134) Hang a sign that says "Thank you for not asking questions" >135) Bring a microphone. Point it at the questioner, talk-show style. >136) Use a TelePromTer >137) "Take my wife - please!" >138) Refuse to answer questions unless they phrase the question as a limerick. >139) Have everyone bring wine glasses. When they clink the glasses with a > spoon, you have to kiss your thesis. Or your advisor. >140) Offer a toast. >141) Firewalk. >142) Start giving your presentation 15 minutes early. >143) Play drinking thesis games. Drink for each overhead. Drink for each > question. Chug for each awkward pause. This goes for the audience > as well. >144) Swoop in with a cape and tights, Superman style. >145) "By the power of Greyskull..." >146) Use any past or present Saturday Night Live catchphrase. Not. >147) Stand on the table. >148) "You think this defense was bad? Let me read this list to show you > what I COULD have done..." > >-- >Selected by Maddi Hausmann Sojourner with Brad Templeton. MAIL your joke >(jokes ONLY) to funny@clarinet.com. If you see a problem with an RHF posting, >reply to the poster please, not to us. Ask the poster to forward comments >back to us if this is necessary. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 17:01:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC In-Reply-To: <199503291533.KAA09343@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "cris cheek" at Mar 29, 95 02:30:26 pm Cris, I am responding to you via the list since it is an important question. I have gotten a number of questions personally on this but I do want to explain this somewhat more. Basically, I am a poet and writer, etc. but I have worked for years now in this world of the library. As one might note from my book, _Small Press: An Annotated Guide_, a lot of my effort has been getting the "marginal" into routes that facilitate people connecting with what I would think we might agree are important works. Here then, the "rub." That is, this is an unprecedented opportunity. This OCLC project I have mentioned is not only one of the FIRST efforts at making etexts available through library catalogs - as well as world-wide interlibrary loan systems - but it is incredible that we have been able to negotiate the presence of POETRY in this important project. I have worked very hard for this and I think this is a historic moment, we are seeing a possibility for poetry to be made accessible to many many thousands of people. OK, more coming further in this post... > >This is a call for your out-of-print chapbooks / books that you might > >like to put in the EPC author library. Here's the scoop, the UB > >libraries have received authority from the US Dept. of Educ. via OCLC > >(a library consortium) to catalog Internet resources. We are very > >lucky that they are considering some of our EPC texts for full-scale > >cataloguing. What this means is that texts will be noted through a lot > >of library catalogs. SO send me a note if you are interested in this. > >It's a terrific opportunity! > > Hi Loss, yes I'm very interested in this. Can I be naive and ask how do I > get involved - I'd be keen to do two things, and they might require > completely different approaches. > > 1. To submit a kind of selected of my own work for an author site, would > include visual work, text work and sound work - sometimes all three > interlinked versions under the same title. > > 2. To have some old chaps both by myself and others I've published - > Allen Fisher, P.C.Fencott, Chris Mason and others - catalogued. > > But you might be confined to U.S. authors or publishers. > Just curious, as always > > If you are then in what format would I submit? Who does the formatting? 1. There are NO restrictions as to nationality, etc. This is not an "American" thing. 2. I would prefer texts marked up in html but will accept ascii submissions. I would feel even better if you are committed to converting the ascii texts to html; I would of course provide advice and direction. 3. You may conceive of texts - selected, collected, an individual series - however you wish. This is simply like publishing a chapbook. It could be any permutation of your complete work as you see suits your work. (In this regard it is perfect - make your piece and we present it to the world.) 4. Multimedia formats are NO problem. If you are in this situation I will work this out with you individually. You will need to use html though, to present these works. Graphical files must be .gif files. Sound files must be .au (unix format) though I am working endlessly to mount a program here that will convert, so that you may submit these sound files in other formats. Note: Ken and I ENCOURAGE multimedia gigs. In fact, that is the strenght of the Internet, no? 5. Yes, you may submit work by other authors as long as you have permission. OK - let's make it happen! All best to all on the list, Loss for Loss Pequen~o Glazier and Kenneth Sherwood in collaboration with Charles Bernstein ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 15:22:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Grandma In-Reply-To: <199503292100.NAA20157@unixg.ubc.ca> Eric, Your personal insight was very helpful. I wish that I had the living sources to discuss the westwad crawl of my relaives, unfortunatly all i have is a family tree. I found a rather intriguing poem in the Utne Reader regarding American myth and I'd like to share it with everyone ,I hope I'm allowed to do this. Lindz For Edna and Mildred Mourning the dying American female names In the Altha Diner on the Florida panhandle a stocky white-haired woman with a plastic nameplate "Mildred" gently turns my burger, and I fall into grief. I remember the long, hot drives to North Carolina to visit my Aunt Alma, who put up quarts of peaches, and my grandmother Gladys with her peirced quilts Many names are almost gone:Gertrude, Myrtle, agnes, Bernice, Hortense, Edna, Doris, and Hilda. They were wide women, cotton clothed, early rising. You had to move your mouth to say their names, and they meant strength, spear, battle, and victory. When did women stop being Saxons and Goths? What frog Fate turned them into Alison, Melissa, Valerie, Natalie,Adreinne, and Lucinda, diminshed them to Wendy, Cindy, Suzy, and Vicky? I look at these young women and hope they are headed for the presidnecy, but I fear America has other plans in mind, that they be no longer at war but subdued instead in amorphous corporate work, somebodies assistant, something ina bank, single parent with word processing skills. They must have been made French so they could be cheap foriegn labor. -Hunt Hawkins 1994 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 22:09:50 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC >>This is a call for your out-of-print chapbooks / books that you might >>like to put in the EPC author library. Here's the scoop, the UB >>libraries have received authority from the US Dept. of Educ. via OCLC >>(a library consortium) to catalog Internet resources. We are very >>lucky that they are considering some of our EPC texts for full-scale >>cataloguing. What this means is that texts will be noted through a lot >>of library catalogs. SO send me a note if you are interested in this. >>It's a terrific opportunity! >>Loss > >Hi Loss, yes I'm very interested in this. Can I be naive and ask how do I >get involved - I'd be keen to do two things, and they might require >completely different approaches. > >1. To submit a kind of selected of my own work for an author site, would >include visual work, text work and sound work - sometimes all three >interlinked versions under the same title. > >2. To have some old chaps both by myself and others I've published - >Allen Fisher, P.C.Fencott, Chris Mason and others - catalogued. > >But you might be confined to U.S. authors or publishers. >Just curious, as always > >If you are then in what format would I submit? Who does the formatting? > >respect >cris Is this just limited to US publishers? I've got a handful of out of print titles that I would be interested in sending in - and I'm sure there would be other small Australian publishers who would be in a similiar position. Mark Roberts Australian Writing OnLine ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 19:19:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC In-Reply-To: <199503292051.PAA27515@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Tony Green" at Mar 30, 95 08:49:23 am > Ditto to some of Chris Cheek's qs -- + correct snail-mail address Electronic Poetry Center PO Box 143 Getzville, NY 14068-0143 USA ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 10:29:29 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Who teach? Eric, assuming in the classroom and out that students know in the sense of are responsive as teachers are is not difficult to do. It's hard to find any evidence for a contrary assumption. What students are unlikely to be able to do is locate a "text" (or "image") within the always ongoing process of criticism/evaluation/history of that "text". Cross-referencing opens the "text" to renewed attention, in which students are often great contributors. Yesterday (anecdote, anecdote.... ) Anna Tam asks why -- in tutorial after lecture -- the boys (attendants of Flora in a Triumph of Flora have black wings, what is that on the ground, a head?) and the rest of the group climb in. Best thing is I hadn't thought about that (is there an explanatory text somewhere a la Panofsky?) and the current literature doesn't cover it, so this opens questions, and Anna is off to try to make sense of this herself. (If only I weren't so caught up in other classes to-day on something else altogether....) Describing pictures (for M.A.) students has got around to describing a particular small brick wall (prize of $5 for the "best") this week. The bit I put in was a reading of Pound's Agassiz story (ABC of Reading)-- the fish + discussion on last week's descriptions.... Fine, until someone starts to worry about quantities of information (communication of messages) in the class. Isn't that where the authoritarian structuring of classes has a firm hold; or in the demands for execution of specified form-filling exercises, with the expectation of fulfilling discipline norms established in advance, getting the right answers in one shape or another. But just in case I sound smug in any way, let me also say, woken by thunder and sounds of heavy rain on the roof, I had trouble getting back to sleep last night, thinking of all the places I'd gone wrong in yesterday's teaching. Got to go and check out the Seven Acts of Mercy: last week in class I couldn't recite them, apropos Caravaggio's painting. The tutorial class concerned is meant to come up with the answer today. Funnily enough, one of them could do the Seven Dwarfs, and another did Santa's reindeers, and I could do the Seven Sacraments, but that's another tale. Best Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 13:58:32 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: re Letter to the Editor (Longish) P.S.for John Geraets: " her/axolotl "is in Climate no:30 edited by Alistair Paterson Spring 1979 This was a continuation (kind of ) Bert Hingley's magazine MATE, which in early 70's published young Wystan Curnow on his return from the Americas. I used to read anywhere I could get anything like an ear to read into, hence I also got published by the Titirangi Poets, in 1979 and 1980 a poetry society, that for a short while harboured some unlikely people... (Chris Moisa, Michele & Davina Paterson, Judi Stout, Christian Martin)Ron Riddell at one time the moving force in this, brother of Alistair, you remember Space Waltz. That's all at a level below the magazine mainstream. I stopeed when I realised the responses I was getting were not altogether pleasant from the middle of this, tho the peripheral characters were ok. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 16:59:30 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: To Sandra & Wystan X-To: gpsj@PRIMENET.COM Dear Gary, I don't know anything about G. hitting on young people and sexual harassment or any stuff like that. And it seems a ways away from what I was trying to describe which had to do with performance and audience crossover (hi-to-lo, lo-to-high). I brought it up because ' be more popular' is easier said than done, so what are the conditions for doing, and the measures for success? And actually I looked at the tape again--isn't Bukowski an embarassment? And Ed Sanders's great, and that Kenward Elmslie!!--and the G. clip is fine by me, I think he gets it about right. I found Ron Silliman's comments relevant to the question of conditions. That is, 'popular' means young in the contexts he has in mind. Gotta go now. Wystan. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 14:47:42 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Responsibility X-To: Edward Foster Hi Ed, sometimes I wish I had a 3 line limitation. You didn't get anything back from me because I didn't know how to respond to your question. Sometime I feel trapped in an e-mail responsibility of my own darned making. There aren't enough hours in the day and night free to answer and sort and simply digest all the mail. I wasn't sure whether your post was a question 'requiring' an answer or a statement couched in rhetorical terms. And so the issue of response enters this reply right away. Weasels of worlds! >responsibility's become "i respond even if you do >n't ask," which is arrogance, it may be, of teacher, poet, etc. who is (yr >>sense) responsible. I kind of reversed your approach. That is you asked and I didn't respond. It does seem difficult to understand how it can possibly work the other around though. Or am I being typically pedantic? You can see I'm floundering into trying to make a 'proper' response. To think this through. I want to ask some questions. In the context of a listserv such as this (let's take a trial example that 'might' travel -) is it ok to say that anything posted to Multiple recipients can be responded to. It might well be Eric and Maria and Kali and Tony are discussing a subject but that discussion is posted 'out in the open'. If you and anybody else wanted to comment under that subject heading or break into it to ask a question or beg to disagree - no problem. Yes? Your response hasn't been asked for but you made one. You still had the ability and by responding you kept that ability engaged. Equally your 'response' might be ignored. Extend that example to conversation. (remember the hit and miss aspects of communication - informational content, misunderstanding, tone, deliberate misreading, diverse personalised interpretation, adoptions of persona and many many others . . . call for submissions) Extend that to education. Current discussions on education seems focussed onto institutional forms - hell! When I left school I set out to learn something - particularly when it came to poetry. Please don't let this board become a counselling lounge for academics! (sorry everyone - myself included) Otherwise - shit I just got deleted! Now one problem lies in many subscribers (and some have identified themselves as such, including myself) wanting to respond to many more posts than they in fact 'allow' themselves to do. But that is not a withholding of the ability to respond, it is if anything a keening of it. (there's a fun double edge there) And I'm aware this heads back into discussions re list overload - lurker and poster, representation of diversity of opinion and constituency and so on. And also discussions re - speed of response (gender / reflection / compositional preference / one-up/man/ship and so on). This listserv as a visit to The Boffin Shop. Which points up one other feature becoming apparent - being the similarity between the public front of the list as a performance space and the familiarity traits of Improvised music becoming more etiquette bound and running to 'similar' boundaries in majority cases. (examine for a moment the mechanics of statement / response / variation / negation and other) A point raised by Ira a couple of months back and left on the ground where its nose dropped. Subjects appear to come around in, albeit buckled, cycles - partly as new subscribers jump on. Partly as variations concur. It still seems to me that this can become still more of a LIVE space (not as in MOO). Sufficiently subtle and sensitive and robust as to be able to respond to the varied needs of its subscribers. If this listserv is an e-mergent community then issues of responsibility should be discussed. Call M-e I-r-r-e-s-p-o-n-s-i-b-l-e then call me e-mail (I can't help it) cris p.s. I'm pretty sure I still haven't answered your qeustion ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 07:49:48 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom White Subject: Memory Play In regard to the discussion on MEMORY PLAY, this text by Carla Harryman is available from O Books at $8.50 (plus $2.00 postage): 5729 Clover Drive, Oakland CA 94618. It is also available from Small Press Distribution in Berkeley, 1814 San Pablo Avenue, CA 94702. What's more, Steve Benson says MEMORY PLAY is "in idiosyncratic motion and congruence much as clouds and birds in flight make sense to that visionary in you ... looking back at its patterns and wondering thru it." Experience the marvels of this text. Not only that, but we have others: recently, MOB by Abigail Child, $9.50; GROUND AIR by Scott Bentley, $6.00; CURVE by Andrew Levy, $10.00; COLLISION CENTER by Randall Potts, $8.50. Forthcoming is Alice Notley's CLOSE TO ME AND CLOSER ... (THE LANGUAGE OF HEAVEN), $10.50; P. Inman's VEL, $8.00; and a first book that's really incredible by John Crouse: LAPSES, $8.00. O Books I received the mail address and the e-mail address of the review magazine TAP ROOT, but unfortunately I lost this information. Could you post this again? Thanks. Tom White Phone: (510) 814-2837 Fax: (510) 522-1966 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 10:00:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: To Wystan, more Ginsberg Dear Wystan: I totally, totally appreciate your--& others--going to bat for Ginsberg; I'm well aware I'm expressing (very) personal taste here, & have learned a thing or two from what you & others on this list've said about how they see his work. Maybe "learned..." is the wrong way to put it: more accurately, you all've offered different ways of looking at what he does, different approaches, for which I'm most grateful. "Ginsberg as Bruce-like satirist," for instance, is something I can definitely appreciate, really adds to my sense of the value of his work. Even of _Howl_--I've got two different recordings of him reading that: one, an early recording, he's very nervous, reading quickly, the work sounding, as read, completely angry & serious; the second a later reading (at Naropa, I think, late '70s, early '80s), he's more laid-back, allowing the humor to come through--almost as though these are two different poems! Wonderful, wonderful to have these, a great reminder for me how easy it is to "pigeonhole" anything, & how wrong that is. G.'s playing the wolf on occasion probably has nothing to do with what you were saying; it does have something to do with how I was reading what you were saying, particularly that wonderful line of yours re: "embarrassment." I read that as including *all* public behavior (G. being a very public figure), & so included instances wherein my sense of his freewheeling public behavior would seem to have destructive/harmful effects. Because I'd read what you'd said earlier as a kind of "Ginsberg as anti-uptight role-model" endorsement (& I'm in agreement w/you about that!), that's why I'd brought up these instances. You say you know nothing about G.'s hitting on young people--well, I happen to know about that; the guy hit on one of my best friends, & I've heard about similar experiences w/a number of other younger poets. I can't erase these instances from my memory; they linger & when people endorse, wholesale, his freewheeling spirit, these instances serve for me as somewhat cautionary reminders. "In dreams begin responsibility," as the saying goes. But, geez, I certainly don't mean to dismiss the guy; his work means a lot to me. &, sure, Bukowski's "writing = taking a dump" on that tape is a ridiculous cliche', forgettable. Elmslie's performance had me rolling on the floor w/laughter--the effect (or one of the effects) he no doubt wanted. Sanders has a lovely & hilarious bit in his novel _Fame & Love in New York_ about the need to constantly be *inventing* things, starting new projects--his "finger" synthesizer, & tie-keyboard being real- world examples of that. (I never know how "seriously"--at face value, I mean--to take what he does, his having edited _Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts_.) (A fairly serious journal actually, despite what the title might lead one to assume.) Anyway, I'd never, never write off Ginsberg as a poet or performer, even though I'm not as interested in everything he does, or am not always convinced his motivation's pure. I wonder, for instance, at his GAP khaki's ad--which you may or may not have seen in NZ. (They appeared here in the States in magazines like _The New Yorker_ and _Interview_.) When Ginsberg sells his image to corporate interests--when *anyone* does that (William Burroughs sold his image to Nike shoes for a TV commercial!), I have to wonder about "motivation." Ginsberg & Burroughs both seem, in their writing, to be thoroughly "anti-corporate." So, what gives? I was living in the Haight-Ashbery district in San Francisco when the GAP opened one of its stores, right there on Haight Street, & my memory was that there was some local resistance--including posting of anti-GAP/corporate interest flyers & the like. So, some of what Ginsberg does doesn't jive w/me, has me "questioning," is what I'm--finally--saying, I guess. When I read that Sonic Youth (my favorite rock & roll band, notorious for their recording *right over* a recording of Madonna on their _Ciccone Youth_ l.p.) had done a GAP ad, too, it absolutely depressed me; colored--which isn't to say completely "destroyed"--my appreciation of their work. In the PR kit I received w/Ginsberg's latest book, _Cosmopolitan Greetings_ (which includes a reprint of that anti-smoking rag, btw), his publicist was actually *bragging* about the GAP ad, suggesting it as being indicative of the "complexity" of Ginsberg's character. Well, my take was simply that it was a mistake for him to've done that, not something I'd feel comfortable endorsing. Can't imagine Lenny Bruce appearing in an ad for the GAP, I guess. (Though, God knows, maybe he did appear in an ad or two for something, or would've, if he'd've lived long enough.) (At any rate, the GAP has undoubtedly bought the rights to his image, & plan to use it, if they've not already--corporate interests will get their slimy hands on us one way or the other. Ah, well.) Yours, Gary "Windbag, Nonsenso's sister's son" Sullivan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 08:25:53 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC > Ditto to some of Chris Cheek's qs -- + correct snail-mail address Thanks, reading you loud and clear. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 08:45:18 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Ginsberg quote without permission: ".....and mountains of eggs were reduced to white powder in the halls of Congress no godfearing man will walk there again because of the stink of the rotten eggs of America and the Indians of Chiapas continue to gnaw their vitaminless tortillas aborigines of Australia perhaps gibber in the eggless wilderness and I rarely have an egg for breakfast tho my work requires infinite eggs to come to birth in Eternity and the grief of the countless chickens of America is expressed in the screaming of her comedians over the radio ......." Death to Van gogh's Ear Paris 1958 in Kaddish Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 08:30:44 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC "html"? please help techonolgically barely competent person. I can do ascii. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 17:39:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: signs Something floating around the 'net, wending its way toward the poetics list: > > Here are some signs and notices written in English that were discovered > throughout the world. > > >>In a Tokyo Hotel: > Is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not a person to do such > a thing please not to read this. > > >>In a Bucharest hotel lobby: > The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you > will be unbearable. > > >>In a Belgrade hotel elevator: > To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter > more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then > going alphabetically by national order. > > >>In a Paris hotel elevator: > Please leave your values at the front desk. > > >>In a hotel in Athens: > Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 > A.M. daily. > > >>In a Yugoslavian hotel: > The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid. > > >>In a Japanese hotel: > You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid. > > >>In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from Russian Orthodox monastery: > You are welcome to visit the cemetary where famous Russian and Soviet > composers, artists, and writers are buried daily except Thursday. > > >>On the menu of a Swiss restaurant: > Our wines leave you nothing to hope for. > > >>Outside a Hong Kong tailer shop: > Ladies may have a fit upstairs. > > >>In a Bangkok dry cleaners: > Drop your trousers here for best results. > > >>In a Rhodes tailor shop: > Order your summers suit. Because is big rush we will execute customers in > strict rotation. > > >>From the Soviet Weekly: > There will be a Moscow Exhibition of Arts by 150,000 Soviet Republic painters > and sculptors. These were executed over the past two years. > > >>A sign posted in Germany's Black Forest: > It is strictly forbidden on our black forest camping site that people of > different sex, for instance, men and women, live together in one tent unless > they are married with each other for that purpose. > > >>In a Zurich hotel: > Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the > bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose. > > >>In an advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist: > Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists. > > >>In a Rome laundry: > Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time. > > >>In a Czechoslovakin tourist agency: > Take one of our horse-driven city tours - we guarantee no miscarriages. > > >>Advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand: > Would you like to ride on your own ass? > > >>In a Swiss mountain inn: > Special today -- no ice cream. > > >>In a Bangkok temple: > It is forbidden to enter a woman even a foreigner if dressed as a man. > > >>In a Tokyo bar: > Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts. > > >>In a Copenhagen airline ticket office: > We take your bags and send them in all directions. > > >>In a Norwegian cocktail lounge: > Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar. > > >>In a Budapest zoo: > Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the > guard on duty. > > >>In the office of a Roman doctor: > Specialist in women and other diseases. > > >>In an Acapulco hotel: > The manager has personally passed all the water served here. > > >>From a Japanese information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner: > Cooles and Heates: If you want just condition of warm in your room, please > control yourself. > > >>From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo: > When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously > at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor. > > >>Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance: > - English well speaking > - Here speeching American. > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 18:33:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC In-Reply-To: <199503302255.RAA05151@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Tony Green" at Mar 31, 95 08:30:44 am > > "html"? please help techonolgically barely competent person. I can > do ascii. Well yes, then, you would probably want to supply ascii. If you were interested, you might learn html later, which is a mark-up language that permits some basic formatting and the possibility of making links in World-Wide Web documents. (I'm not sure if you even have world-wide web access. Sometimes this is obtained by typing lynx at your system prompt.) One basic use of html is that you can mark your ascii text, for example, so that there is a table of contents and the user can jump to the section of the text indicated by the table of contents. That's one of the basic uses. You can get more info about html by using the web to go to: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/html-primer.html You may wish to submit ascii first and investigate html as time permits; it takes a while to learn but is very useful. All best, Loss ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 12:16:58 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: signs Dear Steven Shoemaker, Thanks for the giggle. I wonder how many of the solecisms are genuine found "Signs". ("Is that a real sign or did you make it up yrself?") Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz post: Dept of Art History, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Fax: 64 9-373 7014 Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 18:43:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: poetry v history In-Reply-To: <199503262154.NAA12034@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at Mar 27, 95 09:50:55 am Well, Tony, that's funny, re Olson and "real" historians. I am engaged in writingh a history book now, for penguin. I applied for an academic grant, and got turned down, because the granting agency sent my application to some history professors. They were nice enough to send me copies of the profs' reports. One of them, which was filled with very bad English, said I should not get anything because, for instance, I was going to go to local museums instead of a centralized archive, as a real historian would do. So it goes. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 19:34:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Responsibility ya, and then there is the parenthical (hello, ____): hi, there, big friend; everyone watch me wave. let's just measure the rope. so, chris, maybe the problem is the performance and the waving. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 18:17:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Rilke Quote Hey, Y'all: I Need HELP! I'm trying to find a translation from Rilke's Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge; James Wright uses it as an epigraph for his poem "Sappho." I don't speak/read german (I did work in french), so if anyone could be so kind as to either offer a translation or suggest a translated version and where (it's a big work) in the text it occurs I would be eternally grateful. Thanks! Here's the quote: "Ach, in den Armen habi ich sie alle verloven [or is it verloren?], du nur, du wirst immer wieder geboren. . . ." Jeffrey Timmons ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 06:16:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Rilke Quote In-Reply-To: <199503310701.CAA10133@sarah.albany.edu> from "Jeffrey Timmons" at Mar 30, 95 06:17:42 pm > > Hey, Y'all: > > I Need HELP! > > I'm trying to find a translation from Rilke's Die Aufzeichnungen > des Malte Laurids Brigge; James Wright uses it as an epigraph for his > poem "Sappho." I don't speak/read german (I did work in french), so if > anyone could be so kind as to either offer a translation or suggest a > translated version and where (it's a big work) in the text it occurs I > would be eternally grateful. Thanks! > > Here's the quote: > > "Ach, in den Armen habi ich sie alle verloven [or is it verloren?], du > nur, du wirst immer wieder geboren. . . ." A very quick literal version of the quote would give something like this: "O, I have lost them all in the arms, only you, you are constantly born anew." As I don't have the context, this is all I can do at 6 a.m. The awkward "the arms" could possibly become "my arms" Pierre ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | He who wants to escape the world, translates it. Dept. of English | --Henri Michaux SUNY Albany | Albany NY 12222 | "Herman has taken to writing poetry. You tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | need not tell anyone, for you know how email: | such things get around." joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| --Mrs. Melville in a letter to her mother. ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 10:59:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bill Luoma Subject: Re: back to poetry Sappho--phainetai moi It appears to me that his godhead divines your little one on one. He plays forward on the sweet phone of your acuteness and galling desirability. This is my cardiac chest unfeathering. When I see you, nothing comes to me to speak. My tongue is broken. Straightway a fine flame consumes my skin. With my eyes I see nothing and hear forebodings of rain. A cold sweat downs me. A trembling seizes all. I am more green than grass time. I am dead no less than I appear. Sappho--hoi men hippeon straton Most men take strategic knights, while others claim armymen; the rest hold up battleships as the greatest show on earth. But I declaim. It's who do you love. It's no trouble to cinch this once and for all. For she was Helena, beauty of the mortal elsewhere, who left the man, the aristocrat, behind. And went floating off to Troy, with no mind for offspring or beloved parents. Love walked her sideways, knowing straightway. For swayed lightly t one puts me in mind of Anaktoria, now out of sight. I would rather see her step the lovely and do the facial shine more than any continental chariot decked with soldiers under arms. Sappho--poikilothron' athanat' aphrodita Thronechanging amortal Aphrodite, child of Zeus deceit weaver, Hey Lady, don't break my heart on the yoke of grief and ailment. But come on down. Do you remember when you answered my call? It was a long distance and you listened and left your father's golden dome, having yoked the chariot. The beauties led you, swift sparrows over black earth, dense feathers cutting spirals from heaven to the middle of air. They arrived on a dime, with blessed you smiling the amortal smile. And you asked: "What's all this then? Why do you bother to call? How far across the nation did your heart range this time? Whose pretty little head can I turn your way? O Sappho, who's been so mean to you? Listen, if she hides now, soon she will seek. If she won't say thankyou, soon she'll say please. If she doesn't want it now, soon she'll be wanting, but not willingly." Come on. Loose me far away from high anxiety. However much my little heart wants to consume, you consummate. You, yourself, stand by my side. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 16:05:13 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Responsibility >ya, and then there is the parenthical (hello, ____): hi, there, big friend; >ever >yone watch me wave. let's just measure the rope. so, chris, maybe the problem >is > the performance and the waving. can you deconstruct some of this a little further sounds as if you're a serious cow'boy' or is your tone jusy obliquely stretched? Reels one, where's the hanging party? or did you see my performance with the red rope in Toronto? I should ask - which performance, what waving? best cris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 16:05:21 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: GAPsberg X-To: Gary Sullivan Gary, the weasel asks: when GAP buy Ginsberg don't they also somehow endorse all that he has done and 'stands' for? If that can be true, then what consequent implications does that endorsement have for those values which he 'embodies'.? Do GAP realise what they're 'buying' into? Does Ginsberg have an ironic position with regard to what he's selling? Is there some intimation of a Faustian pact? Is he selling his, and others', pasts - or a generative (even some might add congenital) bohemian undergraduate lifestyle - or a set of ideologies and cultural values? In other words if the production and the producer of 'Wichita Vortex Sutra' is 'good' for sales how does or can that affect the reception and critiques of his work as a poet? What is lost? What is gained? What can be reclaimed and on what basis? Can the (sometimes) desperate need for societies to embrace and absorb resistance beyond (either internally or externally) accepted margins or consensual realities reach a point of untenable, or no longer sustainable, flexibility? Is this another strategy for bringing the bourgeousie to its brink? Can a crisis in capitalism be brought about by encouraging it to stretch too far? (the weasel notices he's way beyond the canyon's edge - claws at thin air before speed lines plunge him out of the frame towards the rapidly approaching stream in the canyon's bed) And to pick up Ron's point about large audiences and the rock axis, hasn't much of Ginsberg's career openly engaged with businesses bigger than the small press? What price the intergrity of Rolling Thunder - or Dylan himself for that matter? Aren't Ginsberg and Dylan already part and parcel of the Capitalist fabric of the American dream? I enjoy you teasing these threads apart once more but can't we begin to develop other strategies rather than the binary 'them' and 'us' oppositions. Doesn't all business involve forms of reification by association with success? Like having a commendation from x on the back of the book - or merely being able to publish something written by x to raise the profile of a press. Whilst, arguably, Consumerism can't be separated from Dissemination it isn't synonymous with Capitalism. This list and e-space more generally has a crucial role to play in developing new relations between process and product, between means of production and modes of consumption between forms of communication, information distribution and ecologies of use. I appreciate what you posted a week or so back re; the hallmark of a great card: >The books my wife Marta & I publish include all of the "bullshit," >*despite* my sense that it somehow "cheapens" the things. >Dissemination--almost all of it, at any level--involves some degree of >compromise. It helps, I think, if you can be consistently aware of that, >know beforehand what you are or are not willing to do. There is NO clean money."It's not YOUR money creep, it's MONEY!". There are huge socio-economic arguments massing and missing here. Alongside which lie various reductive ideologies re- mainstream and margin - 'precious tempered formal radicals cleaving to illusory obscurity, that being the only security they've got' (slim pickens) cris p.s. In 1990 I was invited to interview Ginsberg on censorship in the U.S. re Helms and radio 'chilling'. Didn't know what he'd be like 'in person'. I've got to say that warts and all he struck me as to quote you one last time 'a great card' - flawed but then who isn't, and full of the energy to engage - the roughness of the public worlds. He 'hits on' those. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 12:58:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Re: GAPsberg X-To: cris cheek In-Reply-To: <9503311600.aa13748@post.demon.co.uk> Dear Cris: Many thanks for your truly thoughtful & hilarious post. (Great Slim Pickens quote, btw. What's it from?) Yes, yes; that "us" & "them" is too, too easy. (My "Windbag" sign-off not just an acknowledgment of my talkativeness, but, as it comes from More's _Utopia_, a nudge suggesting how ridiculously idealistic I can get, to boot.) (I'm not completely oblivious, though I play ... , etc.) I have friends who feel that small presses in general suffer from just what that Pickens quote brings up--there are many days when I wholeheartedly agree (& include myself in that, too, btw.) Still, I think you can talk yourself into & out of believing anything, & to quote from something a friend writes (about-to-be, but-not-yet-published) about Olson: "He knew and taught that where there are no standards there can be, really, no love." Yours, w/respect Gary ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 16:05:27 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Chapbooks at EPC appologies in advance to more Web experienced folks, but-- just wanted to add encouragement to folks considering contributing to the EPCs electronic text, and to echo Loss's charaterization of this as a pretty special opportunity... to expand a little on HTML, which is the language used to write World Wide Web documents: HTML (HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE) is _much_ less intimidating than it sounds, even fr technophobes like me--not much more complicated than MLA manuscript conventions... *(no, really!)*. basically, it's a set of tags that describe how a text is presented onscreen... ----- now, here's the above paragraph in HTML:

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

is much less intimidating than it sounds, even fr technophobes like me--not much more complicated than MLA manuscript conventions... (no, really!). basically, it's a set of tags describe how a text is presented onscreen. the "

" means "new paragraph"; the text between "

" and "

" will be displayed as a first level heading, like a title; "much" means that "much" will be displayed in italics; "(no, really!)" will appear in bold... all of these tags are hidden when the document is read onscreen, the computer just interprets them & displays the text as specified... besides online resources, there's a book available, "Teach yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week" by Laura Lemay--broken down into "day 1", "day 2"... and all the basic text-oriented stuff is covered by day 3.) ----- in addition to formating, HTML allows you to jump between different "pages" of your document, either in a specified sequence or as a web of interconnections. simple ways of using this would be a table of contents, where each title is linked to it's respective poem-- the reader "clicks" on a title onscreen, and that poem is then displayed. another use would be footnotes that are hidden, and only displayed at the request of the reader... and again, the actual formatused to specify these links is really simple... which brings me to my real point, to encourage folks to utilize the possibilites of the medium (& harkening back to recent discussions about the physical design of books). when i design a paper chapbook, i work pretty hard to sequence the poems so that the book as a whole "flows". with links that aren't necessarily linear (pg 1, pg 2 etc), whole new schemes are possible. for my initial chap for the EPC, i'm working with the poet--from any given poem, she's suggesting 3 or 4 other possible poems that might make good "segues", readers will be able to jump to any one of them from there... and instead of a straight table of contents, she's gonna write a new piece, sort of a letter amoung her various "selves", which will have links (allusive/suggestive, rather than simply the titles) into the various poems... i've been working with Loss for the past coupla weeks, figuring out from scratch how this stuff fits together--he's made things very easy. i'd be happy to offer my meager experience to any of you considering taking him up on this offer. asever luigi ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 17:35:03 +6400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Rilke Quote In-Reply-To: <199503311211.EAA18470@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Pierre Joris" at Mar 31, 95 06:16:32 am The quotation I use is one by M.D. Herter Norton. I have no idea whether it is better or worse than others. In the 1984 Continuum edition of the Works. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 17:49:34 +6400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: AG In-Reply-To: <199503301840.KAA20592@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gary Sullivan" at Mar 30, 95 10:00:52 am Of course, sure, Ginsberg often hits on young guys. He never denies that--in fact, mentions it from time to time. What is he supposed to do: hit on old guys? If the young guys are smitten by fame, well, Allen isnt going to make them pay for it. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 22:51:19 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: New Johanna Drucker book _Dark Decade_, a novel by Johanna Drucker (includes reproductions of 17 paintings by the author) Detour Press, 1995, 128 pp., $10.95. Order from Small Press Distribution, or postpaid from the publisher: Detour Press 1506 Grand Avenue #3 St. Paul, MN 55105-2222 Excerpt from _Dark Decade_ (relevant to a number of threads here, recent & not-so-recent): THE POET'S CONDITION His aesthetics were fed by linguistics, not ecstacy, and he banked on the gestures of middle class life. He matched his chairs with the diningroom table while the computer continued its printout unsupervised. Children dropped into the picture in their requisite role as accessories of the age. The macho tactics that had launched his embryonic career also catapulted themselves into the domestic arrangements. The expectations of a whole generation of forbearers stood ahead of him in the path to glory. The high stakes were all low paying, gambling for the dubious slots in history, and the strategies of youth had all been Oedipal -- taking on masters and then taking aim. What was poetry in this moment but a marginal commentary on a marginal form, smudged against the hallmark of literature, and sleeping undisturbed between the covers of slim volumes? . . . Dyna is not part of this picture, but is also ready to be described. She begs for pulp terms to break the taboo against violence to women with the glandular vocabulary of the super-market novel. Her moments lend themselves to sensationalism. She lives the very antithesis of the obscure literary genre. Hers is a popular mythological tale, full of glamour, gloss and textural attributes. But feeling correct and circumspect we merely indicate the presence of a woman. The poet, meanwhile, has made it to the kitchen where he takes a hunk of bread and begins to live with it. Frustration spreads itself with the knife of anticipation -- later. Later. The refrain stings his soul, against the strange injustice of a world unwilling to acknowledge the power of the word in its own climate: language. The bread bit into him and we lost the opportunity for elaborate development of character or scenes: while the angel of mercy reserved the loaf along with the goals, aims, and standards that the poet, in a better mood, maintained. In our story he represents the state of fallen virtue and the failed project of art. The times would gladly obliterate his existence, but we notice that they do not bother. . . .