=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 11:39:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears and Seventies-Speak
>I dont think anyone swears better than do the Australians. I like it
>when they call someone (even me) a "pisswit."
Dear George
You are a pisswit! Feeling better.
Actually that's the first time I've ever used pisswit. I prefer scumbag.
Mark
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 19:14:09 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears
In-Reply-To: <v01510100ac566fc39b06@[129.78.181.65]>
My Dad spent a bit of time in Monk's Corner, South Carolina and uses
these great phrases like
"Kiss my rabid dog" and "Why you smilin like a wide eyed chessy cat?"
He also lived in Venezuala for seven years and pours out these great
spanish curses, but I never know what exactly he's saying so I'll keep
them to myself. I wouldm't want to offend anyone. But man, Spanish curses
are beautiful.
Oh yeah and some of the best lines from mOvies are
"Why don't you go light your tampon on fire, and blow your box apart,
cause that's the only bang you'll ever get."
The Adventures of Prisilla Queen of the Desert
"OUr love is God, let's go get a slushie" and "Fuck me gently with a
Chainsaw."
Heathers
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 16:27:32 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
In-Reply-To: <199508150126.SAA22551@fraser.sfu.ca>
NO, George, I meant that Mitchell caught Ozzie's fly ball, Ozzie being a
member of the Cardinals. Susan
On Mon, 14 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> Nope, Ozzie Smith never played for the Giants. But he did play in
> calif., for the Padres.
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 22:28:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Shedding the Lurker Skin
tom taylor writes:
> post language post modern
> hopefully post apocalypse (we are in it).
yes --did u know that when robert duncan was adopted by the symmeses, they had
an astrological chart drawn up for him that said, among other things, that he
would witness the end of his own civilization during his lifetime? so the
apocalypse must've happened before march 1988.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 22:43:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: you're fe/mail?
what i wanna know is, is lindz a man or woman? is gwyn a man or woman? are
cris cheek and chris scheil men and/or women? why do i wanna know? i dunno!--md
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 23:59:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: political song for michael jackson to sing
I get embarrassed whenever I try to change anyone's opinion.
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 21:10:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: you're fe/mail?
In-Reply-To: <303017de0c7c002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Mon, 14 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
> what i wanna know is, is lindz a man or woman? is gwyn a man or woman? are
> cris cheek and chris scheil men and/or women? why do i wanna know? i dunno!--md
>
It's kinda cool not knowing what someone is gender wise. But I always
assumed that I pretty well betrayed myself by my responses and my language
as being young and female.
Lindz is short for Lindsey Michelle Williamson. If you're Canadian you
pronounce it like Bowering "Lindzed" if you're from south of the border
it's "Lindzee", but my friends call me "Lins", rhymes with "Fins".
Some interesting variations that have emerged are Lindzeloo-where-are you?,
Lindzerella (when I'm grumpy), Lindzard ( when I'm being weird) Findzee (
a sign of affection), and Fuckhead (specially reserved for when I'm being an
idiot).
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 00:13:00 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Beaudoin <cybercomm@CHARM.NET>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies"
When I lookt up, George Bowering had writ large upon my
screen:
>Has someone explained what AWP means?
>I thought maybe Angry White Poets. Nah.
>Anne Waldman People? Probly not.
August's weary puddle...
/d
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
David Beaudouin in cybercomm@charm.net
Baltimore, Maryland tropos@charm.net
hon! vox/fax: 410.467.0600
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 00:48:00 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Beaudoin <cybercomm@CHARM.NET>
Subject: Re: your mail
When I lookt up, George Bowering had writ large upon my
screene:
>This is not fair! Some sneaky bastards are giving
innocuous titles
>such as "Your mail" to rengas! How can an honest person
delete them
>without looking if they're going to pretend to be
something other
>than renga?
George, it's renganomics: if everything's in the poem, the
poem is everywhere.
/d, stillcranky
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
David Beaudouin in cybercomm@charm.net
Baltimore, Maryland tropos@charm.net
hon! vox/fax: 410.467.0600
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 23:05:03 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: you are male, g.b.
Leaving the bat faster than I came to the plate, I says
to the screwball (wiseballs know everything,
shrewdballs everybody):
> Hey, Charlie, what the hell were in those books?
> > In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > (inspection
> > denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > kook!"
> > Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > warehouse, curls
> > no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > dry cleaners
> > having recovered from the chemicals of deadlines drop stitched
> > into
> > the ball Kevin Mitchell bare
> > handed. Baseball sold
> > out. cash stricken striked.
> > Would that as a poet I had
> > the chance to do something like
> >
> > grace the outfield, hands bare
> > from ringing, washing scales
> > of passion's conformity never
> > minding a green surface, far
> > cry from eternity, kitchen table
> >
> > bleached down, a firecracker
> > cold as the buckles on my sandals
> > as the wesleyans come in the room
> > and hang up their robes and go
> > down to the fellowship hall
> >
> > the garcia posological convention already underway
> > platform sonneteers
> > reminisce those hash oil crisis years
> > when every squib seemed damp & colon slack:
> > get real, ya doofuses, the Blob is back
> >
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 01:35:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Scheil <cschei1@GRFN.ORG>
Subject: Re: you're fe/mail?
In-Reply-To: <303017de0c7c002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Mon, 14 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
> what i wanna know is, is lindz a man or woman? is gwyn a man or woman? are
> cris cheek and chris scheil men and/or women? why do i wanna know? i dunno!--
md
>
Male, all too male. My wife says that excessive testosterone is related
to anabolic karma debt, which explains my irrational love of sauerkraut,
Morton Feldman, & my inexplicable temporary obsessions (appearing this
week: Ankoku Buto, Caspar David Friedrich, De Sica films).
Chris
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 18:42:48 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Chook
chhoks are chickens. They are in my order of merit: Nicolas Le
Poussin and Foghorn Leghorn Chicken Little a distant third
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, 15 Aug 1995 03:01:12 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa A Januzzi <jma5@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: furnished, remember?/no renga
In-Reply-To: <199508132359.QAA10217@fraser.sfu.ca>
My stuff's in a bunch of straight-faced boxes and I'm about to mail my
cats and drive x-c from NYC to Utah, where I expect to be camped for
some time (at the U of U).... So....
1) Can anyone recommend anything poetic to see, besides that damn giant
ball of twine? I'll be looping south through West Virginia (so I can see
the Blue Ridge Mountains for real, instead of just in the Joan Baez song!)
then heading west through St Louis etc. (etc., etc.).
-and- 2) Is anyone from Utah out there? Backchannel anecdotes are
totally welcome.
I already reread the Padgett-Berrigan big travel dialogues.
If anyone's going to be passing through Salt Lake City, well, mi spare
futon es su chrashpad.
Be back soon under cover of new institutional alias.
(Am I mistaken, or has the rengawave subsided?!)
---Marisa <jma5@columbia.edu>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 20:50:11 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Rejected posting to POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU (fwd)
manners poetiquette styles of address currents of concern bad
language language all these I learned lately on the poetics list
poetry doesn't propagate convictions as effectively as expedients
listed who said it's like a bar (and it's usually happy hour?)
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, 15 Aug 1995 08:00:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Larkin fucks again
In-Reply-To: <01HU1FRNI6A08WWYU3@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
On Sun, 13 Aug 1995, Chris Stroffolino wrote:
> Dear David kellogg--for one who has a quote from THOMAS KINSELLA
> (gag) I'm REAL CURIOUS why you'd call Larkin assinine--isn't that
> kinda like the little fish calling the big fish "poison" (if you're
> i mean you'll pardon my french"------anne onimous....
I meant personally asinine. Kinsella, from my limited knowledge of him
personally, keeps his animuses in reserve.
If you're referring to the poetry: De gustibus. So Kinsella makes you
gag -- IMO, he's the best poet in Ireland. Which only means I like him
the most. Poison, hmm -- "the other's poison"? -- if I read you right,
you gag not only at Kinsella, but at others' liking him....?
Let's all correct each other's tastes.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 08:23:00 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: you're fe/mail?
In-Reply-To: <303017de0c7c002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Gwyn is a woman whose parents knew they had some Welsh ancestry but had not
read _How Green Was My Valley_ so didn't know it was a boy's name,
unmitigated by any feathery suffix. It's like being named "Mike." It's
kind of funny--at least the people who assume I'm a man spell the name
right, as opposed to clerks and secretaries who know I'm a woman and
therefore think it must be a typo for "Gwen."
g.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 09:25:05 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rachel Loden <74277.1477@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Larkin fucks again
Ira Lightman asks:
Why either Larkin or Language Poetry? Why not both?
Ira, I couldn't agree more. I happen to love some of Larkin
(so tar and feather me). "Wretched" was meant as a term of
endearment--what's a little wretchedness between friends?
Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 07:34:10 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Seattle readings - Bumbershoot
Here's a list of readers at the upcoming Bumbershoot, Seattle's annual arts
festival. It may not be worth a special trip (It's no BlaserCon), but there
are still plenty of some of you folks in the area may want to come check it
out.
Bumbershoot is a twenty-five year-old nightmare of a festival, held over
Labor Day Weekend (which, I should explain, for the benefit of the many
Canadian folks on this list if for no one else, since they're close enough
to consider coming down, is the SAME weekend as Labour Day Weekend). There
are rock bands, dance performances, theater, visual art exhibitions, a book
fair, food &/or craft booths, etc. all on the site of the 1962 World's
Fair. (Admission to the Space Needle is extra.) It's like a very crowded
county fair with (some) arty trappings, and little livestock.
Anyway, this year's lierary readings include:
Friday: Sam Hamill, William Pitt Root. Marilyn Stablein, Craig Van Riper,
Sharon Doubiago, Ed Sanders, Diane DiPrima.
Saturday: Sara Menafee, Jack Hirschman, Marnie Mueller. Robert Schuster,
Joe Reiner, Sibyl James, Alan Chong Lau, Deborah Woodward, Bart Baxter,
Rajaa Gharbi, David Scully.
Sunday: Natalie Jacobson, Emily White, Willie Smith, Jim Carroll, Patti Smith.
Monday: Nico Vassilakis, Tom Malone, Robert Mittenthal, Joseph Keppler,
Lisa Robertson, Charles Bernstein. Roberto Valenza, Jane Taini, Mixhael
Hureaux, Martha Linehan, Marion Kimes. & the readings all you mystery fans
have waiting for, Steve Greenleaf, Mary Daheim, J A Jance, Ann Rule.
So if you're planning to come hear all those mystery writers on Monday, why
not make a day of it & stop by the afternoon "show" too. You'll be glad you
did.
Also, Seattle reading-wise, starting in late September, there'll be an
ongoing, monthly series of readings which I'll post more about in another
week or so. The name of the series will remain, at least for now, Subtext,
so there's some continuity with the series' that some of you know a little
about, but there's now a larger group of people involved to keep it going
steadily over the year. There'll also be some sort of website with writing
by past present & future readers in various Subtext events. Oh boy, huh?
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 07:34:17 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears and Seventies-Speak
>When George Stanley came back from his stretch in the army, he kept
>using what I took to be a southern expression" "Well, dog bite my
>pecker!"
George -
By "southern expression" I assume you mean from the US.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 18:18:39 BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "I.LIGHTMAN" <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: you're fe/mail?
Sorry to use the list in this way, but Chris Schiel I can't get through
to your e-mail address! Can you backchannel me about the Rodefer books
you want, and if you wanna swap for Carla Harryman's Animal Interests,
or Lyn Hejinian's My Life (ie, if you've got these...)
A fellow Morton Feldman fan,
Ira
I.LIGHTMAN@UEA.AC.UK
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 10:32:59 PST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Taylor <TOMT@CH1.CH.PDX.EDU>
Organization: PSU Cramer Hall
Subject: Re: Shedding the Lurker Skin
maybe it was always apocalypse; my own 1988 was fairly as bad as the
others, years, that is, though my sense of its continuing may be an
extension of my own psychotic episode which began somewhere around
birth. But we do have postapocalyptic visions, say, in those moments
between sentences, or when the toast is burnt, or when others tell us
about theirs. all best
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 14:32:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Gloucester's Olson
----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| The Charles Olson Festival |
| |
| Honoring the Life and Work of Charles Olson: |
| Poet, Teacher, scholar & Community Activist |
| |
| August 12, 1995 |
| |
| Gloucester City Hall, Gloucester, Mass. |
| |
----------------------------------------------------------------
-- A Sketch --
by Loss Pequen~o Glazier
Note: I missed portions of some of these events since
I also spent time talking with people and taking
photos. If anyone else who attended wants to e-mail
me directly any corrections, I'd be grateful. (By
the way, it is my intention to create a photographic
exhibit on a Web page at the EPC called "Gloucester's
Olson" from these photos. Announcement forthcoming...)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
i.
THIS FESTIVAL, which seemed to me to be under-advertised, certainly
had no lack of attendance. The grand meeting room of the Gloucester
City Hall was packed--main floor to balcony--despite nearly unbearable
heat (and David McArdle pointed out that the heat was not
inappropriate: Olson himself had stood in this same room to argue for
the preservation of Gloucester on some equally sultry nights). Though
many of the attendees had travelled some distance to the
conference--getting there however possible--what struck me most about
this one was its local presence.
Many of the persons attending were people from the community, many of
them older; my thought was that there was at least a 50% attendance by
the local community, probably considerably more. Some of these people
I spoke to had shown up because they remembered Olson or they had seen
the Festival announced in the local paper. One fisherman I spoke to
just felt it was a kind of necessary civic act. Another woman came
because "my son used to play with Charlie's son." Another man, dressed
in work clothes and entering the hall just as Gerrit Lansing was
reading from Olson's letters to _The Gloucester Daily Times_ (Ten
Pound Island) would say no more, when I asked, than, "It's respects I
have to pay."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1.
MODEST IN SCALE BUT GRAND in sentiment, qualities of words, and the
vista of Gloucester harbor from the stairway windows of City Hall, the
Charles Olson Festival consisted of three events in one day to
celebrate Olson's life and work twenty-five years after his death: an
afternoon panel discussion, a reception at the library across the
street, and a reading of Olson's works the same night.
The panel, consisting of Robert Creeley, Vincent Ferrini, Hettie
Jones, Jean Kaiser, Ingeborg Lauterstein, Edward Sanders and ably and
enthusiastically moderated by Peter Anastas, undertook a number of
appreciative recollections and questions in the spirit of a
homage. The panelists all knew Olson personally, whether as student,
friend, or peer. Following an opening welcome by David McArdle,
director of the Gloucester library (a place where being "the
librarian" resonates more than in most places), questions such as the
panelists' impressions upon first meeting Olson, thoughts about his
work as a teacher, activist, and political poet were entertained, with
Anastas (who cited Olson's advice, "Just live, the writing will take
care of itself" as having been crucial to him personally) raising
questions and querying panelists one by one.
Creeley, generously offering much thoughtful information, spoke
eloquently on many issues. Given his extensive written contact with
Olson and the number of Olson's works he has edited, his insights
added a specific literary and personal grounding to the event.
One important issue raised by the panel was the context of Olson as an
activist. Ed Sanders, given his own very relevant activities in this
area, was the first to elaborate on this issue. Creeley addressed the
vast imagination of Olson's civic commitment (whether or not this
could be considered "political" poetry was not investigated at length
by the panel), noting Olson's distinction between "epicene
poets--poets who do not enter the society" and the kind of poetic
Olson engaged in Gloucester.
Vincent Ferrini, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and dark glasses,
provided numerous engaging comments, quirky at times, opinionated, and
a poem written for the occasion. He also noted good-naturedly his
contention with Olson about "who had Gloucester" for poetry. Hettie
Jones was warm, kind, and provided personal and valuable reflections
about Olson and his engagement with _Yugen_ (a distinctly supportive
little magazine--with Hettie providing a crucial role--for Olson when
most valuable to him).
And size, yes, about Olson's size. (The best comment on this point was
Ferrini's, who stated quite succinctly, "he lived his body as a
poem".)
Ingeborg Lauterstein, a successful novelist who started out as an
artist at Black Mountain until she became one of Olson's students, and
Jean Kaiser, the sister of Olson's late wife, Betty, both provided
important details and recollections about Olson. Ed Sanders, who
seemed hesitant at times about such a panel format, never lacked in
eloquence or opinion when prompted. Somewhat thorny, though bypassed
for the most part, was Olson's relation to women. Of course the
context was personal here in large part, and in this regard, women on
the panel spoke from their own interactions with Olson. The point
probably was not any resolution but some tangible public fact. (It was
similar when the issue of Olson's "readability" came up, especially
given the local character of his work. It was a question I had also
asked of some Gloucester residents. Those that had tried had not had
much success.)
What counted, in terms of the festival, were the contributions that
Olson made. Though many of the ecologically important locations Olson
argued for have now been paved over or filled in and covered with
condos, his efforts were specific; he intensively argued issues
crucial to Gloucester. Gloucester was his polis and he lived his
commitment to it, both in writing and in action. The panel served to
commemorate a remarkable contribution to this commitment. In Ed
Sander's words, "He was imperfect but he was generous". It's safe to
say, I think, that almost everyone there, panelists and audience
(local and visiting), were motivated by that sense of generosity as
detailed in the panel.
The question period was an event in itself and consisted of a number
of unanticipated spontaneous individual testimonials about other
personal (and life-changing) encounters with Olson.
The panel was followed by a reception at the library and included some
film footage of Olson and greetings from the city by the Mayor, Bruce
H. Tobey. (This was an event I was unable to attend.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
2.
THE HEAT ONLY SEEMED TO INTENSIFY BY EVENING but the main floor and
balcony of City Hall were full again. The evening event, introduced by
Schuyler Hoffman, was a reading of works by and about Olson, delivered
by Gerrit Lansing, Hettie Jones, Robert Creeley, and Edward
Sanders. Lansing read from Olson's letters to the _Gloucester Daily
Times_, reflecting on Olson's method of working: that he might start
writing a letter and it would turn into a poem, and end up an essay
(or something to that effect). Indeed, the letters read by Lansing
were so intensely poetic at times, they must be considered part of
Olson's poetic oeuvre. Hettie Jones read sections from her memoirs
reflecting on Olson's visit to her (and the then LeRoi Jones) and
their household in New York. Her warm and deeply personal account of
the visit included interesting observations about her production
labors in trying to prepare Olson's manuscripts for _Yugen_.
Creeley read some of Olson's work he had selected for Olson's
_Selected Poems_ (California) with great acumen and feeling. With both
Lansing and Creeley's readings, what was most emphasized were the
words themselves, Olson's words, and in those cases there was a
particular pleasure in hearing them in the venue of the Gloucester
City Hall.
Ed Sanders concluded the evening with his own compositions, poems by
Olson set to music by Sanders. Plucking a stringed instrument, the
arrangement alternated between sections of sung text, reminiscent to
me of Ginsberg doing Blake (and in fact I believe it was Sanders who
made a point of placing Olson's work on a scale with Blake's) and
brief interludes or bridges of spoken words. This careful
interpretation provided an apt and festive conclusion to what was
perhaps the most articulate segment of the Festival, the word
itself. A word still there.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
3.
BACK OUTSIDE IN THE NIGHT, a few parting words, then groups of
attendees began to disperse. Mostly to cars or just in directions that
seemed natural for them. This was my first visit to Gloucester and as
such continually offered a new sight around every literal corner. In
fact, I had never even been to New England before. The event seemed
unusual compared to a lot of literary events because of its strength
of location and the people who lived there. And of course, for them,
once it was over, they went home. Gloucester was home. For me, any
direction would do--but I walked towards the harbor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 13:53:33 CST6CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: West Coast Line
George Bowering:
Address, cost for current issue of West Coast Line? I'd like to get
a copy. Am especially interested in the bpNichol material (having
read all of the Martyrology this summer).
Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 17:21:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Gorton's Gloucester (supplement to Loss)
Re part two, the library:
Wild blueberries from Dogtown in a bowl by the defunct card catalogs.
Shrimp cocktail (gone after seven minutes) behind a cooler of coke and pepsi.
Finger sandwiches of tuna and crab.
No one seemed to know exactly where the film was. The conversation seemed
local, convivial.
Saintsbury's history of English Prosody can be requested by interlibrary loan
from Danvers.
Lynn Swigart's photographs of Gloucester scenes were propped around.
(Important to remember how dominated by Gorton's Gloucester is. A contingent
of JHS students were washing cars for free in the drive in front.)
Re part one, the panel in the lyceum: Robert Creeley would throw his hands
and smile, his mouth open. He was totally cogent. Ed Sanders stared down as
he answered. He remarked that he had a sort of "caper" relationship with
Olson. Jean Kaiser was typed as the tough who talked back to Olson; the
librarian at Buffalo who refused Fuck You a Magazine of the Arts space on the
shelves was also called the one person who stood up to Olson. Vincent
Ferrini's poem about Olson met warm applause. Hettie Jones and Ingeborg
Lauterstein characterized Olson as extremely supportive. Peter Anastos smiled
energetically and kept the panel moving.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 14:40:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Watts <cwatts@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Gloucester's Olson
In-Reply-To: <199508151832.OAA12749@orichalc.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Loss
Glazier" at Aug 15, 95 02:32:56 pm
Thanks, Loss. I'd like to have been there.
Were the panels or readings recorded? if so, who would be the person to
ask about getting a copy of the recordings?
Charles Watts
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 18:02:03 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Curt Anderson <CaNDER23@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears, almost
Regarding favorite movie lines, mine comes from the great Peter O'Toole
movie, The Ruling Class, in which O'Toole plays an insane Earl who thinks
he's Jesus Christ. When his relatives ask him why he thinks he's God, the
O'Toole character replies: Because when I pray I seem to be talking to
myself.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 17:18:50 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears, almost
In message <950815180202_55248102@aol.com> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> Regarding favorite movie lines, mine comes from the great Peter O'Toole
> movie, The Ruling Class, in which O'Toole plays an insane Earl who thinks
> he's Jesus Christ. When his relatives ask him why he thinks he's God, the
> O'Toole character replies: Because when I pray I seem to be talking to
> myself.
aha, so that's the name of that wonderful movie i saw so many years ago, where
peter o'toole turns from jesus christ into jack the ripper. one of my favorite
words, "insinuendo," comes from that movie. thanks for the hot tip. speaking
of local slangs, someone (brian?) mentioned calling someone a "gary." in ithaca
new york in the late 60s it was a "gomer." i think the derivation of that is
obvious. in mass. we used to call the liquor store the "package store," or the
"packy" for short.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 15:57:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears, almost
In-Reply-To: <30311d495f01002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "Maria Damon" at Aug 15,
95 05:18:50 pm
Since I have a lot of smart people on line, can anyone tell me the
etymology of "nerd" and "bronco"? No reason. I would just like
to sleep at night.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 19:11:33 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Lurkin'
In-Reply-To: <199508150401.VAA23182@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
don't have my books here beside me -- but as I recall, Larkin _was_ one
of those people who talked snobby about popular music (couldn't seem to
listen much past the stage favored by what the British jazz fans called
"moldy figs") --
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 19:17:30 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: faux mail
In-Reply-To: <199508150401.VAA23182@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
Maria -- Yes, Chris is a man or a woman.
any news for us on the progress of Kaufman collecteds???
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 22:11:31 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: faux kauf
In message <Pine.SOL.3.91.950815191606.19735B-100000@athens> UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> Maria -- Yes, Chris is a man or a woman.
>
> any news for us on the progress of Kaufman collecteds???
hey aldon. i've not heard much from coffeehouse press since i stepped down from
the board, but lasaat i heard it wuz to be out in feb 96, but not the collected,
just selected, including a reprint of golden sardine and a handful of previously
uncollecteds, plus a sampling from solitudes and ancient rain...david henderson
and i both wrote essays for the book, but only his is advertized in the latest
chp catalogue, not quite sure what that means...--md (ps dig yr postpuns)
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 23:14:00 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Beaudoin <cybercomm@CHARM.NET>
Subject: Re: Gloucester's Olson
Loss--
Thanks for the generous and detailed account--speaking of
under-advertised, wisht I had known.
/d
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
David Beaudouin in cybercomm@charm.net
Baltimore, Maryland tropos@charm.net
hon! vox/fax: 410.467.0600
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 13:18:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: AWOL: THE FAMOUS REPORTER
THE FAMOUS REPORTER
'Famous Reporter' is a biannual literary magazine which publishes short
stories, poems, haiku, articles, interviews, reviews and news about writing
events. Issue 12 is due for publication in December '95. New for issue 12
are one hundred word essays taking as their departure point a personal
response to the opening line ("What am I worth?") of R.A. Simpson's poem
'find the saviour. The 'essays' may be in the form of prose or poetry, and
need bear no relation to Simpson's poem apart from an individual response
to the opening line. Contributions for publication will be selected by
Victorian writer Lorraine Marwood.
Subscriptions to 'Famous Reporter' cost $12 (within Australia) for two
issues, from Walleah Press, PO Box 368, North Hobart, Tasmania 7002,
Australia (overseas rates on application). The June '95 issue (# 11)
features interviews with Sam Watson, Annie Warburton, articles essays and
reviews by Bruce Roberts, Paul Bailey, Tim Thorne, David Owen, Elizabeth
Dean, Henry Reynolds, Sherryl Clark and poetry, haiku and prose.
E-mail enquiries: Ralph.Wessman@forestry.tas.gov.au
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 22:03:41 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: favourite care word: "you"
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 23:26:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In message <9508160403.AA23315@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca> UB Poetics discussion
group writes:
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 00:42:33 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 22:19:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: you're fe/mail?
Lindz wrote:
>It's kinda cool not knowing what someone is gender wise. But I always
>assumed that I pretty well betrayed myself by my responses and my language
>as being young and female.
Nope--not to me anyway. I thought you were an older male. (I hope this
neither offends nor excessively surprises you.) This is what I meant not
too long ago when I foolishly posted that "language seems to engender
*itself*" or some such. What I meant was we read gender differently into a
body of written or electronic text than we do into the human or animal body,
but generally with the assumption that there's no difference between the
gender we're reading into the text and the gender of the author of that text
(that is, until Maria or someone starts to question this assumption and gets
up the gumption to ask--thanks, Maria!) Makes for some interesting social
situations. Try figuring out whether the narrator of Carla Harryman's "In
The Mode Of" is male or female.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 22:19:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Too late to the renga
>I get embarrassed whenever I try to change anyone's opinion.
I've come around to your way of thinking.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 22:46:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears, almost
In-Reply-To: <30311d495f01002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "Maria Damon" at Aug 15,
95 05:18:50 pm
In my daughter's highschool about 7 years ago they called them not
Gary or Gomer, but Ned.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 22:50:23 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Chooks
In-Reply-To: <MAILQUEUE-101.950815184248.640@ccnov2.auckland.ac.nz> from "Tony
Green" at Aug 15, 95 06:42:48 pm
I think that my favourite chickens are those created by Daniel
Pinkwater, especially the one under the guy's hat in *Lizard Music*
and the giant one in *The Hoboken Chicken Emergency*.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 23:01:25 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears and Seventies-Speak
In-Reply-To: <v01530500ac55a769c3ac@[192.0.2.1]> from "Herb Levy" at Aug 15,
95 07:34:17 am
No no, by "southern" I mean John Faulkner or Tobacco Road.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 23:06:32 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: West Coast Line
In-Reply-To: <2D379176DCC@as.ua.edu> from "Hank Lazer" at Aug 15,
95 01:53:33 pm
Several people have been asking me about the address and cost and
back issues of West Coast Line, and I have been backchannelling them.
Hoiw abt if I put the info on here?
Dont be put off by the academic address.
West Coast Line,
2027 East Academic Annex,
Simon Fraser University,
Burnaby, B.C., V5A 1S6,
Canada.
Subscription (3 issues) is $20. Usually 150-250 pages. Lots of good
back issues available, probably special rates.
The next issue, in about 3 months, will be the special Brit issue,
edited by Peter Quartermain. Whew!
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 02:08:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears and Seventies-Speak
I think you mean Erskine Atwood
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 23:24:26 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga 11: Invasion from Mars
In-Reply-To: <v01530501ac5127d2ccbf@[192.0.2.1]> from "Herb Levy" at Aug 11,
95 08:37:29 am
I had a dream
& in the dream were books
& in the books were renga
& in the renga were advertisements
for Coke Classic.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 23:30:23 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga 11: Invasion from Mars
In-Reply-To: <199508160624.XAA18976@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Tue, 15 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> I had a dream
> & in the dream were books
> & in the books were renga
> & in the renga were advertisements
> for Coke Classic.
>
George you're my hero, LIndz
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 23:32:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears and Seventies-Speak
In-Reply-To: <950816020807_75876675@aol.com> from "Jordan Davis." at Aug 16,
95 02:08:09 am
No no, Erskin Atwood pitched for the Dodgers several decades back.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 02:38:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga 11: Invasion from Mars
In-Reply-To: <199508160624.XAA18976@fraser.sfu.ca>
I creamed. I came in nooks, in long songs.
I was heard, my birds were rooks.
I screamed. There were other looks
About to tear away the thongs.
Others longed to couple cords with books.
Others' supple hooks sucked rites from wrong.
I beamed, grew long.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 10:29:33 +0200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "W. Northcutt" <William.Northcutt@UNI-BAYREUTH.DE>
Subject: Re: Hambone
Could someone please send me Hambone's address?
Thanks, William
william.northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 06:49:57 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: furnished, remember?/no renga
Congratulations on going to Utah. Having moved away from Arizona two years
ago, I still miss the western skies & landscapes terribly. You're coming
from the other direction, so you probably think I'm a flake when I say that
this Minnesota place is truly farther east than I ever wanted to live
(although I do like visiting those eastern urban places).
If you go through Ohio, stop at Mound City, near Chilicothe, one of the
most interesting Native American mound sites I've seen.
If in southeastern Kansas, the Flint Hills are like some beautiful barren
Martian landscape which I love to drive through. I don't know if there's
much place to stop and walk or hike, but there probably is such a place
there.
Jeff Moran may still be at Lindsborg College (or university?) in Lindsborb,
Kansas, either just north or just south of Wichita (I forget). He was
teaching bookmaking there, and has his own books which are marvelous
inventions of words & materials. I don't have an address, but I knew Jeff
(barely, but admired his books greatly) when I was learning bookmaking in
Madison, Wisconsin, and I am great friends with Penny McElroy, who preceded
Jeff in teaching books at Lindsborg, but she's now at Univ. of Redlands in
California.
Lots of Colorado is beautiful, of course, but in a more majestic,
picture-postcard way. Although Mesa Verde down in 4 Corners land is poetic
& amazing. Almost everything in New Mexico is worth seeing, but that's
probably too far south for you.
Go through the smaller towns all the way if you can. You'll find more
strange and marvelous things. My recent favorite was a small town in
northern Oklahoma which had a house with literally hundreds of painted
signs in front & on top & on the side, all about the coming acopalypse &
other subjects.
Utah may be the strangest state in the west, depending on your religious
sensibility. I thought Salt Lake City was the cleanest city I'd ever seen,
in an eerie way. We camped once at Beaver Creek, in the Wasatch Mountains,
not too far east of Salt Lake, & perhaps just a little south. Down the road
from Beaver Creek (perhaps a national park site, or national forest site)
campsite was Beaver Creek Nudist Colony, which I thought was pretty
interesting to find in Utah -- we didn't go there, though.
Good luck & I hope I make it to Utah. We're currently considering moving
back to Tucson, Arizona.
all best,
charles
charles alexander [===========^^============]
[ <> ]
chax press [ maybe a <> pages ]
[ time <> letters ]
phone & fax: 612-721-6063 [ upon <> frames ]
[ once <> motion ]
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu [ <> ]
[===========vv============]
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 06:50:45 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: furnished, remember?/no renga
Oops, I hit reply by mistake & sent a message intended for Marisa to all
poetics list. My apologies & embarassments.
charles
charles alexander [===========^^============]
[ <> ]
chax press [ maybe a <> pages ]
[ time <> letters ]
phone & fax: 612-721-6063 [ upon <> frames ]
[ once <> motion ]
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu [ <> ]
[===========vv============]
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 08:31:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Fred E. Maus" <fem2x@DARWIN.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: furnished, remember?/no renga
In-Reply-To: <39103.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "Charles Alexander" at Aug
16, 95 06:50:45 am
Wrote Charles Alexander:
>
> Oops, I hit reply by mistake & sent a message intended for Marisa to all
> poetics list. My apologies & embarassments.
>
Don't apologize. It was fascinating.
Better than many things that come to my mailbox, for sure.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 08:49:25 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Too late to the renga
In message <199508160519.WAA15891@slip-1.slip.net> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> >I get embarrassed whenever I try to change anyone's opinion.
> I've come around to your way of thinking.
I've grown accustomed to your
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 08:50:39 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Favorite swears and Seventies-Speak
george b writes:
> No no, by "southern" I mean John Faulkner or Tobacco Road.
who's john faulkner?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 08:52:51 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga 11: Invasion from Mars
sondheim writes:
> I creamed. I came in nooks, in long songs.
> I was heard, my birds were rooks.
> I screamed. There were other looks
> About to tear away the thongs.
> Others longed to couple cords with books.
> Others' supple hooks sucked rites from wrong.
> I beamed, grew long.
bravo
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 12:11:43 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga 11: Invasion from Mars
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950815232945.17547A-100000@interchg.ubc.ca> from
"Lindz Williamson" at Aug 15, 95 11:30:23 pm
George and anyone available:
I had a dream
a song to sing
to help me through
most anything
if you see the wonder
in the fairy-tale...
--Abba
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 13:12:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> (inspection
>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> kook!"
>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> warehouse, curls
>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>> cleaners
>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 13:19:36 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: you're fe/mail?
>Lindz wrote:
>
>>It's kinda cool not knowing what someone is gender wise. But I always
>>assumed that I pretty well betrayed myself by my responses and my language
>>as being young and female.
> and Steve Carll wrote:
>Nope--not to me anyway. I thought you were an older male. (I hope this
>neither offends nor excessively surprises you.) This is what I meant not
>too long ago when I foolishly posted that "language seems to engender
>*itself*" or some such. What I meant was we read gender differently into a
>body of written or electronic text than we do into the human or animal body,
>but generally with the assumption that there's no difference between the
>gender we're reading into the text and the gender of the author of that text
>(that is, until Maria or someone starts to question this assumption and gets
>up the gumption to ask--thanks, Maria!) Makes for some interesting social
>situations. Try figuring out whether the narrator of Carla Harryman's "In
>The Mode Of" is male or female.
I recently surprised myself when writing to a particular editor who went by
intials, rather than by a (recognizable) first name. I thought the
individual was one gender, and later learned that I was wrong. While there
was nothing in my correspondence TO that person that was wrong or wildly
non-neutral (!), I found that what was happened for me was a definite set of
assumptions that did affect the way I spoke or wrote. It seemed more like
working in different (although certainly compatible) languages. Both were
greatly pleasurable. Each was different.
I hope that what I'm saying (with readers of both genders in view) is
conveyed as something more than a set of ditto marks after that Venus Mars
business. Because I believe that for the most interestingly fluent people,
the severity of divisions is usually reduced to a great degree. Minds
talking to minds.
My surprise came in recognizing that although I feel, for the most part,
like a mind talking to minds, there certainly are some things working that
I'd not been so aware of.
Sheila
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 16:23:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: furnished, remember?/no renga
Charles,
>>Oops, I hit reply by mistake & sent a message intended for Marisa to all
>>poetics list. My apologies & embarassments.
That was actually one of the best posts the list has ever seen.
Marissa,
I would recommend getting your hands on Baseball America's 1995 guide that
lists minor and major league schedules, stadium directions, etc. It contains
everything a scout needs to know to drive around the country to watch the up
and coming.
I mean many small to midland towns that you'll be passing through have minor
league ball teams. Evening games are usually mon-sat at around 7:30 pm, the
perfect way to end a long drive.
The problem is the Baseball America guide is kind of hard to find. Usually
MLB marketing professionals have them. The Yanks or the Mets front office
might sell you one. I once bought one in Richmond, VA from the Braves
triple-a front office staff.
Happy trails.
Bill Luoma
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 16:23:59 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: A Poem By Ryan Knighton
> George and anyone available:
>
> I had a dream
> a song to sing
> to help me through
> most anything
> if you see the wonder
> in the fairy-tale...
>
> --Abba
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 17:23:02 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: hole mag fyi
just out:
hole 5
New Poetry, including:
Bruce Andrews
Clint Burnham
Peter Culley
Stacy Doris
Gerry Gilbert
Harryette Mullen
Ted Pearson
forthcoming (Fall 1995):
hole 6
Poetics, Reviews, including:
Clint Burnham
Jeff Derksen
Nate Dorward
Susan Holbrook
Germaine Koh
Rob Manery
Nicole Markotic
Lisa Robertson
Johan de Wit
Fred Wah
& others
2 issues airmail for indivs.: CAD$ 9.00 Canada
US$ 9.00 USA
US$ 11.00 elsewhere.
hole
magazine "with the most cake"
A n n o u n c i n g:
chapbooks
hole chapbook #1
Alan Davies: SEI SHONAGON
$4.00 Can.
US$ 4.00 USA
US$ 5.00 elsewhere
hole 1-4 O.P.
***
a few provisory remarks after July (1995): old news for new
context & emphasis in _hole_ --
for Loss P. G.'s index & Joel K.'s mag
"Politics" in/of aesthetics, and as the most out-there horizon of
"the aesthetic" in here - the everyday (insofar as "the
aesthetic" still exists, and understood if only, then, by
negative historical tracework): these remain for us crucial
issues of poetics and poetry. "Politics," not only as how Robin
Blaser brings it forward from Aristotle into modernism+ via
Arendt - prose of means and ends, ethics of organizing goods and
services to benefit the most meaning. Just as the question of the
referent and the figure of outward has irrevocably altered for
poetry, so too has the question of the phenomenological subject
and the figure of inward. So it's from the latter that we also
take "the political," and on equal terms with that ancient,
fraught concept of "intention," an ethics of. These politics meet
in language as language's motivated condition per se - which
informs the level of the phoneme up through morpheme, word,
phrase, etc., as socially constituted - & therefore contestable -
givens. The rest of "the inward" -- its poetics of the spiritual,
of subjectivity by ideological attrition -- and of "the outward"
-- its poetics of intentionality by a rhetoric of the reductive
-- signal for us only more of the prevailing return of borders
(internal/external) of origin, most alarmingly macro being those
of individual nations (however upset in their dialectic as
trading block members, or however sublated warfare becomes as
economic interest). We want to explore the paradoxical politics
premised on twin interrogatives for formal innovation: of an
irreferential language and an aphenomenological subject. We think
that historically, occasions when poesis has politicized its own
formal machineries and contexts are exceptional enough that such
disclosures of radical materialism, when & how they occur, are to
be closely tended.
(Theory product warning: the relation of these remarks to the
contents of each issue might be as ambiguous to discriminate as
whatever relation exists between, for example, this poetics
listserv and poetry. - On the phyrric as impediment to
"manifesto.")
Louis Cabri/Rob Manery, eds.
_hole_ magazine
22-191 McLeod Street
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K2P 0Z8
(Pls. make cheque out to Rob Manery. Thank you.)
LDMCABRI@ACS.UCALGARY.CA / AK176@FREENET.CARLETON.CA
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 15:56:11 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: JG others and us
In-Reply-To: <302f818f1e50002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Maria, you are wonderful! So glad to see someone else anxiously scanning
the lines to see if theirs are still clinging to the boat...! :-)
Gab.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 21:57:43 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: mumia signature
hi folks sorry bout this but i deleted my mumia petition post after sending it
out to everyone i knew, here's someone who replied to me rather than to the
appropriate folks, so --i can't now remember who posted the mumia info, but cd
you please forward the following forward to the right address? thanks--md
From: Paula Rabinowitz <rabin001@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 21:17:17 -0500 (CDT)
To: maria damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: Re: action alert-- Mumia petition
Please add my name to the list of academics in support of Mumia.
Paula Rabinowitz--Associate Professor of english, american Studies and Women's
studies University of Minnesota
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:15:37 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Wed, 16 Aug 1995 13:12:34 -0700,
Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>> (inspection
>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>> kook!"
>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>> warehouse, curls
>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>> cleaners
>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 21:52:12 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: JG others and us
gabrielle writes:
> Maria, you are wonderful! So glad to see someone else anxiously scanning
> the lines to see if theirs are still clinging to the boat...! :-)
>
> Gab.
hey listen, i'm so unbelievably shy about my "creative" writing as distinct from
my "critical" writing (i almost cry when people ask, "do you write poetry
yourself, as well as crit?" --or as my sister, a writer of light sonnets, so
sensitively puts it, "and are you doing any of your *own* writing these days?")
that i'm impressed that i'm participating at all. having said that, yes, i
fanatically track "my" lines to see if they made the grade enough to further the
renga, or whether i singlehandedly sank the ship. it's kinda fun to cast a line
out there and see if it reels any more lines in...thanks everyone for just the
right degree of anonymity and playfulness.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 15:29:59 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Chooks
Dear George, thanks for the additions to the chicken list, I'd
appreciate a bit of description of each, since your chooks are
unfamiliar.
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, 16 Aug 1995 18:17:54 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Too late to the renga
In-Reply-To: <3031f7632f7f002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Wed, 16 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:> In message <199508160519.WAA15891
@slip-1.slip.net> UB Poetics discussion group> writes:
> > >I get embarrassed whenever I try to change anyone's opinion.
> > I've come around to your way of thinking.
> I've grown accustomed to your
> deodorant but not the nose hair
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 23:32:55 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Too late to the renga
Comments: To: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
On 16 Aug 95 at 8:49, maria damon wrote:
> In message <199508160519.WAA15891@slip-1.slip.net> UB Poetics discussion group
> writes:
> > >I get embarrassed whenever I try to change anyone's opinion.
> > I've come around to your way of thinking.
> I've grown accustomed to your
Overgrowth, as tendril-words embrace the
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:19:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On 8/16, Charles Alexander writes:
>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>> (inspection
>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>> kook!"
>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>>> cleaners
>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:33:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
>On 8/16, Charles Alexander writes:
>
>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>>> (inspection
>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>>> kook!"
>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>>>> cleaners
>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
in brazen deliquescence, curled up in antinomy
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 23:25:35 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Chooks
In-Reply-To: <MAILQUEUE-101.950817152959.384@ccnov2.auckland.ac.nz> from "Tony
Green" at Aug 17, 95 03:29:59 pm
Daniel Pinkwater. the great USAmerican kidsbooks author, is a little
loony on chickens and dogs. In *Lizard Music* Dell paperback, 1976,
there is a kid who has several friends on the street, including an
old African-American guy who keeps a white chicken on his shoulder
and sometimes his head. The chicken's name is Claudia and the man's
name keeps changing. There is also a quintet of Lizards who play
great music, and an attack of the pod people.The man and the chicken
solve all the puzzles, or show the kid Victor how to do it. Almost as
good as Pinkwater's two books about the Snarkout Boys.
*The Hoboken Chicken Emergency* features a 266-pound chicken at
Thanksgiving. A horror story set in New Jersey; what more could you
ask for? Pinkwater's drawings are as bad as Vonnegut's in that book
about the arts festival.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 08:12:33 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: desire / and the 39 steps
Comments: cc: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@vaxa.stevens-tech.edu>
in cool early dawn's light, under a microscope, his artificial grass
appears slavishly vivid. the 'real thing' having dried back years before.
beetles burning their hope there, memorials to the edge between that tended
and that wild pumping valve.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 02:34:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
Dear sad Cardinals fan
>
> That bare-handed line drive [caught by Kevin Mitchell], as I
recall, was off the bat of Ozzie Smith. Didn't he also play for the
Giants for a while?
No. He played with the San Diego Padres before being traded, one up,
for shortstop Gary Templeton who was then presumed to be a better
batter. When he was in San Diego, it was already apparent that Smith
was the finest fielding shortstop ever to play the game. It's sad to
see him now at 40, reduced to mere excellence. The Pods, by the way,
later were to trade Kevin Mitchell for not so much in return. George is
totally right about how his attitude drives "purists" wild.
(PS, if this seems redundant to some other messages, I'm still 250
messages behind, having spent a week in such places as Waco, TX,
Southhaven, Mississippi, parts of Arkansas I never did figure out where
I was and Memphis, Tennessee. Had not previously realized that the
immediate next door neighbors of Mr. Presley were a series of funky
little lube shops. That is not one of the better streets to have had a
mansion on.) George, your cactus collection would fit right in.
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 03:31:43 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies," CAP-L, & the gap (mind it or lose it)
Herb Levy wrote:
>But note that forays onto CAP-L by folks from POETICS (at least those
since last winter) have invariably ended when someone on CAP-L says
"okay, you've made your point about what some of the problems with OUR
stuff are, can you give an example of an inferior work in the "parallel
tradition," so that we have some kind of idea 0f how YOUR aesthetics
operate." So far no one from POETICS has been willing to say "yeah,
here's something that was published in Origin (or Acts, or Aerial, or
Alcheringa, or Avec, to go through some of the more recent journals on
the shelf behind me) & it is really, really bad."
In one sense, I think that this is what Bob Perelman's _The Trouble
with Genius_ does and does admirably, going as it does after the
biggest sacred cows we have. Certainly the section on Joyce's Ulysses
as an accumulative text, with differing and conflicting goals at
different stages of its development, is the most realistic assessment
of that project as writing as we've had. And much of the Pound as well.
Bob (who I think is still in the U.K. tho he may be back in the next
week or so) goes as much at the critical traditions that have sprung up
around Ez, Joyce, Gertrude and Louis (pronounced Louie -- and why, by
the way, does everyone even today still pronounce it that way?) as he
does the writers themselves, but he is very clear in bringing them down
to size by desacralizing them through basic problems in/with their
writing.
The book's weakness, it seems to me, is its reliance on the concept of
genius itself, a frame that he drops very quickly after the intro to
each chapter in favor of a more grounded reading.
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 08:06:13 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies," CAP-L, & the gap (mind it or lose it)
In-Reply-To: <199508171031.DAA24958@ix4.ix.netcom.com>
On Thu, 17 Aug 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
> In one sense, I think that this is what Bob Perelman's _The Trouble
> with Genius_ does and does admirably, going as it does after the
> biggest sacred cows we have. Certainly the section on Joyce's Ulysses
> as an accumulative text, with differing and conflicting goals at
> different stages of its development, is the most realistic assessment
> of that project as writing as we've had. And much of the Pound as well.
> Bob (who I think is still in the U.K. tho he may be back in the next
> week or so) goes as much at the critical traditions that have sprung up
> around Ez, Joyce, Gertrude and Louis (pronounced Louie -- and why, by
> the way, does everyone even today still pronounce it that way?) as he
> does the writers themselves, but he is very clear in bringing them down
> to size by desacralizing them through basic problems in/with their
> writing.
>
> The book's weakness, it seems to me, is its reliance on the concept of
> genius itself, a frame that he drops very quickly after the intro to
> each chapter in favor of a more grounded reading.
Maybe, but the Wile E. Coyote reference toward the end brought it all back
home for me. I whimsically imagine that was the initiating image for the
project. To follow that up with a paper/scissors/rock description of the
literary scene was pretty bold, given the largely academic audience such a
book's destined for. That description still haunts me -- I think it's the
most fully *relational* representation of current writing institutions
I've seen.
I don't see the Joyce chapter quite as strongly as you do -- but maybe
that's because I was saturated with Joyce criticism a few years back.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 09:59:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies," CAP-L, & the gap (mind it or lose it)
In response to ROn and David Kellogg's posts re Perelman and
Genius--I was going to write a review of the book, but I am waiting
for the SEQUEL--the marginalization of poetry--because what he does
there is going to retrospectively confer meaning on this---
But, here's a question for people---would you consider this book
to be a DEBUNKING one, and what is the value of debunking books
today---It is this question of "debunking" (which is weird--coz
Stein, for instance has hardly been BUNKED) that interests me
and it will be interesting to see if P just goes after the
"modernists" so he can build up his contemporaries.....\
STAY TUNED (it's all so kitschy isn't it)...cs
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 14:47:23 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Theresa Krystyna Smalec <tksmalec@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: women's discourses of HIV and AIDS
Dear Buffalo Poetics People,
Hi, my name's Theresa Smalec and i've just subscribed to this
list. i wonder if anyone knows of and/or wants to talk about
women's poetics of dis/ease. specifically, i'm interested
in poetry that deals with HIV and AIDS, though curious about
other people's senses of what a discourse of dis/ease might
entail. any thoughts?
theresa smalec (tksmalec@acs.ucalgary.ca)
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 18:02:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies," CAP-L, & the gap (mind it or lose it)
In-Reply-To: <01HU6BYQAW828Y5IDJ@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
On Thu, 17 Aug 1995, Chris Stroffolino wrote:
> In response to ROn and David Kellogg's posts re Perelman and
> Genius--I was going to write a review of the book, but I am waiting
> for the SEQUEL--the marginalization of poetry--because what he does
> there is going to retrospectively confer meaning on this---
> But, here's a question for people---would you consider this book
> to be a DEBUNKING one, and what is the value of debunking books
> today---It is this question of "debunking" (which is weird--coz
> Stein, for instance has hardly been BUNKED) that interests me
> and it will be interesting to see if P just goes after the
> "modernists" so he can build up his contemporaries.....\
> STAY TUNED (it's all so kitschy isn't it)...cs
I see the book as a kind of sideways debunking, not directly debunking
either the writers or their reputation -- the opposite, in fact, since
we're at the stage now where contemporary experimental poetic practices
are in need of a genealogy for their own authorization (witness, at a far
less engaged level, books by Peter Baker and Christopher Beach). But
rather a debunking of critical myths the writers (to differing degrees)
participated in. A historicization in the sense of tracing a shaping
concept -- genius as the episteme of modernism? -- that no one person
"shaped." So as not to read pre-postmodernist writers like they "asked"
to be read, but to get positive results from reading them against
themselves. A kind of productive debunking. That's a quick 2cents.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 15:07:17 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Faulkner
In-Reply-To: <3031f7ad312b002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "maria damon" at Aug 16,
95 08:50:39 am
John Faulkner was a USAmerican novelist I read when I was a teenager.
He writes a lot like Erskine Caldwell, and he was the brother of
another novelist, William Faulkner. The Faulkners kept the names John
and William going in every generation. They had a grandfather, I
think it was, who was a novelist, too. His name was John Falkner. Wm
Faulkner added the "u", if I remember aright.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 15:12:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga 11: Invasion from Mars
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950815232945.17547A-100000@interchg.ubc.ca> from
"Lindz Williamson" at Aug 15, 95 11:30:23 pm
Hey, Lindzed, I'm not a hero. Kevin Mitchell is a hero.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 15:22:14 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
In-Reply-To: <302b5e793bcd002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "maria damon" at Aug 11,
95 08:43:22 am
Yeah, I was just thinking a while ago about the way people like me
look at ballplayers that are, in the real world, arseholes, like
kevin Mitchell or Jose Canseco, but how we kind of like them in the
baseball world because they are nbot just the normal cliches. I
really liked Dave Kingman, though I would have hated him outside of
baseball. I never did much like Mickey Mantle.
I cant remember all the stuff Mitchell got in shit for. But I do
remember that he and his brother were in the gangs in San Diego.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 15:35:02 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies"
In-Reply-To: <950811024242_74277.1477_HHJ84-3@CompuServe.COM> from "Rachel
Loden" at Aug 10, 95 10:42:43 pm
I am curious about these "new formalists" I have been hearing
snippets abt from US sources over the past few years. They have
never, as far as I know, been heard of up here. Curious: in Canada
the poets of the Allen anthology 30 years ago, quickly became for us
the main US line of poetry, while the Iowa types were perhaps known
by a few profs who probably came from Bucknell anyway. Are any of the
"new formalists" famous? I have a feeling by "new" is probably meant
old, and by "formalists" is probably meant conventional. But I have
never heard any of their poems, as far as I know. Are they a cohesive
group, or is the term just used widely to refer to latter-day Iowa
poets?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 18:50:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: The List Itself
One value of the list itself is the democratic way in which it
introduces people to one another. I had a chance to experience this
first hand in Dallas the other day when Joseph Zitt took me to a great
restaurant, followed by a fine reading (Joe was one of the featured
readers), a view into the Dallas lit scene I could have gotten no other
way. Joe gave a terrific reading, by the way! Thanks!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 19:50:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Shedding the Lurker Skin
Maria (she ends the poems) Damon wrote:
did u know that when robert duncan was adopted by the symmeses, they
had
>an astrological chart drawn up for him that said, among other things,
that he
>would witness the end of his own civilization during his lifetime? so
the
>apocalypse must've happened before march 1988.
Just a smidgen under 20 years before, I'd say.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 22:33:04 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: The List Itself
ron s writes:
> One value of the list itself is the democratic way in which it
> introduces people to one another. I had a chance to experience this
> first hand in Dallas the other day when Joseph Zitt took me to a great
> restaurant, followed by a fine reading (Joe was one of the featured
> readers), a view into the Dallas lit scene I could have gotten no other
> way. Joe gave a terrific reading, by the way! Thanks!
i like to hear this kind of thing, along with extended coverage of conferences,
etc (thanks loss!). thanks ron. my kindred-spirit-in-every-port fantasy seems
to be at least partially realizable.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 22:45:27 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:19:47 -0700,
Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>On 8/16, Charles Alexander writes:
>
>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>>> (inspection
>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>>> kook!"
>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>>>> cleaners
>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 23:20:49 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies," CAP-L, & the gap (mind it or lose it)
David Kellogg writes of Perelman's book on genius, "I see the book as a kind of sideways debunking, not directly debunking
either the writers or their reputation -- the opposite, in fact, since
we're at the stage now where contemporary experimental poetic practices
are in need of a genealogy for their own authorization."
Is this another way of saying a new canon building is needed, a contention
with which I might have some problems, or do you have something else in
mind. Could you explain why "contemporary experimental poetic practices
are in need of a genealogy for their own authorization?" The genealogy I
understand, as long as it is as unrestrictive as is possible. But I'm not
certain why such works need "authorization" beyond their own making. But
you may mean something quite specific by this term "authorization."
thanks,
charles
charles alexander [===========^^============]
[ <> ]
chax press [ maybe a <> pages ]
[ time <> letters ]
phone & fax: 612-721-6063 [ upon <> frames ]
[ once <> motion ]
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu [ <> ]
[===========vv============]
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 23:31:36 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies"
George, I don't know if I have a lot to say about these new formalists, but
my sense is they are not so Iowa-connected, the Iowa line of writers (yes I
know it's hardly a consistent line) being less strictly formal, rather more
free verse narrativists. The new formalists are rather more interested in
received forms of verse, renewing a tradition of poetry based on forms
handed down over the last several centuries. Whether they succeed at such
renewal is another question. At least one wing of these formalists has more
connection to a Stanford tradition which includes such diverse figures as
Yvor Winters and Donald Davie (Davie was teaching at Stanford when I was
there in the early to mid-70's, and while I am in debt to him for
introducing me to serious study of Pound as well as quirky English poets
such as Christopher Smart, I have very mixed feelings about him as a poet,
and I found that, at Stanford, I generally had to get to San Francisco and
Berkeley to experience contemporary writers whose work was meaningful to
me). The key Stanford grad/writer (who went on to Harvard Business School
and a career as a business executive) in the new formalist movement is Dana
Gioia (who was, as a senior in college, a resident advisor in my freshman
dormitory), but although Dana is perhaps one of the best known new
formalists, I really am so unfamiliar with the group as not to know if he
is truly central to their concerns.
I have a vague sense that some part of the new formalist movement comes out
of various more southern USA writing traditions, but perhaps someone else
could speak more about that.
all best,
charles
charles alexander [===========^^============]
[ <> ]
chax press [ maybe a <> pages ]
[ time <> letters ]
phone & fax: 612-721-6063 [ upon <> frames ]
[ once <> motion ]
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu [ <> ]
[===========vv============]
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 03:15:45 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
>I cant remember all the stuff Mitchell got in shit for.
One day, leaving Candlestick Park, the cops busted the person who was
riding w/ Mitch on a homocide warrant. Bar fights occurred once or
twice. And I think he may have pistol whipped a girlfriend (or am I
confusing him with Bonds or Canseco here?). Like George says, not
someone you would want to know "outside of" baseball. Not unlike lit in
that regard. Never could imagine Spicer as a friend, nor Olson, nor
Burroughs.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 08:18:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies," CAP-L, & the gap (mind it or lose it)
In-Reply-To: <93180.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Thu, 17 Aug 1995, Charles Alexander wrote:
> David Kellogg writes of Perelman's book on genius, "I see the book as a kind
> of sideways debunking, not directly debunking
> either the writers or their reputation -- the opposite, in fact, since
> we're at the stage now where contemporary experimental poetic practices
> are in need of a genealogy for their own authorization."
> Is this another way of saying a new canon building is needed, a contention
> with which I might have some problems, or do you have something else in
> mind. Could you explain why "contemporary experimental poetic practices
> are in need of a genealogy for their own authorization?" The genealogy I
> understand, as long as it is as unrestrictive as is possible. But I'm not
> certain why such works need "authorization" beyond their own making. But
> you may mean something quite specific by this term "authorization."
Charles,
Thanks for your response. I suppose I shouldn't have used the term "in
need," since I do NOT mean to suggest that this or that poetry "needs"
anything for its own good -- I'm advocating nothing on that score, being a
thoroughgoing relativist. And I am *certainly* not advocating anything
like a new canon-building process. I was trying to speak (loosely)
sociologically, in the sense of "what happens anyway." Enough people are
reading, say, L-poetry for there to be a collective need to understand
where it came from. Now this "where" is always built retroactively, both
with L-poetry and with all other traditions. For a while the historical
constructions were limited to the "internal" audience (viz. the variety of
essays on/about/through Stein in language-associated publications). The
need to construct a "tradition" is established structurally, not
individually, as l-poetry gains and seeks a wider "outside" (read:
academic?) audience.
I want to stress that I don't think this is a good or bad thing. It's
just what happens.
I should say that my thoughts on this issue are heavily influenced by
Bourdieu, and that I see l-poetry, as it becomes more established as a
viable "position" in the poetic field (gaining what I've elsewhere called
"positionality), becoming firmly entrenched on the side of the field where
rules what Bourdieu calls "restricted production: there value is
determined through a reversal of the economic field, i.e., not sales but
recognition.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 08:32:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies"
In-Reply-To: <93769.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
My sense of the "new formalists" is that there is a strong thread among
them, Timothy Steele and Dana Gioia for example, that is interested in
debunking the entire notion of "free verse," never mind composition by
field. They seem stuck back a few decades ago, trying to debunk WCW's
"Red Wheelbarrow," insisting that it has no prosody and is not a poem, et
cetera. I believe there are other poets who use (and often abuse, cut up,
lop off, etc.) received forms, like Molly Peacock, who don't subscribe to
the Steeleian-Gioian mindset.
Gwyn McVay
gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 08:46:39 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rachel Loden <74277.1477@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: off the subject
I know this is off-subject, but thought it might amuse:
......................
Here's the open letter published in an Australian newspaper that
we told you about:
An open letter to M. Jacques Chirac:
Mon cher Jack
Je suis a bit fromaged off avec votre decision to blow up La
Pacifique avec le Frog bombes nuclears. Je reckon vous must
have un spot in La Belle France itself pour les explosions.
Le Massive Central? Le Quay d'Orsay? Le Champs Elysees?
Votre own back yard, peut etre?
Frappez le crows avec stones, Sport! La guerre cold est fini!
Votres forces militaire need la bombe atomique about as
beacoup as poisson need les bicyclettes.
Un autre point, cobber. Votre histoire militaire isn't tres flash,
consisting, n'est-ce pas, of battailles the likes of Crecy,
Agincourt, Poitiers, Trafalgar, Borodino, Waterloo, Sedan, et
Dien Bien Phu. Un bombe won't change le tradition. Je/mon pere/
mon grand pere/le cousing third avec ma grandmere/la plume de ma tante
fought avec votre soldats against Le Boche in WWI (le Big One).
Have vous forgotten?
Reconsider, mon ami, otherwise in le hotels et estaminets de
l'Australie le curse anciens d'Angleterre - "Damnation to the French" -
will be heard un autre temps.
Votre chums don't want that.
Millo.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 00:40:21 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
Comments: To: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
On 17 Aug 95 at 22:45, Charles Alexander wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:19:47 -0700,
> Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>
> >On 8/16, Charles Alexander writes:
> >
> >>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >>>>> (inspection
> >>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >>>>> kook!"
> >>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >>>>> warehouse, curls
> >>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> >>>>> cleaners
> >>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> >>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> >>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
> >>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
> >>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> >>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
> >>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
itself over us, slower than sound, yet mapping tone to color
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 15:43:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies," CAP-L, & the gap (mind it or lose it)
dear david kellogg--actually, one of the most intriguing things
and positive things about THE TROUBLE WITH GENIUS is the part where
Perelman seems to suggest (I'll find passage if people want) that
the aesthetic of, say, Stevens is preferable to that of Pound and
Zuk---There's a point at which he claims that the problem with the
writers his book focusses on is that they MADE LARGER CLAIMS for
their work than they could have achieved and at least Stevens and
others didn't do this---I find this incredibly interesting--even
if Perelman, I suppose for obvious reasons, doesn't make this CENTRAL
to his book----Bests, chris Stroffolino
(Ron and Maria--i too appreciate the democracy of this list and
have met people to "usher" me places......)
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 12:47:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In-Reply-To: <91249.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "Charles Alexander" at Aug
17, 95 10:45:27 pm
The Inevitable REnga:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
....etc.....
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 13:05:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: GAPPED
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950817175612.3123A-100000@godzilla.acpub.duke.edu>
from "David Kellogg" at Aug 17, 95 06:02:59 pm
Since the Blasercon is somewhat fresh still, can somebody tell
me if Blaser's use of "the Gap" is another term for "outside"
or "other" as in his Collected Books essay abt Spicer? I encounterd
it in Sharon Thesen's Mean Drunk Poem, if that helps.
Thanks millions
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 15:30:02 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In message <199508181947.MAA20892@fraser.sfu.ca> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> The Inevitable REnga:
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>murphy>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> lurkers
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>r>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>chax>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>e>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> rengaside
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> kibitzers
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>guitart>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>n>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>g>>>> bowering
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >silliman>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> lindzed
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>a>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>cabri>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> etc
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> delete
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> .....etc.....
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 16:37:57 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: clean
Poetics
I've decided to take a few days to forget posts before I respond to them. Was
it Alfred Corn or the whole hydra of Cap-L that proposed we choose a
sacrificial experimental poet? Instead of "show us a bad experimental poet,"
why not ask us "what is _good_ about good poetry in the experimental
tradition" and advise us about what is good about good poetry in the
conservative tradition. Then we can talk about the common properties of this
good. Assuming there's any good poetry in either tradition.
Your secret admirer
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 19:21:07 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: just frabjous
I get embarrassed whenever I try to change anyone's opinion.
I've come around to your way of thinking.
Persons outside my ethnic group. Sorry for the confusion.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 21:43:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Curt Anderson <CaNDER23@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: clean
Jordan:
I think that what's good about experimental writing is the willingness to
trust an instinct for what's interesting in verse, both within and without
established forms and traditions -- for "experimental" writing merely
codifies itself on a quicker cycle than more mainstream poetry. What moves
me the most about "experimental" writing are those patches when I don't
consciously know why I'm attentive. As for a sacrificial experimental
writer, I can only hope that I am both obscure and recognized enought to be
disposed of.
Curt Anderson
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 19:20:44 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
>On Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:19:47 -0700,
>Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>
>>On 8/16, Charles Alexander writes:
>>
>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>>>> (inspection
>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>>>> kook!"
>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>>>>> cleaners
>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 20:08:13 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Meet the New Formalists / Just like the Old Formalists
In-Reply-To: <199508180358.UAA02711@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
but less well-read --
does the phrase "first time as tragedy, second time as farce" seem
appropriate here --
several books now out on the subject in USA, George, but look through a
few issues of _The Formalist_ for a roundup --
what's most peculiar, to me, about this is that only practioners of
_certain_ forms and certain rhetorical modes seem to qualify as
formalists to this bunch (by which I mean _that_ bunch) -- part of their
argument is that modernism turned against "the very thing that makes
verse verse," a statement that reveals not only ignorance of much Pound
(and certainly Eliot), but that seemingly refuses to recognize other
formal modes of organizing poems besides meter & rhyme (odd, given the
English poem's origins in alliterative verse) --
Moore & Niedecker remain two of my favorite formalists --
& Ron -- That's a _good_ neighborhood to buld a mansion in if you have a
fleet of cadillacs to keep in running order! besides, it's ggod to know
there's a cola machine nearby when you're up all night shooting
television sets in your living room -- (good, as well as ggod)
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 22:17:49 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies"
Comments: To: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
On 18 Aug 95 at 8:32, Gwyn McVay wrote:
> debunking the entire notion of "free verse," never mind composition by
> field. They seem stuck back a few decades ago, trying to debunk WCW's
What is "composition by field"?
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 1995 21:29:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
<
maria damon writes
In message <199508181947.MAA20892@fraser.sfu.ca> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> The Inevitable REnga:
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>murphy>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> lurkers
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>r>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>chax>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>e>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> rengaside
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> kibitzers
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>guitart>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>n>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>g>>>> bowering
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >silliman>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> lindzed
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>a>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>cabri>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> etc
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> delete
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> .....etc.....
but stturingg it totters. Helicopters flutter
over and over but Kong grabs a grasping
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 01:18:02 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
> >On Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:19:47 -0700,
> >Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
> >
> >>On 8/16, Charles Alexander writes:
> >>
> >>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >>>>>> (inspection
> >>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >>>>>> kook!"
> >>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> >>>>>> cleaners
> >>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> >>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> >>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
> >>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
> >>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> >>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
> >>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
go ahead
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 10:10:51 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies"
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950818082735.11375C-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
On Fri, 18 Aug 1995, Gwyn McVay wrote:
> My sense of the "new formalists" is that there is a strong thread among
> them, Timothy Steele and Dana Gioia for example, that is interested in
> debunking the entire notion of "free verse," never mind composition by
> field. They seem stuck back a few decades ago, trying to debunk WCW's
> "Red Wheelbarrow," insisting that it has no prosody and is not a poem, et
> cetera. I believe there are other poets who use (and often abuse, cut up,
> lop off, etc.) received forms, like Molly Peacock, who don't subscribe to
> the Steeleian-Gioian mindset.
Certainly that describes Steele: if anybody else on the planet has read
his "Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt Against Meter," I
have a dilemma that you could help me resolve:
(a) obtuse or
(b) insane?
I can't make up my mind.
If Gioia is trying to debunk free verse now, then he's changed his mind
of late; his much-cited essay "Notes on the New Formalism" makes much of
the fact that he writes both free and traditionally metered verse. If
only his exercises in either were any good....
Since somebody asked: a good critical essay on the NFs is by Alan Shapiro
(who should be put in the Peacock camp, tho he seems even less of a fellow
traveller) published in Critical Inquiry a few years back, and republished
in his *In Praise of the Impure*. Shapiro resents being called a New
Formalist, and he explains why pretty well.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 10:17:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Goldsmith <kgolds@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Hard Press/Lingo WWW Site Is Up
The Hard Press/Lingo WWW Site is up in basic form. Currently, you can
access selected pieces from "Lingo 4". New works are being added each week
and within a few weeks, most of the issue should be available. We are also
working on putting "Lingo 1/2/3" online. Links & other small press pages
are in store for the future. All in good time. Keep checking the site as it
is very much under construction:
http://crocker.com/~jongams
=============================================================================
Kenneth Goldsmith http://wfmu.org/~kennyg/
kgolds@panix.com
kennyg@wfmu.org
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 12:01:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: EPC.News.3
____ ____ ____
/ / / / / / New URL effective 9/1/95
EEEE PPPPP CCCCC ______________________________________
EE / PP PP CC C/ | |
EEE PPPPP CC / | ELECTRONIC POETRY CENTER |
__EE /_ PP |__ CC C __|__ |
/ EEEE/ PP/ CCCCC/ /| http://writing.upenn.edu/epc |
__/__________________________/ |___________________________________|
E P C . N e w s * Special Issue * No. 3 (August 1, 1995)
___________________________________________________________________
ELECTRONIC POETRY CENTER
Annual Report
July 1995
___________________________________________________________________
The following information details transactions of the Electronic
Poetry Center (EPC), a World-Wide Web based site for poetry and
poetics housed at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Information about its resources as of the end of July, 1995 are
presented in this report.
___________________________________________________________________
I. NUMBER OF TRANSACTIONS
Number of transactions per month:
Month Transactions
1/95 7935
2/95 7940
3/95 10370
4/95 11994
5/95 13458
Counts only include directories having ten or more transactions per
month.
___________________________________________________________________
II. POETICS
The EPC maintains resources related to the Poetics Program at Buffalo,
SUNY Buffalo, including the Wednesdays at Four Plus calendar, and the
archive of the Poetics discussion list. Also maintained are files of
syllabi and other pedagogically relevant materials. At present, the
Poetics archive comprises 24 files and a total of roughly 9.6 million
bytes.
___________________________________________________________________
III. ITEMS "PUBLISHED"
The Electronic Poetry Center, comprised of roughly 640 files in 85
directories, accomplishes the bulk of its "publishing," in addition to
its Poetics files and the publication of RIF/T magazine, in three main
areas: the author library, electronic journals it distributes, and
information on print small presses it provides. Following is
information on these three areas.
1. Authors Presently Linked (35 authors)
* Charles Alexander
* John Ashbery
* Charles Bernstein
* Lee Ann Brown
* Basil Bunting
* John Cage
* Andy Clausen
* Larry Eigner
* Benjamin Friedlander
* Chris Funkhouser
* Elena Garro
* Lydia Gil
* Loss Pequen~o Glazier
* Jorge Guitart
* Matthew Huddleston
* Michael Joyce
* Robert Kelly
* Judith Kerman
* Richard Kostelanetz
* Joel Kuszai
* Hank Lazer
* Jackson Mac Low
* Nathaniel Mackey
* Sheila E. Murphy
* A.L. Nielsen
* Charles Olson
* Peter Quartermain
* Joan Retallack
* Jim Rosenberg
* Jerome Rothenberg
* Leslie Scalapino
* Susan Schultz
* Kenneth Sherwood
* Martin Spinelli
* Katie Yates
2. Journals Currently Distributed/Housed at the EPC (12 Journals;
approx 88 issues / 402 files) Does not include journals to which
links are provided (housed elsewhere)
The following selected electronic poetry journals are distributed by
the Electronic Poetry Center. Unlike many Internet sites, these
journals are provided in collaboration with their editors to
provide texts that are as "authoritative" as possible.
* Brink / Plymouth, Devon, UK
* DIU / Albany
* Experioddi(cyber)cist / Florence, AL
* Inter\face / Albany
* Passages: A Technopoetics Journal / Albany, NY
* Poemata - Canadian Poetry Assoc. / London, Ontario
* Juxta/Electronic / Charlottesville, VA
* RIF/T: Electronic Space for New Poetry, Prose, & Poetics
* Segue Foundation/Roof Book News / New York
* TREE: TapRoot Electronic Edition / Lakewood, Ohio
* TREE: TapRoot Electronic Edition (Hypertext) / Lakewood, Ohio
* We Magazine / Santa Cruz
* Witz / Toluca Lake, CA
3. Listings of Print Small Presses (Approx. 70 files/items)
The EPC provides listings for print small press publications. In
addition to information about sources of information about small
presses, and lists published both in the U.S. and U.K. of experimental
magazines, the following files are presently offered in the
categories, mags, presses, and sources.
_Magazines_____
antenym
chain
compound.eye
coppertales
elephant
first.intensity
impercipient
interruptions
kiosk
littlemagazine
meaning
na.ideophonics
olson.minutes
open.letter
pbriefs
poetry.ny
raddle
situation
skylab
southerly
tinfish
_Presses_____
avenue.txt
avenue_b_list
bdeck.txt
generator
herisson
leave
meow
meow.spring_95
o_books
potes.txt
public.works.apr95
reality.street
roof.txt
segue-p.txt
st-hill.txt
story_line
sun_and_moon
tailspin
texture
viet
wellsweep
___________________________________________________________________
Prepared by Loss Pequen~o Glazier, Director, EPC, July 31, 1995 in
cooperation with Ken Sherwood, Projects Director, and Charles
Bernstein, Poetics Program, SUNY at Buffalo.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 12:11:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: NEW_URL_for_EPC
Announcement: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc
-------------------------
ELECTRONIC POETRY CENTER
> C h a n g e o f U R L
-------------------------
Please make special note of the fact that the EPC will be moving to a
new URL as of September 1, 1995. This move, which has taken many, many
hours of work to effect, has been made for the purpose of having a
much simpler address for "readers" and contributors to the
Center. Instead of the old:
http://writing.upenn.edu/internet/library/e-journals/ub/rift
You will now find the EPC at:
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc
which we all think makes much better sense! I will continue to leave
the old URL "open" for a while until people get used to the new site.
For those of you who have links to the EPC from other sites, please
change your link to the new URL. There are new features and there will
be more graphics, sound, and just plain (or html) poetry!
(PS. Please don't use the new URL until Sept. 1. Though the new
location is much more prominent, I'm still stamping out the bugs)
See you at our new digs!
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 15:26:42 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Value in Poetry
The question of a "bad" poet or poem in the "parallel tradition," to
borrow Corn's vocabulary, really calls up the question of value, which
is what I think Bob addresses in Genius. While Pound and Stein make
pretty explicit claims for their genius (and Joyce was certainly
willing to play the part, tho more cautious in his statements),
Zukofsky seems to have been far more defensive about the issue, and
ultimately does not stake his work on that. What I think Bob is after
is a fresh rereading of all 4 that (1) reads them beyond the
transcendentalist heuristics of their ardent fans, who see only
glimmers of revealed knowledge (they're not alone in this sycophantic
reaction: Spicer, Kerouac and others have all called it forth. Even
Merwin gets it for heaven's sake) and (2) looks at what it may be in
their own writing that calls forth such nonsense as Kenner, Davenport
and Terrell have spewed forth. A very distinct critical problem from
the one put forth, say, by the New Critics, who shunned that fawning
stance in favor of ultraprofessionalism. Where Bob gets in trouble, and
it's minor quibbling on my part to call it that (but to put on the
title as much as anything), is in not being focused at all points on
which is the target of a given reading. So in that sense he tries to do
too much, which oddly replicates what all 4 of those poets do in their
masterworks.
I don't, by the way, think Bob is announcing himself Pro-Stevens over
any of those four (give me that cite, Chris!), tho if you look at the
recent work (in Raddle Moon or the chapbook that Ben Friedman did,
_Chaim Soutine_, the degree to which Bob is primarly a social satirist
(as is Charles B) really comes to the fore. It's an interesting genre
to see get such large play and worth noting that both Bob and Charles
have generally stayed away from anything of "epic" proportions.
The problem of value for my generation is I think sticky. Certainly
value exists, but it is not a fixed, transcendental term in my world
and that relativism is what drives the Bob Doles of poetry (and the
Ross Perots of poetry, too, like Ed Foster) around the bend. Any one of
us could name a poet, or several, whose work we do not connect with,
because it shares little in the way of our own values. In my case, it
would be, say, Susan Howe, whose work seems to me always tepid on the
page and appealing to values off the page for its interest. But those
are my values and I'm conscious of that. I'm sure that I fit into this
same role for other readers too, and that's how the world ends up with
surplus values that cause slippage and surprises for us all. Which is
why the poetry of 20 years from now won't look the way I expect (or
hope or fear) it might, nor the way you imagine either.
But I do think that our parallel tradition (quote unquote) adheres and
evolves in interesting, positive ways because there is a broader range
of shared values, some Venn diagram of which would put myself, Susan
Howe, John Taggart, Larry Fagin, Antler and Joy Harjo all into the same
circle. And this is what makes discourse possible.
The problem is one of knowing where, at any given moment, to put the
emphasis.
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 18:16:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: delayed response
In-Reply-To: <199508190359.UAA24908@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
Maria: that was the best renga yet, by far!
Since onbody else has responded to Corn's possibly rhetorical question --
yes, I have changed my mind as a result of reading posts on the poetics
line -- one example -- I had thought, after reading _A Call in the Midst
of the Crowd_ that Alfred Corn must be a witty and thoughtful writer --
having had a few days to review his passed along post, I now see that I
must have been badly mistaken.
(for "onbody" read "nobody" --- also read Joan retallack's _Errata Suite_
for all you need to know about error)
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 22:06:13 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Fri, 18 Aug 1995 19:20:44 -0700,
Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>>On Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:19:47 -0700,
>>Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>>
>>>On 8/16, Charles Alexander writes:
>>>
>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>>>>> (inspection
>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>>>>> kook!"
>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>>>>>> cleaners
>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to be
>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hooks.
>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 22:09:49 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Sat, 19 Aug 1995 01:18:02 MDT,
Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA> wrote:
>> >On Wed, 16 Aug 1995 22:19:47 -0700,
>> >Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>> >
>> >>On 8/16, Charles Alexander writes:
>> >>
>> >>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >>>>>> (inspection
>> >>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >>>>>> kook!"
>> >>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>> >>>>>> cleaners
>> >>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>> >>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>> >>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments to b
>e
>> >>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were hook
>s.
>> >>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>> >>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>> >>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> go ahead
and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 21:52:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marjorie Perloff <perloff@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: troubles with genius
In-Reply-To: <199508200401.VAA17487@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Having been the reader for the Cal Press of Bob P's "Trouble with
Genius," I'm reading some of the comments here with puzzlement. I think
what Bob is doing is diagnosing modernism as a larger construct--not just
the four writers in question. And I certainly don't think he prefers
Stevens to Pound for being less ambitious (moreover, Stevens had exactly
the same "genius" notions in his own way) but rather is showing the
terrible dilemma--still ours today--of wanting on the one hand to write a
difficult and complex culturally informed poetry and yet speak to a large
audience.
Do we think this problem has been solved?
As for Ron's comments on the silly things Kenner and Davenport say, what
silly things?? I think Davenport is one of the most brilliant critics we
have (also a terrific writer). And Kenner, whatever his limitations, can
do rings around almost anyone writing on poetry today. Why do we really
need to play these games?
Marjorie P.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 23:11:14 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: troubles with genius
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950819214746.24293A-100000@elaine49.Stanford.EDU>
from "Marjorie Perloff" at Aug 19, 95 09:52:31 pm
Speaking as a Canadian reading USAmerican commentary, I have to agree
with Marjorie this time. Plus this: Kenner (okay , he's a Canadian)
and Davenport can WRITE. I will read them on subjects I dont
otherwise much care about. I would add Gass to this short list, too.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 23:18:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies"
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950819100145.15710B-100000
@godzilla.acpub.duke.edu> from "David Kellogg" at Aug 19,
95 10:10:51 am
I guess David Kellogg's message proves my point. I buy and otherwise
acquire lots and lots of poetry books, mags etc, have done for years,
and I have never heard of any of those "new formalist" poets he
mentions. I guess they dont make it out of the US.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 23:30:44 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
In-Reply-To: <199508181015.DAA05997@ix4.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at
Aug 18, 95 03:15:45 am
Ron S. is right again. And it aint just lit and baseball. Can you
imagine being Montgomery Clift's friend? Or james Dean?
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 1995 23:33:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: "marketing strategies," CAP-L, & the gap (mind it or lose it)
In-Reply-To: <93180.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "Charles Alexander" at Aug
17, 95 11:20:49 pm
I'd like to say thanks to all those who helpt fill me in on the "new
formalists."
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 02:36:24 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
In-Reply-To: <199508200630.XAA10051@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Sat, 19 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> Ron S. is right again. And it aint just lit and baseball. Can you
> imagine being Montgomery Clift's friend? Or james Dean?
>
Yeah, the latter -
Alan
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 02:51:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Value in Poetry
Ron (and, by implication, everybody):
The ghostly "presence" Stevens serves in this book (aside from a way
to show Zukofsky'
s 's fawning) uses him as a kind of "value" to question the book's own
gstated guiding assumptions:
He's first included in a list of other poets (ELIOT, Williams, HD,
and Moore) who, according to perelman
"produced poems, rather than life-writing, There is a sense of
finitness [as opposed to finitude] and social lacation that is
not there in Pound and Stein, certainly."
(page 3)
This distinction is problematic, of course,and at first seems to
be something that is NOT attractive to Perelman (as in Jed Rasula's
WAX MUSEUM book)--they lacked a "project" (etc.). I'd want to
argue this point and show that the distinction between life-writing
and mere "poems" does not seem to apply to many of these poets.
But, then I see that Perelman uses Stevens as an example (though,
yes, he's not praising Stevens' work per se) of the value of
"poems" over "life-writing" and credits him with "a clear, delicately
elegaic presentation of the problem"(223)--this is pretty much the
standard avant-garde line on him (see Don Byrd---certainly no L's
poet's POETICS OF THE COMMON KNOWLEDGE), yet because Perelman is
interested in showing what he considers to be the "trouble" with
the ZUK, STEIN, POUND....his use of Stevens to 'affirm that there
is something outside..." makes me question just what is meant by
Perelman's assertion that Stevens work "fits within a socially well-
defined sense of poetry." And this opens up the whole can of worms
of what is SUBVERSION, of why we read....Do we really believe the
canon-makers (or ourselves if we happen to be canon-makers) when
they say "this is subverive; read it" any more than we believed
the highschool teachers and their force-fed frost. Besides, the
(start again)....
I guess my question viz-a-viz "debunking" was this---If this book
explores (at times relying on the fallacy ad hominen to the point
?) the problematics of a certain kind of writing, and shows the
weaknesses of it, the delusions, etc--why doesn't it even attempt
to posit an alternative in Moore, HD, etc? Isn't it possible that
poetry that DOESN'T ADVERTISE ITSELF as "social criticism" as much
as some others do, may be at least as effective---
Presumably, Perelman doesn't find such "empowerment" in any of the
modernists (the four he mentions being the CLOSEST they get)--we'll
see, I guess, if the answer to marjorie's question--has the problem
been solved---comes up when he discusses the work of the in some sense
WILLFULLY MARGINALIZED L poets he discusses (though the early
"separatist' stance is no doubt crumbling....)--
So, I guess I'm doing that De Man thing---
"the second you rebuke a previous writer for his blindness, you
immediately replicate his gesture."
-------well, enuf, chris
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 07:59:38 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>>>>>> (inspection
>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>>>>>> kook!"
>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>>>>>>> cleaners
>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
to be
>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
hooks
>.
>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 11:11:32 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Sun, 20 Aug 1995 07:59:38 -0700,
Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
>to be
>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
>hooks
>>.
>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft fruit
>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 12:21:53 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Value in Poetry
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 20 Aug 1995 02:51:35 -0400 from <LS0796@ALBNYVMS>
Interesting to read Ron, Chris, and Marjorie on Bob P's book. I've only
managed to get part way through it so far, so can't respond directly, BUT for
me the most provocative prose I've read by Bob was the review-essay in
_American Literary History_ a year or so ago, where the project of Charles B
gets juxtaposed to the project of Kamau Brathwaite. There it seems to me
that Brathwaite comes out on top, gets the nod, whatever, which given the
conversation Ron and Chris have been having is curious, no? For Brathwaite's
project is surely epic (though not without elements of satire). At any rate
it seems to offer--in that essay at least--the model of a politics of poetry
Bob P can endorse. Perhaps the essay gets reworked or included in the
forthcoming book. If I'm right about Bob P endorsing the Brathwaite model,
the implications of that endorsement probably need some discussion. Anybody?
The essay ("Write the Power") is in ALH 6.2 (Summer 1994).
Keith Tuma
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 13:35:31 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In message <199508201459.HAA01542@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> >>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >>>>>>>> (inspection
> >>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >>>>>>>> kook!"
> >>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> >>>>>>>> cleaners
> >>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> >>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> >>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> to be
> >>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> hooks
> >.
> >>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> >>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> >>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
that sea anemone so like new associate professors clinging singlemindedly
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 13:36:22 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In message <53348.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> On Sun, 20 Aug 1995 07:59:38 -0700,
> Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>
> >>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > dry
> >>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> >>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> >>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> >to be
> >>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> >hooks
> >>.
> >>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> >>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> >>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >>>>>>>> a la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 16:19:36 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Sun, 20 Aug 1995 13:35:31 -0500,
maria damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>In message <199508201459.HAA01542@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion group
>writes:
>> >>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>> >>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>> >>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> > encore
>> >>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
>> to be
>> >>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
>> hooks
>> >.
>> >>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> > darkness
>> >>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> > fruit
>> >>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>that sea anemone so like new associate professors clinging singlemindedly
to tenuous promissory notes, one ear to thunder, fast over Tucson Mountains
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 20:10:15 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Value in Poetry
Yes, Keith, Bob told me about this piece (which is one of the reasons
I'm waiting for MARGINALIZATION to come out--for I haven't read it yet,
) and it certainly would offer a different paradigm than what ROn calls
"Bob and Charles's....social satire" (which I think is a reductive reading
of even Bob's earlier work, much less "chain sauttine"). I am also extremely
curious of what Barrett Watten's recent work on Laura (Riding) Jackson
consists. Can it be said to be an endorsement? Or would it be the kind
of "right-handed endoresement" (I'm left handed) McGann gives. I am
especially curious because there are tremendous affinities in the work
of Carla Harryman (who Watten is married to--to do an "ad hominen" thing)
and Laura Riding (especially "progress of stories")
And I will quote in full a Laura Riding poem which can be read allegorically
(I suppose) as a kinda law (or Lawn--a la Rosemarie Waldrop) of the
excluded middle shown as one and the same with a "parthenogennesis"
fantasy not unlike that "glaoumourized" (for academics) by LACAN as
"entry into the masculine symbolic" (blah blah)--There is a battle of
names here---SHE'S only a monomaniac because HE'S parthenogenetic!
THAT ANCIENT LINE
Old Mother Act and her child Fact-of-Act
Lived practically as one,
He so proud of his monomaniac mother,
She so proud of her parthenogenetic son.
After her death of course
With his looks and education
Lived on the formal compliments
That other phrases paid him;
And had, of his ceremony, one daughter
Who remarkably resembled
Her paternal and only grandmother.
Indeed, between Act and Matter-of-Fact
Was such consanguineous sympathy
That the disappearance of the matronymic
In the third generation of pure logic
Did not detract from the authority
Of this and later versions
Of the original progenitive argument.
Long flourished that estate
And never died that self-engendering line-out.
Scion followed after scion
Until that ancient blood ran nearly thin,
But Verily, In Truth and Beyond Doubt
Renewed the inheritance--and And So On.
There is a "he" absent from the fist line of the second stanza (maybe other erratua too)--I can see the reviewers now "Almost as good as Silliman's MICROSOFT
BUYS CATHOLIC CHURCH piece"---I'm suprised no one has yet come to Susan Howe's
defense against Ron. On that point, I won't (or can't). Chris Stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 17:36:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950820023608.3241D-100000@panix3.panix.com> from
"Alan Sondheim" at Aug 20, 95 02:36:24 am
Hey, friend, want a ride in my Porsch Spyder?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 11:25:47 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Comments: To: MRoberts@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU
Sybylla Feminist Press Collective 'She's Fantastical' Book launch
Sybylla is the oldest extant feminist press in Australia, run by a
voluntary collective, and is committed to independent feminist publishing.
Sybylla's latest book, entitled 'She's Fantastical', is being launched on
27 August 1995, by Louise Adler, arts editor for 'The Age', at 5.30pm at
Budinskis Theatre of Exile, 380 Lygon St, Carlton, Melbourne.
'She's Fantastical' will be the first anthology of Australian women's
speculative fiction, fantasy and magical realism to be published in
Australia. It is edited by Lucy Sussex and Judith Buckrich with a foreword
written by Ursula K Le Guin. There will be readings at the launch by Ania
Walwicz, berni m.janssen and Rosaleen Love.
'She's Fantastical' will retail for $22.95 and is distributed by Manic Exposeur.
For more inquiries regarding the launch please ring Lisa Fletcher on (03)
9481 0268. Inquiries regarding publicity and promotions should be directed
to Sarah Endacott (03) 9853 2744 and Kathy Miner (03) 347 0348.
email inquiries to Karen Porter - address: chapter@connexus.apana.org.au
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 1995 22:11:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Shaunanne Tangney <st@SCS.UNR.EDU>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
In-Reply-To: <199508210036.RAA03323@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Sun, 20 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> Hey, friend, want a ride in my Porsch Spyder?
>
what if i said yes. . ?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 09:58:38 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: New Formalism
The New Formalism is pretty Old Hat. Here are a couple of
paragraphs I wrote maybe two or three years ago:
Official participants in the New Formalism are harder to
identify with certainty than those who constituted "The Movement"
in England. New Formalism is perhaps best described as a diffused
reaction on the part of poets who are separated geographically,
by age, and by any number of other differences of background and
intellectual conviction. Poets who perceive themselves as New
Formalists are not necessarily admired by other poets who
have--without seeking any such affiliation--been lumped into that
category. Some actively resist being called New Formalists,
feeling a disdain similar to that felt by Elizabeth Bishop
towards those who identified her as a candidate for inclusion in
collections of poems exclusively by women.
At this point I would like to insert a personal note. In the
1970s and early 1980s, The Greensboro Review, of which I was then
editor, was printing--along with much else--work by poets who had
trained themselves to handle the old meters with rare grace and
to employ them in rendering contemporary subjects; three or four
of these poets were former students of Yvor Winters. I did not
imagine at the time that we might be running a stud farm for an
identifiable breed of poetry, and I find it irritating to see
the rapidity with which the livestock is being propagated, raised
to marketable size, and butchered; but as Randall Jarrell said
long ago of the scholar/critic's opinion of the poet, "Pig! What
do you know about bacon!" The magazine published some of the
earliest poems by both Timothy Steele and Alan Shapiro, who have
come to be identified, at least to some degree and in some
contexts, perhaps with increasing discomfort at being so
designated, as New Formalists; also appearing were hard-core
Wintersians such as Kenneth Fields, Charles Gullans, and Raymond
Oliver. But we printed poems, too, that did not fit any
conventional form but which seemed to be aiming at organized
patterns that were metrically satisfying, and many that were in
no discernible pattern, such as one of Dave Smith's earliest and
a poem or two by Charles Simic. Sharing the space in one number
of the magazine published in 1975 were Steele and Fields, but
the same issue included a highly experimental "Mondrian" poem by
Amon Liner (who died soon after publication of that work) which I
now recognize to be immediately anticipatory of "Language"
poetry. I cannot think what label to apply to the poems there and
in other issues which displayed a willingess to employ
as-yet-unrecognized structural elements, such as those by May
Swenson and some by Robert Morgan. "Reconstructive" has too many
accidental associations, whether academic or regional, but "New
Formalism," even if it were accurate, seems worse--because the
label really has acquired a reactionary following and as T. S.
Eliot (in "Little Gidding") put it: "We cannot revive old
factions / We cannot restore old policies / Or follow an antique
drum." Would "New Structuralism" seem anything but an alias? In
any case, at the time that we were publishing these poems the
word "formalist" never crossed my mind. But since then the New
Formalist movement has congealed and has roused considerable
opposition.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 09:26:49 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
shaunanne writes:
> On Sun, 20 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
>
> > Hey, friend, want a ride in my Porsch Spyder?
> >
>
> what if i said yes. . ?
so, forgive my costant questions, what's a Porsch Spyder?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 09:50:32 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
Charles Alexander wrote:
>On Sun, 20 Aug 1995 07:59:38 -0700,
>Sheila E. Murphy <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM> wrote:
>
>>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
>>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
>>to be
>>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
>>hooks
>>>.
>>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
>>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
>>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 11:19:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Shaunanne Tangney <st@SCS.UNR.EDU>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
In-Reply-To: <303897a74b60002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
> shaunanne writes:
> > On Sun, 20 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> >
> > > Hey, friend, want a ride in my Porsch Spyder?
> > >
> >
> > what if i said yes. . ?
>
> so, forgive my costant questions, what's a Porsch Spyder?
>
the car james dean died in. . . evry rare. . . very cool. . . very spooky
ST
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 13:36:22 CST6CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> >>to be
> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> >>hooks
> >>>.
> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 11:53:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: spyder
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950821111903.10923A-100000@pogonip.scs.unr.edu>
On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, Shaunanne Tangney wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
>
> > shaunanne writes:
> > > On Sun, 20 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hey, friend, want a ride in my Porsch Spyder?
> > > >
> > >
> > > what if i said yes. . ?
> >
> > so, forgive my costant questions, what's a Porsch Spyder?
> >
>
> the car james dean died in. . . evry rare. . . very cool. . . very spooky
> ST
>
George drives a grey volvo, . . . very somber . . . very practical .
. . very common.
Lindz (the burster of bubbles)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 12:36:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: spyder
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950821115019.15986A-100000@interchg.ubc.ca> from
"Lindz Williamson" at Aug 21, 95 11:53:34 am
Hey Lindz, and everyone interested:
I only have sandals, but I can fly!
George could too, only he eats too many hashbrowns.
(I'm still hoping someone can answer my Blaser question. Pleeeez.)
>
> On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, Shaunanne Tangney wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
> >
> > > shaunanne writes:
> > > > On Sun, 20 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Hey, friend, want a ride in my Porsch Spyder?
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > what if i said yes. . ?
> > >
> > > so, forgive my costant questions, what's a Porsch Spyder?
> > >
> >
> > the car james dean died in. . . evry rare. . . very cool. . . very spooky
> > ST
> >
>
> George drives a grey volvo, . . . very somber . . . very practical .
> . . very common.
>
>
> Lindz (the burster of bubbles)
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 18:11:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: favorite car word
>>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry
>>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
>>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
>>to be
>>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
>>hooks
>>>.
>>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
>>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
>>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
the tern hangs a little arc and drops, hard, up with
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 10:24:54 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: New Formalism
Comments: To: KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU
Dear H.T.,
Thanks for your paras on the New Formalism, which I've only
recently learnt to distinguish from the Nude Formalism where my heart I
have to say still lies. Be that as it may, your particulars are apprec
iated. Where might I find an official history, but?
I know what you are saying, which in a sense is what they all
say: well, we're all different you know and disagree with and resent being
associated with one another, and the very idea of being referred to as
A MOVEMENT makes us queasy, it's reifying and commodifying, and its all
the camp followers who've produced it and anyway its Old Hat. OK.
But maybe I have this wrong?
Wystan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 20:33:48 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
Comments: To: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
On 21 Aug 95 at 13:36, Hank Lazer wrote:
> > >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> > >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> > >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> > >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dr
> y
> > >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> > >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> > >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> > >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> > >>to be
> > >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> > >>hooks
> > >>>.
> > >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> > >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> > >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> > >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> > >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> > as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
to blue print, graphic sheets of shadow
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 21:48:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In-Reply-To: <199508220132.UAA06977@zoom.bga.com>
odd that how this goes on and on it looks pictorially more and more like
substance, words fractured, arrows cutting through to the flesh of it, no
questioning ideological or political contents, are there any? effusion on
the right-hand side matched by the arrows on the left, double-columns like
glas, everything playing off the fissure, maybe words are permanently
corrupted at this point, bytes bitten? this space the beginning or end of
writing?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 19:57:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Howe's Dfens
In-Reply-To: <199508210357.UAA23495@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
I suppose, being a reader and all, I _am_ one of those things outside the
text that Howe's poems are supposed by Ron to rely upon -- but ain't that
just the way, here I am inside the text after all --
JM's ideas about radial reading may, I guess, be an argument for such
poetry, but it appears to me that there is no good reason to believe that
other poems, Ron's own for example, somehow do not have the effect of
sending us to other texts, even if it's to another of Ron's books. --
there is always that polopony to track down --
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:07:46 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Mon, 21 Aug 1995 21:48:44 -0400,
Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM> wrote:
>odd that how this goes on and on it looks pictorially more and more like
>substance, words fractured, arrows cutting through to the flesh of it, no
>questioning ideological or political contents, are there any? effusion on
>the right-hand side matched by the arrows on the left, double-columns like
>glas, everything playing off the fissure, maybe words are permanently
>corrupted at this point, bytes bitten? this space the beginning or end of
>writing?
What does it mean for words to be corrupted, permanently or temporarily? I
wonder, although I appreciate the qualifying "maybe," as well as the
provisional nature of this entire statement/question. But I don't think of
words as some ideal, corruptible -- rather as continually evolving matter.
charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:12:18 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Mon, 21 Aug 1995 13:36:22 CST6CDT,
Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU> wrote:
>> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dr
>y
>> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> encore
>> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
>> >>to be
>> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
>> >>hooks
>> >>>.
>> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> darkness
>> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> fruit
>> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
with guarded reluctance, waking the dream of eternal flight
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 00:52:21 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In-Reply-To: <92468.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, Charles Alexander wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Aug 1995 21:48:44 -0400,
> Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM> wrote:
>
> >odd that how this goes on and on it looks pictorially more and more like
> >substance, words fractured, arrows cutting through to the flesh of it, no
> >questioning ideological or political contents, are there any? effusion on
> >the right-hand side matched by the arrows on the left, double-columns like
> >glas, everything playing off the fissure, maybe words are permanently
> >corrupted at this point, bytes bitten? this space the beginning or end of
> >writing?
>
> What does it mean for words to be corrupted, permanently or temporarily? I
> wonder, although I appreciate the qualifying "maybe," as well as the
> provisional nature of this entire statement/question. But I don't think of
> words as some ideal, corruptible -- rather as continually evolving matter.
Literally, that they're broken by the word-wrap; figuratively, that the
renga has turned into a renga-machine perhaps, into a word-machine...
What evolves when there are too many words, when words - could there be a
political economy of words - lose their force/tethering within a culture
- What about the renga-machine, say, and the production of on-line poetry
- What if there is too much information (I don't like that word at the
moment and here), one becoming flooding?
Alan
>
> charles alexander
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 22:00:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
[D
> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry
> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments
> >>to be
> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were
> >>hooks
> >>>.
> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 01:10:57 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In-Reply-To: <199508220500.WAA00186@well.com>
On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, Thomas Bell wrote:
> [D
> > >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> > >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> > >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> > >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> dry
> > >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> > >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
> > >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> > >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments
> > >>to be
> > >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were
> > >>hooks
> > >>>.
> > >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> > >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> > >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> > >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> > >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> > as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> > beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
regions where tongues were cut, women raped, no one had the right to speak
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 01:20:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Value in Poetry
Have to admit I was impressed by Bob's book-- the close reading of Pound
especially-- & this may show how closely I (don't) read-- but my problem w/
it was the framing, i.e. genius vs. not a genius. To state it more clearly--
By objecting to their "genius claims" is Perelman valuing "normative
discourse" over the trundlings of the four cited geniuses?
& if so, why wld one want to do that. Is it a populist book?
Seems to me the claims, or more accurately-- the enactment of authority,
within normative discourse is much more problematic than any of those four
*pointing out* their own genius.
--Rod
PS- Is Ross Perot a genius?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 01:23:05 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rae Armantrout <RaeA100900@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Howe's Dfens
For me Susan's work is first of all an auditory experience. She has as
good an ear as anyone ever has had. Beyond that I see her work as being
about loss and temporal erosion. Those themes aren't just referred to;
they're enacted within the unstable legibility of her pages. Since Ron
framed his remarks as an example of personal taste, however, Susan doesn't
really need a defense. No one should be scapegoated at Mr. Corn's request.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 22:37:59 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Thesen
In-Reply-To: <950822011819_60212846@mail06.mail.aol.com>
I'm reading Sharon thesen's Aurara right now and it is soooooo gooood!
I also just today picked up Bowering"s Rocky Mountian Foot at a used book
store on Broadway, I'll get back to you later on what I think, however
the Bio is kind of funny.
About the Author
His Grandfather was a circuit rider who travelled south
of Edmonton/ His father was born in the province. So George Bowering
has ancestral connections with the Alberta he writes about so knowingly
in Rocky Mountian Foot.
"I was all those things that other poets always are on the dust
jackets before they became poets."
-George Bowering 1968.
Hee heee, Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:07:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In-Reply-To: <363337062C6@as.ua.edu> from "Hank Lazer" at Aug 21,
95 01:36:22 pm
>
> > >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best mare and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> > >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> > >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> > >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dr
> y
> > >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> > >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> > >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> > >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> > >>to be
> > >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> > >>hooks
> > >>>.
> > >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> > >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> > >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> > >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> > >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> > as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> to tapioca, from brown space to hot chocolate, from Republican to
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:17:52 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950820221046.4128C-100000@pogonip.scs.unr.edu>
from "Shaunanne Tangney" at Aug 20, 95 10:11:00 pm
Actually, my favourite film of James Dean was an early TV program in
which he played a petulant jilted teenage lover in a jukebox soda
shop.
And my favourite photo of him was that one in *Evergreen Review*
where he's wearing his striped shirt at a ballet class. I think he
was there with Eartha Kitt. . . .
I may have a darg grey Volvo but it's got an Arthur Blythe tape in
the deck.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:25:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
>> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
the dr
>y
>> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> encore
>> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
>> >>to be
>> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
>> >>hooks
>> >>>.
>> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> darkness
>> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> fruit
>> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
to a purer white described without even a thought and carried to another
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:31:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Monday, 21 August, Charles Alexander wrote:
>On Mon, 21 Aug 1995 13:36:22 CST6CDT,
>Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU> wrote:
>
>>> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>>> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>>> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>>> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>>> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>>> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
the d
>r
>>y
>>> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>>> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
>>> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>>> encore
>>> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments
>>> >>to be
>>> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were
>>> >>hooks
>>> >>>.
>>> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>>> darkness
>>> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>>> fruit
>>> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>>> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>>> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>>> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>>> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>>> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>>> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
>> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>with guarded reluctance, waking the dream of eternal flight
to say something in a hoarse voice nearly breaking near its own
inurgency
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 23:32:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
> [D
>> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
>dry
>> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>prescience
>> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> encore
>> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>moments
>> >>to be
>> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>were
>> >>hooks
>> >>>.
>> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> darkness
>> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> fruit
>> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
>> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:24:23 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In message <199508220607.XAA28024@fraser.sfu.ca> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> >
> > > >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > > >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > > >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > > >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best mare and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> > > >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
> > > > neo-colonizing
> > > >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
> > > > oh,ho,
> > > >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> > > >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
> > > > the
> dr
> > y
> > > >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> > > >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > > prescienc
> e
> > > >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
> > > > chose
> > > encore
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > > > moment
> s
> > > >>to be
> > > >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > > wer
> e
> > > >>hooks
> > > >>>.
> > > >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > > darkness
> > > >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
> > > > soft
> > > fruit
> > > >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > > >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > > >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > > >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> > > >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> > > >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> > > as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> > beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> > to tapioca, from brown space to hot chocolate, from Republican to
angel steeped in angelology deeper than rilke's or blake's, by virtue of
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:26:46 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In message <199508220632.XAA09596@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> > [D
> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
> > > the
> >dry
> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >prescience
> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> encore
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >moments
> >> >>to be
> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >were
> >> >>hooks
> >> >>>.
> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> darkness
> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
> > > soft
> >> fruit
> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> >> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> >and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
> premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:45:25 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: movies abt poetry
just saw the postman last night, i mean the movie, not my local mail carrier,
and was very moved despite differences w/ the movie's conception of poetry as
(only) "metaphor," and despite a somewhate facile objection to the insistence on
Neruda's "wisdom," tho even that was skillfully undercut by the ending of the
movie, when he's clearly wondering if he did wrong by inciting the postman to
poetry/politics/death. what do you all think, in terms of it being a movie,
like dead poets' society (ugh!) that "makes a case" for poetry as centrally
important to people's wellbeing? others i shd know about? recommended? what do
you all think?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 05:44:06 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In-Reply-To: <3039e9204ec5002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Tue, 22 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
> In message <199508220632.XAA09596@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion group
> writes:
> > > [D
> > >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
> > > > the
> > >dry
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > >prescience
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > >> encore
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > >moments
> > >> >>to be
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > >were
> > >> >>hooks
> > >> >>>.
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > >> darkness
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
> > > > soft
> > >> fruit
> > >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> > >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> > >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> > >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> > >> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> > >and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
> > premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
> whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
> attitude problems? Dust off the dark wood and make your choice
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 12:15:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Issa Clubb <issa@VOYAGERCO.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
Is it really a question of too many words? What I like about the renga form
here is its extensibility, the way it displays words' continuation, &
through multiplication can't be said to have a "writer"--the "force" that
words have lost, maybe? and when absent, the language becomes a "machine"?
The platitude often cited about digital technology is its infinite
reproducibility, the fact that there is no loss in data from generation to
generation. Which really means that the data *stays the same*. Words, of
course, can be copied exactly, but they also tend to spin off in multiple
directions, and change in almost imperceptible shifts. So maybe machinic
instances of language are helpful, when these shifts of words (between
people) can be made perceptible.
Also I would hesitate to call the renga on-line poetry because the line
has already been broken and rejoined several times.
>Literally, that they're broken by the word-wrap; figuratively, that the
>renga has turned into a renga-machine perhaps, into a word-machine...
>What evolves when there are too many words, when words - could there be a
>political economy of words - lose their force/tethering within a culture
>- What about the renga-machine, say, and the production of on-line poetry
>- What if there is too much information (I don't like that word at the
>moment and here), one becoming flooding?
>
>Alan
__________
Issa Clubb
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 12:29:14 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
One challenge of being hooked up to the Poetics Digest option involves trying
to respond to six messages at once instead of just hitting the reply key. But
here goes.
While I'm not sure that Susan Howe needs me to come to her defense as she lies
there swooning on her fainting couch (poetry *is* like a swoon, y' know, with
this difference . . . the Klupzy Girl said), but I don't mind doing so,
because I love her work. But I also appreciate Ron going out on a limb with
his original comment; the question came up of poets whom one does not
especially warm to within one's own alleged tradition, and Ron was willing to
name names. I find Susan's work very compelling in the very terms that Ron
finds it tepid, on the page--that is, in terms of her wonderful ear and her
visual design of a page--that is, I like it, among other reasons, for the
aural and material values that Ron finds lacking, if I understand him right.
The other point on which I diverge from you, Ron (and I'd like to hear more
from you if you're willing/interested), has to do with your assertion that the
value/interest of Howe's work lies in extra-textual concerns.
("Extra-paginal?" This also sounds oddly close to that old New Critical bete
noire, the "extra-literary.") I'm surprised that someone who's always been so
attuned to the social components of writing, reading, and reception as you
have should use as the basis of your critique what sounds like a dismissal of
or skepticism toward those same social components. Perhaps I'm
misunderstanding something in your comments. Also, didn't you once tell me
that Susan was the only writer in the Tree who made her own selections of her
own work? Was that your choice because of your ambivalence about the work? At
her insistence? Inquiring minds, etc. Or at least mine does.
The larger issue, though, has to do with the differences within a movement
that underlie the public constructions (usually, though not always, by
"outsiders") of that movement's homogeneity. To me this is more interesting
than questions of who likes or doesn't like whose work. The value of Ron's
post on Howe is that it points up the inevitable fissures within so-called
"so-called Language writing," fissures that were probably always present but
that tend to come to the surface later rather than sooner. This is one
interesting and instructive part of Bob P's Language Writing and Literary
History book, which I've read in manuscript: he discusses internal difference
("where the meanings are," remember) within LP, asking some very fundamental
skeptical questions about some of the work of, say, Bruce Andrews and (in the
essay that Keith Tuma mentioned) Charles B. So I don't read Bob's book as a
"bunking" of LP after some kind of Bloominan "debunking" of his modernist
predecessors; it operates with a rather more complex sense of literary and
personal history than that, so that while it's partly involved with bunking (I
like that term, Chris), it's also attentive to points of difference,
disagreement, and to the bringing together of strange bedfellows (O'Hara and
Barthes). But enough on a book that is not yet a book, that no-one's read.
I have to agree with Marjorie on The Trouble with Genius. As I read it, the
four writers engage Perelman precisely because of the conflicting impulses
within their work; the internal contradictions are generative, not "problems"
or "weaknesses." Just like the internal contradictions within a poetic
"movement." And that connects (I hope!) with what Tom Kirby-Smith said about
the New Formalists. Granted, Tom, that like any movement the NF is much less
homogeneous that it might first appear. But remember too that this was not a
label that some evil critic stuck on all these innocent diverse writers who
were just sitting out doing their thing. This is a self-consciously
self-constituted group; even though some people might resist the label, lack
any sense of group identification, or have lost it later (as you suggest Tim
Steele has), the fact is that a group of writers (predominantly male, as seems
nearly always usual) with shared concerns agreed to present themselves as a
group, a movement, and set out to produce polemics and manifestoes designed to
represent and further their work and interests. In the mid-late '80s they even
explicitly talked about themselves as an alternative avant-garde to LP. This
is my sense of the history, anyway. Am I way off? Names associated with the
movement in these formative stages would include Frederick Turner, Frederick
Feirstein, Robert McDowell, Dick Allen, Dana Gioia, just to mention the main
polemicists (editors of essay collections, editors of special issues of mags.,
writers of manifestoes). And from a pretty early stage, fellow travellers
would include Robert McPhillips, Brad Leithauser, Mary Jo Salter, Molly
Peacock, Timothy Steele, Charles Martin, Paul Lake, Mark Jarman, Gertrude
Schnackenberg. A diverse group geographically, professionally, and in other
ways, but they did constitute themselves in print as a group with identifiable
(and self-identified) concerns. Differences--those too. I hear that Dana Gioia
is putting together a NF anthology that does not include Dick Allen, a founder
member. A bit like an LP anthology without Silliman, Bernstein, Watten,
Andrews, or whomever.
One more thought on Susan Howe. I have no desire whatever to resurrect the
soul/spirit thread: but surely ("surely") one reason that the Apex of the
M-ers take Howe and John Taggart as models is that there's a strong sense of
the spiritual (however unconventionally defined) in both writers, and that
this is one point of difference between them and many so-called so-called
so-called so-called so-called Language writers. And no, I'm not going to try
and define "spiritual."
David Bromige writes that the most charged points for him in reading even
writers that he cares about are those points "where interest and disaffection
war" in his reading. This seems to me a good summary of how Bob approaches the
writers in Trouble with Genius.
Maria, everyone knows that a Porsche Spyder is one of those little creatures
that builds yts web on the inside of your Porsche wyndeshield whyn you leave
said Porsche to gather dyst in the garage too long.
Talking of too long . . .
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 12:38:07 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: Oh shit, it's him again
Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
This post is much shorter. Promise.
Just wanted to let you all know that the keynote speakers are in place for the
Twentieth-Century Lit. Conference. The keynote creative speaker will be
fiction writer Stephen Wright; the keynote critical (uncreative?) speaker will
be Rachel Blau DuPlessis. Rachel will also do a poetry reading. We may also
get be able to set up a talk by Patrick O'Donnell, editor of Modern Fiction
Studies and a good writer on pomo. fiction, but that's not confirmed.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 12:43:25 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: Language Poetry and Music
A lot of American poetry--poetry anywhere, for that matter--seems to
grow out of music in some way or another. As everyone points out,
Dickinson's poems are kin to the hymns she heard as a girl in
Amherst; Whitman is regularly compared to biblical phrasing which
itself was an effort at rendering in English qualities of Hebrew
cantillation; and Langaston Hughes used Blues and jazz as a basis for
some poems. There's a whole book that argues that one can explain
everything in Whitman in terms of opera.
Cage's methods seem too mechanical to me to have had much effect on
other people's poetry (besides his own). I was wondering if there is
any musical tradition, and composer, any kind of music that one can
connect with Language Poetry.
I always think of Stravinsky when I read The Waste Land--Pound and
Amy Lowell had been preaching Stravinsky as a model.
Any help on this?
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 13:12:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In-Reply-To: <3039e8914baa002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
rev test > tast; sort tast > tost; rev tast > tyst
eliminate arrowed lines
> > > >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> > > >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
> > > > oh,ho,
> > > >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
> > > >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > > > prescienc
> > > >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> e
> e
> > > >>to be
> > beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> > > >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > > > the
> > > >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > encore
> > > >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > > chose
> > > >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
angel steeped in angelology deeper than rilke's or blake's, by virtue of
> > > >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > > >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > > > neo-colonizing
> > > >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > > >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > > >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > to tapioca, from brown space to hot chocolate, from Republican to
> > > >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> > > >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> dr
> > > >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
> > > > wer
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> s
> > > >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best mare and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > >>hooks
> > > >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> > > >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> > > >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > darkness
> > > >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
> > > > soft
> > > >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> > > fruit
> > > > moment
> > > as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> > y
> > > >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
> > > >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 13:58:26 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Michael Hareper's Titles
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 11 Aug 1995 08:53:54 -0500 from
<damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Michael Harper is a University Professor here at Brown, and lives in
Providence. His most recent book of poems is _Healing Song for the Inner
Ear._ Others include _Images of Kin_ (for which he won the Melville-Cane
Award); _Dear John, Dear Coltraine_; _History is Your Own Heartbeat_ (winner
of the 1978 Black Academy of Arts and Letters Award); _Nightmare Begins
Responsibility_; and _Debridement._ A new collection seems to be in the
works. I have to confess to finding _Debridement_ the most remarkable of the
texts -- the role of history seeps in in disturbing, challenging ways.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 11:13:59 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <FC3331E5458@fagan.uncg.edu> from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Aug 22,
95 12:43:25 pm
Well, my roomate and I went to a local spot called the Glass Slipper
for what was to be a Telepoetics hookup with Toronto. ONe of
the readers was Catriona Strang, a local language poet, and she
performed a few pieces of her alphabet with musical accompanyment.
It was piano, clarinet and stand-up bass which was either used
as a tonal context or punctuation. I think her husband was the
clarinet player, known for playing two at once. I'm still not
too sure what I think of it, though. A lot of the time it seemed
to be music miming the delivery of words. Angular jarring tires
me after a while. But, then again, this is a simplification.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:44:58 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: favorite moities in moire
> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry
> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments
> >>to be
> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were
> >>hooks
> >>>.
> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
and rigging it, as we drop the clipboards and come running
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:47:47 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: mormon in the armoire
>> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
the dr
>y
>> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
>> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> encore
>> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments
>> >>to be
>> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were
>> >>hooks
>> >>>.
>> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> darkness
>> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
soft
>> fruit
>> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
to a purer white described without even a thought and carried to another
plasm, another phone call from the regional director
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:57:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Padgett's Definition
>> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
the
>dry
>> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>prescience
>> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> encore
>> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>moments
>> >>to be
>> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>were
>> >>hooks
>> >>>.
>> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> darkness
>> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
soft
>> fruit
>> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
>> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
balloons rising prominently from the ears of giraffes
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 17:20:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: troubles with genius/floors of congress
Mr Silliman
Could you speak to the stickiness, for your generation, of value? Had there
been previously a kind of exchange value in the poetry business? I'll trade
you a mint Eliot for two Yvor Winters and a Robert Silliman Hillyer? --What
makes discourse possible is _exclusion_ from the venn diagram?
Prof Perloff
re: games
What is there besides critical assessment (offhand or otherwise)? Is there
some transhistorical solution to the problem of a poetry of complexity for
everybody? Yes. Also, I'm going to end the war in Vietnam.
List at large
Is there really an avantgarde tradition in North America totally unaware of
Wallace Stevens?
Willa J
How do I sign up for the Bernadette Mayer fanclub?
Your fan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:56:59 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: How Hear Howe?
For Rae & Alan
I must admit to going back and forth a bit in my admiration of Susan Howe's
work. But it has been the visual, spiritual (I don't want to define that
either, Alan), and historical elements in her work which have attracted me
most deeply, although at times have attracted some argument as well. The
sound of the work, however, has always been problematic to me. I would find
it impossible to defend your statement, Rae, that "She has as
good an ear as anyone ever has had." So if you or Alan might comment on how
you hear her, how that ear shows itself, what informs her ear, I would love
to hear (sorry) such discussion. And, to somewhat contradict what I've just
said, I do admit that there are some marvelously sounded pages in
Articulation of Sound Forms in Time (I'm thinking particularly of the
four pages beginning with "rest chondriacal lunacy / velc cello viable
toil / quench conch uncannunc / drumm amonoosuck ythian", but in general it
is still not the sound of Howe which makes me read her work, as it is with
any number of other writers, including you, Rae.
all best,
charles alexander [===========^^============]
[ <> ]
chax press [ maybe a <> pages ]
[ time <> letters ]
phone & fax: 612-721-6063 [ upon <> frames ]
[ once <> motion ]
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu [ <> ]
[===========vv============]
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:59:47 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:26:46 -0500,
maria damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>In message <199508220632.XAA09596@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion group
>writes:
>> > [D
>> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
>> > > the
>> >dry
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> >prescience
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> >> encore
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> >moments
>> >> >>to be
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> >were
>> >> >>hooks
>> >> >>>.
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> >> darkness
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
>> > > soft
>> >> fruit
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
>> >> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>> >and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
>> premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
>whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
I'm not biting on this, Maria, no matter how you sing it
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:34:47 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: same post, attempt #3
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
go ahead
and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 19:07:12 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: movies abt poetry
>others i shd know about? recommended?
am always happy to recommend chris mann's "poetry in motion"--
the long angelic closeup of bp nichol at th end of the 4 horsemen
piece is worth th price of admission, as also baraka's "wailers"...
luigi
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 19:25:01 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rae Armantrout <RaeA100900@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: How Hear Howe?
Dear Charles,
Yours is a difficult - probably impossible - question for me to answer
well (given that I'm not going to take the time to get one of her books and
analyze its sound patterns). All I can say is that when I see one of her
poems I delight in reading it out loud to myself. I'm sure this involves the
usual suspects: assonance, consonance, cadence, etc. Of course, I'm
interested in the historical contexts her work invokes. As everyone knows,
she's interested in historical elisions and effacements. Somehow the look
and sound of her poems not only suits but dramatizes these issues (for me).
This is what happens on the page (to get back to the point Ron raised). I
feel like everything I'm saying is a cliche. Form fitting content, etc.
And, apart from that, I can't believe we're being asked by these Formalists
(old or new) to prove that "free verse" is poetry. Are we caught in some
sort of time warp here? Do we really have anything to prove to these Cap-L
people? Well, I'm getting long-winded. Gotta go.
Rae
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 16:55:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
>On Tue, 22 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
>
>> In message <199508220632.XAA09596@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics
discussion gro
>up
>> writes:
>> > > [D
>> > >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
neo-colonizin
>g
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially
several
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
oh,ho
>,
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
>> > > > the
>> > >dry
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> > >prescience
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
chos
>e
>> > >> encore
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> > >moments
>> > >> >>to be
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> > >were
>> > >> >>hooks
>> > >> >>>.
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> > >> darkness
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel.
Likewise
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
>> > > > soft
>> > >> fruit
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> > >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> > >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> > >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> > >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> > >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> > >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> > >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> > >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> > >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> > >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> > >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
>> > >> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>> > >and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
>> > premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
>> whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
>> attitude problems? Dust off the dark wood and make your choice
between the glove and a beneathive place where tiny places mood themselves
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 18:31:34 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: favourite bar word: jug
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best mare and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
to tapioca, from brown space to hot chocolate, from Republican to
ranchland desserts fried in fat. Thus "abstract" art & poetry
became increasingly
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 18:34:32 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: Re: combines
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
regions where tongues were cut, women raped, no one had the right
to speak
that side of the Thomson-owned newspaper - which ripped as the
ring-pierced tongue pushed through to
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 20:38:13 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: How Hear Howe?
I've had a thought to write something for some time called "Hearing Oppen
Reading Howe"-- early on in my poetry (self)educaytion I had a tape of Oppen
but no books by him, & a copy of _Pythagorean Silence_ which I heard as I
read in Oppen's cadence-- it still seems to me to flow that way."That way"
being the way Oppen read his post-Numerous work. I don't hear SH's other work
that way-- seems to me she has a fine ear & the best way to decide if you
think so is to hear her read.
Anyone have tapes? I've heard her once, wonderful music & very theatrical as
well.
--Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 10:48:38 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: AWOL: Five Islands Press Launch
FIVE ISLANDS PRESS IN ASSOCIATION WITH SCARP MAGAZINE
invites you to the
NEW POETS SERIES 3 BOOK LAUNCH
Saturday 26 August 'Varuna' Katoomba 2pm. To be launched by Peter Bishop,
Varuna Writers' Centre
Thursday 31 August Gleebooks, Glebe Point Road, Glebe 7.30pm. To be
launched by Neil James, NSW Ministry for the Arts.
Saturday 2 September Victorian Writers' Centre 6pm. To be launched by Ron
Pretty Five Island Press.
The books in New Poets Series 3 are: Karen Attard - Whisper Dark, MTC
Cronin - Zoetrope, Lisa Jacobson - Hair & Skin & Teeth, Peter Minter -
Rhythm in a Dorsal Fin, Sue L Nicholls - Ultimately Female, Mark Reid -
Bitter Suite.
Each book costs $7.50, all six books cost $35.00. A bound volume containing
all six books costs $20.00. (All prices Australian dollars).
For further information contact Five Island Press PO Box U34 Wollongong
University NSW 2500 Australia.
************************
Australian Writing OnLine is a publicity and distribution service for
Australian writers and publishers. For further information please email us
at M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au, write to AWOL PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137
Australia, phone (02) 747 5667 or fax (02) 747 2802.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 21:06:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
This info. is likely known to many on the list tho certainly not all-- a few
direct connections to music re l.p.-- The Rova Saxophone Quartet (let's call
it "new music")-- Lyn Hejinian is wed to a member, Larry Ochs. Carla Harryman
was their manager (or something like that) for many years. Strongly recommend
a recent recording of theirs called _Pipe Dreams_. Also, Bruce Andrews'
significant one is dancer Sally Silvers, they have worked together w/ many
newmusic sorts including John Zorn, Bruce often composes music for Sally's
company. L.H. knows Zorn well, as does Tom Mandel I believe. I once asked Lyn
what music she listened to when she writes, she sd she doesn't, which
surprised me, as I almost always do-- the Benedetti tapes of Bird are a
favorite.
Also, just to say, to characterize Cage as "mechanical" seems to me to show a
lack of knowledge of his work-- which is fine, but I felt a necessity to say
that. The number of questions he had to ask for any given piece as well as
the artistic skill he brought to the act of composing were anything but
"mechanical." Also, Ashbery, O'Hara, Berrigan, others I'm sure, have stated
the importance of his music to their work.
--Rod
H.T.Kirby-Smith wrote:
>Cage's methods seem too mechanical to me to have had much effect on
>other people's poetry (besides his own). I was wondering if there is
>any musical tradition, and composer, any kind of music that one can
>connect with Language Poetry.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 20:25:23 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: mormon in the armoire
In message <950822163805_60663502@mail04.mail.aol.com> UB Poetics discussion
group writes:
> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
> the dr
> >y
> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> encore
> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments
> >> >>to be
> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were
> >> >>hooks
> >> >>>.
> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> darkness
> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
> soft
> >> fruit
> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> > beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> to a purer white described without even a thought and carried to another
> plasm, another phone call from the regional director
of miasmal blankness, white to the core of whiteness only
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 20:26:46 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In message <72369.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> On Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:26:46 -0500,
> maria damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>
> >In message <199508220632.XAA09596@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion
> > grou
> p
> >writes:
> >> > [D
> >> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
> > > > neo-colonizing
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially
> > > > several
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
> > > > oh,ho,
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
> >> > > the
> >> >dry
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> >prescience
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
> > > > chose
> >> >> encore
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> >moments
> >> >> >>to be
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the
> > > > streams
> >> >were
> >> >> >>hooks
> >> >> >>>.
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds
> > > > of
> >> >> darkness
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel.
> > > > Likewise
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
> >> > > soft
> >> >> fruit
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> >> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> >> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> >> >> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> >> >and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
> >> premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
> >whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
> I'm not biting on this, Maria, no matter how you sing it
oy, i get reprimanded in public for my lines, my worst POETICS nightmare
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 18:48:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Susan E. Dunn" <sedunn@S-WORD.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: pardon my formalism
Ryan Knighton's *Inevitable Renga* (and Maria Damon's additions) is the
first piece I've seen in my relatively recent time on the list that
has played with the medium of the screen - the first cyberrenga. I
don't read the rengas because, I don't have the time (I vote for a
separate renga discussion list to spare those of us with limited time
in cyberspace) and I find their aura of competative cleverness anxiety
producing. But I'm the nervous sort. Plus the rengas are practically
unreadable on my grad-school-vintage-late-eighties 286 pc with a teeny
tiny black&white screen. I did see the rengas once on a lovely
17-inch color Sun Microsystems Monitor and the added lines were
lighted up in green and it seemed really nifty. So in some ways they
are rather technologically/economically privileged poems -- after all,
they are for those who have access to this technology not to mention
Spiders and Volvos however ironically alluded to. Anyways, the renga
content (or what I've skimmed of them) seems to have a rather
hard-copy understanding of form. Seems funny that, paradoxically, the
net gives us a wider access to a narrower audience and--as the
technology stands today--the net provides us with a medium that both
expands the page and (visually and economically) contracts its
readability.
Which brings me to Susan Howe, whose poetry is hardly tepid on the
page (for me) as the Awede edition of Articulation of Sound Forms is
one example of powerful use of typography and visual poetics. Despite
the purported bravery of "naming names" I have to question this desire
to prove ourselves as critics by flexing our critical muscles and
citing examples of what we consider to be *inferior* poetry. I agree
with Chris S that there is the question of whether we are "debunking
what has yet to be bunked". While I am not a "Creative Writing 101
it's good if you think its good" relativist, I do have to question
this adversarial model (so fashionable in academia) in which we show
our intellectual prowess by saying something is weak (I like to think
of this as the Beavis and Butthead *this sucks/this rules* model of
criticism.) This seems part of the same school that believes that the
purpose of having a discussion is to change someone's mind (I'm
right/you're wrong). It's not that we can't talk about *quality* per
se its just that coughing up an example of a *bad* experimental writer
does not seem to be an especially interesting way to illustrate that
we are discerning critics. After all, being dismissive of a
critic/poet/*name* says more about one's position of power than it
says about one's critical faculties. It's a kind of jostling for
position. That's the game, isn't it? Or maybe I'm just pissy after
having to trod through too many rengaposts.
I can't help but think, however, that Susan Howe would be amused at
her role in this discussion as the Anne Hutchinsonesque sacraficial
*text* -- the monstrous body that disconnects/relies on powers beyond
the confines of accepted references -- that is held up as a scapegoat for
Corn-as-Puritan-father demanding that we eject our demons and name
names.
Susan E. Dunn sedunn@s-word.stanford.edu
"The chief and primary cause of this rapid increase in nervousness is
*Modern Civilization* which is distinguished from the ancient by these
five characteristics: the steam engine, the telegraph, the sciences,
the periodical press, and the mental activity of women."
- George Beard *American Nervousness* 1881
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 22:27:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Brian McHale <BMCH@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU>
Subject: Re: Michael Hareper's Titles
In-Reply-To: Message of 08/22/95 at 13:58:26 from EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU
How exciting to read Gale Nelson's good words for Harper's "Debridement"! an
undervalued & underread book. I thought I was its only devotee. Especially
its title sequence, which (in my eyes at least) looks stronger & stronger as
the years pass.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 21:06:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: mormon in the armoire
>In message <950822163805_60663502@mail04.mail.aol.com> UB Poetics discussion
>group writes:
>> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
>> the dr
>> >y
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> prescience
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> >> encore
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> moments
>> >> >>to be
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> were
>> >> >>hooks
>> >> >>>.
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> >> darkness
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
>> soft
>> >> fruit
>> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
>> > beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>> to a purer white described without even a thought and carried to another
>> plasm, another phone call from the regional director
>of miasmal blankness, white to the core of whiteness only
wafts to the color in principio which self erases
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 22:19:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
Alan Sondheim wrote
On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, Thomas Bell wrote:
> [D
> > >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> > >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
neo-colonizing
> > >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
oh,ho,
> > >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> > >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> > >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
the
> dry
> > >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> > >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
> > >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
chose
> > encore
> > >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments
> > >>to be
> > >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were
> > >>hooks
> > >>>.
> > >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> > >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
soft
> > fruit
> > >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> > >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> > >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> > as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> > beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>> and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
>regions where tongues were cut, women raped, no one had the right to speak
up or right downtown what they saw beyond the edge of the off
icial facing the end or the impetus toward a new renga about
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 1995 23:47:50 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: favourite critical word: poetry
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
oh,ho, kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
soft fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
I'm not biting on this, Maria, no matter how you sing it
oy, i get reprimanded in public for my lines, my worst POETICS
nightmare
for critic to talk to critic must first triangulate the poem as
overly rich or plain it's
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 00:47:13 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: combines
In-Reply-To: <9508230034.AA32732@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca> from "Louis Cabri" at
Aug 22, 95 06:34:32 pm
>
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her coffee breaks as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> dry cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
> regions where tongues were cut, women raped, no one had the right
> to speak
> that side of the Thomson-owned newspaper - which ripped as the
> ring-pierced tongue pushed through to
> the box scores, Kevin Mitchell went three for four against
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 01:03:25 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <199508221813.LAA21485@fraser.sfu.ca> from "Ryan Knighton" at Aug
22, 95 11:13:59 am
The reed player that Ryan was referring to at the Catriona Strang
reading was Francois Houle, who does some amazing things with
clarinet and saxes. You should hear his sax quartet blasting fast for
a 1.5 hour set in a bar some time.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 01:06:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <FC3331E5458@fagan.uncg.edu> from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Aug 22,
95 12:43:25 pm
It would seem to make sense that language poetry (some) in its
refusal or reluctance to refer, would be akin to music, which looks
more naturally to that freedom. But then language poetry's wordiness
is not, to the ear that ascribes "music" to the lyric, vert musical
at all.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 01:15:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In-Reply-To: <3039e8914baa002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "maria damon" at Aug 22,
95 09:24:23 am
>
> In message <199508220607.XAA28024@fraser.sfu.ca> UB Poetics discussion group
> writes:
> > >
> > > > >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical sacks, landscape of
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best mare and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
> > > > > neo-colonizing
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
> > > > > oh,ho,
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
> > > > > the
> > dr
> > > y
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > > > prescienc
> > e
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
> > > > > chose
> > > > encore
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting throughout eternity for
> > > > > moment
> > s
> > > > >>to be
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > > > wer
> > e
> > > > >>hooks
> > > > >>>.
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > > > darkness
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
> > > > > soft
> > > > fruit
> > > > >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > > > >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > > >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > > >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > > > >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > > >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > > >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > > >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > > > >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> > > > >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> > > > >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> > > > as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> > > beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> > > to tapioca, from brown space to hot chocolate, from Republican to
> angel steeped in angelology deeper than rilke's or blake's, by virtue of
> Donald Turnipseed's decision to pull out onto that highway just then and
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 02:53:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
Tom Kirby-Smith writes:
I was wondering if there is
>any musical tradition, and composer, any kind of music that one can
>connect with Language Poetry.
>
Speaking only for myself, the world music scene (most notably balinese
gamelan and the group choral Ketjak), early Reich (the tape loops
through Drumming--absolutely not the later ornamentalism), Steve Lacy,
Anthony Braxton, ROVA, Woodie Guthrie, Delta blues, and Bob Dylan (I've
heard both Barrett Watten and Charles Bernstein, who in general agree
on very little, make passionate arguments for the formative influence
of Dylan on themselves and generally on many of the LPs). Romeo Void
used to come to readings out in SF and folks like John Zorn have
actively influenced Bruce Andrews. Bernstein as I recall has a great
collection of Brecht/Weill recordings....(And I would dearly love to
get an LP or cassette again of any Harry Partch, especially the hobo
tunes--Partch's instrumentation has always seemed a real model for me
on how to proceed).
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 03:05:44 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
Alan Golding wrote, in one of the best posts I've ever had the pleasure
to read:
I'm surprised that someone who's always been so attuned to the social
components of writing, reading, and reception as you have should use as
the basis of your critique what sounds like a dismissal of or
skepticism toward those same social components. Perhaps I'm
misunderstanding something in your comments. Also, didn't you once tell
me that Susan was the only writer in the Tree who made her own
selections of her own work? Was that your choice because of your
ambivalence about the work? At her insistence? Inquiring minds, etc. Or
at least mine does.
>
My sense is that Susan "uses" the spiritual the way certain identarian
poets use their identity (and the way some of the doggeral Stalinists
of the 30s, viz Cary Nelson's tome, used their class roots), which I in
general tend to see as antithetical to the way I would want poetry to
engage the world, not leading us to it but rather fending off a deeper
questioning.
Several people have mentioned her ear. I must be deaf.
Susan was not the only one to largely or completely dictate their
selection in the Tree, tho maybe the only one that I didn't make any
counter suggestions to, in good part because I was/am aware that I lack
the sympathy to engage a deeper reading. Later she accused me of
deliberately sabotaging her in "my" selections. Now that's the Susan I
know and love.
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 03:21:36 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Poetry and Music
Since Rod brought up the influence of Cage on Berrigan, lets remember
that terrific list at the end of Padgett's memoir Ted, a complete
account of TB's Tulsa record collection still in a sister's attic
somewhere. Key figures:
Tommy Dorsey
Andre Previn
Shorty Rogers
Arthur Godfrey
Perry Como
Sarah Vaughan
Vic Damone & Percy Faith
Al Jolson
Frank Sinatra & Nelson Riddle
George Shearing
Nina Simone
The Platters
Marian McPartland
Patti Page
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 05:58:02 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
On Tue, 22 Aug 1995 20:26:46 -0500,
Maria Damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>In message <72369.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
>> On Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:26:46 -0500,
>> maria damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>>
>> >In message <199508220632.XAA09596@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion
>> > grou
>> p
>> >writes:
>> >> > [D
>> >> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
>> > > > neo-colonizing
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially
>> > > > several
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
>> > > > oh,ho,
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
>> >> > > the
>> >> >dry
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> >> >prescience
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
>> > > > chose
>> >> >> encore
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> >> >moments
>> >> >> >>to be
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the
>> > > > streams
>> >> >were
>> >> >> >>hooks
>> >> >> >>>.
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds
>> > > > of
>> >> >> darkness
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel.
>> > > > Likewise
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
>> >> > > soft
>> >> >> fruit
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>> >> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>> >> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>> >> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
>> >> >> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>> >> >and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
>> >> premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
>> >whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
>> I'm not biting on this, Maria, no matter how you sing it
>oy, i get reprimanded in public for my lines, my worst POETICS nightmare
is on hold, would you care to dance while we're waiting, save me
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 06:06:50 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
"Several people have mentioned her ear. I must be deaf." -- says Ron.
As I read you, and your comments on others, Ron, I think that there's no
possibility of your being deaf. That doesn't mean, however, that any of us
can hear all musics.
charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 08:19:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
In-Reply-To: <199508231005.DAA12089@ix8.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at
Aug 23, 95 03:05:44 am
Well, there is this Susan Howe:
Hear earth born old
hush
no name or mane but nick
in time
and clock
a foil for future
marching
Marching
to Pale
with face for fool
thrumming
'Hollow hollow holds all'
Faintly the scene is played
softly
snow spread on sound
skin pebbles in secret also
You may not like this music, but how get around the fact of it?
As for the criticism of her so-called "spirituality", this seems to me
little more than the expression of difference from those whose
"politcality" equally could be seen to constitutue an obfuscation of
an approach to "the world." A chaque son gout . . .
Best,
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 09:30:20 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
ron s writes:
> >
>
> My sense is that Susan "uses" the spiritual the way certain identarian
> poets use their identity (and the way some of the doggeral Stalinists
> of the 30s, viz Cary Nelson's tome, used their class roots), which I in
> general tend to see as antithetical to the way I would want poetry to
> engage the world, not leading us to it but rather fending off a deeper
> questioning.
>
ouch. while i like the idea of poetry leading us to a deeper questioning beyond
first identitarian blush, the phrase "doggerel stalinists" is so contemptuous
that i feel my own work indicted. personally, i love doggerel, as did g stein
(i'm not putting myself on her level, but citing her for legitimacy). i find it
touching. how do you know that those writers of "inferior verse" (as the
dictionary defines d.) don't experience themselves to be struggling, searching,
saying something that has never been said, engaged in a deeper
questioning...--md
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 07:37:23 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Seattle readings Fall '95
Here's the schedule for the new, now monthly, Subtext reading series.
September 21
Stacey Levine & Peter Culley
October 19
John Olson & Stacy Doris
November 16
Joseph Donahue & Melissa Wolsak
December 14
Ezra Mark & Deanna Ferguson
All readings are Thursdays, at 7:30 pm. The Speakeasy Cafe is at 2304 2nd
Avenue, in Seattle's Belltown district, just north of the Public Market.
The Speakeasy is an internet cafe <http://speakeasy.org>. Soon Subtext'll
have a website hanging off of the homepage there, with writing by past,
present, and future subtext readers, etc. When the website is set up, I'll
post the URL to the list.
As some of you know, Subtext has been presenting short series of (primarily
Northwest) writers in the, uh, "experimental" tradition, for a few years.
It's been re-organized, with a few more people involved, and the plan is to
continue readings on a monthly basis. The series above was primarily
curated by Robert Mittenthal.
Some time after Sept 1, we'll start scheduling readings for January through
April of 1996. The lead curator for this next series will be Ezra Mark.
If there are any writers on the list who are or will be in the area during
this time who are looking for a reading, please let me know via email or at
POB 95744, Seattle, WA 98145. Our budget is _very_ modest (but we do have
one now), so if someone needs a fill-in date out west, something might work
out.
It's unlikely to be enough of a (financial) incentive for anyone from more
than a couple of hundred miles or so to make a special trip to Seattle, but
hey, isn't every trip to Seattle special?
Or something.
Bests
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 07:37:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Value/genius in/with trouble/Poetry
Marjorie Perloff is, to a large extent, right that Bob Perelman's TwG deals
with
> the terrible dilemma--still ours today--of wanting on the one hand to write a
> difficult and complex culturally informed poetry and yet speak to a large
>audience
but Ron Silliman's assessment of the book as a challenge to taking
modernist writers at face value is also right.
Perelman's book is an all-too-rare example of looking at the work and at
the writers and not turning into either a apologistic fan or a knee-jerk
critic.
Yeah, Kenner & (especially) Davenport are good writers. & yeah, they know
more than I ever will about Anglo-American modernist writers or many other
things. But they don't seem to have found a satisfactory way to distinguish
between the glorious modernist project and the flawed people who wrote the
flawed works in the service of this project.
The modernists weren't heroes, their works aren't "masterpieces." They were
perhaps the first writers to be "great" because of their ongoing, perhaps
incompleteable, projects, rather than their products. If nothing else,
their "failures" at completing their grand projects have made it possible
for whatever it is that's going on now (someone else can call it postmodern
if they want).
Even most of the more mainstream poets, including some who may still be
interested in heroics, seem largely to have given on the idea of a big, big
masterpiece.
So when Perloff continues:
> Do we think this problem has been solved?
The answer can only be "Of course not & that's the point."
which is one reason why Perelman's take on "Marginalization of Poetry" is
such an appealing idea.
Bests
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 07:37:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Kenner & CanLit
So George (or anyone),
Now that Kenner's written books about British, American, & Irish modernist
& late modernist writers is he going to do a Can Lit volume?
Or what's the story?
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 07:37:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
>Cage's methods seem too mechanical to me to have had much effect on
>other people's poetry (besides his own). I was wondering if there is
>any musical tradition, and composer, any kind of music that one can
>connect with Language Poetry.
Actually, some of Cage's compositional processes do make sense in terms of
Language Poetry. I'd compare at least some of Ron Silliman's structures for
sentences with Cage's late middle pieces (Music for Changes is an example)
in which particular time units are filled with sound events with no regard
for musical continuity. This seems to be a rather exact analog of some of
the Alphabet sections written a sentence a day or, say, the 21 x 21 grid of
Garfield.
Cage's later "time-bracket" pieces, in which a score indicates a larger
time frame in which shorter events can occur (for example, a 90-second
"bracket" during which a 20-second pitch or chord can be played at any
time), give a kind of loose ensemble feel that relates in my mind to Leslie
Scalapino's never quite exactly repeating structures.
I've heard people try to make a case for the influence of repetitive
pattern music (Reich & Glass) on John Taggart, but to me the repetition in
Taggart's work seems more like the use of recurring song form in standard
jazz improvisation: the structure is constant but the content shifts.
Several very specific Jackson Mac Low poems (those which converge through
various means toward a smaller and smaller vocabulary, ending with the same
word filling all the spots) have the same feel of inevitable closure as
some of Steve Reich's early phase-shifting pieces, though they are formally
quite different.
Clark Coolidge clarifies some of the connections between jazz and the music
(especially the long works from the last ten years) of Morton Feldman. All
three keep going, at great length, in the face of a very real possibility
of failure, and very often are most successful when they include sections
in which not much really happens and are, in fact, kind of dull. (One of
the most liberating things about jazz is that it's okay to be boring while
on the way to something else. Unfortunately, it doesn't always get to that
something else, which is why so many people find jazz boring.)
There are "obvious" (& social) correspondences between the collage-style
work of Bruce Andrews and John Zorn, not least because they both use often
recognizable source types & have cultivated "bad-boy" images. (I don't know
if Zorn's voluminous record collection is sorted by the color of the album
cover, though.)
There are others, but I'll shut up for now. Years ago, Charles Watts
suggested that I write something about connections between new music & new
writing that I never got around to. But as I mentioned to him at BlaserCon,
I've (obviously) been thinking about it more lately.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 09:37:12 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
In message <36224.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> On Tue, 22 Aug 1995 20:26:46 -0500,
> Maria Damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>
> >In message <72369.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
> > writes:
> >> On Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:26:46 -0500,
> >> maria damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >> >In message <199508220632.XAA09596@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics
> > > discussion
> >> > grou
> >> p
> >> >writes:
> >> >> > [D
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine
> > > > > morning
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of
> > > > > water's
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for
> > > > > ignorance
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
> >> > > > neo-colonizing
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially
> >> > > > several
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
> >> > > > oh,ho,
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof"
> > > > > Tobacco
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was
> > > > > at
> >> >> > > the
> >> >> >dry
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> >> >prescience
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
> >> > > > chose
> >> >> >> encore
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity
> > > > > for
> >> >> >moments
> >> >> >> >>to be
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the
> >> > > > streams
> >> >> >were
> >> >> >> >>hooks
> >> >> >> >>>.
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel
> > > > > seeds
> >> > > > of
> >> >> >> darkness
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel.
> >> > > > Likewise
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and
> > > > > recently
> >> >> > > soft
> >> >> >> fruit
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles
> > > > considered
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >> >> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> >> >> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> >> >> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> >> >> >> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> >> >> >and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
> >> >> premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
> >> >whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
> >> I'm not biting on this, Maria, no matter how you sing it
> >oy, i get reprimanded in public for my lines, my worst POETICS nightmare
> is on hold, would you care to dance while we're waiting, save me
that last sonnet please, of forgotten wisteria sestina forsythia
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 07:54:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
George Bowering sez:
>It would seem to make sense that language poetry (some) in its
>refusal or reluctance to refer, would be akin to music, which looks
>more naturally to that freedom. But then language poetry's wordiness
>is not, to the ear that ascribes "music" to the lyric, vert musical
>at all.
But then what often has been described as "musical" in verse has simply
been lines that don't have any harsh sounds & there's certainly plenty
that's literally musical that has those.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 11:36:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Perelman's forthcoming and recent
Bob Perelman does seem to be prolific these days! Can anybody provide
publication information on his forthcoming critical book(s)? Are there
one or two?
As for *The Trouble With Genius*, I want to rephrase -- possibly recast --
some of what I've said earlier. I certainly agree with Marjorie that
what's being analyzed is "modernism as a cultural construct" -- but it's
also being constructed, too, and at the same time. The question is:
whose modernism (now)? The effects of combining Pound/Joyce/Stein/Zukofsky
in the manner in which it's undertaken are several.
One effect is what might be called spatial: the book raises the stock, if
you will, of Zuk, by making him part of *that* construct rather than
another. Of course he's long been linked with Pound, but his overall
critical reputation is nowhere near that of Joyce and Pound (if you
measure it empirically, by, say, production of critical commentary). (To
a lesser degree, it does the same with Stein). By the same token, it
lowers the stock of Joyce, by framing him *within* this construct and thus
detracting from his often-touted originality. (Ron alluded to this in his
slam on Kenner, but I think it's more a function of the book's
organization than its particular readings; a different sort of cultural
construct is created than the one in *The Pound Era*, where cultural
influences are synthesized and transcended by Pound's -- ta da! --
genius.) So the book evens out reputations, as historicizing arguments
tend to do. Which is not to say its individual readings aren't pretty
amazing.
The temporal effect is somewhat different. The organization of the book
*from* Pound *to* Zuk begins to construct a trajectory that will lead,
inevitably yet problematically, to language poetry. This is what I was
alluding to earlier with comments on LP gaining a pedigree and a certain
amount of cultural authority. Therefore the issues are *not* limited to
"modernism as a cultural construct" but are deeply contemporary, affecting
important conceptions of the authority of current writing practices. This
is the first time that I've seen LP linked to Joyce, whose critical stock
remains as high as anybody's. (The trajectory to LP is clear in one of
the final notes in the book, and also in the opening of the Zukofsky
chapter.)
One might say, well, this isn't what Bob's doing, he doesn't care about
critical reputations among professors: but I doubt that can hold water.
Why publish TTWG with a major university press with a big stake in the New
American Poetry and, until Hopkins picked up the ball, Zukofsky as well?
A major audience for this book will be academics, many of them modernist
scholars. Another will be people interested in contemporary poetry, both
in and out of the university. That both of these audiences are desired
is apparent on every page of the book, as far as I'm concerned -- and I'm
perfectly happy with that.
(BTW, there is at least one other critical book that links Joyce and
Zukofsky -- *Writing Joyce: A Semiotics of the Joyce System*, by Lorraine
Weir (Indiana UP, 1989). I'm rather surprised this is nowhere cited in
TTWG. Not an historical argument, but still...)
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:08:31 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rachel Loden <74277.1477@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: code of silence
Susan E. Dunn writes:
>I can't help but think, however, that Susan Howe would be amused at
>her role in this discussion as the Anne Hutchinsonesque sacraficial
>*text* -- the monstrous body that disconnects/relies on powers beyond
>the confines of accepted references -- that is held up as a scapegoat for
>Corn-as-Puritan-father demanding that we eject our demons and name
>names.
Seems to me that Alfred Corn is cutting quite a mythological
figure these days. It was Herb Levy, not Alfred Corn, who
ticked off a list of magazines on the shelf behind him and
suggested highlighting something "really bad" in one of them.
He went on to make a larger point (let me know if I'm misreading
you Herb) about the airlessness of certain POETICS discussions
or non-discussions (agreements to agree, or pretend to agree).
Why must the consideration of a body of work be reduced to a
simpleminded bunking or debunking? I didn't sense that that was
what either Ron Silliman or Alan Golding had in mind, and I'm
grateful for their posts. But if we're all entirely sure of what
sucks and what rules, let's swear loyalty oaths and impose a
gag order.
Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:24:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <199508230953.CAA11448@ix8.ix.netcom.com>
How exactly do these people connect with language poetry, beyond the fact
that perhaps you like their work?
Alan
On Wed, 23 Aug 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
> Tom Kirby-Smith writes:
>
> I was wondering if there is
> >any musical tradition, and composer, any kind of music that one can
> >connect with Language Poetry.
> >
>
> Speaking only for myself, the world music scene (most notably balinese
> gamelan and the group choral Ketjak), early Reich (the tape loops
> through Drumming--absolutely not the later ornamentalism), Steve Lacy,
> Anthony Braxton, ROVA, Woodie Guthrie, Delta blues, and Bob Dylan (I've
> heard both Barrett Watten and Charles Bernstein, who in general agree
> on very little, make passionate arguments for the formative influence
> of Dylan on themselves and generally on many of the LPs). Romeo Void
> used to come to readings out in SF and folks like John Zorn have
> actively influenced Bruce Andrews. Bernstein as I recall has a great
> collection of Brecht/Weill recordings....(And I would dearly love to
> get an LP or cassette again of any Harry Partch, especially the hobo
> tunes--Partch's instrumentation has always seemed a real model for me
> on how to proceed).
>
> Ron Silliman
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:27:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Perelman's forthcoming and recent
Well, David kellogg--what about Beckett---I mean the difference between
Joyce and Beckett...
It seems that what lately has been called LP (when ron first said it--
"both charles and bob cop to the influence of dylan on many of the lps
"---i thought he was referring to the pre CD era) has more affinities
with beckett than with Joyce----cs
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:39:36 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
alan sondheim raises a good point----The L poets are roughly contemporaries
of bob dylan (minus 4 or 5 years as
" "median" age?) but isn't DYLAN more of those GENIUSES they have TROUBLE
with--you know, the self-dramatizing "hero" type replete with personal
pathos and visionary fervor (though certainly a better singer than
GINSBERG) and even, gasp, a willingness to deal with heterosexuality
in a more than merely theoretical way than most of, say, the MALE LP's
(i mean langpo's)---so maybe there is a question of consistency here--
unless of course we simply disclaim the whole issue by saying Bob
Dylan is NOT a poet--therefore the standards one would use to judge
susAn howe, etc--are not applicable and so it's okay if he's a "genius"
or, worse " a hero"--------chris stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:45:38 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Text
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950823122341.27361C-100000@panix3.panix.com>
If anyone is interested in the work I have been writing on virtual
subjectivity/literature/Internet/etc. it is available at
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
and there are numerous accompanying images as
http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/
Alan
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:54:59 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: How Hear Howe?
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 22 Aug 1995 20:38:13 -0400 from
<AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
I have heard Susan Howe read on three occasions -- all within the last
eight years. Each reading was electrifying. The cadence, the attention
to syllable, the fevering (and unfevering) of pitch, diction, the point
where the prosaic lines appropriated from (among others) Charles Dickens
bleeds into the fragmentary / visually arranged materials -- all of this
is spell-binding in memory (and anticipation of another hearing).
Having had the extraordinary pleasure of having worked as editor for Susan's
_A Bibliography of the King's Book; or, Eikon Basilike_, I feel a privileged
sense of Susan's attention to detail. My trying to duplicate the "look" of
her typewritten pages on a typeset-spaced computer system provided us with
the challenge of finding _how_ her work could be articulated in a variant of
the original that was true to her vision. Trade-offs (what letters must
overlap, what angles could shift and to what degree) were discussed, and,
finally approved. I cannot read Susan's work without hearing it; and I cannot
hear it without envisioning its pagedness. As I have suggested elsewhere,
language itself seems refreshed after reading Susan's work.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 07:43:33 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 02:57:20 -1000
From: Indepen <adc8@columbia.edu>
To: Susan Schultz <sschultz@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Subject: response
I already belong to two discussion lists, and don't have the space
for another, but Susan Schultz has forwarded recent posts about good and
not-good LP writing, which I was going simply to read without answering.
I guess I'll have to say something in order to clear up some
misunderstandings.
CAP-L is not a discussion list for New Formalists. It is a
discussion of contemporary American poetry of whatever stamp. Language
poets may subscribe and post. They have before and continue to.
I am not a New Formalist, nor would several of those listed in
recent posts describe themselves as such. The terms "form" or "forma;"
shouldn't be restricted to the use of meter and rhyme, since every poem
has form of some kind or another. I have written more poems without meter
and rhyme than with; meter and rhyme to me are techniques, useful or not,
depending on the poem in question. They are not a faith. Meanwhile,
poetry written in meter and rhyme has been written in every decade of this
century by important poets--Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, et al. It isn't
new, or for that matter old.
I am neither a Puritan nor a father. I did not ask that anyone be
sacrificed, let alone Susan Howe, whose poetry I haven't read. Susan Dunn
objects to an alleged scapegoating, but in doing so scapegoats CAP-L in
general and me in particular. I was interested to hear Ron Silliman's
views on Howe, though I wish he had been fuller in his comments; "tepid"
doesn't convey much to me, and citing particular texts would have been
more useful. I also can't believe that she is the only (*if* she is) bad
Language poet. Are there others? And which ones are the very best--and
*why*?
When Ron Silliman began posting about LP on CAP-L, I and others
raised the question of how it was evaluated, what criteria were brought to
it in order to decide what was good and what was bad. If we can't be told
that, we can never learn what conventions govern the poetry and can never
become competent readers of it. If LP is interested in a wider audience,
I don't see the point of neglecting to explain its criteria. Some of you
are teachers, and if you're good ones, you know that sneering and
scapegoating aren't effective as teaching methods. Calm, undefensive, cogent
(and exciting) exposition is what works.
Alfred Corn
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 13:57:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tim Waples <twaples@DEPT.ENGLISH.UPENN.EDU>
Subject: Notes of a renga lurker
In-Reply-To: <9508230403.AA20996@dept.english.upenn.edu> from "Automatic
digest processor" at Aug 23, 95 00:00:24 am
Thanks, Susan Dunn, for your comments on Susan Howe's work, and
her moment in our critical spotlight, and especially for your thoughts on
the renga...which to my ear sounds more like a dance than a poem.
It's time to confess, I'm a renga lurker. The lace curtains are
still more mollycoddled than aware, and the attorney general and Sir Duke
are forever linked in my thoughts. This despite the fact that I'm peering
into the renga on a system as backward ("Hey, it still word processes")
as Susan's. But I too am finding that the renga is making me think about
technology and audience. If I were receiving messages individually from
this list, my delete trigger might now be as finely tuned as George
Bowering's. But I'm on DIGEST, to save time? More precisely, to avoid the
need to log in every four hours to clear my mailbox. The DIGEST, however,
does not allow rapid deletings; it actually allows less digesting! As a
result, I have to chew my renga 32 times to get to the end and find out
if Maria will be okay. (I hope so!)
A simpleminded suggestion led to another thought; would the
renga-ers be happy with only copying the immediately preceding 3 or 4
lines before adding to the dance? Or could there be some ideology of
"wholeness" within the renga -- or within the technology that invites our
replies to the list -- that inclines to copying the entire thing each time?
I'd prefer to think not, but then again, I'd prefer to be re-acquainted
with Ste. Therese a little less frequently.
It occurs to me that no bulletin board discussion ever strays too
far from the issue of "audience." Perhaps that's only because I prefer
the company of people who spend a lot of time thinking about trying to be
democratic, or self-conscious, or both. But I am wondering what to make
of "audience" and "renga" together.
Tim
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 13:55:10 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: N_w F_______m
I believe that I said, "the movement really has acquired a
reactionary following."
I had hoped that before I died that "The Psalm of Life" would
disappear from important anthologies of American poetry; one of the
untoward effects of N_w F________m may be that it stays. One of these
false hopes, such as wanting outlive Elvis's reputation.
One of the most remarkable things to me about this thing is its
usually unacknowledged descent from Yvor Winters and from Winters's
closest disciples. Sort of like the Children of Israel fearing to
mention the name of Jaweh.
I have never known anyone personally who called itself a N_w
F_______t. I have been told of one, but I
wouldn't want to libel anyone. I have never seen a copy of that
magazine called "The Formalist"--only heard about it the other day,
actually.
I wonder if all these people who feel so virtuous writing Villanelles
realize that villanelle-writing was really just a continuation of
Romantic balladeering, moving on to the Troubadors --just another
Gothic Revival medievalizing trend in the late nineteenth century.
Nothing classical at all about it. Also, the best villanelles have
been written by unabashed Romantics.
Excessive intricacy of form has always been a sign of decadence.
As the Roman Empire fell apart, poet after poet had a fling at
either doing one more great thing in the hexameters borrowed
from Greek, or else did something really fancy that no one had
ever bothered to do before. The great poems of the period are
the early hymns, where the language settled back into the
vernacular Latin and became accentual. N_w F_______m seems to me
somewhat like fifth-century A. D. poetry that went on trying to
revive the grandeur of Virgil and Ovid, Horace and Catullus.
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 13:21:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Brian W Horihan <hori0001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <199508230806.BAA05561@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Wed, 23 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> It would seem to make sense that language poetry (some) in its
> refusal or reluctance to refer, would be akin to music, which looks
> more naturally to that freedom. But then language poetry's wordiness
> is not, to the ear that ascribes "music" to the lyric, vert musical
> at all.
>
This is an idea i wanted to talk about a couple months ago with a
post that didnt quite stick. As for music that is non-lyric,
"non-musical" to the ear George means, what about comparisons to 50s era
serialist music (e.g. Babbit, Stockhausen) which is often very academic,
too? --brian
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 12:45:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
Well, yes, but what about "nick/ in time"--since we're discussing the
music--the familiar phrase--but I love "a foil for future"--I love the sound
of "marching/Marching" but the capitalization (which is for the eye, yes) is
what pleases me about this more than say Clark Coolidge's
"trilobite/trilobites"--as far as getting around the fact of it Mr Boughn
that sounds like Olson coming through you. There are no facts in poetry.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 15:01:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <01HUEVB9FA0Y8Y5Y8Z@cnsvax.albany.edu>
Or can we say that Dylan seems to have been overtly culturally and politi-
cally engaged for most of his life, with a kind of rawness that at least
seems antithetical to L?
Alan
On Wed, 23 Aug 1995, Chris Stroffolino wrote:
> alan sondheim raises a good point----The L poets are roughly contemporaries
> of bob dylan (minus 4 or 5 years as
> " "median" age?) but isn't DYLAN more of those GENIUSES they have TROUBLE
> with--you know, the self-dramatizing "hero" type replete with personal
> pathos and visionary fervor (though certainly a better singer than
> GINSBERG) and even, gasp, a willingness to deal with heterosexuality
> in a more than merely theoretical way than most of, say, the MALE LP's
> (i mean langpo's)---so maybe there is a question of consistency here--
> unless of course we simply disclaim the whole issue by saying Bob
> Dylan is NOT a poet--therefore the standards one would use to judge
> susAn howe, etc--are not applicable and so it's okay if he's a "genius"
> or, worse " a hero"--------chris stroffolino
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 15:38:26 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Perelman's forthcoming and recent
In-Reply-To: <01HUEUZG1F8O8Y5Y8Z@cnsvax.albany.edu>
On Wed, 23 Aug 1995, Chris Stroffolino wrote:
> Well, David kellogg--what about Beckett---I mean the difference between
> Joyce and Beckett...
> It seems that what lately has been called LP (when ron first said it--
> "both charles and bob cop to the influence of dylan on many of the lps
> "---i thought he was referring to the pre CD era) has more affinities
> with beckett than with Joyce----cs
I'm not sure I understand your post. I have no particular desire to
link LP with Joyce; neither does Perelman in a direct sense I think -- but
to read Joyce with Zuk and then connect Zuk with LP (natch!) performs a
critical and evaluative function which I think is interesting. I don't
really care whether it's right, or who's closer. That was never my point.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 16:05:58 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: your mail
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950823074141.25014B-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
On Wed, 23 Aug 1995, Susan Schultz (Alfred Corn?) wrote:
> I was interested to hear Ron Silliman's
> views on Howe, though I wish he had been fuller in his comments; "tepid"
> doesn't convey much to me, and citing particular texts would have been
> more useful. I also can't believe that she is the only (*if* she is) bad
> Language poet. Are there others? And which ones are the very best--and
> *why*?
> When Ron Silliman began posting about LP on CAP-L, I and others
> raised the question of how it was evaluated, what criteria were brought to
> it in order to decide what was good and what was bad. If we can't be told
> that, we can never learn what conventions govern the poetry and can never
> become competent readers of it. If LP is interested in a wider audience,
> I don't see the point of neglecting to explain its criteria. Some of you
> are teachers, and if you're good ones, you know that sneering and
> scapegoating aren't effective as teaching methods. Calm, undefensive, cogent
> (and exciting) exposition is what works.
Dear Alfred,
I'm afraid I didn't read the post that started this, but your response
here raises some issues that I think are worth addressing. Ron's comment
about Susan Howe has been much discussed, and while I don't need to
defend him, it was clear from his post that he was referring to questions
of personal taste, not to Howe's "goodness" or "badness" as a poet. In
fact, I took his whole post as explaining (pretty well) a relativist view
of poetry in which the question of "which ones are the very best -- and
why?" is not really meaningful.
Perhaps more seriously, I'm a bit surprised by this part of your post:
> how it was evaluated, what criteria were brought to
> it in order to decide what was good and what was bad. If we can't be told
> that, we can never learn what conventions govern the poetry and can never
> become competent readers of it.
I find this amazing, and must say: speak for yourself. Do you really mean
that you can't become a competent reader of a poetry that seems strange to
you without somebody telling you "what criteria were brought to it in
order to decide what was good and what was bad"? You lose the potential
to encounter a lot of interesting work this way. I came to language
poetry from "outside," too, and found that the best solution to my own
"incompetence" was to read a lot of it. Do you really need to settle on
an accepted criteria of excellence *before* you read? I prefer to find
out as I go.
A more generous reading of your statement is possible, one that basically
translates into, if language poetry has no set standards, then no
standards are possible. Is there any poetry with such standards, such a
"criteria"? I doubt it. Within language poetry, as outside it, such
criteria are *contested*, not established. That's in the nature of
experimental writing, and also -- I would argue -- with virtually
everthing in culture. The criteria that do emerge, here and there, are
not so unfamiliar: freshness, surprise, intelligence, interesting sounds,
intellectual engagement, dialogue with history, subject matter, -- and
yes, who you know, friendliness with the editor, etc. . . . .
Don't mean to be harsh with you, friend, but I think you're either being
disingenous or didn't think your post through. There are no set
criteria. Nowhere, nohow. Never were.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 16:36:08 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
In-Reply-To: <950823124539_81408493@mail06.mail.aol.com> from "Jordan Davis."
at Aug 23, 95 12:45:40 pm
> Well, yes, but what about "nick/ in time"--since we're discussing the
> music--the familiar phrase--but I love "a foil for future"--I love the sound
> of "marching/Marching" but the capitalization (which is for the eye, yes) is
> what pleases me about this more than say Clark Coolidge's
> "trilobite/trilobites"--as far as getting around the fact of it Mr Boughn
> that sounds like Olson coming through you. There are no facts in poetry.
Well, Mr. Davis (lordy lordy we're getting pretty formal around
here--the creeping effects of all this formalist discussion?) what is
language if it ain't a fact? (and what a trip to have a little Olson
come through . . . wow
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 16:49:29 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
In message <Pine.SOL.3.91.950823074141.25014B-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu> UB
Poetics discussion group writes:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 02:57:20 -1000
> From: Indepen <adc8@columbia.edu>
> To: Susan Schultz <sschultz@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
> Subject: response
>
>
> I already belong to two discussion lists, and don't have the space
> for another, but Susan Schultz has forwarded recent posts about good and
> not-good LP writing, which I was going simply to read without answering.
> I guess I'll have to say something in order to clear up some
> misunderstandings.
> CAP-L is not a discussion list for New Formalists. It is a
> discussion of contemporary American poetry of whatever stamp. Language
> poets may subscribe and post. They have before and continue to.
> I am not a New Formalist, nor would several of those listed in
> recent posts describe themselves as such. The terms "form" or "forma;"
> shouldn't be restricted to the use of meter and rhyme, since every poem
> has form of some kind or another. I have written more poems without meter
> and rhyme than with; meter and rhyme to me are techniques, useful or not,
> depending on the poem in question. They are not a faith. Meanwhile,
> poetry written in meter and rhyme has been written in every decade of this
> century by important poets--Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery, et al. It isn't
> new, or for that matter old.
> I am neither a Puritan nor a father. I did not ask that anyone be
> sacrificed, let alone Susan Howe, whose poetry I haven't read. Susan Dunn
> objects to an alleged scapegoating, but in doing so scapegoats CAP-L in
> general and me in particular. I was interested to hear Ron Silliman's
> views on Howe, though I wish he had been fuller in his comments; "tepid"
> doesn't convey much to me, and citing particular texts would have been
> more useful. I also can't believe that she is the only (*if* she is) bad
> Language poet. Are there others? And which ones are the very best--and
> *why*?
> When Ron Silliman began posting about LP on CAP-L, I and others
> raised the question of how it was evaluated, what criteria were brought to
> it in order to decide what was good and what was bad. If we can't be told
> that, we can never learn what conventions govern the poetry and can never
> become competent readers of it. If LP is interested in a wider audience,
> I don't see the point of neglecting to explain its criteria. Some of you
> are teachers, and if you're good ones, you know that sneering and
> scapegoating aren't effective as teaching methods. Calm, undefensive, cogent
> (and exciting) exposition is what works.
>
> Alfred Corn
hello alfred corn --i've posted several times to poetics to the effect that i
take fairly seriously Robert Duncan's dictum that there are no good or bad
poems. this i hold true for just about every "school" of poetry. i wd not
teach a class in poetry by offering, for example, a "good" and "bad" example
from each "school." it's an intriguing idea, but it's simply never crossed my
mind. even after thinking it over, it strikes me that to learn to evaluate a
product is somewhat like backing into a process backasswards as it were, no
disrespect intended, but to start from a position of judgment is not, i think,
the most effective way to open someone's mind. it shuts down process, and leaps
to a critical appraisal of product --how intimidating to someone trying to learn
to read or practice. maybe i'm a sentimental patsy, but openness, to me, is
always a better approach to learning. rather than asking for an example of a
"bad" language poet, why not ask us how, for instance, we would "read" a given
text? too bad you missed gary sullivan --he posted some stunning close readings
of initially opaque texts that were useful paradidms for learning to read. and
they didn't involve ranking poetry, poems and poets in a meritocratic economy.
respectfully--md
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 18:47:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: non music anon
I'm not surprised to see "their" idea of musical
But then what often has been described as "musical" in verse has simply
been lines that don't have any harsh sounds & there's certainly plenty
that's literally musical that has those.
privileged here. I think a discussion of John Taggart/Susan Howe/Bruce
Andrews/Ron Padgett is in order, in re music of the line. Taggart it seems
plays off repetition as musicality, Zorn is Andrews' ideal, Padgett approves
of cleanliness of syntax and vocabulary, and Howe goes for the glorious
combinations. OR, those are the commonplaces about those authors. Music is
never commonplace. Nor is it ONLY the articulation of sound forms in time. As
long as there is an audience (renga=audience) there are emotional
characterizations and attributions from that audience. What I like most about
"our" poetry is the music (when it's there). I certainly don't care about
anybody's "meanings" except insofar as they add to or detract from the music.
I'm not looking for limits, thanks. Dr & Mrs Corn suggest (in reverse) an
interesting topic: what it is we like about "our" poetries. Philosophy and
poetics should be (I think) free of bad feelings. Originators of exclusion
beware! I would love to see more frequent cogent praises of musics (and I
apologize for the music of that request).
Your humble admirer
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 18:52:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: now words/cognitive dissonance
what is
language if it ain't a fact?
language is words
and language is talking
and something else
But don't confuse me with the facts
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 16:17:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: nadir of the W
In-Reply-To: <199508230357.UAA25442@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
I'm more than a little puzzled by the reluctance to define the word
"spirituality" combined with an insistent usage of that word.
Perhaps that is the defining instance of the spiritual???
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 16:22:42 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: the renga that took the place of itself
In-Reply-To: <199508230357.UAA25442@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
also puzzled by some of our reactions to the renga in progress (including
my own) --
that is, a sort of impatience that differs in interesting respects from
our readings of printed volumes seems to be at work -- we (by which I
mean me) read much longer, and far worse, printed texts without grousing,
but the iterated and reitrated form seems to play a part in the
impatience of some on the list -- that is, maybe _Cantos_ would be more
disturbing yet if, instead of constantly interrupting itself, it
constantly interrupted whatever otehr communication acts we were involved
in at the time -- (as it does to those of us who have read it)
-- & the composer I invariably think of while reading language poetry is
Louis Armstrong -- but I'm tight like that --
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 19:16:31 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: your mail
In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 23 Aug 1995 16:05:58 -0400 from
<kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
I was prepared to contest the premises of Alfred Corn's questions regarding
criteria and evaluation--just as some earlier (myself included) had seen fit
to question a rhetorical model where one post can "change a mind" and perhaps
also the idea that metaphors are "revealing." But I think that David Kellogg
and Maria Damon have already done that--and on the contested nature of criteria
one might refer to Barbara H. Smith's _The Contingencies of Value_. If Corn
has recently become a kind of ghost on this list, he seems to me a friendly
ghost, and I want to say a few things in his defense. It seems to me that
there is a need in the "experimental" poetry community for direct and detailed
statements of "personal"--if you will--value and preferences, tastes (not that
these need be singular or static). Perhaps because of the way langpo emerged
and the climate it emerged in, much langpo prose has been given over to the
criticism of other prevailing modes of poetry--the so-called "mainstream"--or
to a kind of blanket advocacy where the names of the elect are rehearsed. Or,
in some cases, for political and "theoretical" reasons, evaluation is itself
questioned or rejected--Charles B, for one, sometimes seems to me given to
listing rather than explaining his preferences, and I don't doubt for a second
that he has reasons. But there has been comparatively little critical
prose by langpo writers not directed primarily at "others"--at least until
recently, as the case of Bob Perelman's book(s) demonstrates, along with Ron
Silliman's recent remark about Susan Howe. This makes perfect sense to me:
one must first clear a little space, no? (This was part of Alan Golding's
point.) Were things any different in, say, Robert Pinsky's _The Situation of
Poetry_, where he worked to clear space for Frank Bidart, Jim McMichael and
others? But it seems to me that now IS the time for the langpo crowd to begin
working on their own _A Test of Poetry_ and, ideally, the range of their
attention will be at least as expansive as Zukofsky's. This is not just a
matter of expanding an audience but of clarifying what might be meant by
surprise, striking sound patterns,engagement with history--etc etc (Kellogg's
list could of course be expanded a good deal)--in a proliferation of examples
arranged in provovative juxtaposition. Such examples need not be ranked good
and bad and--if it's possible to be open-minded at least a little--the
commentary might follow the examples. Of course finding publishers for
such books--there should be a good number of them--will be difficult, which
probably brings us back to the point where what used to be--perhaps--a
"movement" (langpo) started.
On another note, I'm hoping that Silliman's remarks won't be enough to keep
Alfred Corn from reading Susan Howe.
Keith Tuma
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 20:43:21 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: How Hear Howe?
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%95082313090965@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Gale, I was interested in your comments about the difficulty of
typesetting Susan Howe's work from typescript. When she was a visiting
writer at my university about a year ago, one of the most seminal
(ovarian?) things, to me, that she stressed, was the notion of older
poets' giving younger ones a kind of permission. Could the proliferation
of typesetting programs like Quark XPress lead to a greater sense of
possibility for the rest of us in regard to some of Howe's visual
techniques like superimposed and rotated lines? I'm thinking of _Eikon
Basilike_ probably more than, say, _Articulation of Sound Forms in Time._
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 01:31:27 EDT
Reply-To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: beard@MET.CO.NZ
Subject: Howe Now Brown ... / writer or written?
>how do you know that those writers of "inferior verse" (as the
>dictionary defines d.) don't experience themselves to be struggling, searching,
>saying something that has never been said, engaged in a deeper
>questioning...--md
I suppose we can't know. The question is - do we care?
One's evaluation of a poem comes from one's _own_ encounter with the text, not
from an assumption of the _writer's_ experiences. A banal fragment of writing
might interact with my experiences, my concerns, and the context within which I
find it, and hence become meaningful and evocative. On the other hand, a
sincere piece of writing from someone who believes that he or she is really
"engaged in a deeper questioning" can bore me senseless if it doesn't provoke
_me_ to "struggling, searching" or whatever.
I'm not coming at this from a theoretical perspective of "The Death of the
Author", but simply from a reader's viewpoint. Wearing my critic's hat, I might
be willing to give a writer "marks for effort", but as a reader, a "consumer",
of poetry, I want something more. I want stimulation, challenge, enjoyment,
sensuality, wit and intelligence. Above all, I want excellence.
It doesn't matter whether a piece of writing was written by a "great poet", a
struggling poetaster, a cynically manipulative ad agency or a computer program.
What matters is the poem, and what that poem triggers off in the reader. If
enough readers find that a poem triggers no response with them, or in other
words, fails to make the readers "experience themselves to be struggling,
searching, saying something that has never been said, engaged in a deeper
questioning," then those readers call that poem "doggerel".
If this sounds selfish, then it is. Readers _are_ selfish - they've paid $19.95
or whatever for a 30-page volume of poems, and they want something back. Unless
one is paid to read poetry (which I guess a few people here are ...), then one
doesn't want to waste one's time reading doggerel.
Tom Beard.
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 23:07:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <BERNSTEI@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: ACLA Call for Papers on Lit. betw. Phil & Cultural Studies
ACLA '96
CALL FOR PAPERS
LITERATURE BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
American Comparative Literature Association
University of Notre Dame
April 11-13, 1996
Keynote Speakers
Rodolphe Gasche, Elizabeth Grosz, David Lloyd
Poetry Reading
Lyn Hejinian, John Matthias
While cultural studies and continental philosophy/poststructuralism might
be regarded as two mutually exclusive paradigms, this conference will
explore how the intersections between them can open new productive
possibilities for literary and comparative studies. Toward this end we
propose to interrogate the following set of issues:
Rethinking Modernity: Literature/Philosophy/Culture * Cultural Significance
of Poststructuralist Theory: Derrida, Irigaray, Lyotard * Feminism: Between
Philosophy and Cultural Studies * Sexualities, "Racial" Identities, and
Queer Theory * Cultural and Ethical Figures of Otherness * Post
Enlightenment Philosophies, Pre-Enlightenment Literatures * National
Identities/Comparative Literatures/Postcolonial Studies *
History/Event/Practice: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault * Models of Culture
in Cultural Studies and Deconstruction * Cultural Studies: Without
Philosophy? * Psychoanalysis, Film, and Contemporary Philosophy *
Philosophers Reading Poets/Poets Reading Philosophers *
Papers and panels on other topics related to the theme of the conference
are welcome. Papers should be no longer than 3000 words; paper proposals
approximately 250 words. Panel proposals must include: title, chairperson,
the proposal of 250 words for the panel and a complete set of papers or
proposals.
Deadline for submissions: October 15, 1995.
Address submissions and inquiries to:
Krzysztof Ziarek
Department of English
356 O'Shaughnessy Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556-5639
tel. (219) 631-5637
fax (219) 631-8209
or by email to: English.acla.96@nd.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 20:31:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: favourite care word: "you"
Charles Alexander wrote:
>On Tue, 22 Aug 1995 20:26:46 -0500,
>Maria Damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>
>>In message <72369.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
>>> On Tue, 22 Aug 1995 09:26:46 -0500,
>>> maria damon <damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> >In message <199508220632.XAA09596@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion
>>> > grou
>>> p
>>> >writes:
>>> >> > [D
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for
ignorance
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) &
>>> > > > neo-colonizing
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially
>>> > > > several
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias,
>>> > > > oh,ho,
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof"
Tobacco
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak
was at
>>> >> > > the
>>> >> >dry
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>>> >> >prescience
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter
>>> > > > chose
>>> >> >> encore
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>>> >> >moments
>>> >> >> >>to be
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the
>>> > > > streams
>>> >> >were
>>> >> >> >>hooks
>>> >> >> >>>.
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds
>>> > > > of
>>> >> >> darkness
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel.
>>> > > > Likewise
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
>>> >> > > soft
>>> >> >> fruit
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles
considered
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>> >> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>> >> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>>> >> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>>> >> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>>> >> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
>>> >> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
>>> >> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
>>> >> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
>>> >> >> beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
>>> >> >and silos yield rainbows. Combines circle the outlying
>>> >> premises as substantive as crayons now confused with thought
>>> >whose rainbows rival cosmic immensities to the tune of
>>> I'm not biting on this, Maria, no matter how you sing it
>>oy, i get reprimanded in public for my lines, my worst POETICS nightmare
>is on hold, would you care to dance while we're waiting, save me
the friction of a cushion to inflate, support, revere
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:51:39 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: the renga that took the place of itself
irritant renga -- yes scanning the fairly familiar yards of it until
down , holding mouse button, to the unfmilair, the new line. Gee all
the way through this text again and again like a partridge in a
pear-tree building and building. It's the time it takes. It's that
time in which the programme runs so long that you don't know what's
happened to the ads. I like it.
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, 23 Aug 1995 21:42:45 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Wallace who?
Jordan asks:
>List at large
>Is there really an avantgarde tradition in North America totally unaware of
>Wallace Stevens?
Yes, but by strange coincidence (OR IS IT?!) the movement calls itself "The
Emporers of Ice Cream" and its logo is a clam playing an accordian.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 23:54:25 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: mormon in the armoire
Comments: To: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
On 22 Aug 95 at 21:06, Sheila E. Murphy wrote:
> >In message <950822163805_60663502@mail04.mail.aol.com> UB Poetics discussion
> >group writes:
> >> >> >>>>>>>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> (inspection
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> kook!"
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> warehouse, curls
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
> >> the dr
> >> >y
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> cleaners
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> prescience
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> >> encore
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> moments
> >> >> >>to be
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> were
> >> >> >>hooks
> >> >> >>>.
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> >> darkness
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently
> >> soft
> >> >> fruit
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >> >>>>>>>>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >> >>>>>>>>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> >> >>>>>>>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >> >>>>>>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >> >>>>>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >> >>>>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >> >>>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >> >>>other than prints, trace free of cloth, slow memory night
> >> >> >>with customs planted in them to retract what almost fastens onto
> >> >> >the unhinged wing of night's stern and contracted falsity
> >> >> as blessed glass retracts whatever mule the heart
> >> > beats. In the ensuing silence, her eyes turn from white space
> >> to a purer white described without even a thought and carried to another
> >> plasm, another phone call from the regional director
> >of miasmal blankness, white to the core of whiteness only
> wafts to the color in principio which self erases
golden sections of no-mind shining
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 23:54:31 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Value/genius in/with trouble/Poetry
Comments: To: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
On 23 Aug 95 at 7:37, Herb Levy wrote:
> Even most of the more mainstream poets, including some who may still be
> interested in heroics, seem largely to have given on the idea of a big, big
> masterpiece.
Do you mean that people have stopped doing huge pieces, or that an
equation of the hugeness of a piece with its value which once existed
has gone away? Some of us are still working on big, big pieces --
I've got one in progress that will run 668 pages (I know this ahead
of time due to the chance operations that pre-structured it), and
Ron's still in the midst of his "The Alphabet" (I don't know what
others are up to on the big projects front -- is Armand Schwerner
still writing Tablets?).
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 22:18:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: the renga that took the place of itself
In-Reply-To: <MAILQUEUE-101.950824155139.1120@ccnov2.auckland.ac.nz>
On Thu, 24 Aug 1995, Tony Green wrote:
> irritant renga -- yes scanning the fairly familiar yards of it until
> down , holding mouse button, to the unfmilair, the new line. Gee all
> the way through this text again and again like a partridge in a
> pear-tree building and building. It's the time it takes. It's that
> time in which the programme runs so long that you don't know what's
> happened to the ads. I like it.
>
Yes, it is the time, and some of us can only afford so much of it. I only
receive ten hours of net time a month. Three quarters of it is spent
doing email reading, replying and deleting. I like this list because I'm
always learning new stuff. I'm being introduced to worlds of poetics I'd
never experienced, but renga is not one that I am enjoying. It was fun
for awhile, but it's like beating a dead horse (to use a cliche).
However I know other people still like it so could we come up with a code
word as a heading for rengas so I don't have to look at them. I always
find myself becoming intrigued by interesting titles and then cursing as
I find out it's renga. For those of you who use the digest mode, you have
my condolences.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 22:26:41 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 22 Aug 1995 to 23 Aug 1995
>Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 11:36:54 -0400
>From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
>Subject: Perelman's forthcoming and recent
>
>Bob Perelman does seem to be prolific these days! Can anybody provide
>publication information on his forthcoming critical book(s)? Are there
>one or two?
: I think there's just one critical book coming out, on LangPo from
Princeton. Meanwhile a chunk of it (the fairly harsh essay on Andrews
mentioned a couple days ago by someone) can be read in a recent (number
provided if desired) issue of Arizona Quarterly.
Another recent issue, btw, offers hardcopy version of the Bernstein piece on
"mainstream" poetry vs. the (e)mag world of "alternative" journals and
books--the essay that's also downloadable via EPC.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 22:50:25 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: your mail
In-Reply-To: <303ba26374ae002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "maria damon" at Aug 23,
95 04:49:29 pm
It was interesting to read that strange letter from Corn. (Is he a
well-known poet in the US?) I mean to hear language that comes out of
assumptions that are so much different from the ones one has been
assuming all these years. Foir example, the use of the word
"rhyme"--Mr Corn seems to use the word to mean some kind of end-rime,
which I must admit I have heard elsewhere, but not from a poet, as
far as I know. As to "meter"--I was unaware that that term, which I
have always heard used to discuss poems by Milton, say, or
Shakespeare, was used by or about poets this half-century at least.
One must have noticed his asking about the "conventions that govern"
contemporary poetry. Is he really of a mind to support those two
terms, especially the verb? The idea of governing poetry is as odd as
the idea of "mastering" words, it seems to me. But it is an
eye-opener to hear that there are poets (if Corn is representative of
some larger order) who think that way. The crossing of the BuffNet
and that (is it) CAP-L list might be really interesting. What does
CAP-L (I mean the title) stand for?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:58:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: AWOL: Association for the Study of Australian Literature
ASAL: Association for the Study of Australian Literature
Incorporating the Australian Literature Society (established Melbourne 1899)
Patrons: Jack Davis, AD Hope, Thomas Keneally, Judith Wright.
The Association for the Study of Australian Literature sees a lively
literary culture as essential to the intellectual life of Australia. To
this end it promotes the study, discussion and creation of Australian
writing. It also seeks to increase the awareness of Australian writing in
the wider community and throughout the world. ASAL's members include
writers and publishers, undergraduates and postgraduates, academics and
teachers and anybody interested in Australian literature.
Members of ASAL meet each year at an annual conference, usually in July.
Discussion ranges across broad historical, cultural, critical and
theoretical contexts, always with some consideration of recent writing. As
well as providing the most important national showcase for current research
and critical debate on Australian literary culture, the conference always
invites several Australian writers to read and mix with delegates. It also
serves as a meeting place for publishers and authors. Recent conferences
have been at such diverse locations as Canberra, Perth, Ballarat, Wagga
Wagga, Launceston and Brisbane. ASAL conferences are renowned for their
relaxed social atmosphere, with highlights such as a parody night and the
Frank Moorhouse Perpetual Trophy for Ballroom dancing.
ASAL's newsletter, Notes & Furphies, is posted twice a year to members,
and provides information about current research, and bibliographic,
historical and critical notes useful for anybody interested in Australian
writing.
ASAL also makes three annual literary awards: the Gold Medal of the
Australian Literature Society for an outstanding literary work; the Walter
McRae Russell award for the best work of literary scholarship; and the Mary
Gilmore award for the best first book of poetry. The AA Philips Prize is an
occasional award that marks as especially noteworthy or longstanding
contribution to Australian Literature.
As well as these major activities, ASAL runs one-day conferences and
seminars, and has developed a publishing program contributing to such books
as The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, The Penguin New Literary History
of Australia, and the study of individual authors.
Membership of ASAL costs $30 for individuals ($75 for 3 year membership)
$40 for institutions
($100 for 3 year membership)
$15 concession
(student/unwaged).
Overseas membership add
$5 to cover additional postage
of Notes & Furphies.
(Australian dollars).
Application forms are available from:
Ron Blaber
The Treasurer, ASAL
Communications and Cultural Studies
Curtain University
Bentley WA 6102.
************************
Australian Writing OnLine is an publicity and distribution service for
Australian writers and publishers. For further information please email us
at M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au, write to AWOL PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137
Australia, phone (02) 747 5667, fax (02) 747 2802
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 1995 23:05:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <v01530503ac60ef9b576a@[192.0.2.1]> from "Herb Levy" at Aug 23,
95 07:54:27 am
I was certainly hoping that Herb & others knew that when I referred
to those who equate music with lyric poetry, I was distancing myself
from them . . . .
All my life my mother and sister and wife and dogs and friends have
been listening to my records and claiming that what was coming out
was not music.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 03:27:00 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Wallace who?
Steve Carll--thanks for the stevens reference to surrealism (to make
a clam play acordion is to invent and not discover), yet i wonder if
stevens' problem with surrealism wasn't also its CONVULSIVE BEAUTY--
its chance meeting, and in this sense Dickinson can be said to be more
like Surrealism than stevens (though stevens has "the sound of two words
that clash" sic?)---For instance, Stevens: It is not every day the world
arranges itself into a poem. vs. Dickinson: A word made flesh is seldom
and tremblingly partook---
and to what extent does TONE matter more than meaning? the tone of tone?
cs
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 03:05:14 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
Maria,
to your question re
"doggerel stalinists" is so contemptuous
>that i feel my own work indicted. personally, i love doggerel,
Me too, as I think my work in several places makes quite clear,
particularly if one includes childhood rhymes, tho I would be as apt to
cite Duncan as Stein for that influence (not to mention Seuss and P.D.
Eastman and Carroll)
how do you know that those writers of "inferior verse" (as the
>dictionary defines d.) don't experience themselves to be struggling,
searching, saying something that has never been said, engaged in a
deeper questioning...--md
>
I don't. The great value of Cary's book--for my money the single best
critical volume on 20th C. poetry that exists--is that he begins
deliberately with the "most despised" of all genres and from that point
builds a description of poetry as community that extends outward in all
directions to include pretty much everything that was written. Thus he
can discuss how Pound's work found itself in socialist newspapers of
the 1930s (at a point when EP himself had already begun his fascination
with Il Duce).
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 03:26:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
Alan writes:
>
>How exactly do these people connect with language poetry, beyond the
fact that perhaps you like their work?
>
I don't want to make any large claims (and "liking their work" seems
fine to me), but I do think that virtually all pose either formal
(gamelan, Reich, Partch, ROVA) and/or social (Guthrie, ROVA again,
Partch again, Brecht) models for relating their work to the world that
have had powerful impacts on me.
One might make any kind of systematic correlation I suppose, or build a
model on some such idea as "mode of liner note," alternating between
such options as "early Dylan faux poetry" or "dense Braxton scientistic
jargon"-- but that's the attraction that models always hold. The world
itself is more complex.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 03:36:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: your mail
it was clear from his post that he was referring to questions
>of personal taste, not to Howe's "goodness" or "badness" as a poet.
Amen!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 03:52:32 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: your mail
Alfred Corn has quite a few books, going back to 1976 (he was born in
'43, which places him mid-G1 in Steve Evans' old model), teaches at
Columbia, sometimes writes on homosexuality for The Nation, has won the
Blumenthal and Levinson prizes from Poetry Magazine and a prize from
the American Academy.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 08:22:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: nadir of the W
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950823161521.12312B-100000@athens> from "Aldon L.
Nielsen" at Aug 23, 95 04:17:15 pm
> I'm more than a little puzzled by the reluctance to define the word
> "spirituality" combined with an insistent usage of that word.
>
> Perhaps that is the defining instance of the spiritual???
As used in the recent context here, I think of it more in the terms
William Blake proposed when he argued someone can be simultaneously
your corporeal friend and your spiritual enemy.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 08:38:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: now words/cognitive dissonance
In-Reply-To: <950823185258_81691846@mail02.mail.aol.com> from "Jordan Davis."
at Aug 23, 95 06:52:59 pm
> what is
> language if it ain't a fact?
>
> language is words
>
> and language is talking
>
> and something else
>
> But don't confuse me with the facts
>
> Jordan
But my habitation is precisely a confusion of facts irritably reaching
after a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the penetralium of
mystery. I think. Or was that Coleridge? Or Olson? Anyway, we
definitely had lunch on Thursday.
Best,
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 09:22:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: tone of tone
to what extent does TONE matter more than meaning? the tone of tone? asks cs
well you catch tone (or what you think is the tone) before you catch the
meaning? as in, everybody under the age of 30 interviewed on NPR ends
declarative statements with a rising inflection? so you think nobody born
after 1965 is sure of anything?
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 08:49:47 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: How Hear Howe?
gwyn the girl writes:
>... seminal (ovarian?) ...
>
> Gwyn
how 'bout germinal?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 09:03:43 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: the renga that took the place of itself
lindz the girl writes:
> ... could we come up with a code
> word as a heading for rengas so I don't have to look at them.
>
> Lindz
good idea: how 'bout RENGA?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 09:07:17 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
george b writes:
> I was certainly hoping that Herb & others knew that when I referred
> to those who equate music with lyric poetry, I was distancing myself
> from them . . . .
> All my life my mother and sister and wife and dogs and friends have
> been listening to my records and claiming that what was coming out
> was not music.
really? all your female relatives? none of your male relatives? can you
explain this phenomenon?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 09:10:39 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Howe Now, Brown Formalist (and Bob Perelman too)
ron s writes:
> Maria,
>
> to your question re
> "doggerel stalinists" is so contemptuous
> >that i feel my own work indicted. personally, i love doggerel,
>
> Me too, as I think my work in several places makes quite clear,
> particularly if one includes childhood rhymes, tho I would be as apt to
> cite Duncan as Stein for that influence (not to mention Seuss and P.D.
> Eastman and Carroll)
>
> how do you know that those writers of "inferior verse" (as the
> >dictionary defines d.) don't experience themselves to be struggling,
> searching, saying something that has never been said, engaged in a
> deeper questioning...--md
> >
> I don't. The great value of Cary's book--for my money the single best
> critical volume on 20th C. poetry that exists--is that he begins
> deliberately with the "most despised" of all genres and from that point
> builds a description of poetry as community that extends outward in all
> directions to include pretty much everything that was written. Thus he
> can discuss how Pound's work found itself in socialist newspapers of
> the 1930s (at a point when EP himself had already begun his fascination
> with Il Duce).
>
> Ron
thanks for the clarification. i too like cary's project, tho i think the book
claims too much for itself as paradigm-breaking (a typical academic pitfall),
and, in fact, is primarily a rich bibliography. --md
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 09:18:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: commercial e-mail accounts
I have a general and pragmatic question. as of sept 1, i'll be on the cape, as
i sd, on sabbatical, and am looking for the "best" (ie cheapest for most time)
commercial e-mail account i can find, since it's impractical (ie unnecessarily
expensive) to stay on my umn account for the yr. It seems that people here write
on a variety of commercial accounts; can you give me the benefit of your
research and experience and advise me which you recommend? or, alternately,
(esp chris funk) does anyone know of any cape-based systems (WHOI, MBL) i could
join?
thanks in advance,
md
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 09:34:35 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: How Hear Howe?
In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 23 Aug 1995 20:43:21 -0400 from
<gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Gwyn,
Had Quark Xpress existed (or had I known of it were it to have existed) when
we were working on "A Bibliography..." I probably would have tried to use it
(and may have had good results). As it was, I used a system called Script,
which was available via a mainframe computer. To raise and lower letters, I
had to precede them with commands that looked something like &S'. (to raise)
and &s'. (to lower). These commands were intended for the creation of foot
notes in scholarly papers. So, on screen the descending "steps" on the page
would have looked something like:
.il 3
&S's.t&s'e
.il 4
&S'p.s
To get overlapping text, I pasted up two separate sheets that were then
made into a composite by the printer (yes, reviewing the blue lines was
a crucial process -- Thomson-Shore did a wonderful job).
Having completed this job, I _did_ feel liberated by having lived within
(or, more to the point, nearly within) Susan's text world. Since that time,
I have done some spatial playing, most commonly by combining text and
copier "effects." While Susan's book is clearly not the first one to explore
visual elements in remarkable ways, hers was vital for me because of my
extended contact with it.
When going over the page galleys, Susan was passionate about how the book
would look because the questions of spacing were relevant to what information
the reader would gain (or lose) depending on presentation. As many know, she
has thought long and hard about what Emily Dickinson's work could/should look
like in print. She also spoke of having seen first editions of Wallace Stevens'
books -- and how he used space in them was reevelatory to her. I'm just back
from a quick trip to London, and while there, her comments about Stevens
resonated. I saw (but could not afford) first edition William Carlos Williams'
books -- the poems looked and sounded even more remarkable, simply because of
the presentation.
I hope that we (a generation growing up with poets like Susan Howe as
north stars for the potential within experimentation) can feel liberated.
Cheers,
Gale
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 12:01:26 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: How Hear Howe?
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%95082410244435@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Gale,
One of the other very interesting/revelatory parts of having Howe in
workshop (one of the 19,778 interesting parts!) was learning that she had
started her creative career as a visual artist. Rereading _Eikon
Basilike_ or _Defenestration of Prague_ with that knowledge, it was
enlightening to see how that visual style informed the presentation of
her work. I think when you read Howe, your eyes are like a laser,
simultaneously scanning and imprinting. Or maybe I've just been sitting
behind a Macintosh too long.
Quark XPress makes it easy to flip, rotate, angle, skew, superimpose, and
otherwise deform/inform text--a boon to the experimenter.
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 10:45:39 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: THEN USE IT!
In-Reply-To: <303c86bc48f1002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Thu, 24 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
> lindz the girl writes:
> > ... could we come up with a code
> > word as a heading for rengas so I don't have to look at them.
> >
> > Lindz
>
> good idea: how 'bout RENGA?--md
>
WOW, never would have thought of that myself, probably because apparently
if you're born after 1965 you don't know nuttin'. So renga-ers no more
flashy titles that spark my interest (eg mormon in the armoire ) unless
you include the word RENGA. Phew it will be such a relief, I was really
stressing over finding just the right word, Thanks Maria.
The GIRL, LIndz
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 07:44:25 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Criteria (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 07:39:29 -1000 (HST)
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
To: poetics@buffalo.cc.edu
Subject: Criteria (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 03:09:21 -1000
From: Indepen <adc8@columbia.edu>
To: Susan Schultz <sschultz@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Subject: Criteria
To the POETICS List:
I know that individual posts do not necessarily reflect the views of all
subscribers or represent a fair sampling of the thinking of LANGUAGE poets
in general. So I'm going to continue on with an open mind and assume that
answers to the questions I asked could be better put than some of those
posted these past few days. Keith Tuma made sense; he thought about what
he was writing before just lashing out. There are no doubt others who can
do this, which I'll continue believing until evidence proves otherwise.
To begin with, one small point: I didn't say posts were designed
to change people's minds but instead their thinking. Why be a LANGUAGE,
or any sort of poet if you're not sensitive to language? And if you have
no interest in changing someone's thinking, why not just send the post to
yourself and enjoy the sound of your own voice?
On the possibility or impossibility of evaluating poetry: The
idea that all poems are of equal interest, that no poem is either good or
bad, can be believed by some people, obviously, but not by most readers.
Check your own experience: when you sit down with a new magazine of
poetry, do you really begin at the beginning and in perfect calm read each
poem with equal interest, enjoying, learning and feeling in equal measure
on every page, regardless of what happens there? If you do, you will be
an Editor's Delight, the ideal subscriber, who will never dislike any of
the offerings. Is this actually how you read? Or do you not abandon some
poems in entire boredom, go on to others, reread some with pleasure and
fascination, dismiss others with a chuckle, etc.? Be honest.
By the same token, if evaluation is as contingent as some of the
posts say it is, how is LP able to dismiss "mainstream" poetry as dull or
retrograde or clunky or whatever? Isn't that an evaluation? If it is, on
what basis is the dismissal made? What are your standards? When David
Kellogg cites all the usual criteria that have been applied to the
evaluation of poetry since Day One, I have to ask him why he doesn't read
the "mainstream" poetry that has those qualities in abundance. Obviously
there are other restrictions he is bringing to his evaluation that he
doesn't mention--like (I'm just guessing) "communication forms drawn from
ordinary conversational practice or logical discourse are excluded," or
something like that. Whatever they are, these *extra* criteria, the ones
that distinguish LP from "mainstream," ought to be describable, and that's
what I'd like to hear, provided the describer can communicate clearly.
My own experience: I have read in LP magazines and didn't get
anything out them. I also read some essays in a collection about the
movement. They didn't sound convincing. It's only because of Ron
Silliman's postings on CAP-L that I looked into the question again. In an
interesting post made some six months ago, he asserted that the LP movment
was in the process of splintering into multiple sub-groups who no longer
shared the same aesthetic bases, and that, in effect, these groups could
no longer "read" each other. I would be curious to hear whether other
Langpoets agree that this is true; and, if so, what are the differences
that make it impossible to care about the writings of other splinter
groups? I hope that no one is going to say it is altogether impossible to
discuss the ideas on which poetry or poetries are based. If so, why
subscribe to a discussion group, and why claim a place in the universe of
discourse?
On the question of "music," shouldn't we admit that the sound
techniques of actual music and verbal texts are too far removed from each
other to make this metaphor at all useful? And if pure sound is all that
matters in poetry, why hasn't the movement hailed Dame Edith Sitwell as
one of its heroes?
A final question: are Laura Riding, Dylan Thomas, John Ashbery,
Michael Palmer, Ann Lauterbach, and Jorie Graham LANGUAGE poets. On what
basis do you determine whether someone is writing LP?
Alfred C.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:07:46 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
I just wanted to reply to one point in Alfred Corn's latest points
(and I do think Keith Tuma is right that Corn is a friendly ghost--
also there is intelligence and concern in his willingness to dialogue)
In particular the assumption that this POETICS list is a LANGUAGE
POETRY list. I'm bringing this up because I've received other notes
(mostly backchannel) from people claiming fear of being stifled or
making enemies etc by going against the LANG PO orthodoxy (or orthodoxies)
---To beg the question of whether there IS a LANG-PO orthodoxy for now
, I first want to say that when i was told about this list, though I was
told Charles (Bernstein) was running it, etc, that it was not billed
to me as a LANG.PO list and there have been many OLSONION--BLACK MOUNTAIN
threads as well, and even some NEW YORK SCHOOL ones (though these
"factions" overlap and are not highly defined), there was even discussion
on LEONARD COHEN. If there is a sense that the debates on this list are
debates WITHIN the langyage community (to people like Corn) then either
Bernstein and Andrews are better markerters than I give them credit for
or this assumption needs to be exploded (probably both---the "eithor/or"
construction of the last senstence is not the best way to say it--but
it's too late now....) Chris Stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:01:48 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 24 Aug 1995 07:44:25 -1000 from
<sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
The difficulty, sir, that I have in specifying criteria for "good poetry"
is, at least in part, related to a recognition of the pioneering critical
work undertaken so many decades ago by Victor Shklovsky and his Russian
Formalist colleagues.
...A work may be (1) intended as prosaic and accepted as poetic,
or (2) intended as poetic and accepted as prosaic. This suggests
that the artistry attributed to a given work results from the way
we perceive it. By "works of art," in the sense, we mean works
created by special techniques designed to make the works as
obviously artistic as possible.
V. Shklovsky, "Art as Technique," _Russian Formalist
Criticism, translated by Lemon and Reis, p. 8
Poetic imagery is a means of creating the strongest possible
impression. As a method it is, depending upon its purpose,
neither more nor less effective than other poetic techniques;
it is neither more nor less effective than ordinary or negative
parallelism, comparison, repetition, balanced structure,
hyperbole, the commonly accepted rhetorical figures, and all
those methods which emphasize the emotional effect of an
expression (including words or even articulated sounds).
ibid., pp. 8-9
And so life is reckoned as nothing. Habitualization devours
works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war.
"If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously,
then such lives are as if they had never been." And art exists
that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make
one feel things, to make the stone _stony._ The purpose of art
is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived
and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make
objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the
difficulty and length of perception because the process of
perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.
_Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the
object itself is not important._ [italics in the original]
ibid., p. 12
In studying poetic speech in its phonetic and lexical structure
as well as its characteristic distribution of words and in the
characteristic thought structures compounded from the words, we
find everywhere the artistic trademark -- that is, we find
material obviously created to remove the automatisism of
perception; the author's purpose is to create the vision which
results from that deautomatized perception. A work is created
"artistically" so that its perception is impeded and the greatest
possible effect is produced through the slowness of its perception.
As a result of this lingering, the object is perceived not in
its extension in space, but, so to speak, in its continuity. Thus
"poetic language" gives satisfaction. According to Aristotle,
poetic language must appear strange and wonderful; and, in fact,
it is often actually foreign: the Sumerian used by the Assyrians,
the Latin of Europe during the Middle Ages, the Arabisms of the
Persians, the Old Bulgarian of Russian literature, or the elevated,
almost literary language of folk songs.
ibid., pp. 21-22.
In light of these developments we can define poetry as
-attenuated, tortuous_ speech. Poetic speech is _formed speech._
Prose is ordinary speech -- economical, easy, proper, the
goddess of prose [dea prosae] is a goddess of the accurate,
facile type, or the "direct" expression of a child. I shall discuss
roughened form and retardation as the general _law_ of art at
greater length in an article on plot construction.
ibid., p. 23
There is "order" in art, yet not a single column of a Greek temple
stands exactly in its proper order; poetic rhythm is similarly
disordered rhythm. Attempts to systematize the irregularities have
been made, and such attempts are part of the current problem in
the theory of rhythm. It is obvious that the systematization will
not work, for in reality the problem is not one of complicating
the rhythm but of disordering the rhythm -- a disordering which
cannot be predicted. Should the disordering rhythm become a convention,
it would be ineffective as a device for the roughening of language.
ibid., p. 24
If we take Shklovsky to heart (which I have done, with much thanks to
playwright Paula Vogel for introducing me to his work), we recognize
that criteria for "good poetry" is always shifting. A work may be
written in "tradional form" in such a way that it defamiliarizes the
reader's response to that form, or disrupts the reader's expectations
in relation to the content. A work may also use any device (or technique
if you prefer) to make the poem poetic -- to remind us of the stone...
Vernacular speech, word fragments, discursive structure, random word
combinations, spatial arrangement, repetition, etc., can all be used
to make the reader take notice of the work at hand. So too collage,
cut-up, etc., etc. Queneau's 10 to the 14th power of sonnets is most
assuredly defamiliarizing in the most joyous possible ways. We live
in a time when we can take joy in the possibility that vertical criteria
can be swept aside -- that each work may astonish us on its own basis.
With perhaps too much zeal,
Gale Nelson
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:45:57 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (LONG)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950824074359.28042E-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
Dear Alfred Corn,
Since you single out Keith Tuma as the one person who thought about what
he was writing before lashing out, I'll assume that I'm one of the
dunderheaded lashers who disappoint (DLWD). Nevertheless, I persist.
For everybody's sake, I'll only respond to the part of this post that
addressed me, or that I think were more or less addressed to questions
I've fielded before.
> On the possibility or impossibility of evaluating poetry: The
> idea that all poems are of equal interest, that no poem is either good or
> bad, can be believed by some people, obviously, but not by most readers.
Yes. And *nobody* on this list said otherwise, not even maria; when she
said that she agreed with Duncan about there being no good or bad poems
that was NOT a refusal of evaluation, nor was it an "anything-goes" kind
of policy.
Certainly nobody has said that all poems are of equal interest.
"Interest" is precisely what is at issue, in the sense that our
evaluations of poems are "interested" (read: contingent) and thus
*different*. I am interested in some poetry because I like it; I'm
interested in other poetry because I don't. I find boredom interesting,
but boredom is usually thought of as "bad."
> By the same token, if evaluation is as contingent as some of the
> posts say it is, how is LP able to dismiss "mainstream" poetry as dull or
> retrograde or clunky or whatever? Isn't that an evaluation? If it is, on
> what basis is the dismissal made? What are your standards? When David
> Kellogg cites all the usual criteria that have been applied to the
> evaluation of poetry since Day One, I have to ask him why he doesn't read
> the "mainstream" poetry that has those qualities in abundance. Obviously
> there are other restrictions he is bringing to his evaluation that he
> doesn't mention--like (I'm just guessing) "communication forms drawn from
> ordinary conversational practice or logical discourse are excluded," or
> something like that. Whatever they are, these *extra* criteria, the ones
> that distinguish LP from "mainstream," ought to be describable, and that's
> what I'd like to hear, provided the describer can communicate clearly.
I guess I have to respond here, since my name's mentioned, but let me
state that I have NEVER done any of the following:
a) dismissed mainstream poetry (tho I dismissed Tim Steele's prose--
would you care to defend it, or describe him as "mainstream"?);
b) said I don't read mainstream poetry (I do, in fact, even the
occasional Alfred Corn, even Philip Larkin, tho I once called
the latter "asinine");
c) excluded any of the things he mentioned from my
likings (ordinary conversational practice etc.)
In fact, poetry popularly described as LP (I won't quibble about terms
here, about who is or isn't LP, I have no interest in that game, my own
recent poetry learns from it but probably wouldn't be described as such)
uses all of those things: ordinary conversational practice, logical
discourse, etc. Sometimes its critical discourse has seemed to dismiss
such elements, but that's the difference between the blanket of theory and
the field of practice.
As for the dismissal of mainstream poetry by some language poets, I don't
think it's more surprising than other critiques by excluded groups in
other contexts, and a lot of times it's right. Just to take your own post
for an example, one thing that pisses people off is the concept of a
"mainstream" in the first place -- something that, for most people who
believe in the term, is best eaten reified. When, just to take an almost
arbitrary example, J.D. McClatchy begins his Vintage book of contemporary
American poetry by arguing that no camps need form because everybody
already knows who the big ones are and then begins the book *out* of
chronological order with LOWELL and BISHOP, pushing Olson for example
about ten poets down the line and representing him with a single poem --
well, that's disgusting. There are I'm sure lots of specific examples of
exclusion from the movement's early days that others on this list could
tell you about.
However, it seems to me that the anger from LPs about mainstream poetry
has toned down in recent years, and why? Partly because exclusionary
tactics like McClatchy's are more recognizable for the strongarming they
are, and partly because some wrongs are being righted (the new Norton
postmodern etc.). The breakup that Ron mentioned I think is partly due to
the fact individual language poets are getting recognized, and that group
identification is less attractive to leaders who are recognizable
individually. (I'm not necessarily speaking of you, Ron; I'm thinking
sociologically now.) Certainly Ron has advocated precisely the kind of
more pluralistic reading that you seem to think language poetry excludes
(see his "Canons and Institutions").
From my point of view it's you, and not me, who describe any liking of
language poetry in exclusionary terms, like the way you assume that I
don't read what you call "mainstream" poetry -- a pretty galling and
arrogant assumption, not to mention 100% wrong. I don't need to exclude
anybody to desribe my tastes. For example, my favorite poets among the
language group are Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, and Leslie Scalapino (tho
she's maybe not defined as "in" the group by everybody). These poets make
use of prose, which I find interesting, and they've opened for me ways of
thinking about the poetic process (or better, procedure?) that are pretty
fresh for me. With Ron there's a sense of immediacy in the project at
hand, something to be done, and a willingness *not to exclude* the
seemingly anomalous or "ugly" material. So some stuff gets left seemingly
hanging, but not "wasted," -- or "waste" is reconceived in the process of
the poem. My response to Hejinian is I guess pretty typical -- My Life
was a pivotal book for me, the work that made me think, hey, there's
something going on here -- and its virtues are more apparent each time I
read it. Since everything I say about her has been said better somewhere
else, I'll refrain. With Scalapino for me it's again a question of
process, repetition, and -- in her case especially -- perspective. How a
subject gets talked around, through, wrung out. Her work is exhausting,
and saying "it's not for everybody" does not degrade its value *for me*
and for many others.
My reasons for reading each of these poets is often different from my
reasons for liking them, and may include political or research interests:
these can be transpersonal, and I may find the work satisfying in these
respects and worth promoting to others. I may even critique other poets
as not meeting such needs (politically indifferent, not worth writing a
paper on, not likely to interest students). This is all due to my
situatedness as an academic, my *contingent* (as an adjunct, highly ;-)
contingent) position in the university and, beyond that, the world. I
may also read other poets for other reasons. Who's to say? Me.
See? None of my reasons for liking any of these poets is based on an
exclusion of conversation, logical discourse, etc. I'd appreciate it if
you didn't assume wrong things about somebody you don't know for no
reason other than his presence on a mailing list.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 16:29:33 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 24 Aug 1995 07:44:25 -1000 from
<sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Well, the conversation is getting interesting and, damn, just when I have a
thousand things to do--seminars to prepare, deadlines, self-imposed deadlines.
So I'm not going to write the world's longest post on why I like to read
poems by, uh, Bernadette Mayer, Ron Silliman, Jerome Rothenberg, Lorine
Niedecker, Basil Bunting, Charles Bernstein, Michael Palmer, Cole Swensen,
Sir Thomas Wyatt, Frank Bidart, Thomas Campion, Baudelaire, Villon, Catullus,
Nathaniel Mackey, Nathaniel Tarn, Will Alexander, Robert Creeley, Leslie
Scalapino, Elizabeth Bishop, Thom Gunn, Dr. Suess, Turner Cassity, Firdosi,
Cid Corman, John Taggart, Clayton Eshleman, Homer, Horace, Dickinson, Susan
Howe, John Skelton, Mina Loy, Amiri Baraka, Larry Eigner, Roy Fisher, Allen
Fisher, Catherine Walsh, Maurice Scully, Gael Turnbull, Peter Redgrove, David
Dabydeen, H. D., Wallace Stevens, Laura Riding, William Bronk, Paul Celan,
Vallejo, Dante, Hugh Macdiarmid, Tom Raworth, Sappho, William Northcutt. . .oh
I'm already running out of gas. It's a big and glorious world: also crowded.
And I don't think of myself as much of a poet, which may make a difference.
BUT, in the spirit of friendly dialogue, I would like to ask Alfred Corn--yes
I've read two of the books too, _A Various Light_ and the book about NY--a
question. Just don't seem fair that you get to ask all the questions. You
mention that you have looked at langpo magazines and not been impressed and
read a book of essays on langpo and not been convinced. I'm wondering what
magazines and what critical book those were? And what put you off or didn't
convince? That would clarify some things.
One final point: you seem to suggest that the only alternative to the model
of discourse-as-persuasion is solipsistic blather. Can't agree.
--Keith Tuma (who was going to stop but now blathers on. . .
It may be obvious, but who knows? So I'll say that just because a name isn't
on that list above doesn't mean I don't read him/her with pleasure and just
because it is doesn't mean I read all of his/her work with pleasure. Must be
cautious with a ghost around and--hell--we also don't want to wake up all the
lurkers.
Oh, and one more thing: Michael Palmer doesn't for the most part think of
himself as a language poet, though the issue is complicated. See the interview
Lee Bartlett did with Palmer in the New Mexicao book _Talking Poetry_. MP
can speak for himself there.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 17:27:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
Dear Alfred C
Actually I think the important word in our posts (or my posts, I _love_ my
voice) was "try". That is, a congenital dislike for wilfullness opposes our
need to oppose what we see as travesties of the language, and what we say
seems like an awkward "lashing out".
I don't think you'll get very far with the false argument that we're trying
to be insensitive to language. We are passionate, meaning cold when
necessary, but we're not insensitive.
As for the evaluation of "mainstream" poetry, I'm not agin it. Let's have a
preamble to the discussion, from the pages of Poets & Writers 25th
Anniversary issue (which takes the form of reflections on "25" from ... oh
well, 21 writers). David Lehman quite rightly (if in a characteristically
extreme way) remarks that "There are still people who think that our general
cultural blight can be summed up in the word _workshop_ (as in "we
workshopped my sestina today"), just as Hitler thought that the popular dance
called the shimmy was the perfect metonymy for all the idiocy of America."
From the same issue, and in the preface to Dana Gioia's list of 25 love poems
by modern English-language poets which "deal with sexual love--_eros_ not
_agape_--expressed in every possible way", come these sentences:
The only pleasure some romances provide in retrospect is their bittersweet
absurdity. My only regret is that I could not list another 25 favorites. I
shall have to delay that pleasure for Poets & Writers' 50th anniversary.
I realize that you are not the author of either of these passages, and I
won't ask you to explain the comparison of people who distrust "workshops" to
Hitler.
And now I see Mr Nelson has posted Shklovsky and Mr Tuma has sent a list of
names (are catalog poems of interest?) and they are more affirmative and
passionate and I'll stop.
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 17:18:36 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
Dear Alfred Corn:
a coupla points
i never intended any of my responses to your queries to be vituperative or
dismissive. i'm not "lashing out;" if i seem to be, that's my "style," as
others on the list can attest; it has nothing to do with the topic.
i have never written on language poetry nor have a particular stake in its
thriving or wilting. i'm on the list because i met charles bernstein at a
conference and he offered to sign me up. i sd sure, great. i'd never been on a
list before. i didn't know about the cap-l list, tho' as i've said, it's
closely associated with some members of my department. so, in my particular
case, the people who "reached out" to me are the people whose list i joined.
i've felt welcome, though it's been clear during some interactions that i'm
coming from a different place. i try to take to heart robert duncan's "no good
or bad poetry," perhaps because as a fellow-traveler and sometime participant in
all kinds of schools that stress relativity, from the pop-psych insistence on "I
statements" ("I like this" rather than "this is good") to cultural studies's
underlying ethos of cultural relativity (for inst., i prefer montaigne to most
of his contemporaries, etc.)
anyway, those who are of the "personal experience is a bore, personal anecdotes
are narcissistic and self-indulgent" persuasion (which cuts across ideological
orientation, i've found) are probably dozing off by now, but i wanted to clarify
one person's history w/ the POETICS list and reflections on your latest forward.
come on down! (you can always use the DIGEST option)--maria d
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:39:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Criteriaria
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%95082417183943@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU> from "Keith Tuma" at
Aug 24, 95 04:29:33 pm
I'm still a fairly recent and novice reader of langpo and would like
to throw my two-bits out, for all they're worth.
I find langpo to be closer to its poetics than most other "schools"
insofar as it reads to me as theory. In it's "refusal to refer",
as George put it (I think), I find myself anchored in this clause
and its dynamics as referent itself. Moreover, In the reading
I have done, I find it to be more historical (erudite?) than Eliot
insofar as what is not being done as before or what is being resisted
(i.e. formal, syntactical, political expectations [desires?]) is its
momentum. What is absent, in other words, informs what is present
by virtue of negation: a system of difference, I suppose. In any case,
I can enjoy the clatter of words as I can enjoy O'Hara's lunch hour--I
love skimming the surface--but for some reason I am left feeling
uncomfortable when the within is a without. Maybe that is good, though.
And I suppose the reason I say all this is because Language Poetry,
when it was taught/introduced to me, was accessible through its
relationships to other "schools" we played with. Maybe that is good, too.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:49:02 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <303c87934c38002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "maria damon" at Aug 24,
95 09:07:17 am
At the time I wrote about my female relatives complaining about my
favorite music, I wondered whether someone would jerk a knee about
the fact that I mentioned female relatives.I did not mention "all" my
female relatives. It happens that I have just one wife and one kid,
who is my daughter, and had no father to listen to my record player.
In fact my first dog liked Charles Parker and could not abide
Coltrane. When I reared two of his sons (male) they didnt mind
Coltrane, but ran out of the room into the basement when I played
Giussepe Logan or John Chicai or however you spell it. My cats now
live outside the house, and my daughter digs alternative garage
bands. My wife Angela likes early Coltrane.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:50:13 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: the renga that took the place of itself
In-Reply-To: <303c86bc48f1002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "maria damon" at Aug 24,
95 09:03:43 am
Yeah, but what will we do if some wag titles her message RENGA and
then makes an interesting point about Nicole Brossard instead?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 19:02:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
In-Reply-To: <199508242249.PAA13423@fraser.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
Aug 24, 95 03:49:02 pm
Actually George's daughter is my roommate adn she likes Chet
Baker. George just plays everythin too loud, including during
classes.
But this discussion raises an interesting question, for me anyway.
I was raised on pop music and find a lot of jazz elusive, even
annoying, because I haven't a sense of its tradition, its lineage
and evolution. Is it me or is this required to HEAR what's
going on. Or, conversely, is this required to HEAR pop songs (does
one need to know that liverpool band in order to get the irony
of the Manchester scene, for ex.)
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 19:04:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: the renga that took the place of itself
In-Reply-To: <199508242250.PAA13578@fraser.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
Aug 24, 95 03:50:13 pm
Then we'll have to mire that interesting point amongst a
litany of disfunctional renga lines.
GB wrote:
>
> Yeah, but what will we do if some wag titles her message RENGA and
> then makes an interesting point about Nicole Brossard instead?
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 22:24:12 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (short)
In-Reply-To: <303cfab40c5e002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Sorry for inflicting a rather long post on everybody. But if I could
just say two things more, forms of agreement really:
1) Chris is right that this is NOT a langpo list, and that a variety of
perspectives get articulated here;
2) what maria said about style goes for me as well. A list is a
conversational forum; a lot of what gets said may seem rather blunt.
(Tho looking back at my post dismissed with others as lashing out,
there's nothing of substance I'd really change).
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 19:25:13 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Susan E. Dunn" <sedunn@S-WORD.STANFORD.EDU>
A. Corn writes:
>I am neither a Puritan nor a father. I did not ask that anyone be
>sacrificed, let alone Susan Howe, whose poetry I haven't read. Susan
>Dunn objects to an alleged scapegoating, but in doing so scapegoats
>CAP-L in general and me in particular"
My puritan narrative was not meant to be taken literally. It was
meant as an ironic absurdity. There was no intention of slander. I am
truly mortified that it was taken as such.
Susan Dunn sedunn@s-word.stanford.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 22:36:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950824074359.28042E-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
> A final question: are Laura Riding, Dylan Thomas, John Ashbery,
> Michael Palmer, Ann Lauterbach, and Jorie Graham LANGUAGE poets.
yes, no, yes, yes, yes, no. Three more and you can have the poetry
Hollywood Squares. I nominate Corn, Silliman, and Susan Howe.
XXXXXOOOOO,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 22:49:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
I seem to be the only one but I'll say matter of factly that I don't read
"mainstream poetry" -- closest I would get is Ashbery, or maybe Joy Harjo,
only one or two things of hers I like-- but I REALLY like them. The epithet
"mainstream" and the critical evaluation "boring" are pretty much synonymous
in my critical vocabulary. I subscribe to APR & do try to find things on
occasion that surprise-- actually Eileen Myles had a great piece there --
mainstream? no. I don't have time to read everything, so I don't read what I
can be pretty sure shares assumptions I find uninteresting, assumptions, even
at times supportive of social values I find threatening. I don't think any
one way of writing is correct, & I don't think the mainstream can be easily
characterized-- but you can often look at the publisher of a book & know
whether what's inside is gonna be drek or not. I work in a bookstore &
confirm this to myself daily.
It is sociological I think. I come almost entirely out of New American Poetry
through that to l.p.-- & have recently been hired to teach just that-- from
me thy're gonna get O'Hara, Mayer, Armantrout, Shapiro, Bernstein, etc. The
"splintering" Ron refered to is a result of two things I believe-- the
increase in audience for New American/l.p. & economic circumstances. Many
excellent writers my age are scrounging for $200 to publish a chapbook--
their audience becomes local.
--Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 22:58:03 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: new & forthcoming
"Bookstore guy" here to mention a few things forthcoming & new:
Carla Harryman's long-awaited City Lights book _There Never Was A Rose
Without A Thorn_ is out!
_Asia & Haiti_ by Will Alexander is just out from Sun & Moon.
U. Iowa published a book worth reading: _Voices Cast Out To Talk Us In_ by Ed
Roberson.
Forthcoming Sept. _Walter Benjamin: A Biography_ by Momme Broderson.
Apparently this is THE biography, translated by Malcolm Green. Verso
hardcover 30 dollars.
What else. . . new Ashbery from FSG in the fall. Selected Watten from Sun &
Moon, "Forthcoming" as they say. Alferi trans Swenson just out Sun & Moon.
Still haven't seen the Celan from Sun & Moon. Candidate for title of the fall
_The Missionary Position: The Ideology of Mother Teresa_ by Hitchens, also
Verso. Sun & Moon reprints _The Crystal Text_.
BIG Olson book by Ralph Maud $45 hardcover from Southern Illonois, fall
sometime. Feb. brings Mina Loy bio & reprint of Baedeker by FSG, suspect
Marissa has opinions on these. Big drama anthology from Sun & Moon. Collected
Padgett from Godine. Retallack's conversations with Cage from Wesleyan in
Oct. Rothenberg/Joris anthology. Kerouac _Book of Blues_.
Gym class, oceans to warn by, & truth. . .
(didn't feel like scrolling to the end of the renga)
--Rod
PS-- NYC recently lost 3 independent stores to the chains. Is that "great
selection" at Barnes & Noble still gonna be there after they're all gone?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 17:22:13 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 15:22:24 -1000
From: Indepen <adc8@columbia.edu>
To: Susan Schultz <sschultz@hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
To Keith Tuma:
The magazine's name was, no, there were two of them. But I can't
remember their names. It's been ten years. The anthology of critical
prose was titled L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. Was Charles Bernstein the editor?
Can't remember. Are there better collections of essays on the movement
than this one? And what are regarded as the best magazines?
From your list of favorite poets, Keith, it seems to me that you
don't restrict your tastes to the new movement. WHich means it isn't an
orthodoxy for you, but simply one of the places you find interesting
writing--is that a fair summary of what you are saying? Is this typical
of the subscribers to POETICS, or, on the other hand, do most of the
subscribers hew closer to the line on what is legit and what not?
Alfred Corn
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 22:06:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: new & forthcoming
In-Reply-To: <950824225711_62774927@emout04.mail.aol.com> from "Rod Smith" at
Aug 24, 95 10:58:03 pm
Maybe I'll add, since we're pluggin good stuff, George Stanley's
new book is due in September. I think it's _Gentle Northern Summer_
or thereabouts.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 22:31:43 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: who is this guy?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950824172156.6827B-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
Corn wrote:
"Is this typical of the subscribers to POETICS, or, on the other hand, do
most of the subscribers hew closer to the line on what is legit and what
not?"
Why are we being attacked? I find this whole discussion very confusing
as I too am new to the concept of language poets and " mainstream"
poets. I don't really consider anytype of poetry mainstream as it still
focuses on a certain section of the masses, but i suppose within the
community there has to be a norm. But howw is our discussion
typical of anything? Everyone here is so vocal in expressing themsleves,
we never seem to agree on anything and I like it. The dicussion is always
good when things get hot. But who is this guy who's trying to define us,
and (oh god) make generalizations about us. He's worse than a lurker as
he isn't even part of the list.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 05:48:44 EDT
Reply-To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: beard@MET.CO.NZ
Subject: Re: Language Poetry and Music
Would you count the libretto to _Einstein on the Beach_ as LangPo? For example,
Christopher Knowles's text, "These are the days", with its repetitions, strange
juxtapositions and fragmentations of words?
Or, moving towards "popular" music, how about the lyrics to Underworld's
_dubnobasswithmyheadman_ album? They certainly rely upon tone and fragmentary
images more than any structured exposition - "30000ft above the earth, Elvis,
fresh meat and a little whipped cream" - although they tend towards the Avant-
Pop a la Mark Leyner. The liner notes form an interesting visual/textual piece,
and as the design group _Tomato_ they published a book called _mm, skyscraper,
I love you_ using the same techniques.
Or, come to think of it, does scat singing count as sound poetry?
just a few ramblings,
Tom.
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 17:55:40 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
I've been noticing ever since I've been on the list, the absence of a
lot of writers associated with L=, and friends less clearly so
included too whose writings I've read and enjoyed. No Gottlieb, or
Seaton, or Tom Beckett-- no Johanna Drucker -- no Grenier or Eigner,
Susan Howe, Jackson Mac Low, Hannah Weiner. I don't see why anyone
would call this a L= . Is there some particular U.DS. academic
politics here that I'm not "getting"?
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, 25 Aug 1995 18:15:53 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Mitchellmania, Harpermania
Sure, will it tow my Ford Laser while I ride with you?
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, 25 Aug 1995 00:26:02 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: poetry/prose thinking
The temporal axis of engagement on this listserv virtually
garantees that its corpus - the prose as much as the poetry - is
collaboratively written, whether acknowledged, and to what
degree, or not. I for one have purposely listened-up for that in
posting to the poem. In fact I'd say that a lot of the poem has
to do with how to reflexively acknowledge the collaborative
nature of the listerv itself (and its concerns, and the reading
horizons of its various non/participants, etc). So I am surprised
at the unthinking tilt against the listserv's recent development,
to wit: the ongoing, collaboratively written poem.
Up til now I've tried to engage with these prosaic prods by means
of adding lines to versions of the poem. But how can this
persistent antagonism toward the poetry be explained? What does
it say about 'who' we are when we read, how we read/think, and
what we are reading for (and all this in specific relation to the
communal, processual address permitted by the listserv?)? Is it
really - it seems endemic to computer technology, complaints of
how slow it is - the repeated lines that are irksome as some have
politely said, or questions of lack of time, or is it more like a
judgement on the _quality_ of the 'slowed perception' that the
lines require?
These questions are for the poetry contributors as well. What
does this decision mean: of when and what to contribute to the
poem, and what and when to contribute to the prose instead? The
semantic content of the prose (e.g. reaching for facts about...)
is in some ways accountable to/by the institutional/pedagogical
context that implicitly lurks 'beneath' the listerv (viz.
university addresses appended to contributor names).
Some of these questions, the way I've quickly sketched em, may
seem to demand of contributors a 'self-inquiring' kind of
response, but I do mean them to be read in more of an objective
sense than that.
For subjectively speaking, I could evilly say more than the
following about how I find the prose posts at their worst to be
irredeemably complacent, inertial, phatic, self-regarding,
vapidly 'spontaneous', substitute television - just as some of
you no doubt could and have said and implied as much about your
reading experience of the poetry. So in other words: this kind of
judgement on quality ain't an interesting pursuit on these
terms - and there seems to be a general consensus on this. In any
event, to go on as I have just done wouldn't explain why this
antagonism exists in the first place, nor how to theorize it in a
reflexive way as a means toward interpreting the nature of this
listserv practice, and the potentials for both its poetry and its
prose. As we know blah blah blah, the history of prose, in all
its forms - and this evidently is no exception - is one of
positioning itself as the natural communicative ideology, in
comparison to poetry. This seems the case recently regardless of
medium - so that, for instance, the poetry on the listserv is
criticized for being "hard-copy," whereas there is no reflexive
critique at all of the listserv prose as being equally - if not
more - so. That's just one recent example of the agonism between
the genres. Now there is a preference for debate across the
boundary of the listerv itself (with a non-member) _in prose_,
rather than beginning one between the thinking in prose and in
poetry on the listserv itself. Expansionism, always the way. How
can people interested in poetry not be interested in thinking in
poetry especially in this listserv format? The common denominator
prevails: its the most conservative articulation that gets the
attention: so there's a collective rallying of 'explaining to do'
when the listserv is challenged by someone 'from outside'. While
the listserv's decentred centre, the poem itself, performs its
own variety of common excesses. This too long, but hey, only the
letters in these words have repeated (some might find comfort in
saying).
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 02:34:30 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <00995636.E727D360.13@met.co.nz>
I don't understand these classifications, emphases on definitions,
taxonomies, generations. Is this the point of poetry, to be slotted? Is
it only for other poets? If language poetry is a framework for a
movement, does one _belong_ or not?
Taxonomy's the death of it. Again, if Kristeva found a revolution in
poetic language, classification will kill it.
Who are we writing for?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 08:06:36 EDT
Reply-To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: beard@MET.CO.NZ
Subject: 27 - a reading
I hope this doesn't sound like advertising ...
but I've just completed a hypertext poem, one that invites the reader to
construct her or his own reading, and I'd like to mention the URL of the site
in the hope that people here could email or post their readings, so that I can
include these readings with the poem on my website.
The poem is called "27 - a reading", and is a tentative investigation of the
first 27 years of my life (as of tomorrow) in the form of fragments from
journals, letters, stories and notes. Both the highly structured nature of the
sequence (an attempt to deflect my tendency to jump to conclusions) and the
idea of "an autobiography in which I refuse to tell the story of my life" were
suggested by Alan Loney's book _The Erasure Tapes_.
The URL is "http://metcon.met.co.nz/nwfc/beard/www/notes27.html". The poem's
multi-dimensional structure has eluded my attempts to put it onto paper without
"flattening" it, so I've had to put it into hypertext. I'd also love to see
some "active readings" from list members with WWW access.
Here are a few readings that I've constructed:
a common thread, my old letters
began to fall
no psionic ability, oysters
7 days,
a murmuring, whisper
take your poems, tastefully
covered up
learn to see
landscape, rivers,
mountains,
a new light, rains
of fire - you are
dangerous flowers, unfrozen lakes
I stopped
dancing, began
to fall,
brilliant & lucid, it
wasn't easy.
I blindly continued by
careful nurturing the final choice.
Like unpredictable
electricity, the
stoical scheme,
the final choice
to the ceiling. Don't play
games, the stoical scheme of
reasoning power, tomorrow
like today.
I look forward to your readings.
Tom Beard.
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 08:05:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Corn pone
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950824172156.6827B-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
from "Susan Schultz" at Aug 24, 95 05:22:13 pm
> From your list of favorite poets, Keith, it seems to me that you
> don't restrict your tastes to the new movement. WHich means it isn't an
> orthodoxy for you, but simply one of the places you find interesting
> writing--is that a fair summary of what you are saying? Is this typical
> of the subscribers to POETICS, or, on the other hand, do most of the
> subscribers hew closer to the line on what is legit and what not?
>
> Alfred Corn
I think what's most amusing about this whole exchange for me is the
way Professor Corn so clumsily masks his own rare sectarianism
behind accusations of sectarianism.
Do you think we should let him see the loyalty oath we have to sign
before Papa Charlie let's us on the list?
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 08:12:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Renga free
In-Reply-To: <9508250626.AA66770@acs5.acs.ucalgary.ca> from "Louis Cabri" at
Aug 25, 95 00:26:02 am
Just to note the first renga-free morning since the virus hit.
Hallellujia. Maybe we'll survive after all.
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 08:33:05 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: music and poetry
Oh blah.
If the sound techniques of music and poetry are too far removed from
each other for this issue to make sense, then perhaps there is a
problem with both.
Too recapitulate briefly: Greek poetry was never anything but
involved with music; it did not exist apart from music. This is true
of epics, dramas, lyrics, and odes. Latin Poetry did not use music
but used the Greek musical meters. Early Christian poetry used
melodies from synagiogues and popular melodies in its hymns and
chanting. What about troubadours, trouveres, minnesingers and
meistersingers? Why did Thomas Wyatt beging his poem, "my lute,
awake?" Why did Donne title poems "song." Milton was passionate about
music. Dryden wrote pieces to be set to music.
In another post I mentioned Dickinson and Whitman. One sang hymns and
the other sang operas. The poems of both owe a great deal to music as
an analogical form.
Indeed, almost the only good poetry that approaches the assumption in the
statement I began with was eighteenth-century closed couplets. Even
there, the pentameter was a remote descendant of the decasyllables of
the the Chansons de Gestes, which were sung.
Most of Robert Burns's poetry goes to music. The Romantics revived
songs and ballads. It's true that Tennyson's and Browning's poetry
departed into a sort of self-sustaining range of verbal effects
rather remote from music itself, but at the same time Troubadour
forms were being revived by others.
Why did T. S. Eliot use titles such as love-song, prelude, rhapsody,
not to speak of the Four Quartets? Try to tell Langston Hughes that
music and poetry were unrelated. Listen to Ginsberg fusing Buddhist
and Jewish chanting.
Poetry and music do go their own ways and can never fuse again as
_mousike_, the combination of dance, word, and melody, except in
surviving ceremonies such as I once saw some Hopis perform.
Most people who resist linking poetry and music are bothered by the
idea that poetry should try to BE music, along the lines of Walter
Pater, or else are still stuck in some Imagist outlook that wants to
make poetry into a static iconograph.
I guess if you are willing to throw out Pound and Eliot--the one
telling us to "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase" and the
other informing us that his poems usually began with a sort of
impalpable musical impulse--and stick to Pope, Tennyson, Browning
(all of whom I enjoy reading) and a lot of extremely dull contemporary poets
(none of which I enjoy reading) then you can safely ignore the
relation of poetry to music. But you have to overlook an awful lot of
poetry to do this. And to do that, you have to remain uninformed
about the origins of poetry.
Oh I forgot Poe. And Longfellow. Horrible examples of what happens
when poetry tries too hard to make its own music.
To lighten up: I just remembered a Punch cartoon of years ago. An old
American Indian is speaking to a young Indian, saying: "Now,
Hiawatha, you are a man. Now you must learn to use trochaic
tetrameters."
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 08:46:55 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: new & forthcoming
In-Reply-To: <950824225711_62774927@emout04.mail.aol.com>
Readers all--
Just a point of clarification, since Marisa's on the long road to the
mormon in the armoire-- the FSG Loy, edited again by Roger Conover, will
not be a reprint of Last Lunar... but will instead be a new Selected.
Also, am reading the new Sun & Moon Celan, the 1967
Breathturn, as translated/introduced by none other than Pierre Joris--a
tremendous volume, done up really well here. For your pleasure:
THE WRITTEN hollows itself, the
spoken, seagreen,
burns in the bays,
in the liquified names
the dolphins dart,
in the eternalized Nowhere, here,
in the memory of the over-
loud bells in--where only?
who
pants
in this
shadow-quadrat, who
from beneath it
shimmers, shimmers, shimmers?
Back to the shadows--
Jonathan Levin
NYC
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 07:40:35 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Size vs Use
On Wed, 23 Aug 1995 23:54:31 +0000 Joseph Zitt sent:
>On 23 Aug 95 at 7:37, Herb Levy wrote:
>
>> Even most of the more mainstream poets, including some who may still be
>> interested in heroics, seem largely to have given on the idea of a big, big
>> masterpiece.
>
>Do you mean that people have stopped doing huge pieces, or that an
>equation of the hugeness of a piece with its value which once existed
>has gone away? Some of us are still working on big, big pieces --
>I've got one in progress that will run 668 pages (I know this ahead
>of time due to the chance operations that pre-structured it), and
>Ron's still in the midst of his "The Alphabet" (I don't know what
>others are up to on the big projects front -- is Armand Schwerner
>still writing Tablets?).
Obviously there are huge, ongoing, potentially unfinishable, long poems
still being written, but they aren't like the modernist epics.
I can't find the exact quote right now, but the composer Morton Feldman
says somewhere that when he began writing very large works (lasting 1-4 or
more hours long) he had to severely limit his materials, because so many of
the mammoth post-Wagnerian gesamtekunstwerks were massive failures. I hope
that this idea helps.
A major difference is that long poems today don't need to (& the useful
ones flat out don't) try to encompass, remake, or "save" the world (you
_will_ only make matters worse).
Bests
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 11:02:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <01HUGENHL45Y8Y62D7@cnsvax.albany.edu>
On defining lang-po or not lang-po: It's interesting to me that Susan
Howe's is one of the first names that comes up when people try to define
lang-po, but if you ask *her* if she is one, she slams her fist on her
book and says "No!!" I wonder how that works with the notions
someone mentioned that the artistic character/genre of a work depends on
how we perceive it.
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 10:39:56 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 24 Aug 1995 17:22:13 -1000 from
<sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Dear Alfred Corn,
Probably if I had to name just two essays that might serve as a primer for
someone coming late to the game they would be the title essay in Silliman's
_The New Sentence_ and Bernstein's "Artifice of Absorption" in _A Poetics_--
neither of these really "about" langpo so much as concerned with elements and
issues relevant to it. And there's CB's _Content's Dream_ too, Perelman's
edited collection _Writing/Talks, Steve McCaffery's _North of Intention_,
many of the essays in _Poetics Journal_, the now-defunct _Temblor_, Bernstein's
collection _The Politics of Poetic Form_, books by Watten, Perloff, too many
others really to mention with a lunch appointmentin an hour. One partly
skeptical but useful and too little known essay is Nathaniel Tarn's "Regarding
the Issue of New Forms" in _Views From The Weaving Mountain_. Then there's
near-famous exchanges between E. Weinberger and Michael Davidson in _Sulfur_,
one of the journals I'd recommend, though by no means devoted to langpo, and
between Charles Altieri and Jerome McGann in _Critical Inquiry_, which also
oncepublished an introductory essay by Lee Bartlett. That's just a start
though.
Don't know if there are journals exclusively devoted to langpo--too diverse
anymore to be worth characterizing--but a few of the journals I read where
some might be found at times (and there are many I won't name--see the SPD
catalog) are _Avec_, the defunct _O-blek_, Nate Mackey's _Hambone_, _O.ARS_,
_Acts_. _The Difficulties_ and _Temblor_ had great runs and one should look
at newer, not-necessarily and in some cases hostile-to-langpo journals such
as _Apex of the M_, _Five Fingers review_, _lingo_, etc etc. Maybe somebody
with more time than I have today can offer a fuller list, or perhaps refer
you to some of the lists available on-line or elsewhere.
Yes, it's true that langpo is one of the places where I (sometimes) find
interesting writing. But then what writing can ever really be isolated
from other writing anyway? Surely not langpo, which sometimes has a
parasitic/punning/ironic relationship to other writing. What would Mr.
Silliman do, for instance, without the first line of Pound's _Cantos_?
If anything, I'm sorry to be so limited (short, brief) in the lists I'm making
here, and the one I offered yesterday.
Gotta run.
Best, Keith Tuma
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 08:05:07 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Anmarie Trimble <writeme@E-CAFE.COM>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
He's worse than a lurker as
>he isn't even part of the list.
>
>> Lindz
A word from the closet. I'm reaching out beyond the hangers and garment
bags to ask: what's so horrible about being a lurker? I assume lurkers are
those of us who don't jump into the conversation but instead sit on the
sidelines and listen/read. Are we vile eavesdroppers? I didn't know there
were any rules for subscribing to this list. I'm here to learn. So I'm
shy and lurkively learning for now. When I signed on a couple weeks ago, I
didn't have a clue about what anyone was talking about, but I quickly found
myself running to bookstores to read some of the poets discussed on this
list. This lurker is very happy to lurk for now.
Since I wrote this, am I still a lurker?
-Anmarie Trimble
PS Everytime I see Corn posted the word *cornpone* pops into my head.
corn chip corn doger cornuto our people call it maize
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 08:44:38 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Hello Alfred Corn
Comments: To: adc8@columbia.edu
Hello Alfred Corn -
I'm posting this directly to you & to POETICS too, so there's no delay.
I'm sorry if this post seems blunt, but I'm more sorry that it's a bit
repetitive,I don't have time to edit it further.
Apparently no one has ever discussed the ettiquette of news groups and mail
lists with you. You're acting like a twit. Maybe you're a nice guy & don't
mean to be such an asshole, so let me explain some things to you.
When you start reading a newsgroup or mail list, you're supposed to shut up
and read for a few weeks (at least), so you have a sense of the common
discourse, what areas of the topic have already been covered, who's around
the group, etc. This is called lurking. Try it, you might be very good at
it. When you have an idea of how things work, what shared suppositions the
group has, THEN you can start responding to some of the threads, maybe
taking the opportunity to introduce yourself, maybe just responding, that
doesn't much matter.
You don't just barge in to a mail list, ask a lot of questions and expect
everyone to stop what they're doing and explain their lives to you. POETICS
is a lot different than CAP-L, in terms of style & subject matter. If you
want to know how it differs, you should spend some time reading the list
before you start asking questions.
Not only is it more polite to lurk for a while til you get the feel of
things, you'll also look a lot less ignorant when you start asking
question. There's really no excuse for you to not know how few so-called
language poets are on the list or how diverse the aesthetic interests of
the people who regularly post here are. No excuse, except you didn't lurk
before posting.
People have been relatively nice to you cause this is a friendly mail list
and you've raised some interesting issues, but that doesn't mean it's okay
to keep acting like a jerk. The main question your posts have raised is
"who the hell is this guy?"
If you really want to find out what POETICS is about, subscribe to the list
and shut up for a month or so. You need to learn how things work here, the
rhythms, the jokes, etc. Read it all, even the rengas (if there are any
more).
POETICS isn't like CAP-L where a few people polish their prose & check
their citations for a week or two before posting an inquiry. It's more
crowded, livelier, and for better or for worse, much chattier. People (with
some notable exceptions) tend to respond & then clarify as needed.
(To put the degree of activity on the two lists into perspective for those
people reading this who are only on POETICS list: I don't read email every
day, but this morning was the first time in about a month that I received
more than one message from CAP-L. In the last two or three weeks I've
received a total of six messages from CAP-L. Four comprised an inquiry,
responses & thanks regarding an Anne Sexton film, two were about other
films of poets of the same "school." No dumb jokes, no endless renga, (hey
where do I sign up?). At it's busiest, CAP-L might generate as many
messages in a week as POETICS does on a busy day. At it's deadest, CAP-L
can go weeks without a message. I was not kidding when I wrote that CAP-L
is so quiet that I forget to unsubscribe to it.)
Alfred, your first post to POETICS was pretty clever: a quasi-avant garde
appropriation of a multi-phasic personality test about how one should best
attempt to change someone else's thinking. Arty, a little indirect, but
funny. Perhaps you didn't mean it to be read that way. In any case, it
(rightly) received a lot of puzzled responses, mostly from people who
couldn't tell what you were responding to or whether you were serious.
After that, it's been downhill. You've been obtuse, pushy, abusive, whiny,
and just wrongheaded.
Great, you've made a big noise. Now, stop acting like you're writing a
childrens' encyclopedia article about language poetry and chill out.
Subscribe to POETICS and lurk til you understand it or don't bother to post
to the list. You can find out what you need to know in a library or via
email. This ploy of just getting the "relevant" POETICS articles forwarded
to you is bullshit.
And anyway, you're missing all of the secret mesostic messages about you in
the "innocent" posts.
Bests
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 11:06:11 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
anmarie trimble writes:
> He's worse than a lurker as
> >he isn't even part of the list.
> >
> >> Lindz
>
> A word from the closet. I'm reaching out beyond the hangers and garment
> bags to ask: what's so horrible about being a lurker? I assume lurkers are
> those of us who don't jump into the conversation but instead sit on the
> sidelines and listen/read. Are we vile eavesdroppers? I didn't know there
> were any rules for subscribing to this list. I'm here to learn. So I'm
> shy and lurkively learning for now. When I signed on a couple weeks ago, I
> didn't have a clue about what anyone was talking about, but I quickly found
> myself running to bookstores to read some of the poets discussed on this
> list. This lurker is very happy to lurk for now.
>
> Since I wrote this, am I still a lurker?
>
>
> -Anmarie Trimble
>
> PS Everytime I see Corn posted the word *cornpone* pops into my head.
> corn chip corn doger cornuto our people call it maize
hey, i wish i had the self-discipline to be a lurker. i bet a lot of others on
the lists wish so too. these cornposts are indeed very peculiar --a number of
us have responded that we are taken aback at the assumption that we are hostile.
i'm willing to believe ac is approaching "us" (who'e we, kimo sabe?) in good
faith, as keith t and chris s say --i'd like also to believe that he accords the
same openness to us. those of you who are on other lists --are we unusually
feisty or exclusionary? what's the typical list-protocol and how do we
conform/deviate? just curious.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 12:22:54 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
Comments: To: Anmarie Trimble <writeme@E-CAFE.COM>
way to be, Anmarie.
I've only been reading the list since yesterday, and intend to listen and learn
for a while. Just want to offer my support, altho I don't believe "Lindz"
meant the remark to be nasty.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 09:32:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
In-Reply-To: <v01510102ac6323779e2d@[204.245.198.61]>
Dear -Anmarie Trimble
I was making punches to cause reactions. That's what I
do, if you lurk for long enough you'll see that, but hey you spoke so
welcome aboard.
About this music/poetry thing I don't know what to think. I
agreee with someone who said that music and poetry can't merge back into
the original form used by the classics. It seems that popular music has
become this overpowering demon is "mainstream" society and poetry is on
the outside. Awhile ago I was at the Grunt GAllary viewing a friend of a
friend's Art Opening. After the show she and her band put on a show, a
"performance piece" that appeared to be a reading with some jazz in the
background. But she didn't want to be called poet since she is an artist
and everything she produces is art.
Along the same lines I've really been into Morphine lately ( the
band , not the drug) and they have a couple songs that seem to me to be
more poetry than music. When I saw an interview with Mark Sandman (
vocalist and writer for Morphine)He claimed to be doing research in the
origins and language and experimenting with phonetics, word formations and
constructions. NOW is he a poet or a songwriter, or does it even matter?
Lindz
Ps Evveryone should pick up MOrphine's latest disc "YEs", It's GOOOOOOD.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 10:35:30 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Zukowski <U37753@UICVM.BITNET>
Subject: introduction
For the past few months I've been a "voyeur" to the list and feel
it's time I reveal myself and join in the discussion.
Actually, I want to respond to Rod Smith's "new and forthcoming"
note of 8/24/95 with the statement "Still haven't seen the Celan
from Sun & Moon." I've just read _Breathturn_ by Paul Celan, just
out from Sun & Moon and wanted to let you know it's one of the
most beautiful, puzzling, and significant books of poetry I've
acquired over the past several years. It's bilingual, which I'm
enjoying, having studied German for six years. I must say that
Pierre Joris's translation is nothing short of brilliant, not to
mention his introduction.
And since I'm introducting myself to the list, I feel I must put
in a plug for _Private Arts_--a Chicago-based journal of fiction,
art, and poetry, for which I am one of the co-managing editors.
I'll try not to make it sound too much like a sales pitch, although
I boast about it constantly.
Our last issue, a sort of rebirth double-issue, (8 and 9)
was a smash success when it was released last
November. It has poetry by Hilda Morley,
Keith Waldrop, John Ashbery, Theodore Enslin, August Kleinzahler,
Ann Lauterbach and a "verbal improvisation" by Robert Duncan.
Fiction contributors include Ewa Kuryluk, Raymond Federman, and
Andrew Allegretti.
Among the visual are a beautifully illustrated and designed memoir
by artist Roger Brown and "pasteups" by Jess.
We are outdoing ourselves with _Private Arts 10_, due out
this fall.
Poetry by Norma Cole, Douglas Messerli, Leslie Scalapino,
Lyn Hejinian, (our friend and guardian) Charles Bernstein,
Larry Eigner, Rosemarie Waldrop, Keith Waldrop, Rosanne
Wasserman, as well as some impressive first-time-published
locals.
Fiction by Curtis White, David Foster Wallace, Christopher
Sorrentino, Ursule Molinaro, John Knoepfle, as well as a
few of my favorite subversive locals--Maureen Daley, Dagfinn
von Bretzel, and Jeff Allan.
Essays and reviews include a prosaic/poetic essay "about"
Language Poetry by one of our contributing editors, Michael
Barrett, Richard Kostelanetz on Fluxus participants Dick
Higgins and George Maciunas, and an interview with, and essay
about the work of Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino.
Lastly, the issue seems to have a paradoxically/viscerally
stunning visual aesthetic which includes a new (and large)
collection of painters and an incredible collaboration between
John Yau and Ed Paschke.
Look for William Gass, Carol Maso, Francesco Clemente, and
John Matthias in _Private Arts 11_.
At the risk of having overdone the "plug" for _Private
Arts_, I'll just say thanks for reading and feel free to
contact me personally if you would like to know more. I
can be reached at:
zukowski@uic.edu
Next week I'll post an order form to purchase 8 and 9 and
reserve a copy of issue 10.
Maybe my next e-mail note can actually be a statement about
some sort of poetics.
It's nice to be corresponding with all of you.
Regards,
Peter Zukowski
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 10:47:36 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950825023133.4747B-100000@panix3.panix.com> from
"Alan Sondheim" at Aug 25, 95 02:34:30 am
I don't know if I agree taxonomy is the death of poetry. It doesn't
seem to do anything to the poems but make them move more. Animals
are still wild within their species and genus'. It's just an *attempt*
to create a stable language for them and, in the attempt succeeding
with some, failing with others, stubborn features are foregrounded for grabs.
I don't think Adam's ttask was about mastery.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 14:38:26 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <199508251747.KAA29484@fraser.sfu.ca>
By Adam, the biblical? I must disagree with you; animals are not wild at
this point; they are managed, accounted-for, and this accounting is
taxonomic. With animals, there can be no turning-back if extinction is to
be avoided, but the taxonomic is the first stage of encapsulation.
With poetry, why should there be a stable language? Isn't instability
perhaps one of the conditions of poetry? At least some poetry?
Which for me is where for example Coolidge's Flag Flutter & US Electric
fit in - half in the measure towards, have back there, at the time
instability throughout, and liberating in the moment
Alan
On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote:
> I don't know if I agree taxonomy is the death of poetry. It doesn't
> seem to do anything to the poems but make them move more. Animals
> are still wild within their species and genus'. It's just an *attempt*
> to create a stable language for them and, in the attempt succeeding
> with some, failing with others, stubborn features are foregrounded for grabs.
> I don't think Adam's ttask was about mastery.
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 14:05:44 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry
ryan knighton writes:
> I don't know if I agree taxonomy is the death of poetry. It doesn't
> seem to do anything to the poems but make them move more. Animals
> are still wild within their species and genus'. It's just an *attempt*
> to create a stable language for them and, in the attempt succeeding
> with some, failing with others, stubborn features are foregrounded for grabs.
> I don't think Adam's ttask was about mastery.
this is really interesting. i always thought that was exactly what adam's task
was all about --language aquisition inseparable from mastery --both in the sense
of self-empowerment --a feeling of accomplishment --and of a feeling of power
over.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 09:24:30 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: More Forwards (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 04:54:04 -1000
From: Indepen <adc8@columbia.edu>
To: Susan Schultz <sschultz@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Subject: More Forwards
To the POETICS list:
To answer the question "Who the hell is this guy?" I guess I'm not quite
satisfied with Ron Silliman's thumbnail biography. I've published six
books of poetry and one book of criticism with Viking Penguin. The
poetic line I belong to, insofar as it can be separated out from the
general Western tradition begins with Whitman, goes through Crane and
Stevens, on up through the poets discussed in David Kalstone's book about
autobiographical poetry, titled --Five Temperaments--. The ones he
talked about were Lowell, Bishop, Ashbery, Merrill, and Rich. I met
Kalstone when I was just beginning to publish and he shaped my ideas
about what poetry could do. I'd like to think I'd added something of my
own to this poetic line, but it isn't my job to say whether I have.
Silliman says I sometimes write about homosexuality for --The Nation--.
I have no idea what he means unless he's referring to a review of
the stories of Edmund White (a gay fiction writer) that is in the current
issue. A few prizes have come to me for my poetry, but as the posts on
this list amply demonstrate, I'm not especially well known, certainly
less well known than, say, Lyn Hejinian. I teach as an adjunct in the
Columbia MFA Program, but have done visiting stints at other places as
well--UCLA, Yale, the U. of Cincinnati. Will this do as an intro?
To David Kellogg: No putdown intended. We were speaking at
cross purposes. I thought you understood that what I was asking for was
the aesthetic of LP, what makes it different from other approaches to
writing poetry. The criteria you gave overlap with the ones I apply, so
I felt frustrated in the wish to get a general introduction to the
movement. Yes, I could just plunge in by myself, but I did that before
and got nowhere. A critical guide can save years of wasted effort.
Meanwhile I see that LP is only one kind of poetry that interests you,
not *the* only. That sounds reasonable to me. What I had been bothered by
was the foundational "exclusionary" line of argument I had heard
elsewhere: that LP is the "real" poetry of our time and the future; in
fact, one of the recent posts takes this position, dismissing the other
approach as predictable and boring. (I had used the term "mainstream"
before because some of POETICS's posters did.)
It begins to sound like the POETICS list is quite varied, with
perhaps only a few subscribers exclusively L= poets. So I'd been given
the wrong sense of what the list was.
I begin to wonder, too, whether the big division proclaimed
between the LP movement and the rest of poetry is really useful. Some of
the recent posts suggest that it isn't. For after all, poetry using
unfamiliar methods of communication goes back at least to Rimbaud (1870)
and Mallarme' (1880-1890). Everybody knows about Dada, Modernism,
Surrealism, and Black Mountain. Plus various unclassifiables like
Gertrude Stein, Laura Riding, Bunting and Ashbery. And the Naropa
Institute. So I'm not yet certain that LP has introduced anything that
wasn't already there. If writing non-representationally is the key, we
have to acknowledge that almost none of Wallace Stevens is
representational. If disjunctiveness is the key, then no one could be
more disjunctive than Ashbery. If collage is it, then the Surrealists did
it long ago--ditto for automatic writing. Meanwhile the other poetry, the
one based on narrative, on representing sensory impressions verbally, or
providing philosophical or meditative discourse, was always attentive to
experimentation and used some of the new techniques a well. Just maybe
the same situation obtains today, with some poets fusing the two
approaches. My own impression of Hejinian was that --My Life-- was an
autobiographical narrative and therefore at some level representational;
plus a constant intrusion of cognitive "interference," words used like
(metaphor) paint--a kind of alogical interruption to transparent
narrative. Isn't this a fusion of the two? To use a comparison from
music, "classical" music of this century has again and again borrowed from
jazz--but then so has jazz borrowed from "classical" music over and again.
There's no Stravinsky without jazz and there's no Mingus without
Stravinsky.
Maybe LANGUAGE poetry really isn't a separate movement at all,
but instead is just --poetry--, multisourced and not really describable in
simple terms as truly distinct from the other poetry?
As for signing on to POETICS, I'll think about it, Maria, it's
just that there are demands on my time and a mailbox already overloaded
with messages from two other groups.
Alfred Corn
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 16:06:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Issa Clubb <issa@VOYAGERCO.COM>
Subject: Re: new & forthcoming
>Also, am reading the new Sun & Moon Celan, the 1967
>Breathturn, as translated/introduced by none other than Pierre Joris--a
>tremendous volume, done up really well here.
>Jonathan Levin
>NYC
yeah, it's fantastic--I've been setting poems side by side with the older
Hamburger translations, which highlights the consistent moves by Joris
towards an English that is both hyper-literal and free to sound *made*
rather than spoken. The notes are also extensive & extremely helpful for
those of us without a lick of German.
Pierre, since the introduction mentions that other later Celan volumes have
been translated, does this mean they'll also be coming out soon?
Also does anyone know the info for Rosmarie Waldrop's translation of
Celan's prose?
__________
Issa Clubb
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 13:18:38 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Hello Alfred Corn
In-Reply-To: <v01530502ac633663770b@[192.0.2.1]>
Way to go Herb! That was very tactful, I wish I had the composure to be
so bold yet eloquent. Unfortunately, I'm just a loud mouth. And I
didn't mean to offend lurkers. I just like to know who's out there,
personally I feel weird lurking, like a poetic pervert or something, it's
my own hangup and i'm dealing with it.
I was wondering again about this whole song/ poem thing. Who defines me
as a poet?
I say I'm a poet therefore I am. I write therefore I'm a writer? Or is
publication the mode of defining. I exist on the page so I must be
valuable? Or I've read on a stage, so I'm worth hearing. If my voice is
sweet then am I musical? If I read with a piano or flute accompaning me
is that a song. Does anyone remember the opening to the last night ofthe
Blaser readings where someone did a cute Blake peice, something about a
Robin, was he singing a poem, or reading a song.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 15:49:22 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
lindz writes
When I saw an interview with Mark Sandman (vocalist and writer for Morphine)He
claimed to be doing research in the origins and language and experimenting with
phonetics, word formations and constructions. NOW is he a poet or a songwriter,
or does it even matter?
>
like the question about scat singing as sound poetry, i'd vote it doesn't
matter. some people, i guess, use the word "poet" to confer dignity (as in,
"some songwriters are poets, some aren't," meaning some songwriters rise above
the lowly term sw., or "so & so's not a songwriter, s/he's a POET" meaning the
same thing) but i think those are connotative rather than denotative uses of the
word. for my $, smokey robinson is one of the cleverest lyricists around, though
he's not experimental --cd one call him a new formalist? and talk about
deterritorialization --ella fitzG coulda coined the term. --md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 15:24:17 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Theresa Krystyna Smalec <tksmalec@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: Re: the renga that took the place of itself
In-Reply-To: <199508242250.PAA13578@fraser.sfu.ca>; from "George Bowering" at
Aug 24, 95 3:50 pm
>
> Yeah, but what will we do if some wag titles her message RENGA and
> then makes an interesting point about Nicole Brossard instead?
>
well, you know how dearly we all value the referent. shouldn't
it go without saying that RENGA means RENGA and not Nicole
Brossard or mandarins or morning orange splintered grey?
shouldn't it go without saying that if you're going to write a
renga, then you can't make interesting points about anything
which falls outside the semantic jurisdiction of RENGA? come on,
based on all this recent discussion of CRITERIA, it seems we know
and unquestionably trust the rules of language 'governing' this list...
theresa smalec
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 17:52:08 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: in this self-regard
Juliana Spahr where are you?
As I recall your posts were in
a broken format that was pleasant
to read. Pleasant for lurkers and
others are the archived files of the
poetics discussion in which Marc
Nasdor can be seen turning into me
and Joe Amato Steve Evans Kali Tal
and many many others shine
Bill Luoma where are you?
You almost never send us poems
any more and it's true Jorge does
but I want his and yours both
in this my only newspaper Charles
Bernstein's piece "The Only Utopia
Is In a Now" btw Alfred Corn was
what carried me over the threshhold
to respect for the writing of
the people on this mailing list
and a lot of people who mumble
"luddite" when I bring up the net
What do you want to happen
on this list? or how do you want
this discussion to go?
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 17:55:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: new & forthcoming
Hi Issa,
Having just finished doing an entry on Rosmarie for the Dictionary of
Literary Biography, I find that I have surplus knowledge on her career.
The publication info is
Manchester, England: Carcanet, 1986
Riverdale-on-Hudson, NY: Sheep Meadow, 1990.
Whether the book is still in print is something I haven't checked, but a
few calls on your part would settle that.
It's been a long time since I've heard news of you, tho I did catch a
glimpse of you strolling around the lower east side back in late
winter/early spring. Hope all is well!
Yours,
Steve
>been translated, does this mean they'll also be coming out soon?
>
>Also does anyone know the info for Rosmarie Waldrop's translation of
>Celan's prose?
>
>__________
>Issa Clubb
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 17:04:50 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
Comments: To: adc8@columbia.edu
alfred c writes:
To the POETICS list:
>
>
> To David Kellogg: No putdown intended. We were speaking at
> cross purposes. I thought you understood that what I was asking for was
> the aesthetic of LP, what makes it different from other approaches to
> writing poetry. The criteria you gave overlap with the ones I apply, so
> I felt frustrated in the wish to get a general introduction to the
> movement. Yes, I could just plunge in by myself, but I did that before
> and got nowhere. A critical guide can save years of wasted effort.
> Meanwhile I see that LP is only one kind of poetry that interests you,
> not *the* only. That sounds reasonable to me. What I had been bothered by
> was the foundational "exclusionary" line of argument I had heard
> elsewhere: that LP is the "real" poetry of our time and the future; in
> fact, one of the recent posts takes this position, dismissing the other
> approach as predictable and boring. (I had used the term "mainstream"
> before because some of POETICS's posters did.)
> It begins to sound like the POETICS list is quite varied, with
> perhaps only a few subscribers exclusively L= poets. So I'd been given
> the wrong sense of what the list was.
> I begin to wonder, too, whether the big division proclaimed
> between the LP movement and the rest of poetry is really useful. Some of
> the recent posts suggest that it isn't. For after all, poetry using
> unfamiliar methods of communication goes back at least to Rimbaud (1870)
> and Mallarme' (1880-1890). Everybody knows about Dada, Modernism,
> Surrealism, and Black Mountain. Plus various unclassifiables like
> Gertrude Stein, Laura Riding, Bunting and Ashbery. And the Naropa
> Institute. So I'm not yet certain that LP has introduced anything that
> wasn't already there. If writing non-representationally is the key, we
> have to acknowledge that almost none of Wallace Stevens is
> representational. If disjunctiveness is the key, then no one could be
> more disjunctive than Ashbery. If collage is it, then the Surrealists did
> it long ago--ditto for automatic writing. Meanwhile the other poetry, the
> one based on narrative, on representing sensory impressions verbally, or
> providing philosophical or meditative discourse, was always attentive to
> experimentation and used some of the new techniques a well. Just maybe
> the same situation obtains today, with some poets fusing the two
> approaches. My own impression of Hejinian was that --My Life-- was an
> autobiographical narrative and therefore at some level representational;
> plus a constant intrusion of cognitive "interference," words used like
> (metaphor) paint--a kind of alogical interruption to transparent
> narrative. Isn't this a fusion of the two? To use a comparison from
> music, "classical" music of this century has again and again borrowed from
> jazz--but then so has jazz borrowed from "classical" music over and again.
> There's no Stravinsky without jazz and there's no Mingus without
> Stravinsky.
> Maybe LANGUAGE poetry really isn't a separate movement at all,
> but instead is just --poetry--, multisourced and not really describable in
> simple terms as truly distinct from the other poetry?
> As for signing on to POETICS, I'll think about it, Maria, it's
> just that there are demands on my time and a mailbox already overloaded
> with messages from two other groups.
>
> Alfred Corn
cool. NOW i see the beginnings of what i'd call dialogue...(probly just seeing
my own name in print did it for me) --i tend to think along somewhat similar
lines, though i've been drifting toward langpo more these days --i'm an old
naropa-ite, Beat-version-of-rimbaud affiliated poete manquee/monkee turned
cultural studies student, hired to teach contemporary poetry and poetics, so
have gotten back into it in the last few yrs, withering on the vine here in
Minensota surrounded by people who won't touch me w/ a 10ft pole cuz of what
they think i "stand for", until the NuYoricans came to town a coupla yrs ago and
i had that Anne Sexton feeling --these are my people, they speak language. had
some language to live for again. the reason i urge u to join the list is that
it's fun in an anthropological participant/observer way --i myself have flipped
from observer to participant i guess --if herb is right, cap-l's volume isn't
prohibitive -- u cd just join for a week or two, as an ethnographer, make
friends and probably not influence people but have a good time trying. cheers,
brother --md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 15:18:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950825143518.25295A-100000@panix3.panix.com> from
"Alan Sondheim" at Aug 25, 95 02:38:26 pm
re Alan's reply (sorry my editor won't copy):
If classifying poetry isn't possible, being alive and various, then
how can classifying or the attempt to do so be the "death" of it. It
seems to me to be a vital step: one of many catalysts which set poetry
off. The imperfections of any taxonomy help articulate what is
chaotic, unique and important to a variety of agonistic processes.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is the *only* way one can
access works, of course. But the failure of classification is another
reminder that poetry, like language itself, is bigger than us , older
than us and, if anything, having us (thank you Mr. Blaser). What
it is that prevents its naming is the critical detail. And I don't
see an apocalypse in trying to understand.
Best
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 15:28:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950825092306.6547B-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
from "Susan Schultz" at Aug 25, 95 09:24:30 am
Something i was thinkin bout was raised here. I'm not sure if
LP is just refusal to refer or resisting representation. In Howe's
case, their seems to be a distinct political condition which manifests
itself in this kind of writing (misrepresentation? disrepresentation?)
This is why I say I find LP closer to theory than most other schools.
But, being unfamiliar with others, or less familiar with, say, Andrews,
I'm curious what other conditions or contexts yield LPoetry, or if there
is indeed something constant other than "refusal".
--Ryan
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 15:34:54 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
In-Reply-To: <303e374f5c72002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "maria damon" at Aug 25,
95 03:49:22 pm
I'd like to think scat is sound poetry, sharing the improv impetus etc.
I'd also like to think Tom Waits could be considered new old Formalist,
tampering with the structure and noise of ballads, pop songs, etc.
and playing the discourse of a time and place like a keyboard of
collocations. Lovely stuff.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 18:32:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Scheil <cschei1@GRFN.ORG>
Subject: Re: Language Poetry (& the morning Corn report)
In-Reply-To: <199508251747.KAA29484@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote:
> I don't know if I agree taxonomy is the death of poetry. It doesn't
> seem to do anything to the poems but make them move more. Animals
> are still wild within their species and genus'. It's just an *attempt*
> to create a stable language for them and, in the attempt succeeding
> with some, failing with others, stubborn features are foregrounded for grabs.
> I don't think Adam's ttask was about mastery.
Been thinking about the discussion of taxonomy here & some of what I
perceive as Alfred Corn's underlying assumptions in reagrd to his
questions about "good," "bad," Langpoets & their "lineage," "influences,"
& "predecessors." Is it just me, or does anyone else detec(s)t a sort
historiographic imperative underlying his ad-hoc exploration of this
list's attributes (who we (statistically speaking) like, dislike, who we
agree or disagree are influences, whose literary stock we value, who we'd
be willing to sell short, ect.)? I'd like to think that most of us tend
to privilege the idea of direct, contextual (in human hours, days, &
minutes) encounters with poems over a sort of mannered, "lets see your
certified bloodline before I buy yr ass" theory of reading. I know I do,
and consequently it's a bit off-putting to think that we should be
scrambling to defend our preferences & justify whatever prejudices we
might possess; after all, as far as I know, no one has been over to
CAP_L, saying "why do you all like such boring work?," or "what's with the
maniacal autobiographical impulse in most of yr work--are you egoists or
just narcissistic?"
If you want to know this lists "character (if it can be said to have
one)," Mr. Corn, ask for a reading list (which Mr. Tuuma has already
provided for you) or subscribe. We never asked for your poetic lineage,
& as far as I can tell (having been subscribed here for about 9 months),
POETICS is both too diverse & too contentious to ever agree on a
definitive one anyways.
To everyone else: sorry this is such a polemical mess, quite out of
character (ironic hyperconformity in the face this list's mist-elegant
swirl...)
Chris
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 19:37:46 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Corn
Having stumbled back into this forum with a little note meant for Issa but
sent to everyone, I may as well take a moment more to mark, with
bemusement, Alfred Corn's latest contribution to our discussion. I
brightened up when the following sentences appeared in his post:
"For after all, poetry using unfamiliar methods of communication goes back
at least to Rimbaud (1870) and Mallarme' (1880-1890). Everybody knows
about Dada, Modernism, Surrealism, and Black Mountain. Plus various
unclassifiables like
Gertrude Stein, Laura Riding, Bunting and Ashbery. And the Naropa
Institute."
Terrific, until:
"So I'm not yet certain that LP has introduced anything that
wasn't already there."
Evidently, were Alfred Corn to recur in history (as recur I somehow suspect
he will), he would extend his list to include language-centered writing,
while reserving the final sentence for whatever persons happened to be
challenging his assumptions at *that* time.
Moreover, he conveniently (and typically) overlooks the way that such past
formations live in a dialectic with present ones; that, in other words,
substracting the action of present avant-garde writers & readers, past ones
fall into atrophy, are forgotten, are--put most simply--rendered
irrelevant. The domestication of international (including American)
modernism after WWII is one case in point, familiar to participants on both
POETICS and CAP-L.
And more to record the pleasure of the coincidence than because it sheds
any great light on the central questions at hand, Vernon Shetley mentions
Alfred Corn once in his chapter on Language poetry / New Formalism in
_After the Death of Poetry_ (1993):
"In practice, the appeal of New Formalism seems closely linked to the
humanist pieties that generally form the ultimate horizon of justification
for its enthusiasts and practicioners (it's worth remarking in this regard
a modest revival of Christian thematics among certain younger formalist
poets, most notably Alfred Corn and Gjertrud Schnackenberg)." [160]
Finally, since this discussion ultimately pertains to provincialism, let me
say (confess?) that the best laugh out of the many I had during a recent
reading of Heine's essay on the Romantic School (recall by the way that
Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, at least, consider the German romantics the
first avant-garde) came when Heine wickedly described people in the French
country-side as bearing on their foreheads sign-posts indicating their
distance from Paris. Get my drift...?
With warm regards to all,
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 19:55:55 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Corn
Though I too found Corn's thing more than a little beyond the pale, I think
the "sit and wait a while til youre savvy" thing is almost as stilted.
Societies are metted out in stochastic time i.e., we all are to be
broadsided as part of the discourse. So to prescribe a function at this
social junction is tantamount to elitism. There is no need to embrace, but
certainly _personal_ rejection speaks more of a will to protect the
"status" (or priviledged drift) of this "venue." It seems to me that this
kind of ordained determinism is almost as naive.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 16:12:51 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 14:32:30 -1000
From: Indepen <adc8@columbia.edu>
To: Susan Schultz <sschultz@hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
To Keith Tuma:
The articles and reviews you sent I've copied out and will look
for. Thanks for taking the trouble.
To Maria Damon: The volume on CAP-L (Contemporary American
Poetry-List) is low now because of August vacations, but it will step up
after Labor Day and also if I get back to it (where so many on POETICS
tell me I belong) and stop neglecting to send things while I post here.
I get bored with people lashing out, not because I can't take it but
because it isn't stimulating but instead stultifying. But you're
obviously a likable and reasonable person, so I look forward to hearing
what you say on the other list.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 22:49:15 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
maria---right on about smokey, bob dylan (that "faux-poet" according to
silliman!) also called smokey one of the best poets of his generation or
something...
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 23:16:11 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
In a flurry of activity I seem to have deleted Louis Cabri's interesting
(and so far ignored---well, at least in this forum) post about the
renga vs. the polemics--If I remember correctly Cabri raised some impor-
tant points about how polemics often institutionally circulated to
(i mean circulateS) ghettoize poetry---but that may not actually be
the case---Just because poetry often generates response in the form of
poetry and polemics generates response in the form of polemics doesn't
mean that one is necessarily privileged over the other---although I do
not wish to appear naive, I once had a conversation with a poet who
expressed concern that her boyfriend (a "critic" and/or "theorist")
is taken more seriously because he's a male and she a female, but though
I don't wish to trivialize the implications of gender, it seemed that
what she was complaining about was quite similar to what Cabri was:
that theory is taken more seriously than poetry---and though I am
also (as MD said) someone who wished I could avoid the temptation not
to be a lurker here more than i do, it seems the segregation (separate
but equal?--I hope not) between poetry and polemics, or the co-existence
here on the list of the two forms, need not be antagonistic towards each
other. And it seems, in partial response to Corn's question, that one of
the major things that distinguishes Ashbery from, say, Perelman (or
Stevens from Pound) is that the former does not engage in polemics as much
OUTSIDE THE FORUM OF THE POEM---this idea that somehow theory is needed
as a kind of supplement to the poem, to rid it of its "abject object"
status, seems something that is more prevalent on the POETICS than the
CAP-L list and can at times actually "get in the way" of the poem and
(if i read cabri right) actually make the poem(s) into even more of an
object than it would be without theory to guard over and protect it--
Of course, it can also be a way to "kill the down time" between poems,
but I still think our poems often know more than our polemics do
(however "essentialist" a position that may appear)....Just some loose
thoughts, chris s.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 23:18:28 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: new & forthcoming
Yes, just sat down with pierre's CELAN--looks like the long awaited
HAMBURGER HELPER has arrived----cs.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 21:45:30 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: ceci n'est pas un poeme
Cell Line to My Parisian Lineage
Sign their foreheads
exist on a page read
on a stage
to refer.
Ordained determinism!
Be wild with your species
genome patent.
Great, you've made a big noise.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 21:26:14 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry/prose thinking
Louis Cabri writes:
>The temporal axis of engagement on this listserv virtually
>garantees that its corpus - the prose as much as the poetry
...> While the listserv's decentred centre, the poem itself,
>performs its own variety of common excesses. This too long,
but hey, only the letters in these words have repeated (some
might find comfort in saying
Are you trying to say that prose drives out poetry?
That does seem to be what is happening.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 00:04:10 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Renga free
Comments: To: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
On 25 Aug 95 at 8:12, Michael Boughn wrote:
> Just to note the first renga-free morning since the virus hit.
> Hallellujia. Maybe we'll survive after all.
All in passing. (Ebolangpo) after the avalanche of
:-)
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 00:04:04 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
Comments: To: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
On 24 Aug 95 at 22:31, Lindz Williamson wrote:
> poets. I don't really consider anytype of poetry mainstream as it still
> focuses on a certain section of the masses, but i suppose within the
> community there has to be a norm. But howw is our discussion
Funny thing: in my head, I think of the poets that get discussed here
as a mainstream, mostly because this is the only place I hear poetry
discussed. (Other than, that is, at the usual open mikes, where the
only poets people seem to talk about are Marge Piercy, Sharon Olds,
and Charles Bukowski (who would probably all feel a bit odd being
seen in a sentence together).) When I bring up a poet I think of as
an established master -- Jackson MacLow, for example -- all I get is
blank stares from the fellow openmikers. Oh, to wander back into
academe :-)...
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 22:27:44 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Anmarie Trimble <writeme@E-CAFE.COM>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
>hey, i wish i had the self-discipline to be a lurker. i bet a lot of others on
>the lists wish so too. these cornposts are indeed very peculiar --a number of
>us have responded that we are taken aback at the assumption that we are
>hostile.
>i'm willing to believe ac is approaching "us" (who'e we, kimo sabe?) in good
>faith, as keith t and chris s say --i'd like also to believe that he
>accords the
>same openness to us. those of you who are on other lists --are we unusually
>feisty or exclusionary? what's the typical list-protocol and how do we
>conform/deviate? just curious.--md
I didn't think Lindz's statement hostile. I just thought it a bit strange
that there's been three or four lurker slams here in the past two weeks.
Maria-
As for the tone of this group, uh, it's feister than the, say, the WAC
list? (I think I just gave my age away?) I haven't checked out many
lists, but those I have frequented are more reserved, with a friendly,
business meeting-like atmosphere, or they're so academic and theoretical I
want to yawn. Maybe it's just the ones I've tried. I don't know. I only
know that, with poetry, I want spirit, not religion. So the passion and
fluency here are a refreshing change, but y'all certainly took me aback,
especially considering I didn't know a new Formalist or LP from a hole in
the ground.
And someone mentioned that lurking made him/her feel like a pervert. I
grew up thinking people who love poetry must be slightly twisted. And since
I write the damned stuff, I must be an all out drooling, panting,
greasy-haired, masturbating poet.
I will speak no more of lurking, which, by the way, has more to do with
exhaustion, shyness, and laziness than self-discipline. blah blah blah
-A.T.
***********************
How's this for an affirmation ofthe day:
"Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly
the first time as you are about to act now." -Viktor Frankel
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 22:43:17 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950825092306.6547B-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
from "Susan Schultz" at Aug 25, 95 09:24:30 am
Something has been puzzling me here, lately. In Corn's messages he
implies that Ashbery is one of "their" poets, a sort of exemplar of
the conventional or whatever. When did that happen? I know he was one
of those academic press new poet winners at first, but then he was in
the Allen anthology, etc. Uh, I have always found him satisfyingly
difficulkt to read, a kind of unhip O'Hara or less chummy Schuyler. I
was not aware that he had been taken over by the cubes. But I do
remember that after Lowell died, the popmags like *Time*, who still
think there is a canon, tried to make him the bigdeal US poet. They
tried that in fiction too, trying to entomb, for instance, the guy
that wrote *Herzog* as the successor to the dead masters. Well, I
still like (and hate) reading Ashbery, and that is not important; but
I still think that he is formally interesting, and that does.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 22:48:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marjorie Perloff <perloff@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Joris's Celan and Corn on L poetry - 24 Aug 1995 to 25 Aug
1995
In-Reply-To: <199508260403.VAA00830@leland.Stanford.EDU>
I'm so glad, Jonathan, that you mentioned Pierre Joris's new translation
of Celan. It is STUNNING. Pierre's command of German, French, English
is incomparable and he's a poet who really has a feel for Celan. This
is, for me, a major poetry event.
But I must confess to being very discouraged by the Alfred Corn
conversation that's been going on on this net for the last few days.
This Poetics Discussion Group was, after all, founded at Buffalo by, yes,
Language poets and although I myself feel the term language poetry has
outlived its usefulness (like any school), and although it's true that
the so-called L poets are often very different from one another (and
obviously some are much better than others--again, as in any movement),
the fact remains that L poetry has made an enormous difference in the
poetics of the 80s and 90s and that, on the other hand, poets like Alfred
Corn and J. D. McClatchy and any of their poet friends at Yale Review
and similar places have vigorously opposed it or, at best, ignored it.
Corn is being just a little bit disingenuous: he and his friends win all
the prizes (Guggenheims, MacArthurs etc), are reviewed in the NYT Book
Review (unlike Clark Coolidge or Lyn Hejinian or Charles Bernstein) and are
very successful. LYn H. and Susan H. have yet to win a Guggenheim--which
boggles the mind (my mind), but that's the way it is. And again the plain f
fact is that the Director of the Guggenheim, Joel Conarroe, is a staunch
advocate of Corn's and McClatchy's (with the father figure of James Merill in the
background), and that in this particular circle trashing language
poetries, the Objectivists, and most Concrete poetries is de rigueur. When
the big and exciting conference on Visual Poetics was held by the dept of
spanish-Portugese last spring (starring the deCampos brothers and including,
among many others, Steve McCaffery, Johanna Drucker, and Charles
Bernstein), not one faculty member from the English dept. showed up.
So why are so many people on this net like Keith Tuma suddenly so pleased
and grateful that--gee!--Alfred Corn is actually willing to participate in
discussion with members about Language poetry! And why is Maria saying
that she never writes about language poetry anyway. . Maria, that's
just not true. You do write about language poetry (as in Stein, Duncan,
other precursors, yes?)in the larger sense of the term, and respecting
the rights of others can turn into capitulation, no? .
Alfred says of Lyn Hejinian's MY LIFE that being autobiographical, it
does have representational elements. Well of course. Many of us have
said this in print. The old chestnut that "language poetry" doesn't
"say" anything has finally been laid to rest. And as a new generation of
students arrives on the scene, I've learned that they have no problems
with the "meanings," in, say, Lyn's OXOTA, which my theory class at
Stanford read last year and loved. There were a number of Russians in
the class and they were especially pleased by their "shock of
recognition." Their finding the persons and places they know well in
this book.
As for Rimbaud's "dereglement de tous les sens," I'd say that it's very
different from the projects of the L poets even as it is from Corn's own
poetry. The point of comparison has to be not a great poet of the 19th C
(Blake, Rimbaud etc.) whom we can all agree on but what is happening
NOW. And here there's just no use saying that there are no differences.
I'm sorry to sound like an old grouch on this one. But I feel that as an
outsider (i.e. not a poet) I can say some of these things: to wit,that
until the system of prize-giving and award-giving changes appreciably,
there is no use pretending that the Establishment Doesn't Exist.
Marjorie Perloff
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 22:50:41 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry/prose thinking
I like your perspective, Louis.
Sheila M.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 1995 23:15:30 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: poetry/prose thinking
In-Reply-To: <199508260550.WAA05996@bob.indirect.com> from "Sheila E. Murphy"
at Aug 25, 95 10:50:41 pm
OOps.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 01:32:41 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Size vs Use
Comments: To: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
On 25 Aug 95 at 7:40, Herb Levy wrote:
> I can't find the exact quote right now, but the composer Morton Feldman
> says somewhere that when he began writing very large works (lasting 1-4 or
> more hours long) he had to severely limit his materials, because so many of
> the mammoth post-Wagnerian gesamtekunstwerks were massive failures. I hope
> that this idea helps.
Ah, good point. OK, I grok the difference (I think).
As luck would have it, I'm listening to some Feldman as I write this.
I haven't heard any of his hyperlong pieces though, mostly due to the
prohibitive cost of 4-CD sets.
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 02:57:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Joris's Celan and Corn on L poetry - 24 Aug 1995 to 25 Aug
1995
Marjorie's right.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 00:02:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
Chris S., You make wonderful points about the meshing of two "ways."
Frankly, it is the overdoing of either that likely "gets to" those more
predisposed toward the other mode. The list seems generally favorable
toward stranded discussion, often of a somewhat analytical drift.
Interestingly, the number of first (generative) statements is considerably
lower than the fan-out of responses. (As in life--people spend most of
their time reacting to something someone else started up...one can only hope
that the thing started by the other is what the masses would have
wanted...Let's just hope so) If I had time, I'd like to have done a
quantitative mapping of original strands and the numeric responsorial
follow-up. (That's just not where I can or will invest. But the idea
intrigues.) Obviously, we'd have branches and branches. And this might show
a lot of things.
None of that satisfies my other hunger (for sound; new language), though.
The volleying of line toss can be genuinely interesting (John M. Bennett and
I keep a pretty constant volley going via snail mail. It's engaging - I'd
say perky, if that didn't sound too Gidgety or something.)
What Louis terms the antagonism toward this thing mislabeled renga (or very
loosely named such) is something to think about, as he suggests. Humor's
probably the thing to rejuvenate!
Tired after a week that could've used a bit more bounce!
Sheila
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 03:57:01 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Renga
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
go ahead
and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 06:12:40 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rachel Loden <74277.1477@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: poems & polemics
Chris Stroffolino wrote:
"...but I still think our poems often know more than our polemics do..."
Which is probably why we turn to polemics with such happy ferocity.
We're dumber than our poems, which makes us uncomfortable. Or perhaps
we should just trade poetry baseball cards, which I'm told are being
offered in _Poets & Writers_...
Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 04:06:23 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Fwd: (Fwd) Pound, Dylan, LZ, Whitman
To Herb Levy's
>
>> Even most of the more mainstream poets, including some who may still
be interested in heroics, seem largely to have given on the idea of a
big, big masterpiece.
>
Joe Zitt commented, aptly
> ome of us are still working on big, big pieces --
>
To which I would add the following. A characteristic of the INTENT
(rather than the accomplishment) of three of the authors Bob P tars w/
the brush of genius is the assumption of a massive (or master) work
that is defined by its sense of closure. Stein really is the exception
there. But then Pound and Zukofsky both have their problems at that
level, as has everyone who ever tried such a thing (Dorn, like Pound,
just sort of peters out).
But if I think of Ronald Johnson's Ark, Bev Dahlen's "A Reading,"
Rachel Blau DuPlessis' Drafts, bp nichol's Martyrology, Duncan's
lifework, etc, it seems to me that there are large numbers of poets
still involved in sizeable writing projects. Then there are all the
poets who have done booklength poems outside of that construct, like
Robert Kelly (Songs, Axon Dendron Tree), Don Byrd's Dime Store saga,
Watten's Progress, James Sherry's Our Nuclear Heritage, Lee Hickman's
Tiresius IB: Great Slave Suite, many of the books of Bernadette Mayer,
Jerry Rothenberg's Poland, Creeley's Pieces and A Day Book. On top of
which I'd add those writers whose works seem to link one into the other
into a larger if wholly informal web of connections, like Eigner,
Ginsberg and Grenier.
The real distinction here--the heroic claim for genius, in Bob's
terms--has I think to do with a sense that one can impose closure
(teleology) on any project of such scope. Whitman and Duncan have
always seemed to me to offer much more attractive approaches than the
perfect circle or Pound's "ball of light." LZ has, after "A" 6, a sense
of the distinctness of each stage in "A"'s progress that is entirely
different from what we find in Pound. And I have yet to see a good
analysis that identifies what changes as we move from "A" to "An" in
LZ's book.
Someone mentioned (rightly I think) the idea that an attraction of
Dylan fell into the same genius trap (or at least that Dylan himself
did, at one point in his life). Having once hitchhiked 3,000 miles in
the express hope of meeting Dylan, that seems/feels like a proper
critique. When I did meet him on that trip (at a party in Newport, RI),
he was all of 23 (six years older than I) and showed me xerox copy (on
"thermal paper" as I recall) of a song he was working on--Tambourine
Man. It seems odd in retrospect to realize that we were both such
juveniles at the time. I think it was very difficult for him (or anyone
who paid much attention to him at that point in the early 60s) to
separate out what he was doing to the use of metaphor in song from the
deliberate myth that was being spun in order to free him from the
reality of being a suburban middle-class kid who'd belonged to a
fraternity only a few years earlier. After the drug rehab (which was
termed a "motorcycle accident" at the time), I think he looked at what
he was doing and the myth of genius in/for himself pretty much
shattered. The use of wild metaphor in his songs declined sharply and
never really returned. Tho he still uses the "genius" as schtick (viz.
the 30th anniv. concert a few years back). What I think he accomplished
was--very briefly--an American surrealism that felt authentic rather
than borrowed and precious (viz. Mr. Bly, Mr. Edson and several NY
School poets). And that I suspect is what carried forward as an
influence amid my friends, the langpo connection.
((special thanks to Joe Zitt, to whom I inadvertantly posted this
first, for saving and getting the errant missive back to me))
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 04:10:38 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Anmarie Trimble
Anmarie wrote:
>
>Since I wrote this, am I still a lurker?
>
>
No, you're a Post-Lurker. As in Post-Lurkerism.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 04:14:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Criteria (fwd)
>Silliman do, for instance, without the first line of Pound's _Cantos_?
>
I'd probably go down to the ship, set keel to breaker, forth on the
godly sea....
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 04:58:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Marjorie's Post
Marjorie,
That was a WONDERFUL post. Thank you.
As to your comment:
>there is no use pretending that the Establishment Doesn't Exist.
Well that, of course, is one of its founding principles (and not just
this establishment either, viz. Hilton Kramer or even Pat Buchanan).
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 05:01:04 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Revenge of the Renga
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
go ahead
and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
of pretending you have no power ("Mistah Corn, he....
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 09:01:12 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: CAP-L List
I wouldn't really advocate this, but I wonder what would happen if
everyone on this list all at once signed up, en masse, to the CAP-L
list.
I was on that list for a couple of weeks and found myself drawn into
conflict with the most whiny and irritating sort of special pleading for an
attenuated and exhausted poetics.
There is nothing quite so unpleasant as a failed neo-formalist. I
have run into several in various contexts and they are like
disinherited nobility. I would also compare them to the clothes
police at the Vatican, who turn away a lovely sixteen-year-old in a
long skirt because the edge of her shoulders shows beyond her blouse,
while letting in some aging harridan in a lowcut dress with half her boobs
hanging out.
Not all neoformalists seem failures to me. A while back there was
this discussion of Larkin that seemed to center on his naughty
liberated poems --though nobody quoted my favorite of those,
Sexual intercourse began
In 1963
Between the end of the Chatterly ban
And the Beatles' first LP--
But just too late for me.
But few poets since 1950 have written anything to equal "Church
Going" in which Larkin is true to his own bored and comically cynical
nature, while compassionate and understanding about the need many people
feel for faith of some sort. Also, when not too self-conscious,
Timothy Steele has written some lovely poems. And I think of Anne
Sexton as a remarkable formalist in a lot of her work.
For really funny parodies of the sort of writing some New Formalists
would like us to go back to, look at Phoebe Cary's entries in John
Hollander's Library of America Nineteenth Century American Poetry--
her versions of Poe and Tennyson, especially.
Funny thing about neoformalist poetics is that it claims great
historical authority yet usually stops looking backward with the
early English Renaissance. As someone recently pointed out, the
genuine English meter was the old Germanic alliterative stress meter.
Not this overlay of French syllabics.
But is serialization or aleatory poetics the only answer? To me, the
Rengamania that broke out here was very promising. Among other
things, I never knew what a renga was. And it wasn't any trouble to
skip over the rengas in my daily compilation if I got tired of them.
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 08:06:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
anmarie t writes:>
> Maria-
> As for the tone of this group, uh, it's feister than the, say, the WAC
> list? (I think I just gave my age away?)
what's wac and how can i claim youth by joining?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 08:33:08 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: poems & polemics
rachel l writes:
.. perhaps
> we should just trade poetry baseball cards, which I'm told are being
> offered in _Poets & Writers_...
>
> Rachel Loden
okay, sister, as a popcult stalwart i must come to the defense of poetry
baseball cards which i think is a swell concept. (even tho it reifies authorship
blah blah blah...it does so in a playful way). just y-day i came across some
rabbi cards, if u can believe it, in my desk drawer, from a time when i was more
seriously into Jewish cultural studies and not spending all my time fending off
post corn flakes on the POETICS list. selon moi, these rabbi cards (the full
series is named "Torah Personalities") are a hoot --absolutely darling. i've got
"series 3: featuring pre-war photos!" "enjoy inspiring stories of learning
mini-series," etc. Pictures of frail old guys w/ beards reading books.
apparently (my friend who procured them for me sd) they're traded very seriously
by little boys in Brooklyn etc, mostly i think Hasidim. anyway, our erstwhile
comrade Gary Sullivan is currently making poet-cards (i unloaded 7 years' worth
of Poetry Flashes on him for this very purpose). hey if poets and writers is
ready to exhibit a sense of humor about themselves maybe we are on the verge of
a paradigm shift in poetics, age of aquarius, whatever.
by the way, i;d love to get hold of that city lights book, Major League Poets,
which is out of print. any leads? i think its by someone named something like
michael horowitz or something--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 08:33:16 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: poems & polemics
On Sat, 26 Aug 1995 06:12:40 EDT,
Rachel Loden <74277.1477@COMPUSERVE.COM> wrote:
>Chris Stroffolino wrote:
>
>"...but I still think our poems often know more than our polemics do..."
>
>Which is probably why we turn to polemics with such happy ferocity.
>We're dumber than our poems, which makes us uncomfortable. Or perhaps
>we should just trade poetry baseball cards, which I'm told are being
>offered in _Poets & Writers_...
>
>Rachel Loden
>
>
Bravo, Rachel! I think it's brave to say we're dumber than our poems (& not
true all of the time -- there are some dumb poems, too), and generally
correct.
charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 08:39:22 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: who is this guy?
>anmarie t writes:>
>> Maria-
>> As for the tone of this group, uh, it's feister than the, say, the WAC
>> list? (I think I just gave my age away?)
>
>what's wac and how can i claim youth by joining?--md
>
>
When I was a boy growing up as child of an Air Force father, until age 11,
WAC was Women's Air Corps. So I don't know if WAC shows one's age as
youthful or ageful. Yes, what's WAC? --ca
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 08:45:31 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Fwd: (Fwd) Pound, Dylan, LZ, Whitman
ron s writes:
>
> Someone mentioned (rightly I think) the idea that an attraction of
> Dylan fell into the same genius trap (or at least that Dylan himself
> did, at one point in his life). Having once hitchhiked 3,000 miles in
> the express hope of meeting Dylan, that seems/feels like a proper
> critique. When I did meet him on that trip (at a party in Newport, RI),
> he was all of 23 (six years older than I) and showed me xerox copy (on
> "thermal paper" as I recall) of a song he was working on--Tambourine
> Man. It seems odd in retrospect to realize that we were both such
> juveniles at the time. I think it was very difficult for him (or anyone
> who paid much attention to him at that point in the early 60s) to
> separate out what he was doing to the use of metaphor in song from the
> deliberate myth that was being spun in order to free him from the
> reality of being a suburban middle-class kid who'd belonged to a
> fraternity only a few years earlier. After the drug rehab (which was
> termed a "motorcycle accident" at the time), I think he looked at what
> he was doing and the myth of genius in/for himself pretty much
> shattered. The use of wild metaphor in his songs declined sharply and
> never really returned. Tho he still uses the "genius" as schtick (viz.
> the 30th anniv. concert a few years back).
> Ron Silliman
having lived in the twin cities for 7 yrs now, i find it entirely believeable
that dylan, as a Jew growing up in one of the bleakest, most Jew-less and
joyless places in the country (Hibbing, a far-north "Iron Range" town wasting
away in post-industrial era) would feel completely out of place and wd
occasionally revert to clinging to the term "genius" to make sense out of his
life. you simply can't imagine...i never would have believed it until i got
here...some of my *graduate* students have never heard the word jew except as a
verb... and as for the fraternity business, i thot his frat experience was a
miserable failure whose emotional residue is recorded in "Positively 4th street"
(4th st. is fraternity row here at U of MN)...so, middleclass he might have
been, but there are other indices of Otherness that might result in a genius
shtick...md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 09:10:04 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Joris's Celan and Corn on L poetry - 24 Aug 1995 to 25 Aug
marjorie p writes:
.
>
>
> Corn is being just a little bit disingenuous...
of course he is. i think some folks here are adopting the strategy (w/
debatable success) of reading him at face value in order to sidestep the
defensiveness and passive-aggression that characterize his posts, and get to the
issues.
When
> the big and exciting conference on Visual Poetics was held by the dept of
> spanish-Portugese last spring (starring the deCampos brothers and including,
> among many others, Steve McCaffery, Johanna Drucker, and Charles
> Bernstein), not one faculty member from the English dept. showed up.
yup, that's the stanford english department i know and ... s&p is always ahead
of the game...
>
Maria, that's just not true. You do write about language poetry (as in Stein,
Duncan,other precursors, yes?)in the larger sense of the term,
wow, thanks, marjorie, yr. right. i hadnt intended, as u know, to write on stein
duncan spicer as precursors to LPs, in fact, i was always wary of the possible
charge that i was "reducing" complex language-centered writing to crude partisan
politics based on (gasp) biographical data. but now that i know more abt LP,
i'm happy to be considered a fellow-traveler.
and respecting the rights of others can turn into capitulation, no?
nah, i guess we differ here. i don't see myself capitulating, tho i resisted a
strong urge to respond w/ irrational hostility to the patronizing assessment of
myself as a "reasonable and likeable person." this is his method, to accept a
few welldeserving interlocutors (keith, etc) out of the rabble, and make a great
show of carrying on a pained and painstakingly "objective" conversation about
poetics, and generally play the martyr, tho it's all happening through forwards
etc.--highly mediated and distant. still, i'm willing to give him the benefit
of treating him at face value for several reasons: 1) my sister is a writer of
light verse in a formalist mode; i want to support her creative efforts and not
engage publically in debates that might result in our being pitted against each
other 2) what if AC genuinely thinks he is asking questions in good faith, and
just can't help his tone of aggrieved righteousness; telling him off, as others
have done eloquently, won't help any putative conversation between LP and
Formalists 3) i really don't have anyting against merrill's, bishop's and
lowell's poetry, and resent being perceived (as i am in my department, tho
paradoxically, i'm the only person that teaches these poets, and i do so quite
sympathetically, as anyone who's read my work wd know) as a wild-eyed ignoramus
unaware of "tradition" etc... so if AC sees himself as a representative of the
aforementioned poets i'd like to welcome him w/ respect, tho his intentions may
turn out to be as nefarious as you claim...isn't this funny, i'm feeling like an
indigenous 15th century dignitary trying to decide how to receive a could-be
conquistador...
AC might be disingenuous, but by assuming so, don't we make him so, and thus
pre-empt any possibility of conversation?
of course i know all this will be forwarded to him and i'll forfeit my standing
as a nice person...JUST KIDDING ALFRED, i know you can rise above it...
there is no use pretending that the Establishment Doesn't Exist.
true, but on the other hand, isn't there sometimes dialogue between
establishment and anti-establishment, or is that too naive of me.
>
md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 10:15:21 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Joris's Celan and Corn on L poetry - 24 Aug 1995 to 25 Aug
1995
I also agree whole heartedly with Marjorie and want to thank you.
I would like to bring up something that was obliquely gestured toward in
one of the paragraphs:
>
>....the fact remains that L poetry has made an enormous difference in the
>poetics of the 80s and 90s and that, on the other hand, poets like Alfred
>Corn and J. D. McClatchy and any of their poet friends at Yale Review
>and similar places have vigorously opposed it or, at best, ignored it.
The first part of this sentence, that L poetry has made an enormous
difference, could also be followed with, Corn and J. D. McClatchy and any
of their poet friends at Yale Review and similar places have made little if
any difference in the poetics of the 80s and 90s. This is very much a part
of the discussion and of course is hit home by the last line:
>there is no use pretending that the Establishment Doesn't Exist.
Though this is obvious to us most of the time, it is the course and purpose
of the establishment to deny difference, and certainly not to make a
difference, in order to perserve state (as per Ron's note), or status -
thanks again Marjorie for bringing it back to the forefront. There is "use"
in knowing, and reiterating, that the Establishment Does Exist.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 10:25:53 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Linda Lane Reinfeld <lreinfeld@ECKERT.ACADCOMP.MONROECC.EDU>
Subject: Language Poetry: Writing As Rescue
For Alfred Corn and all those generous enough to help him in his explorations
of Language Poetry: let me recommend my book, _Language Poetry: Writing As
Rescue_ (LSU Press, 1992). I provide an introduction to the social and
intellectual background of what is generlly referred to as Language Poetry,
close readings of poems by Charles Bernstein, Michale Palmer, and Susan Howe,
and good bibliographies--especially in the intro and chapter one. Of course
the book is not "up to date," but it's not out of date either. Reviews are
still coming out... the most recent from the British _Year's Work in English
Studies_ in which Marjorie Perloff's _Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the
Age of Media_ and my _Writing As Rescue_ are appreciatively discussed.
Linda Reinfeld
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 08:10:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>The caravan of windows to what they flee
>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> dry cleaners
>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments to be
>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were hooks.
>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
>of subject's object status, violent transformation
>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> go ahead
>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 08:17:45 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Renga
>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>The caravan of windows to what they flee
>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> dry cleaners
>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments to be
>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were hooks.
>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
>of subject's object status, violent transformation
>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> go ahead
>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>of pretending you have no power ("Mistah Corn, he....
plunked steeping into post-shrill yawn of the long tea
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 11:48:12 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Joris's Celan and Corn on L poetry - 24 Aug 1995 to 25 Aug
1995
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 25 Aug 1995 22:48:16 -0700 from
<perloff@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Yo Marjorie,
Neither "grateful"nor "pleased"--just courteous, for once in my life. No need
to blast away always, especially when others are doing it, and i've at least
a little hope that, with texts in hand, some of the conversation may improve.
And there are other "awards" besides those you mention, quite rightly, as
dominated by the so-called "establishment." Such awards have never defined
(exclusively) the prestige and cultural capital so important to poets, and you
as historian and critic should know it. I suppose that Charles B and Ron S
and others would like such awards, but as far as I know they're interested in
capturing bigger fish and would probably have to readjust subject positions
in a flash were they to win a MacArthur.
I guess though that you've earned the right--and have the credentials--to
light the torches of polemic, so do what you want, yes? I'll save my bile
for the moments I think it's most needed--otherwise I get tired of pissing
everybody off.
--keith
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 13:21:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199508260543.WAA06838@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> Something has been puzzling me here, lately. In Corn's messages he
> implies that Ashbery is one of "their" poets, a sort of exemplar of
> the conventional or whatever. When did that happen? I know he was one
> of those academic press new poet winners at first, but then he was in
> the Allen anthology, etc.
I don't know when it happend. But here's some evidence for it. In Vernon
Shetley's *After the Death of Poetry*, Ashbery, Bishop, and Merrill are
constructed as a "mainstream." And Shetley goes out of his way to say
that Ashbery *doesn't* appear in Allen! Can you believe it? He's been
mainstreamed enough (I like that word, makes JA sound like a kid who's
been going to a "special" school) so that folks like Shetley can either
LIE or just forget, and nobody who reads the book for the press (Vendler
blurbed it, she must have read the ms) caught the error! (If you haven't
red the book, the statement that Ashbery doesn't appear in the Allen NAP
is not incidental, but part of the book's major argument that Ashbery
"transcends" "mere" camps.) I'm really sorry I never finished writing
my scathing review of that book -- I suppose it would be outdated now....
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 14:02:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: perloff v. corn
Many thanks to Marjorie Perloff for telling it like it is once more.
---0---
I think we should have a discussion about taste: The Taste of the
Establishment, is it yours?
I find I have the same taste as, say, the editors of the 1981 special issue on
American Poetry (l'Espace Amerique) of the Paris literary journal Change
(one whole section was about Poesie Langage USA) but not the same taste as,
say, Helen Vendler as displayed in the Harvard Book of Contemporary American
Poetry (1984).* What about you, friends?
*See M. Perloff's Poetic License, Chapter 3.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 14:05:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <950826035656_63718867@mail06.mail.aol.com>
On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> dry cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> go ahead
> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 12:17:53 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Anmarie Trimble <writeme@E-CAFE.COM>
Subject: Big Mac Wac Pac
>anmarie t writes:>
>> Maria-
>> As for the tone of this group, uh, it's feister than the, say, the WAC
>> list? (I think I just gave my age away?)
>
>what's wac and how can i claim youth by joining?--md
That's what I get for trying to write past my bedtime. Sorry. WAC is
Writing Across the Curriculum. Not very interesting, and not poetic. I'm
trying to start a WAC program at my college, so it was the first thing that
came to mind.
The ending of sentences with a question mark is the youth marker. I was
born after '65. Barely.
I'm off to the mountains for a couple days. Will meditate for renga epiphany.
- A.T.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 12:54:14 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Cage/Cunningham
Comments: cc: silence@bga.com
The cable TV channel Bravo will run a two-hour show tonight (Sat., Aug.
26) at 7:00 PM Eastern Time on John Cage and Merce Cunningham.
Usually Bravo, like most of the Cable channels, reruns programs 4 or 5
times in the month after the original showing.
Probably better than watching Bill Moyers fawning over whomever (even
when it's a poet I like, I cringe to watch Moyers at work)...
Listening to Charles Shere's Symphony in Three Movements as I write.
It's wonderful, Charles.
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 13:22:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
>On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
>
>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> (inspection
>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> kook!"
>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> warehouse, curls
>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
>> dry cleaners
>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> prescience
>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> encore
>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> moments to be
>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> were hooks.
>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> darkness
>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> fruit
>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
>> go ahead
>> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 15:27:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <gleaeri@HARPO.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: trading cards and WAC
I've got the Philosopher All Stars trading cards, anybody want to trade for
my Ghandi, or maybe even Simpson (Bart)?
>>anmarie t writes:>
>>> Maria-
>>> As for the tone of this group, uh, it's feister than the, say, the WAC
>>> list? (I think I just gave my age away?)
>>
>>what's wac and how can i claim youth by joining?--md
>>
>>
>When I was a boy growing up as child of an Air Force father, until age 11,
>WAC was Women's Air Corps. So I don't know if WAC shows one's age as
>youthful or ageful. Yes, what's WAC? --ca
Charles, was there a WAC as well as WASP?
-eryque
Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason
71 E. 32nd St. Box 949
Chicago, IL 60616
gleaeri@harpo.acc.iit.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 14:58:45 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: place genre heading here & behead
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
dry cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
moments to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
were hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
go ahead
and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
of pretending you have no power ("Mistah Corn, he....
plunked steeping into post-shrill yawn of the long tea
thinking for Christ's sake, Kevin, the god needs a job, and if it
weren't for the Vatican police
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 17:24:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950825092306.6547B-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Alfred Corn wrote:
> To David Kellogg: No putdown intended. We were speaking at
> cross purposes. I thought you understood that what I was asking for was
> the aesthetic of LP, what makes it different from other approaches to
> writing poetry. The criteria you gave overlap with the ones I apply, so
> I felt frustrated in the wish to get a general introduction to the
> movement. Yes, I could just plunge in by myself, but I did that before
> and got nowhere. A critical guide can save years of wasted effort.
Dear Alfred,
How to respond?: first, apology accepted.
Second, as for a guide to save effort. . . . Hmm. Remember Stuart
Gilbert? Joyce commentator, born without a sense of humor? An expert,
and a good guide, but he ruined Ulysses for many readers who saw him as a
shortcut. (Pound makes up for Gilbert's lack of humor by having "Jim the
Comedian" appear in the Pisan Cantos).
Third, sometimes a guide won't help; here's where there may be some
fundamental incommensurability, having to do with our respective
backgrounds, temperments, etc., what we're willing to accept or how we
receive our pleasures. My dying grandfather, bless him, says rock music
is "noise" -- and when I grew up I stopped trying to change his mind. Tho
if I had to pick a contextualization, I'd pick something indirect, like
Marnie Parsons's *Touch Monkeys: Nonsense Strategies for Reading
Twentieth-Century Poetry*. Or Bernstein's "Artifice of Absorption"
(though I have plenty of problems with that, and actually see it as a
Romantic document -- how's that, Charles B? (by the bye, CB, the paper
you asked for's in the mail)).
> Meanwhile I see that LP is only one kind of poetry that interests you,
> not *the* only. That sounds reasonable to me. What I had been bothered by
> was the foundational "exclusionary" line of argument I had heard
> elsewhere: that LP is the "real" poetry of our time and the future; in
> fact, one of the recent posts takes this position, dismissing the other
> approach as predictable and boring. (I had used the term "mainstream"
> before because some of POETICS's posters did.)
There are simple reasons why Rod doesn't read "mainstream" poetry: it's
not worth it to him. Just like language poetry is not worth it to you.
Either neither is exclusionary, or both are. (Just for the record, I tend
to think that neither practice is exclusionary, but both rhetorics of
explanation can be.)
> I begin to wonder, too, whether the big division proclaimed
> between the LP movement and the rest of poetry is really useful. Some of
> the recent posts suggest that it isn't. For after all, poetry using
> unfamiliar methods of communication goes back at least to Rimbaud (1870)
> and Mallarme' (1880-1890). Everybody knows about Dada, Modernism,
> Surrealism, and Black Mountain. Plus various unclassifiables like
> Gertrude Stein, Laura Riding, Bunting and Ashbery. And the Naropa
> Institute. So I'm not yet certain that LP has introduced anything that
> wasn't already there.
You'll forgive me if I remind you of what William James said about the
reception of the new. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong (guess I'm
reminding myself, too) but it goes something like this.
First, the response is: Ugh! It's awful. I don't understand.
Then, the response is: I did it first!
Finally, the response is: That's how it's been all along. Everybody's
always done it that way.
I see we're at stage three now (having I believe skipped stage two or
assimilated it into stage three). But that's to be expected. And here's
where Marjorie's comment about the "establishment" becomes relevant, to
which I'll put my own Foucault/Bourdieu spin: within the poetic field,
some have a greater stake in conservation (stability) and some have a
greater stake in innovation (change). Usually the latter feel (often
rightly) that they are excluded from access to symbolic capital
(recognition) and the former feel that they have that capital because of
the inherent worth of their own work. They tend to see the exclusion of
the innovators as a part of the natural course of things, not to be
worried about, and when they feel threatened by the innovators they tend
to translate radical innovation into traditional terms. That's what I see
you doing. By the same token, of course, the innovators tend to overplay
the revolutionary potential of their own practice -- and possibly their
own exclusion. Which may be one thing that turned you off.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 14:43:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: reply reply reply
In-Reply-To: <199508260359.UAA20674@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
Maria -- if there's anyone on the cape with a university account who's
willing to let you use it, you can simply telnet to your own account --
that's what I do when I'm away from San Jose State, since I can't afford
a separate account or long-distance fees -- but I'm in L.A. & there might
not be so many willing accomplices where you're headed -- maybe an
inquiry on one of these listservs will surface a volunteer??
As to the proceedings of Mr. Corns (whose books I have read, thank you)
-- First he asks KT if he's one of the few here who doesn't "hew" to the
line, then he carps about people "lashing" out in reponse to his posts --
confirming that I was right to have changed my mind about him in reponse
to his posts (& how the hell one changes one's mind apart from changing
one's thinking is beyond little ole me -- guess he thought he saw
quotation marks around the word "mind" and grew offended --poem I read once:
Certainly a revolution hardens.
That it should have become a museum piece,
Like this tavern, troubles.
tell me it ain't so, Alfred
And in response to a question about jazz from someone -- no, no knowledge
of lineage required in advance, else who ever would have listened? But,
as with poetry, it certainly helps you identify all those quotations.
The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz is actually a pretty good
place to start a self-education pleasurably -- much better than you might
have expected from that source --
by the way, everybody, several of the old Smithsonian recordings of
poetry are now out on CD -- There's a really good selection of Sterling
Brown recorded across decades -- check out their catalogue --
Maria again,,, if you go off the list while on leave, be sure to give me
an address so we can keep in touch about this 'n that --
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 21:33:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <gleaeri@HARPO.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
David Kellog wrote:
>Second, as for a guide to save effort. . . . Hmm. Remember Stuart
>Gilbert? Joyce commentator, born without a sense of humor? An expert,
>and a good guide, but he ruined Ulysses for many readers who saw him as a
>shortcut. (Pound makes up for Gilbert's lack of humor by having "Jim the
>Comedian" appear in the Pisan Cantos).
>
>Third, sometimes a guide won't help; here's where there may be some
>fundamental incommensurability, having to do with our respective
>backgrounds, temperments, etc., what we're willing to accept or how we
>receive our pleasures. My dying grandfather, bless him, says rock music
>is "noise" -- and when I grew up I stopped trying to change his mind.
David, I empathize with Alfred's request for a guide, and I agree that
sometimes a guide won't help a bit. The trick is to find a guide that
helps, and the results of their instruction aren't often evident until the
guide isn't necessary anymore--assuming that the lost soul has some
affinity for the subject. Looking back on my flight instruction, I realize
that my instructor actually taught me very little, he was mostly along to
keep me from crashing. My best guide was my father who hadn't flown at all
for thirteen years before I started. Of course, at that time I was
seventeen and not talking to him. The question really comes down to how
badly a guide is required. I've found simple advice to be invaluable (such
as a suggestion to read _Tender Buttons_ aloud), where involved discussions
can often take a large portion of the enjoyment and flush it.
Eryque
P.S. My grandmother and I agree that she doesn't pretend to find any value
in John Lennon, and the same goes for me about the Lennon Sisters
Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason
71 E. 32nd St. Box 949
Chicago, IL 60616
gleaeri@harpo.acc.iit.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 21:40:50 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: trading cards and WAC
On Sat, 26 Aug 1995 15:27:18 -0500,
Eryque Gleason <gleaeri@HARPO.ACC.IIT.EDU> wrote:
>Charles, was there a WAC as well as WASP?
>
>
>-eryque
>
Eryque, I know WASP only in the more familiar "white anglo saxon
protestant" way -- but I'm not certain what you're referring to.
There was certainly a WAC, at least in the 1960's, although I'm not certain
when it began, when it ended, or if it still exists. What's your WASP?
all best,
charles
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 21:53:24 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
I keep reading the phrase, first from Corn, then repeated by others quoting
him, about "poetry using unfamiliar methods of communication" at least
since Rimbaud & Mallarme. Every time I hear that it just grates. Perhaps
because I don't buy it, unless it comes with a more thorough discussion
concerning "unfamiliar to whom," "why unfamiliar," etc. Maybe it's because
I think of poetry as the most welcoming form of comunication I know. Yes, I
know, techniques of "defamiliarization" have been common since a long time
before Rimbaud or Mallarme. And "defamiliarization" relates to
"deterritorialization" rather nicely, whether that deterritorialization is
encompassed by Ella Fitzgerald or Deleuze & Guattari.
charles alexander [===========^^============]
[ <> ]
chax press [ maybe a <> pages ]
[ time <> letters ]
phone & fax: 612-721-6063 [ upon <> frames ]
[ once <> motion ]
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu [ <> ]
[===========vv============]
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 23:03:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: trading cards and WAC
"before we married mommy served in the WACS in the philipines"--
WOMAN AIR CORPS---cheap trick, 1979
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 22:00:37 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
(I hit "send" by accident, so here repeat a post I already sent, but here
with its continuation)
I keep reading the phrase, first from Corn, then repeated by others quoting
him, about "poetry using unfamiliar methods of communication" at least
since Rimbaud & Mallarme. Every time I hear that it just grates. Perhaps
because I don't buy it, unless it comes with a more thorough discussion
concerning "unfamiliar to whom," "why unfamiliar," etc. Maybe it's because
I think of poetry as the most welcoming form of comunication I know. Yes, I
know, techniques of "defamiliarization" have been common since a long time
before Rimbaud or Mallarme. And "defamiliarization" relates to
"deterritorialization" rather nicely, whether that deterritorialization is
encompassed by Ella Fitzgerald or Deleuze & Guattari.
But perhaps what I don't like about this phrase, as much as its specific
form, is how easily Corn tosses it off, as though, because it is old hat to
do something "unfamiliar" (or innovative? or building on other's
innovations?), it is therefore not very interesting or valuable. I mean,
Dada did it, Modernism did it, even "various unclassifiables" (this too
sounds like some kind of put down) like Gertrude Stein & Laura Riding did
it, so let's not claim that any strategy of experimentation or innovation
is the least bit exciting.
I really think that stinks. And that "unfamiliar methods of communication"
sounds like using a toilet bowl as a telephone.
charles alexander [===========^^============]
[ <> ]
chax press [ maybe a <> pages ]
[ time <> letters ]
phone & fax: 612-721-6063 [ upon <> frames ]
[ once <> motion ]
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu [ <> ]
[===========vv============]
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 22:08:49 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In message <199508262022.NAA19000@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> >
> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> (inspection
> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> kook!"
> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> warehouse, curls
> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> >> dry cleaners
> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> prescience
> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> encore
> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> moments to be
> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> were hooks.
> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> darkness
> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> fruit
> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> >> go ahead
> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 17:17:24 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <950826035656_63718867@mail06.mail.aol.com>
On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> dry cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> go ahead
> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
on for another night--rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 23:19:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Renga II
In-Reply-To: <199508261201.FAA24025@ix8.ix.netcom.com>
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> dry cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> go ahead
> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> of pretending you have no power ("Mistah Corn, he....
fed on grans, Im savin dis penny for anodder neo dude"
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 22:20:18 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
On Sat, 26 Aug 1995 17:17:24 -1000,
Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU> wrote:
>On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
>
>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> (inspection
>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> kook!"
>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> warehouse, curls
>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
>> dry cleaners
>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> prescience
>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> encore
>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> moments to be
>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> were hooks.
>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> darkness
>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> fruit
>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
>> go ahead
>> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>on for another night--rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit
runs rings round rare rutabagas, reason rumbles recessions
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 23:30:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: place genre heading here and behead
I was reading Perloff's O'Hara book and like what she says about
O'Hara's poem "the critic" in which O'Hara famously refers to the
critic (and the critic "inside himself" too, if you will) as the
assassin of [his] orchards---
And Perloff certainly has helped advance the stock of more writers I
respect than Corn has, but that doesn't mean (Rod S, Steve E. and
Patrick P--to name a few) that she shouldn't be questioned--if only
insofar as I believe that poets MUST question critical paradigms--
even critical paradigms that flatter and/or justify them viz-a-viz
what WCW would call the "bastards out there" (and I am NOT naming
namesat present)---
There do seem to be, however, implicit accusations:
(and they circulate):
"if you don't "come together right now over M(arjori)e" and Ron
in every instance to present a unified front you are therefore
and independent (and isn't that Corn's code name) and thus a
bourgeois self closer to corn that looks like it's climbing
clear up to the sky poking a hole in the ozone of an undivided
LEFTist community (aside:--in which some pigs are more equal
than others, or to quote the renga "the power of pretending you
have no power"...). FOR we all know what INDEPENDENCE DAY means,
and community (which Bernstein, to his credit, recently problem-
atized---oops, I'm stepping out of part--scratch that) is a flag
you can't burn because it allows poetic freedom, poetic license,
radical artifice."
Oy, ye jealous gawds, and to think I gave up being a catholic
to party in your ranks.....
(this goes on, but it gets "less public"--I mean the topical
side of the myth gets refigured in more "subtle" terms that
may be mistaken as "universalist" and "ahistorical" to some)...
chris s.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 18:57:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Size vs Use
Joseph Zitt wrote (some time last week):
>On 25 Aug 95 at 7:40, Herb Levy wrote:
>
>> I can't find the exact quote right now, but the composer Morton Feldman
>> says somewhere that when he began writing very large works (lasting 1-4 or
>> more hours long) he had to severely limit his materials, because so many of
>> the mammoth post-Wagnerian gesamtekunstwerks were massive failures. I hope
>> that this idea helps.
>
>Ah, good point. OK, I grok the difference (I think).
>
>As luck would have it, I'm listening to some Feldman as I write this.
>I haven't heard any of his hyperlong pieces though, mostly due to the
>prohibitive cost of 4-CD sets.
I wish I could recommend that you request that the local radio station play
"For Phillip Guston" or such, but that's a little unlikely. Perhaps a
library (public or, more likely, academic) can be cajoled into purchasing
something.
Still there are good single CD recordings of "Piano & String Quartet,"
"Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello," "For Bunita Marcus," & "3 Voices." These are
all lovely & idiomatically similar to the 2-4.5 hour pieces though they are
also relatively short (less than the 80 minute time-limit for CDs, anyway).
For those who didn't get my point here, Feldman's pieces are quiet,
intimate, personal, gorgeous, pieces that simply don't not to obey the
usual standards of length for modern music.
Ron Silliman's take on countering the modernist imposition of "closure
(teleology) on any project of such scope" rings true to me, both in terms
of the long poems he, Joseph Zitt & I have referred to in this context & in
terms of Feldman's music.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 12:53:01 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: Joris's Celan and Corn on L poetry - 24 Aug 1995 to 25
Comments: To: perloff@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU
Dear marjorie and fellow Poetics discussants:
thank you, Marjorie, for the straight talking on this subject.
Just so long as the Alfred Corns continue to regard poetry in the way that
they do, I suspect it really is best they continue to believe in 'the big
division between the LP movement and the rest of poetry'.
A poetic, be it LP or any other, is not determined by 'features' of the
kind Corn lists (nor for that matter is the 'quality' of a poem, which issue
Corn approaches in the same fashion), let alone some 'key' characteristic,
or 'special feature' by means of which position in the marketplace, or
value, can be established. If Poetics is the theory of practice, then it is
characterized by its purposes. What begins to take shape as a poetic are
practices which implicitly and or explicitly take issue in a similar way
with existing writing practices (within poetry and without it). Another
way to say this I guess is that the differences in poetics that matter are
ideological not stylistic. As are differences in taste. Well, I don't mean
to lay down the law, but I did feel the issue, if you'll excuse the figure,
was being skirted.
best,
wystan
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 20:03:49 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: place genre heading here and behead
Well Chris, you shake that tree and, here, something falls out.
Me thinks you've lumpened a real need to critique all established modes
(Perloff's and Silliman's included) with a more personal interpretation of
events. I.e., what arises as lines are drawn are sometimes less clear
lines.
But the fundamental issue is something not so open to interpretation. As
I'm sure you follow, the New (Neo is better) Formalists clearly represent a
Gingrichean front of popular anachrony. What I've read of their criticism
is almost all poor attempts at some cheap structuralist paradigm which is
more a thinly veiled self promotion. The bile that rises at the ruse of
"expansive" (versus emaciated) poetry Creeley's work proclaimed as a
thin, weak emaciated trickery of line break is one thing, but to couple
this impoverishment of "criticism" with the fact these politicians have
received numerous Guggenheims, NEA grants and other prizes for their
work...(speechless)...next thing you know, Wyatt Prunty will be president
Gingrich's press secretary.
Surely the fact that these pundits are applauded and praised is not the
point. And in fact Marjorie's lament of the poetry world's prize structure
struck me as a less determining, though somewhat curious, factor in shaking
out the lines of poets, than is the function of her note in general
delineation. (I should say, there will never be an established prize
structure for experimentalists as someone has pointed out on this list,
significant prizes are a means of pulling the errant into the fold.) But,
as I think your pointing out, De-Lineation (as opposed to sidleing up) is
different and it is through a process of de-lineation that we can sharpen
our definition of "the established" no matter who they may be.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 16:06:27 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: George Stanley
Thanks Ryan for alerting us all of George Stanley's new book "Gentle
Northern Summer." For all of you who want to order it here's the info
New Star Books Ltd.
2504 York Avenue
Vancouver, BC V6K 1E3
CANADA
1 (604) 738-9429
As Ryan has stated, it is "good stuff." Thanks everyone!-Kevin Killian
>Maybe I'll add, since we're pluggin good stuff, George Stanley's
>new book is due in September. I think it's _Gentle Northern Summer_
>or thereabouts.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 15:30:56 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Another Death in the Family
In-Reply-To: <199508270357.UAA06825@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
Just heard on the radio last night that John Gilmore had died recently.
John was one of the greatest tenor saxophone players of our era, a major
influence on Coltrane, and another great freind of poets throughout the
world. -- One of those musicians who actually thought about the poem he
was creating music to accompany -- not sure if any of that ever got
recorded, though -- Since John never had the musical equivalent of
Ashbery's grand slam (Nat'l book award, pulitzer & nat'l book critics'
circle award all in one gulp), the establishment (I liked it in the 60s
when we used the even vaguer term "the system") never felt compelled to
appropriate him.
("friend" for "freind" above)
If you've ever heard John once, you'll never forget his work -- and he
was one of the most generous and open-minded people I ever met --
If you don't know his work, _Sun Ra Live at Montreaux_ is a good place to
hear him.
Speaking of Ashbery, his "case" presents an interesting opportunity for
reception studies -- compare the Bloom Ashbery to the David Lehman
Ashbery to the Silliman Ashbery to the Ashbery as he is taught to college
senior English majors from the Norton Anth -- a real study in contrasts
-- and the work to be done by us critic types (often the same people who
appear on other pages as poet types) is to account for the ways that
those varied reading spring from the same texts (though, as with
Williams, it's often the case that readers choose the Ashbery texts that
seem most fitted to their own aesthetic, which explains the nearly
universal rejection of _Tennis Court Oath_ along the Bloom-Vendler-you
name it route))) --
got to drive to San Jose State in the morning to start a new semester --
see y'all when I get there.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 16:46:43 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: rough as a corn cob
I have only just now begun to get a fix on what seeems to have
happened with this Corn thing, and would enjoy hearing more about how
it all got started. All I noticed at first was the tone of
communications descending ex cathedra, as if broadcast from the roof
of St. John the Divine, "To the Thessalonians...I mean, the Poetics
List, greetings, with sorrowful apprehensions that you may have
slipped into some Eastern heresy." His Eminence's emissaries were
dispatched, his Eminence remaining aloof on said roof. Evidently this
is One of those to whom one makes visits, nay is granted audiences, but
who does not return visits. Maybe not the Holy Father himself, but
surely, to judge from tone of the messages, among the more powerful
Cardinals.
I did recognize the tone. I once addressed a letter to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, using all the proper honorifics, asking that George
Herbert's vicarage at Bemerton not be sold off but be kept as a
museum. I got a letter from a high-up underling that was even
snottier than those things from Corn.
Oh and I do hope that Ron Silliman has memorized a vastly expanded
and enriched bio-bib of Corn to be rattled off next time it's
needed. We wouldn't want to offend him again.
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 09:22:42 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
>In message <199508262022.NAA19000@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion
group
>writes:
>> >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
>> >
>> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >> (inspection
>> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >> kook!"
>> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >> warehouse, curls
>> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
>> >> dry cleaners
>> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> >> prescience
>> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> >> encore
>> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> >> moments to be
>> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> >> were hooks.
>> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> >> darkness
>> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> >> fruit
>> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
>> >> go ahead
>> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
>> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
>down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 08:48:43 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Renga II
jg writes:
>
> > In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > (inspection
> > denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > kook!"
> > Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > warehouse, curls
> > no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > dry cleaners
> > piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > prescience
> > the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> > Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > moments to be
> > of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > were hooks.
> > All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> > falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> > of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > go ahead
> > and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > of pretending you have no power ("Mistah Corn, he....
> fed on grans, Im savin dis penny for anodder neo dude"
jorge's back and yr gonna be sorry, hey lawdy lawd
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 09:16:56 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: joriscelan
just picked up breathturns, joris's celan, and i hafta add my voices to the
chorus of consensus here: wowie kazowie. multiple groove factor and yay!--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 04:38:36 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: goof me up! tweettweet!
thomas, maybe prose did drive poetry out of town - oh Lisa, how
pastorale - and maybe it's a roundtrip.
last time _poetry_ had a vehicle the tenors went on strike. with
corn flecks in my soda pop _i'd_ be pissed off too. driven out
sure - but driven. let's say
"thank you."
personally, i metaphor after three o'clock only, fearful of any
symbol's crash. no original jokes allowed! (the corn factor...
except those might not be hands i'm looking at now - my
ontogeny is showing - is
is that ok?! derrido it if
derri duh it's
just louis "hail me a" cabri quick - [cabris. fr. goat]
"let him eat our hats"
and away, thou motley humourist!
Whalen away
i
metaphysical object
& screamed.
always-indeterminate
listserved condition of "post depression"
with that post-lurker FEED ME savoir fare - as a proseur
object to it, since the...
how can there be poetry without prose?
the object i've
the objective al
ive
there too - tickets all round!
(take _back_
the pop
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 02:53:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Children of the Corn
Chax writes (rightly),
>
>I keep reading the phrase, first from Corn, then repeated by others
quoting him, about "poetry using unfamiliar methods of communication"
at least since Rimbaud & Mallarme. Every time I hear that it just
grates.... But perhaps what I don't like about this phrase, as much as
its specific form, is how easily Corn tosses it off, as though, because
it is old hat to do something "unfamiliar" (or innovative? or building
on other's innovations?), it is therefore not very interesting or
valuable.... "various unclassifiables" (this too sounds like some kind
of put down)
There is, I think, in both phrases an anxiety of categorization at
work. And it is just as easy (and limiting) to counter with one's own
tossed-off groupings of a "non-unfamiliar" poetics (we could even
develop a list and exfoliate a la the renga brigades).
But what I'm interested in here is what the need for the category
itself here might represent, an arms-length methodology for
containment, an attempt to explain something (dare I say) unfamiliar
without disturbing a fixed map of one's sense of the world.
One of the worst things about the term langpo (esp. in its most
virulent form with the = signs betwixt every capitalized letter) is how
it then excuses the children of the Corn to dismiss the writing itself
as somehow irrelevant to their own "ordinary" or "mainstream" or
"traditional" poetics. That dismissal of course is precisely what Alan
Soldofsky had in mind when he first used the phrase in Poultry Flush
back in 1979. And it's been remarkably effective as a strategy.
Corn prefers the more global (and seemingly more neutral) term Parallel
Tradition ((which could be interpreted as that poetry in America which
does not assume itself to be a tributary or descendant of British
poetry, what C Bernstein refers to as "the island poets")), but it
accomplishes much the same thing--to set aside that which challenges
one's own assumptions. And it is those assumptions that are precisely
the issue.
That's what always has bedeviled me about the poetry in, say, The
Nation, an ostensibly left journal that has (ever since Levertov left
as poetry editor 30 years ago just as her own work was veering to the
right) continually focused on a poetics of the most conservative
assumptions. How those assumptions do NOT fit into a larger framework
of conservativism/patriarchy I just don't get. It's what I've generally
thought of as the "Marilyn Hacker Problem" (probably because she does
it well, so it deserves to be looked at critically in her work) of
writing unquestioningly in forms that institutionalize a world in which
her gender and sexual orientation have historically (and not
accidentally) oppressed and suppressed.
And in a sense this is very similar to the discomfort I feel at Bill
Moyers' conception of literature, the purpose of which is to put us in
touch with "timeless, shared" values that in fact are the imposition of
historically developed frameworks that, like Marjorie's Establishment,
start by denying their own existence. Universalism is always already a
white male heterosexual point of view from a particular class, so if
you do not want to reinforce it, why seek it out?
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 01:25:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950826171441.2982H-100000@uhunix4.its.Hawaii.Edu>
from "Gabrielle Welford" at Aug 26, 95 05:17:24 pm
>
> On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
>
> > In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > flicka the mother of Thunderhead and the storm in the glass of water's
> > halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > (inspection
> > denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > kook!"
> > Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > warehouse, curls
> > no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > dry cleaners
> > piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > prescience
> > the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> > Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > moments to be
> > of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > were hooks.
> > All melded like striated film theorists in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> > falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> > of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > go ahead
> > and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> on for another night--rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit
> and ten dull words oft creep in one slow line
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 01:22:26 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <89875.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "Charles Alexander" at Aug
26, 95 10:20:18 pm
f
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 23:09:10 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Marjorie's Post
Or, more specifically, Marjorie's rhetorical question, "respecting the
rights of others can turn into capitulation, no?" Of course it can.
Anything positive can turn into anything negative. Does that mean we
shouldn't respect the rights of others, just on the off chance that
something bad might happen if we do, like, god (or whoever) forbid, dialogue
with "the enemy"? Demonizing the people in "the Establishment" hasn't been
very effective in making it go away, either. Ask Tim McVeigh.
If Lyn Hejinian gets a Guggenheim, *then* can we talk to Alfred Corn without
our loyalty being questioned? Asking him questions about the issues
Marjorie brought up in her post wouldn't be a bad idea; ignoring him (and
being shocked that everyone else isn't) seems to me a way of trying to
pretend "the Establishment doesn't exist."
Kinda miffed,
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 19:57:06 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: protesting executions in S.Arabia (fwd)
Forwarding this to you guys because I know you won't wag a finger at me
for irrelevancy. I lived in Turkey as a kid and am sad about this
happening. I've written to Ismet. He's doing a study that sounds like
similar studies done in the States of why fewer Kurds succeed in school
than other citizens of Turkey. Gab.
---------------------------------------------------------
Dear Netters,
I am sending this message to inform you about the executions of four
Turkish truck drivers by cutting their heads apart by a sword for the sake of
ALLAH (as they claim) in Saudi Arabia recently.
As a muslim person and as a citizen of a country in which 90% of the
population is muslim, I know that there is no such word of ALLAH which orders
such punishment for such a crime ( carrying some medicine which have narcotic
effects). This punishment is only their way of understanding "Kur-an".
**** I am protesting the cruelty and inhumanity of such punishment and the
King who approves it. ****
You may find the message irrelevant for your list but as a member of the
civilized world, I feel myself responsible to protest that barbarism using any
means of communication.
If you agree with the brutality of such punishment and feel a piece of
sarrow in your hearts for those drivers, please distribute this message adding
your point of view to your friends and and other lists you may reach.
I wish you peace,happiness, and justice in the world forever.
Ismet Sahin
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 01:08:38 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Macaronic
Now, Chris, my agreeing w/ Marjorie on this point does not mean I wld agree
with her on many others, just seems to me, in general terms, she was & is,
quite right on this one.
--Rod
Chris S wrote:
>[Perloff] certainly has helped advance the stock of more writers I
respect than Corn has, but that doesn't mean (Rod S, Steve E. >and
Patrick P--to name a few) that she shouldn't be >questioned--if only
insofar as I believe that poets MUST question critical >paradigms--
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 22:01:54 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
Sheila E. Murphy wrote
>On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
>
>> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> (inspection
>> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> kook!"
>> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> warehouse, curls
>> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
>> dry cleaners
>> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> prescience
>> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> encore
>> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> moments to be
>> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> were hooks.
>> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> darkness
>> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> fruit
>> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
>> go ahead
>> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
>> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
armaments sano in corporate corridors to
hold back the Eatern Horde renga take to horse
.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 23:59:05 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Renga
On 26 Aug 95 at 5:01, Ron Silliman wrote:
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> dry cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> moments to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> were hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> go ahead
> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> of pretending you have no power ("Mistah Corn, he....
frosted tiger scholls as water breaks like wind aloud
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 23:59:11 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: poems & polemics
Comments: To: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
On 26 Aug 95 at 8:33, maria damon wrote:
> okay, sister, as a popcult stalwart i must come to the defense of poetry
> baseball cards which i think is a swell concept. (even tho it reifies authorship
> blah blah blah...it does so in a playful way). just y-day i came across some
> rabbi cards, if u can believe it, in my desk drawer, from a time when i was more
> seriously into Jewish cultural studies and not spending all my time fending off
Yow! I'd love to see these. The Fringeware store carries Saint cards,
which I got for some of my Catholics friends for Ch* presents last
year. (This year, I know already that I'm getting most of my Jewish
friends and family copies of Rothenberg's "Exiled in the Word", which
is *wonderful*! The local Half-Price Books just got in a heap of
them, and I think they're going to go fast.)
Hey, I can trade you a Ron Silliman and a Theresa of Avila for a
Nachman of Bratzlav, a Keith Mitchell, and an unnamed draft of
"Howl".
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \|
/ <A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/"> Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 18:33:56 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Corn talk
This time I'm writing, not forwarding (and forwarding again).
Corn tells me he's through, after I urged him to get on the list for
real, especially since I seemed to be spending a lot of time simply
bouncing messages around. It was a strange experience, all around. I've
had this notion for a long time that different groups of poets and
audiences for poetry should talk to each other more, rather than staying
within their lists, as it were. The inter-action on the CAP-L list,
between Corn and Silliman, though brief, was a highlight; important ideas
emerged out of the dialogue which might not have done otherwise. Once I
got into the forwarding business on this list, however, I got very
uncomfortable. I thought it a bit funny that Corn was expressing
opinions on poets he hadn't read; I found it appalling some of the
responses to him, or to the idea of him as "mainstream" or "New
Formalist" or "whatever." We all got locked in so quickly to the
differences between "mainstream" and "avant-garde" or "Language writing"
that real conversation had to be found between the shouts. The truth is
that Corn is a serious writer and thinker about poetry; my allegiance to
him has been as much personal as professional, since I rather prefer
poets on the "Language" side of whatever divide we're talking about. But
I've learned a lot from reading poets who are not on this list, among
them Corn--and Walcott and, yes, James Merrill, whose facility with the
language is a joy to behold, even as one gasps at his stone age
politics. Should say "was," I guess. And there's Rich, etc. etc. I see
no harm in thinking about these poets, in reading them. Hell, I for one
love Stevens.
I guess my sense is that the experiment, while it yielded a few nuggets,
didn't really work. But I do hope that this list will continue to
discuss its own differences from itself, perhaps even from others not on
the list, in substantive fashion. And I think I'll stop forwarding (and
backwarding) anything for a long while.
Best wishes,
Susan Schultz
PS After I forward this one, of course.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 00:24:51 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <303fe1ae5360002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, maria damon wrote:
> In message <199508262022.NAA19000@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion group
> writes:
> > >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> > >
> > >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >> (inspection
> > >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >> kook!"
> > >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >> warehouse, curls
> > >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > >> dry cleaners
> > >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > >> prescience
> > >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > >> encore
> > >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > >> moments to be
> > >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > >> were hooks.
> > >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > >> darkness
> > >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > >> fruit
> > >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > >> go ahead
> > >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> > in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
> down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
but do cavort in the mind of Angelo's mom
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 00:24:45 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: More Forwards (fwd)
all--
this post praps applies to several current threads...
got messerli's _gertrude stein awards in innovative american
poetry_ anthology th other day--anthology of work that's appeared
in magazines over the previous year. i'd recommend this to mr.
corn as a source for current work in the langpo vane(s)--many of
these authors appeared in either _in the american tree_
or ganick's followup _art of practice--much to be said for a
collection of work still in current circulation, not yet nailed
down... still open to fresh readings, rather than waiting for
the approved interpretation.
for corn, too, might be useful to see the variety of veins being
mined, rather than a single langpo party line... contrarywise,
i was a little disappointed to see many of the "usual suspects",
both in terms of authors & magazines... brings up the friendly
question of is there some ossification or complacency in the LP
tendency--i mean, a parallel or alternative canon is still a
cannon (sic)--is there a sense in which langpo creates its own
"claustrophobic constraints" for younger poets who're largely
identified w/ it? is that a problem? is there a solution?
likewise concerned w/ the concentration on a few periodical
titles (tho all those included certainly deserve...). the
impercipient, black bread come to mind quick as fitting well
within the scope as laid out--what others would any of you
recommend?
& more interestingly, to me: what publications might you recommend
that might _expand_ the scope of this project? Lost & Found Times,
Juxta, again come quick to my mind--recommends from y'all?
coming soon: addresses for these mags--my most pointed
complaint about the collection is the lack of addresses--these
things deserve more readers/subcribers...
asever
luigi
**********
featured magazines & authors:
**********
6ix (bill tuttle)
abacus (bruce andrews)
arshile (2) (lydia davis, william fuller)
avec (11) (a.l. nielsen, andrew levy, fiona templeton, jessica
grim, joe ross, karen mac cormack, kim rosenfield, myung mi kim, nathaniel tarn, robert crosson, tom mandel)
big allis (paul vangelisti)
conjunctions (2) (martine bellen, rachel blau duplessis)
exquisite corpse (steve mccaffery)
grand street (4) (craig watson, dennis phillips, jeff vetock,
pam rehm)
green z (2) (drew gardner, kimberley lyons)
hundred flowers, a (will alexander)
lingo (5) (elizabeth burns, elizabeth willis, lisa robertson,
martha ronk, peter inman)
long news in short century (2) (michael davidson, peter gizzi)
lower limit speech (6) (buck downs, deanna ferguson, elizabeth
robinson, liz waldner, nathaniel mackey, peter ganick)
lyric& (2) (jean day, mark wallace)
mirage (jennifer moxley)
o.ars (3) (darid de stefano, larry eigner, robert creeley)
object (joan retallack)
oblek (12) (cole swensen, daniel davidson, douglas messerli,
elaine equi, john perlman, kathryn macleod, laynie brown, norma
cole, phillip foss, rae armantrout, robert fitterman, susan smith
nash)
poetry project newsletter (charles north)
raddle moon (5) (albert mobilio, charles bernstein, ray dipalma,
rod smith, shelia murphy)
re*map (brett evans)
ribot (3) (aaron shurin, jeff conant, juliana spahr)
situation (4) (george albon, marjorie welish, roberto tejada,
tan lin)
sulfer (2) (mei-mei berssenbrugge, michael leddy)
talisman (3) (catriona strang, forrest gander, gilbert
sorrentino)
texture (michael palmer)
that (janet gray)
to (5) (abigail child, david bromige, jeff derksen, mary
angeline, susan schultz)
washington review (lyn hejinian)
witz (2) (barbara guest, nick piombino)
the world (5) (clark coolidge, john mcnally, kenward elmslie,
kit robinson, stephen ratcliffe)
(apologies in advance for typoos...)
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 23:26:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <gleaeri@HARPO.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: WASP
Charles, WASP was the Women's Air Service Pilots, or something very much
like that. It was a corp of female aviators during WWII (I don't know how
long after the end of the war the WASPs were used) that mostly ferried
airplanes for the Army, although a few were test pilots as well. And most
were White Anglo Saxon Protestants anyway. I'm guessing that WASP was the
predecessor of WAC.
eryque
Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason
71 E. 32nd St. Box 949
Chicago, IL 60616
gleaeri@harpo.acc.iit.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 00:13:31 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508261517.IAA15336@bob.indirect.com>
On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Sheila E. Murphy wrote:
> >In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > (inspection
> >denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > kook!"
> >Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > warehouse, curls
> >no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > dry cleaners
> >piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > prescience
> >the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> >Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > moments to be
> >of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > were hooks.
> >All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> >falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> >of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > go ahead
> >and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >of pretending you have no power ("Mistah Corn, he....
> plunked steeping into post-shrill yawn of the long tea
never recovering for the lascivious, he not from these parts"
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 00:08:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508261510.IAA15237@bob.indirect.com>
> >In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > (inspection
> >denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > kook!"
> >Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > warehouse, curls
> >no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > dry cleaners
> >piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > prescience
> >the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> >Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > moments to be
> >of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > were hooks.
> >All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> >falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> >of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > go ahead
> >and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
which explains why the pump is busted and why
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 17:58:13 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <89875.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Charles Alexander wrote:
> On Sat, 26 Aug 1995 17:17:24 -1000,
> Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU> wrote:
>
> >On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> >
> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> (inspection
> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> kook!"
> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> warehouse, curls
> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> >> dry cleaners
> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> prescience
> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> encore
> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> moments to be
> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> were hooks.
> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> darkness
> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> fruit
> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> >> go ahead
> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >on for another night--rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit
> runs rings round rare rutabagas, reason rumbles recessions
> occasionally pointed but not Pointer, no it's always
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 1995 23:50:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: dylan
Ron--thanks for the story about meeting dylan. He once said that he
tried to write another Mr Tambourine man and that that was a mistake--
I was just recently listening (with michael Gizzi) to the outakes from
the basement tapes---a five CD bootleg set (which if anybody has I'd
send you money for cassette copies of--since I don't have a CD player)
and the major change in his stule which you refer to is there evident
(typo-style)--as is the "dropping out" of the pop-music scene at the
height of the career, etc---Yet, I don't know if one can make a mere
pre-and-post 1966 distinction---especially by focusing it around the
notions of "metaphor" and "genius"---His language got plainer to be
sure, but the myth of genius returns. Of course, even in earlier works
like "HIWAY 61" we see the "roving gambler" (which may be a self-portrait,
but it is certainly a harsh, ironized one, a la 1983's "MAN OF PEACE")
and so it seems hard to script dylan's development so easily---For
he changed album to album. Now on one level all the masks (country-star,
christian rocker, recluse, etc.) can be read as but a marketing scheme,
but it also seems that commiting himself absolutely to a particular
paradigm (or schtick, if you must) also fulfilled some psychological
need (as if one must argue "authenticity" on this list for credibility)
---Whatever, the point is that one of the attractive things about Dylan
(like say Yeats) was his ability to go through different "phases" in
a way I find severely lacking in say Bruce Andrews---though that just
shows you how retro I am.....we'll meet on edges soon, chris
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 02:56:14 EDT
Reply-To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: beard@MET.CO.NZ
Subject: Re: Hello Alfred Corn
Herb wrote to Alfred Corn:
>Apparently no one has ever discussed the ettiquette of news groups and mail
>lists with you. You're acting like a twit. Maybe you're a nice guy & don't
>mean to be such an asshole, so let me explain some things to you.
>When you start reading a newsgroup or mail list, you're supposed to shut up
>and read for a few weeks (at least), so you have a sense of the common
>discourse, what areas of the topic have already been covered, who's around
>the group, etc.
Alfred's posts do have a quality of challenge about them, a challenge to what
he sees as the assumptions of this list, and there was a hint of rudeness
there. But words like "twit" and "asshole" can only escalate the flamewar, and
seem to go beyond the response that a mere breach of netiquette would justify.
Perhaps on comp.unix.nerds or whatever, where the net.gods take delight in
proving their superiority over ignorant newbies; but not on a list such as this
where respect and tolerance might be expected to be the norm.
Instead it seems that Alfred Corn has touched a nerve here, one more closely
related to poetics than to listserv etiquette.
>You don't just barge in to a mail list, ask a lot of questions and expect
>everyone to stop what they're doing and explain their lives to you.
In a sense, I'm glad that Alfred _did_ barge in and ask them - some of these
are questions that had been niggling in my mind since I joined the list several
months ago. Questions such as _What is LangPo?_, _Is this a LangPo list?_, _How
broad are people's interests on this list?_, _To what extent does this list
represent contemporary American poetry?_ and _How does one read or judge
LangPo?_. Through a lack of courage exacerbated by a surfeit of tact (although
I am aware that the latter has not alway been in evidence in my posts ;-) ) I
have never got around to asking these questions. Corn's posts, while dripping
with sarcasm at times, have nevertheless provoked a series of intriguing and
occasionally even enlightening replies, whereas a more mildly-worded set of
questions might have been ignored.
In addition, the injuction not to "expect everyone to stops what they're doing
and explain" would be more appropriate if this list had a FAQ. What usually
irritates people about newbies' questions is that everyone asks them - what's
interesting in this case is that Alfred's questions were central to what this
list is about, but they appear to be very infrequently asked. It appears that
most of the posters to this list are highly conversant with LangPo and its
practitioners, whereas an outsider, whether geographical (such as myself) or
sylistic (such as A.C.), might be forgiven a feeling of bewilderment. I'm not
going to say that this list is homogeneous or insular, but it sometimes takes
an outsider, whether in innocent curiosity or in snide animosity, to make
people question the axioms that seem transparently true to them.
>There's really no excuse for you to not know how few so-called
>language poets are on the list or how diverse the aesthetic interests of
>the people who regularly post here are.
Well, one could be on this list for weeks, reading and deleting messages about
soul, baseball players, US vs Canada, John Cage, Zen and Hole, and still not
know whether (for instance) Ron Silliman is a "Language Poet", or find out what
"Language Poetry" is. I'm not objecting to the chat on the list (I like chatty
lists). I'm just pointing out that it can feel like a private club, where
everyone knows everyone else and is in on the joke. For someone like me on the
other side of the globe, without access to university resources, and who has to
pay $60 and wait 3 months to order Olson's _Selected_, it would be nice to see
some discussion of the _work_ of Ron S, Lyn H, Charles B and others.
I'm enjoying this list, and the (slow) process of learning about the kinds of
poetry that people here enjoy. While I don't particularly agree with Corn's
viewpoints, I must admit to gaining a kind of perverse pleasure at watching
people's reactions to the little hand grenades that he's tossed into our midst
from the other side of the ramparts.
Tom Beard
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 23:23:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Marjorie's Post
The characterization by Tom Kirby-Smith of Corn "speaking from on high" seems
to me more accurate than the characterization of "lines being drawn" around
Marjorie's post-- did anybody say "If you don't agree w/ M.P. you have
faltered into the nether-realm of cozzening disquises"? NO.
My guess is L.H. will get a major award one of these days,
which wld be very good, but it won't, unfortunately, substantially alter the
terrain M.P descibed. Also, I think Mr. Corn was anything but ignored on the
list. & finally, I'd like to *slightly* correct the mad new american mongrel
picture I presented of myself with the observation that I rather like Stevens
& still think The Wasteland a satisfying orchestral pastiche.
It seems some are hearing "the institution speaking" in Perloff, others in
Corn, personally, I've been beating my carpet for 3 days AND ITS STILL THERE.
'Do the people wish to continue war under such circumstances?' It is a
chinese signal.
The mud, the duckboards, published,
then lost
& become a figurehead "he said"
to protect their realms.
--Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 00:04:51 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508271622.JAA05282@bob.indirect.com>
On Sun, 27 Aug 1995, Sheila E. Murphy wrote:
> >In message <199508262022.NAA19000@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion
> group
> >writes:
> >> >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> >> (inspection
> >> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> >> kook!"
> >> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> >> warehouse, curls
> >> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> >> >> dry cleaners
> >> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> >> prescience
> >> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> >> encore
> >> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> >> moments to be
> >> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> >> were hooks.
> >> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> >> darkness
> >> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> >> fruit
> >> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> >> >> go ahead
> >> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
> >down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
> whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
each with its own erotic carnival and lack of ruin
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 00:11:15 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Renga II
In-Reply-To: <304077b66126002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
md writes
> jg writes:
> >
> > > In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > > And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > > & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > > gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > (inspection
> > > denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > > pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > kook!"
> > > Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > warehouse, curls
> > > no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > > dry cleaners
> > > piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > prescience
> > > the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > > encore
> > > Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > > moments to be
> > > of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > were hooks.
> > > All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > > darkness
> > > falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > fruit
> > > of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > > la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > > flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > > alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > > go ahead
> > > and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > > out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > > inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > > of pretending you have no power ("Mistah Corn, he....
> > fed on grans, Im savin dis penny for anodder neo dude"
> jorge's back and yr gonna be sorry, hey lawdy lawd
> & beware of Airam the Nomad rising from ten thousand lakes
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 00:13:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: bedside reading late late summer
In-Reply-To: <30407e526647002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
bedside reading yr book & learning a lot from it.
:-*
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 00:21:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508270825.BAA17570@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Sun, 27 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> >
> > > In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > > And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > > & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > > gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > flicka the mother of Thunderhead and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > (inspection
> > > denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > > pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > kook!"
> > > Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > warehouse, curls
> > > no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > > dry cleaners
> > > piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > prescience
> > > the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > > encore
> > > Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > > moments to be
> > > of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > were hooks.
> > > All melded like striated film theorists in the pastel seeds of
> > > darkness
> > > falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > fruit
> > > of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > > la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > > flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > > alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > > go ahead
> > > and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > > out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > > inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > on for another night--rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit
> > and ten dull words oft creep in one slow line
b.n.i.m.m (but not in my mirror) i dig gaby's bunnies
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 00:27:11 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508270501.WAA13050@well.com>
On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Thomas Bell wrote:
> Sheila E. Murphy wrote
>
> >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> >
> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> (inspection
> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> kook!"
> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> warehouse, curls
> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> >> dry cleaners
> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> prescience
> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> encore
> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> moments to be
> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> were hooks.
> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> darkness
> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> fruit
> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> >> go ahead
> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
> armaments sano in corporate corridors to
> hold back the Eatern Horde renga take to horse
play & violent stump time air just as i wanted to be some orb
>
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 22:28:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Children of the Corn
Ron Silliman writes:
>That's what always has bedeviled me about the poetry in, say, The
>Nation, an ostensibly left journal that has (ever since Levertov left
>as poetry editor 30 years ago just as her own work was veering to the
>right) continually focused on a poetics of the most conservative
>assumptions. How those assumptions do NOT fit into a larger framework
>of conservativism/patriarchy I just don't get. It's what I've generally
>thought of as the "Marilyn Hacker Problem" (probably because she does
>it well, so it deserves to be looked at critically in her work) of
>writing unquestioningly in forms that institutionalize a world in which
>her gender and sexual orientation have historically (and not
>accidentally) oppressed and suppressed.
I'm wondering about the word "unquestioningly" here. It's always seemed to
me that Hacker's "sonnet novel" *Love, Death, and the Changing of the
Seasons* was precisely a serious questioning and even deconstruction of the
historical assumptions of that form from the perspective afforded by her
gender and sexual orientation. And, perhaps more importantly, I think she
succeeds to a great extent in de-institutionalizing the sonnet, turning it
back into something resembling an empty shell which she then reconfigures as
a vessel for what she wants to put in it (although this is, of course, an
oversimplification, as no form is as fluid as its content.)
I'd love to hear you (or anyone else, for that matter) expand on this,
actually. Can any form be "retrieved"? We recently had a discussion on
this list about borrowing forms from other cultures and, either with no
knowledge of how they operate in that culture, or by willfully ignoring how
they operate in that culture, creating amazing work in the form. Can this
be done from *within* the culture in which the form operates, or can we,
even while creating, not get far enough outside our cultural assumptions
(and if we can't, then does it matter what forms we work in?)
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 22:44:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
Jorge Guitart wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Thomas Bell wrote:
> Sheila E. Murphy wrote
>
> >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> >
> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> (inspection
> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> kook!"
> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> warehouse, curls
> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> >> dry cleaners
> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> prescience
> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> encore
> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> moments to be
> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> were hooks.
> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> darkness
> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> fruit
> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> >> go ahead
> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
> armaments sano in corporate corridors to
> hold back the Eatern Horde renga take to horse
play & violent stump time air just as i wanted to be some orb
>
itally pivots and throwss with his gloved hand to get him at first.
We all wanted to play in the bigs and keeps of Arthurian woe
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 00:00:17 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: surfacing
I offer that last post of mine as "my head" sent-up for once -
the utterly pathetic artifice of its style - in return, as poetic
justice, for those heads I may have taken with seeming "predatory
intent" since first posting. Fortunately there is a precedent to
draw from "in Canada" of self-embarrassment as closure - in for
example the saint figures of bpNichol's early work (and elsewhere
too). Anyhow, best to everyone.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 23:04:56 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: WASP
In-Reply-To: <v01510101ac65a20a0abb@[192.0.2.1]> from "Eryque Gleason" at Aug
26, 95 11:26:18 pm
In the Canadian military services during the WWII, a WAC (sometimes
CWAC) was a woman in the army, a WREN was a woman in the air force,
and a WAVE was a woman in the navy. I know that the terms were used
long after the war, but I havent heard them used much lately. I think
I remember that WACs were army women in the US, too.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 1995 23:06:05 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
>On Sun, 27 Aug 1995, Sheila E. Murphy wrote:
>
>> >In message <199508262022.NAA19000@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion
>> group
>> >writes:
>> >> >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >> >> (inspection
>> >> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >> >> kook!"
>> >> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >> >> warehouse, curls
>> >> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
>> >> >> dry cleaners
>> >> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> >> >> prescience
>> >> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> >> >> encore
>> >> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> >> >> moments to be
>> >> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> >> >> were hooks.
>> >> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> >> >> darkness
>> >> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> >> >> fruit
>> >> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
>> >> >> go ahead
>> >> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>> >> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>> >> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>> >> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
>> >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
>> >down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
>> whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
> each with its own erotic carnival and lack of ruin,
plenty of stalagmites seeming to protect whatever we redeem within and of
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 09:00:37 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508280544.WAA10956@well.com>
On Sun, 27 Aug 1995, Thomas Bell wrote:
> Jorge Guitart wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Thomas Bell wrote:
>
> > Sheila E. Murphy wrote
> >
> > >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> > >
> > >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >> (inspection
> > >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >> kook!"
> > >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >> warehouse, curls
> > >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > >> dry cleaners
> > >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > >> prescience
> > >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > >> encore
> > >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > >> moments to be
> > >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > >> were hooks.
> > >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > >> darkness
> > >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > >> fruit
> > >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > >> go ahead
> > >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> > >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
> > armaments sano in corporate corridors to
> > hold back the Eatern Horde renga take to horse
> play & violent stump time air just as i wanted to be some orb
> >
> itally pivots and throwss with his gloved hand to get him at first.
> We all wanted to play in the bigs and keeps of Arthurian woe
tinkering with ever & chance (Bud & Lou had it right about *form*)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 08:52:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Children of the Corn
In-Reply-To: <199508270953.CAA18571@ix6.ix.netcom.com>
If you want to take issue with Corn's notion that "unfamiliar methods of
communication" are actually old hat because the French Symbolists used
them--and I do want to take issue with that notion--you could point out
that the hallowed Emily Dickinson used grammatical and syntactic
ambiguity, ellipsis, obliquity--as one critic pointed out, "unrecoverable
deletion." (The source is _Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar_; I'm
spacing on the critic's name right now.) Or see Howe on E.D., who may
have been a little more subversive than some of her staunch defenders
give her credit for.
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 08:33:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: Corn talk
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950826181925.26272B-100000@uhunix2.its.Hawaii.Edu>
from "Susan Schultz" at Aug 26, 95 06:33:56 pm
> We all got locked in so quickly to the
> differences between "mainstream" and "avant-garde" or "Language writing"
> that real conversation had to be found between the shouts.The truth is
> that Corn is a serious writer and thinker about poetry;
Dear Susan Schultz:
I don't think the "problem" had to do with getting locked into these
differences. The problem was that Professor Corn's attitude was
insufferably pompous, judgemental, and pretentious, and that every
time he posted here, the post contained some veiled or not so veiled
accusation, insult, or demand. Well, fuck him.
Given the huge differences on this list between various philosophical
and poetic outlooks (some of which I would venture are at least as
massive as those between Silliman and Corn), I have never encountered
anyone here not open to real conversation. Frankly, I don't think any
of this had to do with differences between approaches to poetry, or
having a real conversation. I read or have read all the people on
Professor Cornpone's pedigree, frequently with pleasure, always with
interest, and a number of other people here expressed the same
attitude. No, the problem here had to do with Cornpone's profound,
unapologetic, and aggressive ignorance. How can anyone, in 1995, be a
"serious thinker about poetry" and know nothing about alternative
traditions to their own? And then have the arrogance, the gall, to
accuse those others of being sectarian? What a dickhead.
The biggest problem with this e-space is you can't pick up a knife off
the table and chase that asshole around the room with it. (Altough
Herb did pretty good, given the limitations.)
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 09:16:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508280606.XAA19852@bob.indirect.com>
On Sun, 27 Aug 1995, Sheila E. Murphy wrote:
> >On Sun, 27 Aug 1995, Sheila E. Murphy wrote:
> >
> >> >In message <199508262022.NAA19000@bob.indirect.com> UB Poetics discussion
> >> group
> >> >writes:
> >> >> >On Sat, 26 Aug 1995, Rod Smith wrote:
> >> >> >
> >> >> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >> >> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> >> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> >> >> (inspection
> >> >> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> >> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> >> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> >> >> kook!"
> >> >> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> >> >> warehouse, curls
> >> >> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> >> >> >> dry cleaners
> >> >> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> >> >> prescience
> >> >> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> >> >> encore
> >> >> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> >> >> moments to be
> >> >> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> >> >> were hooks.
> >> >> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> >> >> darkness
> >> >> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> >> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> >> >> fruit
> >> >> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> >> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> >> >> >> go ahead
> >> >> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >> >> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >> >> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >> >> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> >> >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
> >> >down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
> >> whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
> > each with its own erotic carnival and lack of ruin,
> plenty of stalagmites seeming to protect whatever we redeem within and of
the cave of caves in connecticut, but don't let me unleash you now that
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 08:40:24 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: Bill Moyers and "Shared values"
I appreciate being sensitized by Ron Silliman to the risks of
talking about "shared" values or ideals. I suppose I should have
watched more of the Bill Moyers stuff, but... well.... he did start
off as a Baptist preacher, then became an apologist for Lyndon
Johnson, whom I think of as more evil than Nixon because he seemed so
humane at one point.
But to get back to poetics and "shared" things. Would "shareable" be
any better? That wouldn't seem to presuppose aligning oneself with
some already-established hierarchy.
I am much disturbed at any poetics that presupposes an incommunicable
authenticity, a messianic or God-like bard who speaks a strange
tongue which we fall down before and venerate but which we cannot
understand. I don't like the idea of the reader, or listener, serving
as the adoring substratum or pedestal. To me there's something
creepily reminiscent of a religious ceremony in too many poetry
readings--worse, since you don't even get to sing a hymn; it's all
preaching or testifying. Once thought of starting an action group
called SOPOR, Stamp Out Poetry Readings.
I never can quite get John Nims's epigram straight, the one about an
approaching poetry reading:
A vision of the bard appears:
God help your booze, your wives....your ears.
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 09:55:16 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: music and poetry
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 25 Aug 1995 08:33:05 EST from
<KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
When I listen to tapes of the Four Horsemen or Kenward Elmslie, I do not
attempt to categorize them out of music and into poetry or out of poetry
and into music.
Gale Nelson
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 09:58:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Scheil <cschei1@GRFN.ORG>
Subject: corn detourned
`
imperative land that: injury precedes doubt, only no reign in to this
visit of amazed sum of originals restoring absolutes. Far seemed this
thrill of latest poop incoming. Get so imperative mail grating to cope
opinion with an orchestra of misted anticipation auctioneers that apron
to this rail. Imperative: awfully couple beef & biscuit, quiet then
sorely of told prayer, thrilling pathos filled double. Kindred uncanny
manifolds are serpentine; hearth thunders accidental (what hearth) wee
yields beside the leaden lawn. Throughout arrangements, oak drains
overhead. Who captures tigers, which imperative logic copes beyond until
exclamations purify overhead.
To beloved: with opposite social ponds, imperatives don't tally, saying
prayers, white developments to chase phrased sanatoriums: misery,
chemical, laconic their thrill. Why is beauty absolute latest, nought
aside space of polyglot implications abutting reason only set to latest?
Anticipation, implication, a butte heaves north, iron individual,
chatting on someone's anamatronic thrill, why only leaders to series this
praise to yourself. Anticipation of esteem this span of abstract &
paired wastes? On this practice ought incoming of exception pop: this
imperfect that amaze poppas arrogate on esteem irons, that northern popul
vuh joint evidently grammars ought to go banking, careering beauty
bestows callings sorely perplexed, old, chemical only in calling the
neighbors the same. Chicken abstracts pair in the extreme: when absolute
slave drawbridged with absolute northward maladies of polyglot, down
absolute really beloved auction this beloved anticipation in persons
centrifugal rebuffs the edge of polyglot with esteem, irony, entry,
lessons anticipated, figuring income on esteem, the met opinion excited
in palms, release of what elegant hat throughout this? Implications
about doubt, about wiped beef and enclosed sanatorium departures, this
imperfect sum, whose winning never distressed aside of this out. Jointed
till about a hundred abutted reflexes? Originals down the absolute only
accidentally, sore in an equilibrium box, gout onto overhangs, respect
sorely withheld in pleural anticipation of favours, districts overheard
with absolute clatter, except.(?) Beauty howling.
Calling this scarlet tool implication extremely jars my assurance (cool
assurance) sorely. Of this prayer say, "Job, joke a hundred jokes on
madhouses absorbing ten districts," & popular assurances are easily got
for these original rifles (original coffins, original wily coyotes?).
Are there jointed tallywhackers that aren't an exception? Implication is
in jointed, orange baying jokers, this distract of manifolds? What
arrangements abstract stirring? Whispered death knells claw together
this vapor cup, that health behold arguments to this exception of
polyglotted & snowy debauches. One imperative heaved to another attempt
by him to say why hearths doubled the tally of reflex; this "man" poops
too, that he told to a racing individual with ADD. Offence throughout
arrangements other than ribbon hearth jokes, building to history's
exception to that hearing of double miniatures--living (imperative mail,
leaden habitation). Then say, "concerning foxed duplicates from outcry,
Corn presaged we ought madly to dishonour & arrogate the external."
Original southern living, that. Wilt they arrange thrilling *fearfully*
crushed oracles for that diver to cut "mail" from "man," to overwork
towards beauty this destruction, this anticipation that purifys? What
imperative danger loads to what help, purifying this detailed carpet of
compunction & the clot of thought.
My pain's extreme: imperative to heave rebuff in a manageable
anticipation of dinners that tally some glorious apprehension out of
them. Imperative is anything I sorely excuse from the individual
absolute comedy of accidental thinning. They digress to ally stertorous
cores with the joined & are too oriental because their routine skinning
schticks often precede the opening & displaying of green carry-lamps.
That they are imps in love with a racing amazement regains my
individually strewn ironic praise, marched sorely through slang for a
motive alone. Hearty atonement, that these madhouses narrow the weary
individual to a projection of mute squadrons in a suitable gulf (who are
neither Nortoned nor sheeted), mayhap scarlet agoniste's baton,
anticipating that individual encounter which some thrilling might cover.
To "rebuff" the edge off other, per wrote beauty (my "cypress to help
which other latch amaze from that tiger") turning; anticipation,
implication just so, what arrangement is this directory that maniacs
incoming by cartloads can accidentally yield this whole other slant?
guns? Might be too humbled by that joint goodness to sceptic it in
anguish, incoming to display this imperfect dye on which these polyglot
ought to be batted. In location, so why sum to absolute dispatches,
anticipation of the why is a clear absolute pledge in this use of
dishonour?
In Amaze, my Camera
Alfresco Cornet
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 09:13:22 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Children of the Corn
seve carll writes:
> Ron Silliman writes:
>
> >It's what I've generally
> >thought of as the "Marilyn Hacker Problem" (probably because she does
> >it well, so it deserves to be looked at critically in her work) of
> >writing unquestioningly in forms that institutionalize a world in which
> >her gender and sexual orientation have historically (and not
> >accidentally) oppressed and suppressed.
>
> I'm wondering about the word "unquestioningly" here. It's always seemed to
> me that Hacker's "sonnet novel" *Love, Death, and the Changing of the
> Seasons* was precisely a serious questioning and even deconstruction of the
> historical assumptions of that form from the perspective afforded by her
> gender and sexual orientation.
>
> I'd love to hear you (or anyone else, for that matter) expand on this,
> actually. Can any form be "retrieved"?
>
> Steve
bob perelman referred to the hacker phenomenon as "tuxedo porn," which
immediately made me willing to reconsider her, whom i'd regarded with some
impatience...md
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 10:57:17 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: Lost Mail
Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
In my early morning/first day of semester fog, I just managed to delete three
days of Poetics Digest (Fri.-Sun.). If I lost a personal message from you to
me, can you please resend it or backchannel me? Thanks.
Alan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 11:09:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 26 Aug 1995 to 27 Aug 1995
In-Reply-To: <199508280440.AAA06656@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
A message for Bob Drake that I thought I should send to the Poetics List
to clear up any confusion:
Bob, in your recent list of magazines and authors, I noticed that
next to the name of the magazine I publish (Situation) was a list of
names of writers who have never appeared in the magazine, and my name
appeared next to a magazine I've never been in. I don't mean this as a
criticism, but were you trying to offer info about those magazines, or
something else? Maybe I'm just missing the point, but clarification would
help me, and maybe others also... Hope I'm not being blatantly stupid here...
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 11:34:12 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Children of the Corn
Gwyn--I think the critic's name is Christine Miller---though the readings
she offers of Dickinson are pretty peurile and/or conservative/traditional
(LOADED GUN she reads pejoratively as an "adolescent fantasy"), you're
right to point out that she points out her conservatism---Actually GWYN
I've been thinking of raising this issue on the CAP-L list, where it
might be more needed than here---(especially now that corn's gone as
schultz says)---are you on that list? would you care to mention it there?
chris stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 11:58:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: poetry and music
In the last 96 hours, two unrelated people have given me the
(unsolicited) datum that the whole of Emily Dickinson's
poetry can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas".
I tried it with "Title divine is mine/the wife
without the sign/Acute degree conferred on me/Empress of Calvary, etc."
and it sort of works.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 12:17:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Children of the Corn
GWYN--there was a dreadful typo in my last note on Dickinson---
I mean that Miller points out that Dickinson's syntax, meter,
ambiguities (even if we don't appeal to the recent work of MARTA
WERNER etc) is NOT as "conservative" as the "scansion" crowd over
at CAP-L (presumably) would say---Sorry for the confusion, chris....
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 12:41:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Goldsmith <kgolds@PANIX.COM>
take any of them. Emilio. Rob. Tom. Ally. Demi. Andrew. Judd. And you can
throw in Molly Ringwald and Charlie Sheen just to be thorough. On gut
instinct alone I'm saying that at least one of them will die in an auto
crash in the next 6 years.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 10:13:35 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Typoo
In-Reply-To: <199508280437.VAA23334@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
thought that was an unpublished Melville novel!
Want to make one correction to Luigi's list from the Sun & Moon anthology --
I have never been published in _Avec_ -- In fact, having been
unceremoniously rejected on numerous occasions, I gave up -- My poem in
the anthology appeare in :that:, and god bless steve ellis for being open
to unknown poets!
Yes, many of the usual suspects in the anthology, but, as one of the
nominators for that year's bunch, I made a point of suggesting poems from
more nearly micro presses -- I suppose it's in the nature of an awards
anthology that many already-known poets will appear -- but this book at
least makes an effort to go beyond the well-established -- several of the
poets on Ron Silliman's list of people who might have been in another
anthology representing itself as representing something appear here --
(and by the way, thanks _very_ much to whoever it was who noominated my poem)
one hopes the anthology will become more expansive with each year --
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 10:29:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Susan's experiment
In-Reply-To: <199508280437.VAA23334@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
experiment design is everything -- there's nothing wrong at all with your
desire to get more discussion going among the varied groupings of poets &
critics, but such experiments must begin in good faith on all sides --
In this instance, Corn began by insulting everybody and then announced
his refusal to do even the most rudimentary job of reading the posts on
this list prior to characterizing their tenor and the intellects of those
who write them.
Imagine the following --
I have someone forward a post to CAP-L: in this post I announce my
genuine desire to engage in thoughtful colloquiy: I announce in another
post that I once read part of a book by Helen Vendler, but I couldn't get
anything out of it. I once looked at an issue of _New Formalist_, but it
made no sense, seemed too self-promoting, party-line, etc. I ask CAP-L
folk to suggest a "good" formalist poet and furhter ask that the criteria
determining this "goodness" be laid out for me so that I might judge them
without actually having to plow through several volumes of published
criticism on the subject. And, I declare that I simply haven't time to
subscribe to CAP-L or to engage its members in discussion on common
ground -- etc.
Well now, what do you think would be the image people might form of my
willingness to discuss the issues in good faith?
("colloquy") hell, I'll be back on my onw, correctable machine tonight.
Further, suppose that one of the CAP-L folk takes me at my word & offers
a reading list -- following that I wonder "outloud" in my still forwarded
posts whether that individual is the only one on the list-serv who
doesn't hew to the party line (which I somehow know all about without
having read anything by any of the participants) --
In my profession we have a name for people who ask others to do all their
homework for them --
Now, there are plenty of real dialogues going on about these issues all
the time, even at such staid venues as the MLA -- When I present a paper
somewhere, there is often a critical respondent on the panel whose task
is to test mt arguments and my evidence -- we engage in creative debate
-- we don't ask intemediaries to carry our slighting remarks into the
next room to be read to an audience we clearly disapprove --
anyway -- here's an open invitaion to any and all who wish to debate
aesthetics to backchannel me or to meet at high noon in the glare of the
list servs of America -- but we talk face to face, no?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 14:43:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Children of the Corn
In-Reply-To: <01HULSJWN9UQ8Y6E2S@cnsvax.albany.edu>
I thought it was Miller, too, but that seemed too simple. Chris S.--No,
I'm not on CAP-L, hadn't even heard of it until I subscribed here. I am
on CREWRT-L, which is directed more at academia/teachers/students and
thus may have a bit of overlap with them--who knows. Do I get to list the
listservs I subscribe to under "Professional Affiliations" on my CV?? And
who says fantasies are necessarily puerile? I read that in Miller's book
more as her reading of the work's genesis rather than its existing
construction, if you can say there's a difference.
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 14:44:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and music
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9508281115.F539413841-0100000@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
Jorge, the "Yellow Rose of Texas," I find, really works best on "Because
I could not stop for Death" and "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," giving
both a mien of cheery, robust horror.
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 14:48:31 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: place genre heading here and behead
In-Reply-To: <199508280005.UAA00360@Brown.EDU>
On Sun, 27 Aug 1995, Patrick Phillips wrote:
> next thing you know, Wyatt Prunty will be president
> Gingrich's press secretary.
Wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg The moment is at hand.
University Writing Program Take one another
Duke University and eat.
Durham, NC 27708
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 12:34:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marjorie Perloff <perloff@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: MisunderstandingsPOETICS Digest5
In-Reply-To: <199508280440.VAA14255@leland.Stanford.EDU>
I want to clarify a few points because I can see from Susan Schultz's
posting and some of the others that one thing I said was sort of
misunderstood--my fault no doubt for writing at white heat at midnight as
is my wont.
Anyway: I wasn't trying to set up a "them" versus "us" situation and
Susan, you know, I don't think there's only one "good" group of poets and
so on. I too love Stevens and I admire Merrill's work very much. That
was not the issue. What bothered me--and I've since written this to
Alfred who wrote me--is that I felt Alred was being condescending and
making the case that, hey, we're actually quite similar, aren't we and
besides Rimbaud has already done it so what's so new, and therefore , I
felt, co-opting the group a bit in ways I found troublesome. And so I
wanted first to remind the people in this group that Charles Bernstein
founded it and that far from "language poetry" being where it's at, so
far as the larger public goes (and at Buffalo I noticed students
especially seem to think this way--which is natural since they're there),
that it has been a tremendous uphill battle for the more radical poetries
as no one knows better than Ron S.
So just a few facts for the younger people who may not remember all this:
1) In 1978 or so when Bruce and Charles were first editing
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, poets like Alfred and Sandy, John Hollander, Richard
Howard, Charles Wright, and in fact most of the "respected" poets, male
or female--Cynthia Mcdonald, Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov (who hates L
poetry), said loud and clear and in print that language poetry was a
scam, a fraud, worthless, and so forth. At the Alabama Poetry Conference
(see Hank lazer, WHAT IS A POET?), Denise L said to Charles Bernstein,
who was invited, on my suggestion, only because John Ashbery couldn't
come, "Your poetry is no good because it doesn't move people." I asked
her, "How do you KNOW it doesn't move people?" No real answer but at
that conference Louis Simpson, Gerald Stern, Denise etc. virtually
trashed Charles.
2) This was par for the course. In 1985, when I was offered a job at
Stanford, Denise tried to sabotage my appointment by writing a memo
distributed to every member of the dept, saying that although I was a
"very nice lady," she recommended not hiring me because I was too fond of
Zukofsky and "would turn the students into little Gertrude Steinlets."
She then spent two pages excorciating "language poetry" and said she had
met some of these people in San Francisco and that they were without any
talent.
3) Now it's not just a question of did or will Lyn win a Guggenheim. The
question is, today, in 1995 are things better? Yes and no. No, so far
as Stanford, which just hired Eavan Boland (to my way of thinking a
wholly negligible late confessional poet with some Irish patina), is
concerned. Michael Palmer and Lyn couldn't even make the short list.
And it's no better at Berkeley where, when I recommended Charles and Ron
and BOb Perelman a few years back when they had a poetry job, I was told,
no one has ever heard of these people and to forget it.
4) Only in the last few years--about 3, I'd say--has the tide turned
somewhat. The Buffalo program has gotten a lot of attention. Individual
"l poets (some of them like Susan Howe not really l poets anyway) have
gotten the attention they deserve. Some have actually gotten academic
jobs, although these jobs have little to do with their poetry. Most of
the people at Penn didn't even know Bob P wrote poetry! He got tenure
strictly on his critical work, believe me.
But, yes, in the last few years the "establishment" has finally realized
that there are other poets besides Philip Levine and Amy Clampitt. It's
still very partial: I was asked to be a poetry consultant for a NEH
series called "Poetry for the 21 century." The person doing it keeps
sending me lists and I keep telling her I hate them, but the whole ethos
is like Bill Moyer's and is all about "how can poetry matter at a time of
crisis?"--that sort of rhetoric and the poets to be featured don't
include a single poet on this list or known particularly to those on this
list. It's Maxine Kumin, Rita Dove, W. S. Merwin, Edward Hirsch, et. al.
But things ARE a little bit better. And I take Alfred's interest as a
sign of this. What I took his posting to mean was that perhaps it was
time to at least deign to address members of this group since it was
becoming clear that language poetry wasn't just an aberration that was
going away but that some of its principles and principals were here to stay.
What bothered me is that the response to this less than cordial foray was
what seemed like joy--hi, there, Alfred, join the party. And that seems
like a certain cooption to me. Because if Alfred Corn is genuinely
interested in, say, Lyn's MY LIFE, or in the work published in SULFUR or
AERIAL or whatever, let him put his money where his mouth is and invite
some of the language poets to read at Columbia or at the New York Y and
so on. And once that has happened, once the anthologies really do blur
(let's remember that Helen Vendler's Harvard Book doesn't even admit
Creeley!), then when can all be very hospitable and say we like poetry of
all kinds and isn't it nice how varied American poetry really is.
I hope this makes sense, Susan and Wystan and others who raised what are
very real issues.
Marjorie
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 20:46:29 EDT
Reply-To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: beard@MET.CO.NZ
Subject: Re: Children of the Corn
Ron Silliman writes:
>That's what always has bedeviled me about the poetry in, say, The
>Nation, an ostensibly left journal that has (ever since Levertov left
>as poetry editor 30 years ago just as her own work was veering to the
>right) continually focused on a poetics of the most conservative
>assumptions. How those assumptions do NOT fit into a larger framework
>of conservativism/patriarchy I just don't get. It's what I've generally
>thought of as the "Marilyn Hacker Problem" (probably because she does
>it well, so it deserves to be looked at critically in her work) of
>writing unquestioningly in forms that institutionalize a world in which
>her gender and sexual orientation have historically (and not
>accidentally) oppressed and suppressed.
I'm wondering about the word "unquestioningly" here.
Steve Carll writes:
>It's always seemed to
>me that Hacker's "sonnet novel" *Love, Death, and the Changing of the
>Seasons* was precisely a serious questioning and even deconstruction of the
>historical assumptions of that form from the perspective afforded by her
>gender and sexual orientation.
...
>I'd love to hear you (or anyone else, for that matter) expand on this,
>actually. Can any form be "retrieved"?
...
>Can this
>be done from *within* the culture in which the form operates, or can we,
>even while creating, not get far enough outside our cultural assumptions
>(and if we can't, then does it matter what forms we work in?)
Another example of a woman poet (re)claiming the sonnet sequence is Michele
Leggott's _Blue Irises_, in DIA. This is an explicit attempt to wrest the form
away from the traditional formulation of male lover/female beloved towards an
expression/exploration of "feminine" sensuality in the broadest sense, and a
higly successful attempt it is too. I use the word "feminine" advisedly
(knowing the loaded connotations of the word) since "female" doesn't quite
cover the field - it is a "femininity" with which I can readily identify.
I think that if one is aware of the cultural assumptions behind a form, then
one can quite happily exploit/subvert/play with those assumptions, but it's the
assumptions of which one is unaware that are dangerous. But need the values of
the society that creates a form necessarily "contaminate" that form? Does
writing in the tradition of Pound make one a fascist?
Tom Beard.
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 14:36:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Brat pack
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950828123904.13356A-100000@panix.com>
On Mon, 28 Aug 1995, Kenneth Goldsmith wrote:
> take any of them. Emilio. Rob. Tom. Ally. Demi. Andrew. Judd. And you can
> throw in Molly Ringwald and Charlie Sheen just to be thorough. On gut
> instinct alone I'm saying that at least one of them will die in an auto
> crash in the next 6 years.
>
I'm sorry I don't how this fits in, do we do Hollywood gossip now?
Emilio- accused of being an abusive husband and responsible for Ex- Wife
Paula Abdula's bulemia, currently filming Mighty Ducks III
Rob-Video pervert, caught on tape with a minor, best roll he's had lately
Tom- trying to be a respected actor and father of two adoptive children
Ally- in detox
Demi- Vanity Fair playmate of the month, Haper Lee fan and starring in
The Scarlet Letter.
Andrew- Washed up, hasn't done anything interesting since Pretty In PInk
Judd- party animal, recently spotted at LUV-A-FAIR ( a VAncouver
nigthclub) buying drinks and drugs for everyone.
Molly- In Europe, tryign to escape the type casting of John HUghes
Charlie- soon to be married if he can escape the Heidi (can't spell her
last name) Flice trial.
Now fill me in why they're all going to die in car crashes.
Lindz, fan of trash TV.
Ps BEt ya that the Cap-L's don't cover the important stuff like this.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 17:58:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and music
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950828144407.13333B-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
Thank you, Gwyn. I was just trying it with "There is certain slant of
light/in Winter afternoons/that oppresses like the heft/of cathedral
tunes..." and you are right on target about the qualities of the horror.
On Mon, 28 Aug 1995, Gwyn McVay wrote:
> Jorge, the "Yellow Rose of Texas," I find, really works best on "Because
> I could not stop for Death" and "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," giving
> both a mien of cheery, robust horror.
>
> Gwyn
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 17:29:57 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: Children of the Corn
What's the CAP-L list?
jb
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 22:14:12 EDT
Reply-To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: beard@MET.CO.NZ
Subject: LangPo & the refusal to refer
Some recent posts discussed whether or not "a refusal to refer" (or words to
that effect) was a defining characteristic of Language Poetry. Are there people
here who would take this refusal as a principle of their writing? And is
writing that refuses reference necessarily more interesting to you than, for
example, writing that acknowledges and takes advantage of the fallibility of
reference while still "attempting" to refer to the "world"?
I'm asking this in the spirit of curiosity, and not with any "Corn"y animosity.
My practice is closer to the latter of the above two poetics: while I recognise
and delight in the ambiguities, allusions and delusions of language, I feel
language is more interesting when it refers to something outside of itself,
despite (or rather because of) the difficulties that this raises.
We evolved (with) language because it improves our evolutionary fitness - it
helps us survive and breed. To do this it _has_ to refer to the objective
world, in order for us to modify/avoid/eat it.
When language refers to or otherwise evokes human concerns while being aware of
itself, I find it more interesting than when it restricts itself to one of
these qualities. Where do people on this list stand on this issue? Reference,
self-reference or both of the above? And if language poetry is not defined by
a refusal to refer (and several counterexamples of "language poets" whose work
_does_ refer have been given recently), then what _are_ peoples definitions?
I hope I don't sound like a rabid taxonomist - it's just that LP is a term that
gets bandied about, and it would be interesting to hear what people think when
they see this term.
Best wishes,
Tom Beard.
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 17:28:12 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: Riff Barkers Frig Intention's Loam
Steep
commiseration & brinkfall!
Let the Brinks man visit the next bank
job too late
Disclose indifference
& - coin - the coin
Alarms themselves are the fires we
are a jig
Rigged
transparently romantic
Materialist?
then think your wall
Thought building
class
Class
breaks you're history
History - your
move ear closer
Composition as
film production maybe
Of "of"
intention as
"Ideology
& in other staples
Corn etc"
_to the wall_
Outside on
its sides
In
sides'
Stomach a natural
pump romantically
Make, fool
yourself not for reason, but a reason
Ladders in every ironed crease
a grim pill's waterway
Wastes
slithers folds
Solvency's
expenses
"Demurs the bank
loan
Me an intention
riffs exculpatorily"
Imperatives
impair!
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 18:16:46 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: Chris Scheil
I love your situationism. "We" - if you allow me to use this just
once & tactically for a mo' - might be limiting ourselves & the
issue, as Ron Silliman seems to suggest that "we" are (&
here the "we" would embrace some of the rengaists too, & even Ron's
one line on the matter) when Corn is dealt with as poetic corn or
at least concern. In fact in many ways I agree with him, for when
the differences between CAP-L and this listserv are plain why
complicate them, in a response to for example a post from a CAP-L
member (Corn), with a poetic form of ornamentation, thus
trivializing the differences and possibly even obfuscating
("limiting" in that sense) them? Until your post came along!
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:12:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: jms <jms@TIAC.NET>
Subject: Rejected posting to POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
This keeps getting rejected. I think it should go through this time. Although
it seems a bit out of date now.
Forgive all the <.
>
>>
>Jordon asks:
>>
>>>Juliana Spahr where are you?
>>
>>
>>I've been lost mainly over the last two years in
>>an all encomposing job search that has hurt all aspects
>>of my life. I remember
>>wanting to continue to discuss with Ron generational
>>issues what now seems like a long time ago but being
>>unable to do that since I spent every free moment
>>writing job letters. My advice: never look for a job.
>>
>>But I am finding the Alfred Corn discussion most
>>interesting now. I actually am glad that he posts
>>from afar as an intruder. When I was working on
>>getting a graduate student union there used to be
>>this continued discussion about whether people who
>>haven't done any work, who have just shown up at
>>a meeting, should be allowed to participate or
>>not. I would reply similarly to complaints about Corn's
>>posts: it isn't that these people have a right to be involved in
>>the conversation but rather that we need their input
>>because they might say things that might not otherwise
>>be obvious or noticed. While I'm not pleased or actually
>>glad or feel that Corn has blessed this list with his
>>presence there are things that I've learned from Corn:
>>language poetry remains threatening and poets can, unfortunately,
>>flaunt their lack of knowledge of one of the major poetic movements
>>from the seventies onward without shame (while I've only
>>met a few alternative type poets who have read only alternative
>>type poetry it seems to be almost de rigeur to flaunt one's lack of
>>knowledge about alternative type poetry in certain, mainstream?, circles--I've
>>experience this first hand many times, once in another conversation
>>with Corn). Other thing that has tantalized me: the way both
>>sides claim Ashbery (which tells us something wonderful about
>>his work).
>>
>>As to Marjorie's:
>>
>>>And as a new generation of
>>>students arrives on the scene, I've learned that they have no problems
>>>with the "meanings," in, say, Lyn's OXOTA, which my theory class at
>>>Stanford read last year and loved. There were a number of Russians in
>>>the class and they were especially pleased by their "shock of
>>>recognition." Their finding the persons and places they know well in
>>>this book.
>>
>>I just got done teaching at what was basically a glorified composition
>>program at Bard College. For this class I was given an anthology that
>>had poets like Jorie Graham ("Framing") and Ted Weiss ("Fractions") and
>>Lyn Hejinian (My Life, two sections from it) and Charles Bernstein
>>("A Defence of Poetry"). I tried for the first time to teach without dogma,
>>to teach, in other words, all of these poets (they made me teach Weiss but
>>that is another story). After I was done I asked students to answer
>>a series of questions about how they related to each poem. Questions
>>were: 1) do you take anything away from this poem? if so what, if not
>>why not? 2) what images, devices, or other parts of the poem stick out
>>in your mind? 3) are there any parts of the poem that you identify with
>>or feel a special relation to? All but one of the students didn't like
>>the Weiss (this might be because Weiss also came to read and I think
>>the student that liked the poem skipped the reading). When it comes
>>to what the students liked it seemed to be tied between the other three
>>(even though I didn't ask them almost all of them ranked the poets).
>>I found also that the students had "no problems with the 'meaning'" or
>>with the nonconventional language. Some of their comments were
>>useful (and I did not encourage them to value the work
>>of one poet over another): On Hejinian: "I like the writing
>>style of My Life. I identified with the style of writing, picking out
>>memories, making correlations about your life, but keeping it loose
>>and not super-analytical." On Bernstein: "The poem made me realize
>>how difficult I make things for myself. I read it two times before I
>>could allow myself to just let it be nonsense." "Bernstein makes sense--
>>many times I'll read into a work too much and it'll turn to mush and
>>get more confusing than it should be." "I relate to this poem because
>>I feel the poet's frustration in a way." "Bernstein's poem I was excited
>>about. Especially when we did that translation. That seemed to stick
>>with me. Also it was so true how by not really studying closely you
>>could decipher what he had written. I liked that."
>>
>>What I am now wondering: have other people asked similar
>>questions? what have been the results? But also I am also wondering
>>how much of this has to do with the teaching method used at
>>Bard in this program which is something that might be close
>>to Peter Elbow's ideology. Like one of the reason I think
>>My Life might have been available to them as a text was that
>>one of their assignments was to imitate it (write something
>>that is 18 sentences long and without narrative connection).
>>Several of these pieces turned out to be the ones that the
>>student like the best (they would read them at group readings
>>or put them in their portfolios). I'm not sure it is totally
>>the teaching method (I've taught similar works in more
>>traditional classrooms and had some success with them). But
>>it just made me begin to think about what new teaching
>>methods might be required to teach this work.
>>
>>Sorry to go on at such length about something that might
>>be of little interest. I am curious about this reading and
>>identification issue because it seems to haunt so many of
>>the dismissals of alternative type poetry (and poetry seems
>>to have something to do with identity and identification
>>as the relentless autobiographical impulse of confessional
>>poetry illustrates). Yet, at the same time, I feel that
>>the dismissal of alternative type poetry on the argument
>>that such works don't allow identification is without
>>evidence.
>>
>>As is obvious, I'm dying to do some real ethnographic
>>work on this issue. Maybe when I get a job...
>>
>>Juliana Spahr
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:37:35 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: furnished, remember?/no renga
marisa: just got back from motorcycling in the rockies with side-trip (BIG MISTAKE) to Salt Lake City, now here's yr post reminding that this is where yr going and wish to help. Will send books, consolation, the place is infested w/ FAMILIES!
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:55:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rae Armantrout <RaeA100900@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Rejected posting to POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
Juliana,
What was the name of that anthology you used? Who published it? I'd
like to see it.
Rae
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:01:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: it's unsub time
okay, now that i've weathered the corn-stalking episode, the time has come to
say arivederci. i gotta unsubscribe cuz this is taking up all my time and i'll
reappear maybe after sept 10 w/ a diff. address. love u all madly, md
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 22:05:21 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: To reefer or not to
> Are there people
> here who would take this refusal to refer as a principle of their writing?
Dear Tom Beard:
What does "refer" mean here? Are you proposing some unmediated
instrumentality? You don't have to be an l-person to find that idea
suspect. What is the address here anyway?
Best,
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 19:32:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Corn talk
In-Reply-To: <199508281233.IAA16402@blues.epas.utoronto.ca>
Having been away for some time and just recently returned I am somewhat
surprised at the "tone" of some this "corn talk". . . . I realize he
must have stepped on some toes, but I'd like to think that what ever he
said he did say it in some spirit of exchange. I guess I object to some
of the responses and their needlessly cruel tone. Poetry is not just
stylistic, but ideological, yes, but does it have to be so darn mean?
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:34:41 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: must be kismet
okay, this is the third take on unsubbing. i can't seem to get it right --or
maybe, something's got a holda me and i can't let go, o, o, o, maybe this is my
fate, to be tied to cyberpoetics irrevocably hurtling thru space w/ a renga
round my throat...cool melody ropes/ entwine my neck...md
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 19:51:33 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Rejected posting to POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199508290112.VAA29530@zork.tiac.net>
I found Julianna's comments very interesting--particularly (and I don't
want to beat any dead animals here) as they related to "outsiders"
intruding into the POETICS listserv. I think it is good--even if the
interlocutor (sp) was not up to snuff for some folks--that we attempt to
engage those that do not share our ideology. I think we lose twice when
we first reject those that do not share our views and then vent on them.
I only skimmed the whole exchange so forgive me if I'm not seeing this
thing clearly enough. Also, her comments about teaching "alternative"
poetry were great. It is worthwhile, I believe, to discuss the success
or failures of such classroom (or other) experiences with other than
"mainsteam" poetries (and we all know it when we see it. I guess one
question might be, is identification necessary for the aesthetic
experience? I mean, is identification with poetry taught as a way to
engage with it? I am curious as to why such a mode of response seems so
prevalent. I'd like to see more discussion of such work with poetry.
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 22:57:47 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: Typoo
aaarrrrrrrrrrgggguh...
first, sincere & abject apologies for the word-processing (&
lack of proofreading) error that resulted in the scrambled
attributions in the _stein awards..._ listing. i'll post a
corrected (tho probably still imperfect listing) after this...
i hope that my error doesn't keep folks from responding
to my question, tho, of whether or no (or in what ways) there
is a langpo orthodoxy, and if so, how that "tradition" is
compatable with an program that sets out to challange
received traditions... as further data, i'm recalling various
references in recent posts where folks 'fess up to liking
various poets (frm stevens on down...) but being hesitant to
admit, lest they show their un-hipness. if it intimidates like a
cannon, it just might _be_ a canon (tho certainly there are
bigger guns...)
its kind of the contradition of any "avant guard movement", eh?
th attempt to construct a space (social space? community?) that
challenges the normative values, w/out imposing its own norms on
itself...
th 13yr old daughter (fan of Hole, amongst other female rock bands)
was just explaining to me why she hates the term "alternative" music,
how coopted it is... being a parental unit, of course, i just
wouldn't understand...
lbd
6ix:....................abigal child
abacus:.................liz waldner
arshile:................gilbert sorrentino
robert creeley
avec:...................charles bernstein
david bromige
karen mac cormack
kit robinson
mary angeline
michael davidson
peter ganick
phillip foss
rae armantrout
steve mccaffery
william fuller
big allis:..............catriona strang
conjunctions:...........forrest gander
myung mi kim
exquisite corpse:.......will alexander
grand street:...........lyn hejinian
martine bellen
mei-mei berssenbrugge
robert fitterman
green z:................jeff vetock
pam rehm
hundred flowers:........janet gray
lingo:..................albert mobilio
charles north
craig watson
kenward elmslie
peter gizzi
tan lin
long news...:...........barbara guest
aaron shurin
lower limit speech:.....brett evans
buck downs
drew gardner
joe ross
kim rosenfield
susan smith nash
lyric&:.................elizabeth robinson
george albon
mirage:.................juliana spahr
o-blek:.................cole swensen
daniel davidson
deanna ferguson
elizabeth willis
jeff derksen
jennifer moxley
jessica grim
john mcnally
mark wallace
roberto tejada
rod smith
susan m. schultz
o.ars:..................andrew levy
bruce andrews
stephen ratcliffe
object:.................joan retallack
poetry project:.........nathaniel mackey
raddle moon:............finoa templeton
jean day
kathryn macleod
lisa robertson
peter inman
re*map:.................paul vangelisti
ribot:..................martha ronk
norma cole
rober corsson
situation:..............bill tuttle
elizabeth burns
jeff conant
sheila murphy
sulfur:.................michael palmer
rachel blau duplessis
talisman:...............john perlman
laynie browne
michael leddy
texture:................clark coolidge
that:...................a.l. nielsen
to:.....................dennis phillips
larry eigner
nathaniel tarn
ray dipalma
tom mandel
washington review:......darin de stefano
witz:...................nick piombino
the world:..............douglas messerli
elaine equi
kimberly lyons
lydia davis
marjorie welish
luigi
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 22:58:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: new & forthcoming
In-Reply-To: <v02120d00ac63d538db87@[204.97.9.199]> from "Issa Clubb" at Aug
25, 95 04:06:48 pm
Issa -- first, thanks for the kind words on _Breathturn_. & yes, more
volumes are forthcoming: the plan right now is to publish _Threadsuns_
next year & _Lightduress_ a year later. Pierre
=======================================================================
Pierre Joris | "Poems are sketches for existence."
Dept. of English | --Paul Celan
SUNY Albany |
Albany NY 12222 | "Revisionist plots
tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | are everywhere and our pronouns haven't yet
email: | drawn up plans for the first coup."
joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| --J.H. Prynne
=======================================================================
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:02:09 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Old Hats, New Heads?
>If you want to take issue with Corn's notion that "unfamiliar methods of
>communication" are actually old hat because the French Symbolists used
>them--and I do want to take issue with that notion--you could point out
>that the hallowed Emily Dickinson used grammatical and syntactic
>ambiguity, ellipsis, obliquity--as one critic pointed out, "unrecoverable
>deletion." (The source is _Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar_; I'm
>spacing on the critic's name right now.) Or see Howe on E.D., who may
>have been a little more subversive than some of her staunch defenders
>give her credit for.
>
>Gwyn
So if even ED was using them, wouldn't it still mean they're old hat?
A little more seriously, I think it's the fact that we become (or seem to
become through various cultural methods of coopting what is unfamiliar, Cf.
Emily's canonization despite the fact most of us still don't quite have a
handle on what she's talking about!) familiar with the unfamiliar methods of
communication, and then someone needs to come up with a new tactic for
defamiliarizing us that makes us realize--language is bigger than we are (or
our poems smarter; whatever).
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:02:13 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Kenny:
Don't change the subject!
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 00:20:32 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and music
GWYN and JORGE---Dylan's "Gates Of Eden" (did I say this b4?) ALMOST
works as a setting for Dickinson too---
---cs.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:35:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Help..
I copied this, but I can't remember who posted it.
"When language refers to or otherwise evokes human concerns while being
aware of itself, I find it more interesting than when it restricts itself
to one of these qualities. "
i agree with this because it makes the language responsible and
introspective upon itself. I'm having trouble with understanding these
LAnguage poets and I think this is the main cause. I still see poetry as
a form of communication as that is the primary use of language. POetry
although not directly conversive still does perform this task, why eles do
we feel the need to write poems in response to other poems. Or even why
do we renga? Word play, concrete images, and phonetics are experiments
within the realm, but communication is the goal. If not then why bother
showing it to anyone else. If its not going to invoke emotion or atleast
a reaction then I don't understand the purpose.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 00:53:15 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: MisunderstandingsPOETICS Digest5
Marjorie--thanks for the post---Okay Rod (etc.), I relent--Marjorie
in this case is right.......cs
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 21:49:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Alan Golding's Lost Mail
In-Reply-To: <199508290416.VAA23597@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
Alan -- I sent you a virus, but it seems you've escaped my perverse
designs once more. Coises, foiled again.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 22:04:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: ref ref
In-Reply-To: <199508290416.VAA23597@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
How would a writer go about refusing to refer, and in what language could
such a refusal ever be accomplished?
No, what I think happened back there (and I'm old enough to remember) was
a critique of a correspondence theory of truth and a radical questioning
of representation -- another kettle of fish entirely --
Charles Dickens rewrites Wittgenstein:
The world is all. _That_ is the case.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 19:20:28 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: MisunderstandingsPOETICS Digest5
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950828121024.14906A-100000@elaine13.Stanford.EDU>
Thanks, Marjorie, for putting everything in perspective as only
one who's been in the trenches of the avant-garde (sorry, that became
intentional only halfway through) can do. I see why lines got drawn so
strongly, at least on "our" side, if not on that of the Establishment.
But what makes me pause at this moment in history is that I see, in my
very few experiences of "mainstream" poets, a kind of envy toward the
Language group (to say nothing of so-called multicultural poets, who
include anyone not white, so far as I can see). When Charles B was in
Hawaii, he got attacked for being a successful academic, which was rather
ironic since he'd only had the Buffalo job for about three years when he
came here--and he was being attacked by other successful academics,
though they obviously didn't think so. It's rather like the way poets on
our faculty used to dismiss local writers as "inferior" and now try to
argue against them on the grounds that they publish themselves in BAMBOO
RIDGE, a wonderful journal that was founded in part because these writers
couldn't get into other journals--or didn't want to. So we've now hired
a "distinguished visiting writer" FROM Honolulu, after the creative
writing faculty spent hours wondering whether to take the "distinguished"
part off the title. Such progress.
At any rate, I still hope for some cross-listed dialogues at some
point. And I think that the current balance of power (or lack thereof)
between old and new establishments may help. May.
Susan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 22:55:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: To reefer or not to
In-Reply-To: <199508290205.WAA01441@blues.epas.utoronto.ca> from "Michael
Boughn" at Aug 28, 95 10:05:21 pm
I was talking with George Stanley about this the other night. According
to him, the notion of words refusing to refer is impossible, unless they
are not words, I suppose. Maybe we mean mean.
Michael B. wrote:
>
> > Are there people
> > here who would take this refusal to refer as a principle of their writing?
>
> Dear Tom Beard:
>
> What does "refer" mean here? Are you proposing some unmediated
> instrumentality? You don't have to be an l-person to find that idea
> suspect. What is the address here anyway?
>
> Best,
> Mike
> mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 23:00:04 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: communication
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950828213420.3282B-100000@interchg.ubc.ca> from
"Lindz Williamson" at Aug 28, 95 09:35:48 pm
Lindz, communication is probably going to happen. When you get into
trouble is when you think of communication AT THE TIME of
composition, if you have something you want to tell some other
person. That is when you will screw the p[oem. You dont have to
emp[loy Spicer's trope of the radio/poet, but it would be a good idea
while composing to be all ears rather than aware of using the words
to convey something to someone.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 01:34:38 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: music and poetry
>When I listen to tapes of the Four Horsemen or Kenward Elmslie, I do
not
>attempt to categorize them out of music and into poetry or out of
poetry
>and into music.
>
>Gale Nelson
>
Well, Kenward Elmslie will always be a category of himself.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 01:41:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: From the CAP-L list
I thought I would repost this message from the CAP-L list, where they
have been discussing "can poetry occur in T-shirts, rock songs, etc."
with some of the same oblique anxieties about the Moyers phenomenon as
we (I) have expressed here. The question of slams is interesting to me
in that it is as far removed, I think, from the Poetics list as a
characteristic genre of poetry as it is from CAP-L.
While I'm here, I do want to say that I've been startled by the anger
(M Boughn, say) that has been expressed at Corn's attempt to articulate
his position, say. I always try to treat the list from a netiquette
standpoint much as I would a cocktail party in which everyone will be
able to remember what you said tomorrow (because they can look it up in
the archives!). Personally, I appreciate his attempts, regardless of
their tone or his unwillingness to join a list that sends 50 messages a
day....
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
------------------------------------
Subject: Poetry Slams
The discussion about t-shirts, etc. makes me wonder (since I am fairly
new to
this list) if the whole poetry slam phenomenon, and its implications
(if any)
for more traditional (?) kinds of poetry, has been debated here. If
it's all
been hashed out ad nauseam, apologies; but if not, I'd be interested to
hear
what people think.
For my part, I'm pleased to see poetry on subways, buses, posters,
t-shirts,
and any place else it will fit.
John Landrigan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 02:43:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: CAP-L/refusing to refer
You wrote:
>
>What's the CAP-L list?
>
Contemporary American Poetry Listserv (a discussion group like this,
only with far fewer posts and more conservative poets involved. Alfred
Corn is the most visible poster there.)
Also, forgot to mention in that refusal to refer post response to Tom
Beard above that what I do think was/is happening is that reference is
being considered as an active variable in the poem, that can be
modified and directed to a lot of different places. Quite a distinction
from mere refusal.
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 03:04:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Repost, re post
There's a post below, believe me. I decided to leave all this weird
header stuff in. I've posted 5 little missives to POETICS this AM (it's
6:05 right now), using the reply button each time. Three got through
and two did not. I have no idea why, Loss. This bounceback arrived from
New Zealand, so it appears the internet is taking the long way to
Buffalo.
Hmmm,
Ron
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Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 02:33:23 -0700
Message-ID: <199508290933.CAA18331@ix5.ix.netcom.com>
From: rsillima@ix.netcom.com (Ron Silliman)
Subject: Pound's forms
To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
Tom Beard asks
Does writing in the tradition of Pound make one a fascist?
No it does not. Nor does writing a sonnet, as Bernadette Mayer, Louis
Zukofsky, Ted Berrigan and others have repeatedly proven. Forms by
themselves are amoral. It is how they are used.
But they do have formal implications and the order of the sonnet is so
thoroughly ingrained and historically conditioned not by one poet but
by at least 6 centuries of poetry that its implications (its expression
of a universe of great and preordained orderliness) have to be dealt
with in some fashion whenever one uses the mode. Some people (see
above) play against that and use the form ironically to great affect.
I'm more concerned/disturbed by a poetics that seems to "leave it
alone" as a form, which at best is laziness and at worst seems truly
conflicted and disturbing (which is how I read the formal strategies in
a poet like Merrill, who is fascinating in his dreadfulness, given his
enormous talents).
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 03:06:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Repost #2
Repost #2
Tom Beard writes,
>
>Some recent posts discussed whether or not "a refusal to refer" (or
words to that effect) was a defining characteristic of Language Poetry.
This canard is a carry-over from some of the first put downs of LP in
the late 70s (exacerbated, I must say, by some of the early attempts of
articulating what was going on, viz. Grenier's pre-LP term for this
movement "nonreferential formalism").
But I think I'm the most referential poet who ever lived. Although
Bruce Andrews might be moreso.
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 08:57:55 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: From the CAP-L list
In-Reply-To: <199508290841.BAA01333@ix4.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at
Aug 29, 95 01:41:21 am
> While I'm here, I do want to say that I've been startled by the anger
> (M Boughn, say) that has been expressed at Corn's attempt to articulate
> his position, say.
Dear Ron:
I guess we all have our buttons, eh? After spending 12 years on the
shop floor encountering that attitude (Corn's arrogance) every
day, it sends me over the edge. That combined with the fact that I
really just get so tired of being accused of sectarianism by
sectarians wrapped in the flag of "transparency" (as I was after a
recent reading in Toronto).
The knife thing was a joking reference to an old Buffalo Creeley
story, though I think that incident involved a discussion of jazz, not
poetry. Bob, of course, wielded the blade. Ah, those were the days.
Part of Corn's arrogance is his assumption he can say anything he
wants, and not have to account for it. Where I come from, you can say
whatever you want, but you better understand that some people take
these things personally and act accordingly.
Best,
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:28:05 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: Laughlin/Corbett
FYI:
Anyone who will be in or near Boston on September 14, James Laughlin and
William Corbett will be reading at a local bookstore. I'll provide details for
those interested.
daniel_bouchard @ hmco.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:35:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rae Armantrout <RaeA100900@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Repost #2
I think most L poetry (and I have some doubts about whether that is even
a meaningful term) is closer to a wild excess of reference than to a refusal
to refer.
My work has been included in most Langpo groupings since the beginning and,
personally, I have never refused to refer.
Rae Armantrout
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 10:02:42 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: place genre heading here and behead
Chris -
I address some of the issues you raise in another post, but to answer one
of your other points: Corn's "code" name is an undented <Indepen>.
Bests
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 10:02:32 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: an aside on grants 'n' stuff
Some people have noted with various degrees of despair which writers
receives support from MacArthur, Guggenheim, & the like.
In most cases, staff members don't choose grantees, but they do greatly
influence the outcome through their selection of jurors. Who gets funded is
a function of who selects the selection panel & why. Because it's a matter
of public record, you can go through the NEA's annual reports & see how
even 1 or 2 supportive panelists can substantially change the stylistic
range of grant recipients.
In the case of the MacArthur Fellowships, for instance, where the literary
selections have been primarily dreary, the selections for composers with
some link to the "jazz" tradition have been almost uniformly "progressive"
(is that a less "problematic" term than "avant garde"?) and recipients have
included musicians such as Ran Blake, Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman,
George Russell, & Cecil Taylor.
Note that, while this works toward solving the problem of lack of
recognition for less "mainstream" artists in the field, it increases the
problems of at least a perceived "official" "avant garde." (& if you don't
think there's been a lot of talk among conservatives as to why "the only
MacArthur awards in jazz have been to these weird so-called avant garde
jazz musicians", then you don't get out enough.)
Note too, that the MacArthur awards for composers working more directly in
the western classical trdition have been much spottier in their support of
artists working outside of the traditional venues.
I can imagine the changes in the system that could in turn change who gets
funded, but I can't imagine what it would take for those changes to occur.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 10:02:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Hello Alfred Corn (longish)
Tom (& others) -
Believe me, I know how much of an asshole I was.
In the thread "marketing strategies" a few weeks ago (the thread that
apparently got Corn interested in nosing around here to begin with) I wrote
a little about the limits of negative definition in the "avant garde"
tradition. To put this most succinctly, a sense of who "they" are isn't
enough, there's got to be a useful common definition of who "we" are, too.
This group is diverse enough that the ready-made terms don't work (though
Alan Golding is, perhaps, moving in the right direction, with his phrase
'the "so-called 'so-called "language poets"'"'). All negative definitions
are, by their nature, reactionary and far more limited than even the most
provisional positive definition. (I'm talking about tendencies here, I
realize that definitions are contextual & can't be entirely negative or
entirely positive.)
In any case, however clear the various individuals "here" at poetics are
about their positions in regard to "language poetry" the "mainstream," the
"avant garde," or anything else, the sense of the place itself is much more
provisional & fragile. Recently there've again been the beginnings of a
discussion of who "we" may be, of what this "place" is. This is an endless
topic, that many find seem to find annoying. It can't, or shouldn't, take
the place of others discussions, but it's part of the function (or at least
the use-value) of this list, that it's one of the topics "here."
In other words, I think the issue of what this place is, is more important
than the definition of any particular stripe of "non-'mainstream'" writing
that may be represented here. In this light, it was particularly annoying
to see the few halting steps in this direction subverted again and again by
Corn's willfully (& aggressively) ignorant questioning.
I'm not an isolationist (the poetry I'm reading now includes Carla
Harryman's Vice; a stack of various visual poetries from Light & Dust; &
James Merrill's Changing Light at Sandover). Susan Schultz is right that
people on all sides of the divide need to know how to talk to each other.
But, <poetics> isn't some monolithic institution, there are already people
from many sides of the divide trying to talk right "here." That's why there
are the fifty messages a day that Ron Silliman correctly notes would ward
off many sane people from poking their nose in "here." (For most of the
last month, I've been getting my email every 2 or 3 days, so I really
understand the problems this kind of volume creates.) But it's also why
_all_ of those messages are important, not just the ones which pertain
directly to my (or anyone else's) interests. The range of the discussions
"here," including all the chat, rengas, and bad jokes, is what "here" is.
I really do think that, given given the fragile or tentative beginnings of
group definition "here" at <poetics>, it's exactly NOT the time to get
caught up in defining "ourselves" in terms of "them" & how "they" see "us."
I've seen too many interesting "alternative" new music projects (concert
series, festivals, ensembles, recording companies, publications, etc.) dry
up (either literally or figuratively) when they decided to be too
"inclusive," too quickly, to want to see the same thing happen "here."
Chris Stroffolino is right that we need to question critical paradigms, as
well as what makes this potentially "virtual" community feel like more than
just another bundle of unexamined email. & he's right that self-serving
poormouthing along the lines of "the power of pretending you have no power"
can be as much of a problem "here" as it can be anywhere. (I think there
are other sources for this concept that go into somewhat greater analytic
detail than the current renga; Gramsci & Foucault are two that come to
mind.) This was also a significant issue in a previous "renga" composed
mainly by Spencer Selby & Tom Mandel several months ago.
But the solution to this posturing on power issues isn't to appeal to some
authority with even a little more power in the still quite tiny world of,
what do we call it since there is no mainstream, more generally
recognizable (?) poetry, even if that authority is also willing to claim
that they too have no power. That's still a negative definition of
<poetics-list> and I don't think it'll move anything forward.
Anyway, Tom (& others), yes I was an asshole. But, obviously, I've at least
rationalized it enough so I don't feel too badly about it. Sorry to any of
you who were offended.
Bests
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 13:27:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Fred E. Maus" <fem2x@DARWIN.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: an aside on grants 'n' stuff
In-Reply-To: <v01530505ac66d4fe3bc6@[192.0.2.1]> from "Herb Levy" at Aug 29,
95 10:02:32 am
The MacArthur awards in music scholarship--Steven Feld, Gary
Tomlinson, now Susan McClary--have been brilliant.
Fred
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 13:49:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: pardon my formalism
I will be signing off the list for awhile--If anybody wants to get
in touch with me, please backchannel---thanks alot, and it's been
'fun'---chris stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 14:15:00 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Laughlin/Corbett
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:28:05 EDT from
<Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
On the same day that Bill Corbett and James Laughlin read in Boston,
we'll have Rae Armantrout reading in Providence. Alas, cloning seems
an unlikely solution to making it to both readings...
Gale Nelson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 16:15:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rae Armantrout <RaeA100900@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Laughlin/Corbett
That reminds me that I could use the list to say that I'll be reading at
Brown the evening of Sept. 14 and at U. Penn on the 15th in the afternoon.
Rae A.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 17:17:17 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: Subjects
Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
My usual random list of responses, questions, etc. to various folks' posts:
Gwyn: Assuming that CREWRT-L is a creative writing programs list (that is, it
sounds like it is from the name), how does one subscribe?
Gwyn and Jorge: Where "The Yellow Rose of Texas" works for ED, so too usually
does "Heartbreak Hotel," I've found. Very appropriate for "There's a certain
slant of light. If that fails to inspire, put "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy
Evening" to "Hernando's Hideaway," and "A Psalm of Life" to "My Darling
Clementine. " Really.
Since a couple of people recently have mentioned Cris (it's actually
Cristanne) Miller's name, y'all might want to know about her and Lynn Keller's
edited essay collection from Michigan, Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry
and Theory.
Essays likely to be of especial interest to the list would include pieces
by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Joan Retallack, M. Nourbese Philip; one on Theresa
Hak Kyung Cha; and one by Lynn Keller on the very topic raised here, Marilyn
Hacker's reclamation of the sonnet sequence.
Since I like to be a little perverse: can Edna St. Vincent Millay be said to
reclaim the sonnet sequence for "alternative" purposes? Elinor Wylie in "One
Person?"
Alan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 17:16:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
>> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> >> (inspection
>> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> >> kook!"
>> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> >> warehouse, curls
>> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
>> >> dry cleaners
>> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> >> prescience
>> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> >> encore
>> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> >> moments to be
>> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> >> were hooks.
>> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> >> darkness
>> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> >> fruit
>> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
>> >> go ahead
>> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
>> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
>down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
of participation, a kind of rhomboid pastry it turns out
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 17:15:11 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
> >In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > (inspection
> >denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > kook!"
> >Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > warehouse, curls
> >no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > dry cleaners
> >piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > prescience
> >the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > encore
> >Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > moments to be
> >of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > were hooks.
> >All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > darkness
> >falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> >of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > go ahead
> >and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
which explains why the pump is busted and why
he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 14:19:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Herb's anatomy
In-Reply-To: <v01530502ac671a9f901a@[192.0.2.1]> from "Herb Levy" at Aug 29,
95 10:02:49 am
Herb, you werent an asshole. You were more of a sacrificial duck.
While most of the people here were being very (ironically sometimes)
polite to Corn, many were probably thinking of bad things to say to
him, stuff he might have to hear, even if it didnt do any good. I for
one, while cringing a little at the vehemence, appreciated your
posting and enjoyed it, to tell the truth. While it would do little
good to weild flamethrowers all over the place like testosterone boys
on a Star Wars net, ((wield, I mean)) one does get a but weary of
smarminess. When I was a younger dad I didnt much like my kid's
daycare races in which everyone got a ribbon. Well, I kind of liked
it. You see the ambivalence? That is, Someone on this list needed to
say that stuff to/about Corn. You, as fate wd have it, got the job.
And I think we owe you our thanks. We got to come off as goodies with
both shoes on while you jumped into the war zone.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 14:27:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: referring
In-Reply-To: <199508291006.DAA13640@ix3.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at
Aug 29, 95 03:06:34 am
I have been rifling the books and staying up all night thinking and
drinking only mineral water from the Rockies, and I think I have it:
every word in every language refers
and when you get right down to it, none of them does, really.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 14:21:32 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kit Robinson <krobinson@BANDO.COM>
Subject: LangPo & the refusal to ref
Subject: Time: 2:20 PM
OFFICE MEMO LangPo & the refusal to refer Date: 8/29/95
Tom,
This idea that language poetry is somehow non-referential, which
I think Ron was partly responsible for promulgating in an essay in
the 70s, has never made any sense to me. Words refer, and it's
almost impossible to use them without doing so, even if one wanted
to, which most of the usual suspects under the L= rubrick don't,
least of all Ron, whose work can be mined like a time capsule of 70s-90s
Bay Area daily culture (so far). Maybe P. Inman would qualify, working
as he has at the level of the phoneme, but for the most part, forget it.
What might distinguish langpo -- but why is anyone so anxious to do
so? -- would be the role of referentiality among other dynamics: sound,
rhythm, syntax, synthesis, the page, the tone, the tome. So that the
transparency associated with a writing in which referentiality takes
precedence over all other factors is rejected in favor of what? Not
opacity really, though it may seem that way at first, but a continually
shifting frame of reference that enacts itself as content.
Wait a minute. Who's work am I talking about now? By defining a
school, one rigidifies reference, just what I hate. Boundaries are porous.
References litter the ground, which keeps moving us, round & around,
with all that's said and done just under foot.
Kit
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 14:46:10 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Hernando
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%95082917131364@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU> from "Alan Golding"
at Aug 29, 95 05:17:17 pm
"Hernando's Hideaway" also works splendidly with that Housman poem
that starts
Oh I have been to Ludlow Fair
and left my jockstrap god knows where
and carried halfway home or near
pints and quarts of Ludlow beer.
etc
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 17:57:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: wac
Women's Action Coalition (?)--viz. WAC Stats, a useful collection of
statistics re discrimination against women in the worlds of work, art, and
society...
Lindz & kg
last I heard those actors were explaining why Johnny Winona Brad Keanu and
River didn't really bring anything new to acting
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 18:06:37 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: Herb's anatomy
In-Reply-To: <199508292119.OAA14064@fraser.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
Aug 29, 95 02:19:15 pm
> G. Bowering writes:
> Herb, you werent an asshole. You were more of a sacrificial duck.
Allow me to say, with no irony, right-on.
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 18:54:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <950829171600_66377930@mail06.mail.aol.com>
> >> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning>> >> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> >> (inspection
> >> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> >> kook!"
> >> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> >> warehouse, curls
> >> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> >> >> dry cleaners
> >> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> >> prescience
> >> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> >> encore
> >> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> >> moments to be
> >> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> >> were hooks.
> >> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> >> darkness
> >> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> >> fruit
> >> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> >> >> go ahead
> >> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
> of participation, a kind of rhomboid pastry it turns out
reading, "sex is true happiness;the idea that merely by screw-
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 18:57:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <950829171510_66380670@emout04.mail.aol.com>
> > >In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > (inspection
> > >denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > kook!"
> > >Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > warehouse, curls
> > >no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > > dry cleaners
> > >piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > prescience
> > >the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > > encore
> > >Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > > moments to be
> > >of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > were hooks.
> > >All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > > darkness
> > >falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > fruit
> > >of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > > go ahead
> > >and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > >out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > >inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> which explains why the pump is busted and why
> he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
crap about not having a cousin on the moon
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 18:55:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: rerenga
> >> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> >> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning>> >> First
in
verted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> >> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> >> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> >> (inspection
> >> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> >> kook!"
> >> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> >> warehouse, curls
> >> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> >> >> dry cleaners
> >> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> >> >> prescience
> >> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> >> >> encore
> >> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> >> >> moments to be
> >> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> >> >> were hooks.
> >> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> >> >> darkness
> >> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> >> fruit
> >> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> >> >> go ahead
> >> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
> of participation, a kind of rhomboid pastry it turns out
reading, "sex is true happiness;the idea that merely by screw-
driver solfege anthrax micrometer of double rabbit
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 21:41:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Laughlin/Corbett
how do you do the "no mail" command? for some reason i keep getting
mail--even though I did what I thought was the no mail command---cs
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 21:45:29 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lee Chapman <Leechapman@AOL.COM>
Subject: Yasusada = Hoax?
As one of the editors who recently published work by Araki Yasusada (Brad
Morrow, CONJUNCTIONS, and Jean Stein, GRAND STREET, were others), I feel a
responsibility to inform anyone who may have read the work (in FIRST
INTENSITY #5) that it is more than likely a hoax; that is, a person or
persons unknown to me at this time concocted the bio and writings of this
supposed Hiroshima poet. The person who submitted the work to me refuses to
confirm or deny the rumors of fakery, and with absolutely no evidence in
favor of Yasusada's existence, while there is plenty against it, I think it's
safe to assume that the rumors are true.
I don't want to interrupt the flow of current discussions to use this forum
for a big screechy diatribe on the ethical ramifications of such practices,
but I want everyone to know that I did not know of the hoax when I accepted
the work, which obviously I found very moving--and timely, of course.
However, I believe that the author's deliberate targeting of some major
literary magazines, such as CONJUNCTIONS, just in time for the 50th
anniversary of the horror of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is
indefensible.
If the purpose was to bring attention to this 50-year-old horror, well I
think we are already perfectly aware of that--many of us have been living
"under that bomb" for all our lives! If the author's purpose was to assure
that he/she/they received closer attention by synchronizing their attack with
the anniversary, well they succeeded. They got our attention. But now what
are they going to do with it?
My main purpose here is to alert you all to this hoax, and to warn any
publishers who may have been approached by anyone (such as Kent Johnson of
Freeport, Illinois, who submitted the work to me) claiming to be associated
with "Yasusada's editors."
The perps did a nice job of writing, but they trashed their own creation when
they decided to trash their readers' hearts. Thousands of human beings died
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and thousands of their family members are still
alive today, to remember the horror personally. To use their pain as a
springboard to some kind of notoriety is unconscionable. There are hoaxes
(such as the Ern Mally affair in Australia during World War II, in which the
target was a single editor) and there are hoaxes (such as Yasusada, in which
the pain of millions of people--as everyone on earth is affected to some
extent by what happened in Japan 50 years ago this month--was callously
ignored, apparently in favor of personal gratification); this one really
stinks.
I guess I diatribed after all. Sorry. As it seems that the RENGA got started
after someone posted a note about the Yasusada business in FIRST INTENSITY,
I'm somewhat to blame for the seemingly endless renga-ing. You know, I almost
didn't publish the renga part of the Yasusada submission--see what happens
when you don't listen to your instincts?
Best to all,
Lee Chapman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 18:46:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Tom Beard writes:
>I think that if one is aware of the cultural assumptions behind a form, then
>one can quite happily exploit/subvert/play with those assumptions, but it's the
>assumptions of which one is unaware that are dangerous. But need the values of
>the society that creates a form necessarily "contaminate" that form? Does
>writing in the tradition of Pound make one a fascist?
Or, to bring the question into poetics list currency, let's note that renga
is, by tradition, a Japanese form. Japan's society is every bit as
patriarchal as, well, most of the others on the globe, last time I heard.
So are we importing the local Trojan Horse for Japanese-style patriarchy by
playing around with this form?
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 22:03:24 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: your mail
In-Reply-To: <199508300146.SAA11478@slip-1.slip.net>
On Tue, 29 Aug 1995, Steve Carll wrote:
> Tom Beard writes:
>
> >I think that if one is aware of the cultural assumptions behind a form, then
> >one can quite happily exploit/subvert/play with those assumptions, but it's the
> >assumptions of which one is unaware that are dangerous. But need the values of
> >the society that creates a form necessarily "contaminate" that form? Does
> >writing in the tradition of Pound make one a fascist?
>
(to which Steve replied)
> Or, to bring the question into poetics list currency, let's note that renga
> is, by tradition, a Japanese form. Japan's society is every bit as
> patriarchal as, well, most of the others on the globe, last time I heard.
> So are we importing the local Trojan Horse for Japanese-style patriarchy by
> playing around with this form?
>
> Steve
>
And, let's not show any more of Shakespeare because when he was around
there were no female actors in his plays?
Did you notice that women have been active in the renga here? It's not a
boy thing.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 20:01:41 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: referring
George Bowering sez:
>I have been rifling the books and staying up all night thinking and
>drinking only mineral water from the Rockies, and I think I have it:
>
>every word in every language refers
>
>and when you get right down to it, none of them does, really.
That sounds right. They all refer, but none of them does it absolutely, in
a one-to-one ratio. They all set up fields of reference to bounce around in
(or we bounce around in, depending on how you want to look at it). It's as
if language were "code" for the world, but there's always some component of
it that won't quite *de*-code.
Stefe (see what I mean?)
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 20:02:04 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: "getting" jazz
Ryan:
I don't honestly know why, but all of a sudden, after 25-some years of not
being real interested in jazz (I grew up on pop and rock--everyone from the
Beatles to Simon & Garfunkel to punk and Motorhead), I just all of a sudden
had some unquenchable interest in it. I think it was hearing Mingus, or
Monk, or Coltrane, or someone who just grabbed me and wouldn't let go. I
heard something in the music at 25 that I probably didn't have the ears to
hear at 20. Knowing the cultural history behind the music's creation may
help you "gain perspective" as a listener, but it can't substitute for just
hearing something in the sound that pulls you into the music.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 22:04:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Millay
Alan Golding wrote:
>Since I like to be a little perverse: can Edna St. Vincent Millay be said to
>reclaim the sonnet sequence for "alternative" purposes?
*I* think so, but I have long wanted to find out how . . . do you, Alan
(or any of the other fine critics on this list) know of anyone who is doing
any interesting work on Millay right now? Yours, Kevin
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 14:15:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: AWOL: September Happenings
SEPTEMBER HAPPENINGS
A monthly guide to writing events around Australia.
AUSTRALIAN WRITING ON LINE
PO Box 333 CONCORD NSW 2137 AUSTRALIA
email: MRoberts@extro.ucc.su.oz.au
Phone: (02) 747 5667 fax (02) 747 2802
AWOL Happenings. A monthly guide to readings, book launches, conferences
and other events relating to Australian literature both within Australia
and overseas. If you have any item which you would like included in future
listings please contact AWOL.
AWOL is also setting up a virtual bookshop for Australian small magazines
and presses. This will take the form of regular newsletters (which will be
available both on the net and by mail and fax) that will pre/review new
publications. These titles will then be able to be ordered by mail or fax.
Associated with our Virtual Bookshop is our Sydney distribution service for
small presses. Please contact us for further details if you want to
distribute your publication to bookshops in Sydney.
AWOL posts are archived on the WWW at the following address
http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au:80/danny/books/AWOL/ then click on Australian
Writing OnLine.
How to receive AWOL postings
Internet
All AWOL postings, including the monthly Happenings list, one off posts
about special events, the latest literary magazines magazines and small
press books, together with information about AWOL's Virtual Bookshop, are
available free to subscribers with an internet address. Simply send a post,
asking to be added to our mailing list, to MRoberts@extro.ucc.su.oz.au.
Mail
Each month AWOL will post a hard copy of that months Happenings list,
together with a copy of all special posts, to AWOL subscribers. While we
are setting up our Virtual Bookshop there will be a introductory charge of
$12.50 (for six months) to cover postage and printing costs (rates will be
reviewed early in 1996). Please send cheques, made payable to Rochford
Press, to AWOL, PO Box 333, Concord NSW 2137 (overseas rates on
application).
Fax
Subscribers in the 02 telphone area can elect to have the monthly
Happenings list and special posts faxed to them for $5.00 for six months.
please send cheques, made payable to Rochford Press to AWOL, PO Box 333,
Concord NSW 2137. Subscribers outside the 02 area should contact us for
individual fax rates.
********************************************************************
NSW
SYDNEY
READINGS BOOK LAUNCHES
Every Tuesday...POETRY SUPREME 9pm, Eli's Restaurant, 132 Oxford Street,
Darlinghurst. Details phone/fax (02) 361 0440.
Every Sunday...THE WORD ON SUNDAY 11.30am Museum of Contemporary Art,
Circular Quay. 2 Admission $8/ $5. 3 Sept Judith Fox, 10 Sept Susan Geason,
17 Sept Angus & Robertson Fiction prize winner. Details phone (02) 241
5876.
Every Thursday...POETRY ALIVE 11am-1pm, Old Courthouse, Bigge Street,
Liverpool. Details phone (02) 607 2541.
1st and 3rd Wednesday ...POETS UNION 7pm, The Gallery Cafe, 43 Booth
Street, Annandale. Details phone (02) 560 6209.
1st Friday...EASTERN SUBURBS POETRY GROUP 7.30pm, Everleigh Street,
Waverly. Details phone (02) 389 3041.
1st Tuesday...ICEBREAKERS GAY POETRY 8pm, 197 Albion Street Surry Hills. $2
includes free coffee. Details phone Noel Tointon (02) 3172257.
2nd & 4th Saturday...GLEEBOOKS READINGS 2pm, Gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point
Road, Glebe. Details Nick Sykes (02) 928 8607.
3rd Sunday...POETRY WITH GLEE: THE POETS UNION AT GLEEBOOKS. 2-4pm, 49
Glebe Point Road, Glebe. Admission $5/$2 Details Nick Sykes (02) 928 8607.
4th Monday of each month...FUTURE POETS SOCIETY 8pm, Lapidary Club Room,
Gymea Bay Road, Gymea. Details phone Anni Featherstone (02) 528 4736.
4th Wednesday...LIVE POETS AT DON BANKS MUSEUM 7.30pm, 6 Napier Street
North Sydney. Guest reader plus open section. Admission $6 includes wine.
Details phone Sue Hicks or Danny Gardiner (02) 908 4527.
A CELEBRATION OF AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE at the University of Western Sydney,
Nepean Campus. Sunday 17 September 1995 10am - 3.30pm. Celebrating
Australian Literature by established writers, writers of today and
tomorrow. Meet Allan Baille, Libby Gleeson, John Marsden, Maureen People,
Mary Small and Steven Herrick. Learn about illustrating from Kerry Millard,
about helping children read, about using Australian literature in the
classroom and about publishing books for children. Details phone Mary
Morrissey on the festival hotline (02) 566 9963.
Poets Union / State Library Workshops at the State Library Macquarie Street
Sydney 4th Saturday . September 23 Alan Jefferies, October 28 John Bennett,
November 25 Luke Davies Poets Union Inc. or The Library Society members $20
per workshop Non-members $25 per workshop. Details phone 230 1500.
September 28 8pm Writers at the River, Roscoes Riverside Restaurant,
Penrith, NSW. 'Cause and Effect Theme' featuring Bernard King. Open Section
included. Details contact Carl Leddy (047) 21 2087.
Coming up in October (28/29) Writers at the River at the Penrith City
Festival - The Wonder of Words Weekend. Writers/Performers include Steven
Herrick, John Derum, Anthony Lawrence, Peter Minter & Patricia Gaunt.
Details contact Carl Leddy (047) 21 2087. More details will appear in the
October Happenings.
NSW WRITERS' CENTRE EVENTS
WOMEN WRITERS' NETWORK 2nd Wednesday. 7.30pm, NSW Writers' Centre. Details
Ann Davis (02) 716 6869.
FEMINIST & EXPERIMENTAL WRITERS' GROUP meets every second Friday
6.30-9.30pm. Details Margaret Metz (02) 231 8011 or Valerie Williamson for
details of venues.
BILL IDEN's first book of poetry The High Price of Eating Out, will be
launched by Ann Davis at the NSW Writers Centre on September 15 at 7pm
WOMEN WRITING Saturday September 23 9.30am - 5pm. UK based Australian poet
and novelist Gillian Hanscombe will be running this workshop which will
examine the following questions: Do women write differently? How to edit
your work, Writing wrongs and how to write love letters. Cost $60 (members
NSWWC) $80 (non members). Bookings contact NSWWC (02) 5559757 or fax
(02)8181327.
SPRING WRITING WEEKEND a two day literary festival featuring a mix of
established and emerging writers. September 16-17 at the NSWWC. Writers
include Justine Ettler, Penelope Nelson, Matthew Condon, Sue Woolfe, Judith
Fox, Hazel Smith, Ruby Langford Ginibi, Judith Beveridge, Morris West,
Fotini Epanomitis, Antigone Kefala, Anna Kokkinos, Tim Thorne, Bruce Dawe,
Don Anderson, Drusilla Modjeska, Frank Moorhouse, Dale Spender and many
others. For further details contact NSWWC Phone (02) 5559757 or fax
(02)8181327.
Unless otherwise stated all NSW Writers' Centre events are held at the
Centre in Rozelle Hospital Grounds, Rozelle. Enter from Balmain Road
opposite Cecily Street and follow the signs.
REGIONAL NSW
ARMIDALE 1st Wednesday 7.30pm, Rumours Cafe in the Mall. Details phone
James Vicars (067) 73 2103.
WOLLONGONG 2nd & 4th Tuesday 7.30pm, Here's Cheers Restaurant, 5 Victoria
Street, Wollongong. Details phone Ian Ryan (042) 84 0645.
LISMORE 3rd Tuesday 8pm. Stand Up Poets, Lismore Club, Club Lane. Details
phone David Hallett (066) 891318.
NEWCASTLE / HUNTER VALLEY
3rd Monday... Poetry at the Pub. Northern Star Hotel, 7.30pm Beaumont
Street Newcastle Street $2/$1. September features Springwood Poets. Details
phone Bill Iden (049) 675 972
September 23 3pm at the Joy Cummings Centre, corner Pacific Highway and
Scott Street Newcastle. Newcastle launch of Bill Iden's first book of
poetry The High Price of Eating Out. Details phone Bill Iden (049) 675 972
MAITLAND Poetry group 4th Friday 7.30, Literary Institute in Banks Street
East Maitland. 22 September Celtic night. $2. Details phone Bruce Copping
(049) 301497.
WAGGA WAGGA
2/3 September Tony Reeder is presenting his Life Stories Writing Workshop
for aspiring writers, (auto) biographers, etc. Both afternoons will be
taken up. Cost $35.00 Enqiries (069) 332465.
Tuesday 5 September at 8 pm, Firenze Restaurant, RICHARD ALLEN & KAREN
PEARLMAN, poets/dancers will perform some of their recent word/text work.
Exciting both visually and verbally. Admission $8 and $6 (Members of Wagga
Wagga Writers Writers get in for $5).
15 - 24 September. Inaugural FESTIVAL OF THE VOICE in Wagga, featuring
performance poets (eg Myron Lysenko, Lauren Williams, Grant Caudwell, Kerry
Scuffins etc), troubadours, musos in a multitude of venues. Loads and loads
of vocal and verbal activity. For info contact Roger Ansell, ph (069)
235705.
********************************************************************
QUEENSLAND
Queensland Writers Centre Events
EXCITING WRITING: READINGS OF NEW WORKS AT THE QUEENSLAND WRITERS' CENTRE
Tuesday 3 October. 7pm. As part of Warana Writers' Week The Queensland
Writers' Centre Presents an evening of writing excellence at Grand Orbit, 1
Eagle Street, The Pier, City with Andrew McGahn, Robbie Lappan, Matthew
Condon, Fran Ross, Marcus Gibson, Michael Richards (including a preview of
his upcoming QTC production ' Christmas at Turkey Beach'). 'Paradise to
Paranoia' an anthology featuring many of the featured writers will be
launched by Laurie Muller and Marion Halligan. Tickets must be booked
before the event. Contact QWC for further details phone (07) 8391243.
Saturday 7 October 8.30am Romance Writers of Australia One Day Conference
at Lennons Hotel, Queen Street Mall, Brisbane. Speakers include Helen
Bianchin, Lu Cairncross, Kath Filmer Davies, Emily French and Meredith
Webber. Details phone (07) 3821 1373.
NOW AVAILABLE FROM THE QUEENSLAND WRITERS' CENTRE...... HANDBOOK FOR
QUEENSLAND WRITERS.
Contents include Preparation, Representation, Professional Issues and
Development and Funding. Cost $10 plus $1.50 postage for QWC members 0r $15
plus $1.50 for non members. For more information contact the QWC.
WARANA WRITERS WEEK 1995
Sunday October 1 - Thursday 5 October.
Daily program in the Brisbane Customs House, evening events at various city
venues. Interstate visitors include Penelope Nelson, Damien Broderick,
Thomas Shapcott, Justine Ettler, Marion Haligan, Nick Enright, Gilian
Hanscombe, Victor Kelleher, Ursula Dubosarsky, Patsy Adam-Smith, Rosemary
Dobson and Fay Zwicky who will join many Queensland writers of fiction,
biography, poetry and drama including Helen Demidenko/Darville, Venero
Armanno, Jay Verney, Daynan Brazil, Hugh Lunn, Michael Noonan and Estelle
Pinney among others.
Highlights include the Awards Dinner in the Customs House on Sunday 1
October where the Steele Rudd Award, the David Unaipon Award, the Premier's
Poetry Award, the City of Brisbane Short Story Award and the State Library
Young Writers Award will be presented.
The Festival program will be available from early September from Brisbane
libraries, Queensland Writers' Centre, selected newsagents and booksellers,
Brisbane City Council Information Centres and the Warana Offices. Or phone
the Warana Hotline on (07) 38522468.
********************************************************************
NORTHERN TERRITORY
The Northern Territory Community Writing Program presents 'Word & Breath: A
celebration of Poetry from any Nations' (incorporating the 1st Northern
Territory Aboriginal Writers' Convention). Darwin 1 - 10 September.
Word & Breath will draw together writers from throughout the Northern
Territory and beyond to celebrate and explore the spoken word and its
significance to people from a range of cultural backgrounds. Events will
incorporate the reading and recital of poetry and short stories,
storytelling sessions by NESB creators (both Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal), and the performance of music and dance reflecting the
survival of cultural traditions in the modern world.
Interstate writers visiting Darwin during the festival will include
Komminos, Antigone Kefala, Herb Wharton, Barry Hill and Terry Whitebeach. A
number of Central Australian writers will also be visiting including
Aboriginal novelists Alexis Wright and Kenny Laughton, poets Herbie
Laughton, Lana Quall and Sylvia Neal and songwriter Boby Randall. Local
Darwin writers appearing include writers from Bengali, East Timorese,
Estononian, Flipino, French, Greek, Indian, Italian, Papuan, South African,
Sri Lankan, Thai and Vietnamese origin. There will also be regular Darwin
writers/performers including Karyn Sassella, Steve Holliday, Ann Parry,
Crinkle Steward, Anita Carcour, Noodle E String, Natalie Sprite and Brian
Bailey.
The Word & Breath Festival will be launched at the Old Town Hall Ruins on
the evening of 1 September . Events during the festival include 'Poetry on
the Rocks' (Dudley Point) each weekday evening at 6pm, Palm City Poetry at
Brown's Mart from 7.30pm on Wed. 6 September and a Poetry Fair in the
Botanic gardens on Saturday 9 September. The festival will close with One
Last Blast at Stokes Hill Wharf on Sunday 10 September.
Over the four days of the festival the 1st Northern Territory Aboriginal
Writers' Convention will also take place in Darwin.
For further details contact Andrew McMillan, Literature Officer Northern
Territory Community Writing Program, GPO Box 1774, Darwin NT 0801,
phone/fax (089) 412651.
********************************************************************
VICTORIA
MELBOURNE
Last Friday 6.30pm MELBOURNE POETS Meeting and reading/workshop The
Hawthorn Lower Town Hall, 360 Burwood Road, Hawthorn (entry and car parking
at rear). 6.30pm meeting begins, 7.30pm reading/ workshop begins. Cost $3
(Members), $5 (non members). Details write to Martin French 1/16 Kent Road
Surrey Hills Vic 3127.
VICTORIAN WRITERS' CENTRE EVENTS
The Victorian Launch of SCARP/Five Islands Press New Poets series 3 will be
held at the Victorian Writers' Centre 156 George Street Fitzroy on Saturday
2 September at 6pm. The writers in Series three are MTC Cronin, Karen
Attard, Lisa Jacobson, Peter Minter, Sue Nichols and Mark Reid. Details
phone VWC (03) 415 1077
********************************************************************
TASMANIA
GARY DISHER'S TASMANIAN TOUR.
Saturday 2nd September. Reading and workshop in Stanley. Numbers are
limited and you are advised to contact Bruce Roberts on ph 004 423543 to
check availability.
Saturday 2nd 1.30pm. September. Reading in Ulverstone for the North West
Tasmanian FAW. Details ph Bruce Roberts 004 423543.
Sunday 3rd September 6.30pm. Dinner and Reading at Donna's Restaurant,
Davenport. Details Glynis Donnelly, Tasmanian Arts Council ph 004 245497.
**
Wednesday 4th September there'll be a Tasmanian Writers' Union (TWU)
reading at the Bavarian Tavern 28 Liverpool Street Hobart at 7.30 pm.
featuring three of the readers from the Tasmanian Poetry Festival: Matt
Simpson (U.K.), Jenny Boult and Chris Mansell. Cost $8/$5 conc. Details
phone TWU (002) 240029.
22nd September, Vivien Smith and Stephen Edgar will read for the TWU at the
Old Magistrates Court, in Main Street Richmond, at 6pm. Entry by donation.
Details phone TWU (002) 240029.
The Tasmanian Poetry Festival takes place at Launceston from 29th September
to 1st October Readers include Matt Simpson (UK), John Harding, Chris
Mansell, Dennis Kevans, JS Harry, Dipti Saravanamuttu, June Perjins,
Marilyn Arnold, Jenny Boult, Bruce Penn and Tim Thorne. Also open readings,
young writers' reading, bookstall and the famous Launceston Poetry Cup -
Australia's oldest and most prestigious performance poetry competition - on
Saturday night 30 September at the Launceston Novotel. Further information
from the director, Tim Thorne, on (003) 319658 (phone/fax) or from PO Box
345 Launceston Tas. 7250.
********************************************************************
COMPETITIONS
15 SEPTEMBER: UNIVERSITY OF THE THIRD AGE CENTRAL COAST REGION AUSTRALIA
AND NEW ZEALAND LITERARY COMPETITION 1995
Section 1 Short Story min 500 max 2000 words). Section 2: Article (min 500
max 1500 words). $3 per entry. No postal orders or cash. Cheques payable to
U3A Central Coast Region.
No limit number of entries but entry fee for each entry. Prizes each
section: 1st: $150 2nd: $75 3rd: $50. No entry forms required but
COMPETITION CONDITIONS must apply to ensure entry will be judged. All
entrants must be financial members of U3A at time of sending in MSS.
Indicate section for which it is intended. Staple pages together. SSAE of
sufficient size and postage for return of MS and results slip. U3A does ant
accept responsibility for the non-arrival or the loss of MSS. Send entries
to: The Convenor. U3A Literary Competition, 1 Shopping Village. Saratoga
NSW 2251. Winners will he notified and results announced by 31/12/95.
29 SEPTEMBER: BLUE MOUNTAINS FAW
Theme The Blue Mountains. Short Story to 3000 words and Limerick Section.
No entry forms required but send SSAE for details and conditions before
submitting entries. Entry fee: $3. Competition conditions must apply to
ensure entry is judged. No handwritten manuscripts. $500 plus in prizes. PO
Box 125 Springwood NSW 2777.
30th SEPTEMBER: FAW NSW Inc 1995 MARJORIE BARNARD AWARD:
Prize $500 for a Short Story of not more than 3000 words, Entrants must be
permanent residents of Australia. Entries should be typed on A4 paper, in
English double spaced on one side only with good margins. Real name not to
appear on MS but an a separate title page with address and phone number.
Work should be original. unpublished and not having won any competition at
time of entry. No entries will be returned instead they will be shredded
and the paper recycled. Judges decision will be final and no correspondence
will be entered into. The Award will be presented at the Annual Luncheon in
November and results published in December issue of Writers Voice. Entry
Fee $3. Send to: Competition Secretary. PO Box 5 Blakehurst NSW 2221
20 OCTOBER: MELBOURNE POETS NATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION
Prizes to the value of $500. Judged by Judith Rodriguez. $3.00 entry fee.
Entries to 'The Melbourne Poets National Poetry Competition', c/ Martin
French, 1/16 Kent Road, Surrey Hills, Victoria 3127. Poems should be
previously unpublished, they can be on any theme, they should be typed, no
longer than 20 lines and should be accompanied by a cheque or money order
of $3 per poem. There is no limit to the number of entries any individual
can make. Each poem should be accompanied by an entry form (contact
organisers). The poet's name should not appear on the page with the poem.
For further details contact Melbourne Poets at the above address.
30 OCTOBER ULITARRA SHORT STORY COMPETITION.
For details on this competition contact Ulitarra magazine at PO Box 392
French's Forest NSW 2086.
********************************************************************
CONFERENCES
EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR STUDIES ON AUSTRALIA
Third conference: Copenhagen, October 6-9, 1995
Conference theme: Inhabiting Australia: The Australian Habitat and
Australian Settlement.
The conference aims to bring together contributions from a wide range of
disciplines, from architecture to zoology. Papers which take up the theme
from cultural, historical, social, scientific, literary and other
perspectives are invited.
Further information available from Conference organisers:
* Bruce Clunies Ross (45) 35 32 85 82 internet: bcross@engelsk.ku.dk
* Martin Leer (45) 35 32 85 87 internet: leer@engelsk.ku.dk
* Merete Borch (45) 35 32 85 84 internet: borch@engelsk.ku.dk
Copenhagen University, Department of English Njalsgade 80, DK-2300
Kobenhavn S Phone. (45) 35 32 86 00 Fax (45) 35 32 86 15
* Eva Rask KnudsenWiedeweldtsgade 50, st. 2100 Copenhagen O. (45) 35266025
SYMPOSIUM: (POST) COLONIAL FICTIONS: RE-READING ELIZA FRASER AND THE WRECK
OF THE STIRLING CASTLE.
University of Adelaide, 25-26 Nov., 1995.
Contact: Kay Schaffer, Department of Women's Studies, 08 303 5267 direct,
08 303 3345 FAX, e-mail: kschaffe@arts.adelaide.edu.au
Post-colonial studies within Australia have attempted to re-evaluate and
re- write colonial history to include those people either marginalised or
subjugated by the colonial process. This two day symposium will explore a
different aspect of post-colonial discourse through the exploration of one
of the best known events in Australian colonial history. In 1836 the
'Stirling Castle' was wrecked off the Queensland coast and many of the crew
together with the Captain's wife, Eliza, were marooned on Fraser Island.
Events surrounding the rescue of the castaways, in particular Mrs. Fraser,
received international media attention. In the last 160 years the story of
Eliza Fraser has become the subject of popular myth, fiction, opera, art,
film and scholarly research in the areas of cultural studies, literature,
history, anthropology, archaeology, women's studies, and the visual arts.
(Post) Colonial Fictions will examine critically the Eliza Fraser saga by
bringing together, for the first time, an interdisciplinary team of
academics, authors, artists and members of the Fraser Island community.
Discussions will include feminist analyses of the incident, textual and
iconographic representations of Aboriginal people, and Eliza Fraser as a
creative inspiration for the arts.
Speakers on 19th century ethnography, visual arts, and Fraser Island
history include: Ian Mc Niven, Lynette Russell, Rod McNeil, Olga Miller,
Elaine Brown; on 20th century cultural studies and Batdjala representations
include: Kay Schaffer, Sue Kossew, Jim Davidson, Jude Adams and Fiona
Foley. We are hopeful that the symposium will include an exhibition of
Fiona Foley's works and a performance by University of Adelaide
Conservatorium of Music students of the theatre opera: "Eliza Fraser Sings"
(arranged by Peter Sculthorpe/libretto by Barbara Blackman).
AUSTRALIAN STUDIES AND THE SHRINKING PERIPHERY: SURFING THE NET FOR AUSTRALIA.
The Centre for Australian Studies in Wales, University of Wales, Lampeter,
are hosting this conference next year. Organisers are calling for papers.
"In recent years the consolidation of Europe into the 15 states of the EU,
the integration of east and west within Europe, and the progressive turning
of Australia to its own Pacific backyard have furthered the impression of
periphery: one world's edge looking distantly at the other."
The contacts are:
Dr Graham Sumner and Dr Andrew Hassam
Centre for Australian Studies in Wales
University of Wales
Lampeter
Dyfed, SA48 7ED,
Wales, UK.
Telephone: Graham Sumner +44 (0) 1570 424760 or 424790 (secretary) Fax: +44
(0) 1570 424714 Andrew Hassam +44 (0) 1570 424764 (secretary) Fax +44 (0)
1570 423634 E-mail: sumner@lamp.ac.uk or alh@www.lamp.ac.uk
Offers of papers should reach the organisers by 31 December 1995, and
comprise a full title and an abstract of no more than 100 words.
Further information will be sent when available, and will appear on the
Centre's WWW home-page (htp://www.lamp.ac.uk/oz).
INTERNATIONAL P.E.N. 62nd WORLD CONGRESS
26 October - 1 November, 1995 at the Esplanade Hotel, Fremantle, W.A.
This Congress will be one of the most important literary and cultural
events ever staged in Australia. The Congress will seek to explore the
issue of freedom of speech in relation to different cultural contexts. It
will also include literary readings, discussions and performances of
Aboriginal culture, an International Quiz Night, a Hypothetical and many
events designed to be fun!
Speakers will include Ronald Harwood (England), Goenawan Mohamad
(Indonesia), Keki Daruwalla (India), George Aditjondro (Indonesia),
Satendra Nandan (Australia-Fiji), Samina Yasmeen (Australia-Pakistan), Beth
Yahp (Australia-Malaysia), Andrey Voznesensky (Russia), Ilsa Sharp
(Australia-Singapore), Sally Morgan and Jill Milroy, Elizabeth Jolley,
Judith Rodriguez, Tom Shapcott, and many more. The Congress is open to
anyone interested in literature and culture, and in the issue of Freedom of
Speech. For the full program and other details, please contact Promaco
Conventions, Ph. 09. 364.8311, Fax 09.316.1453; or your local PEN Centre,
or the Perth PEN Centre, PO. Box 1131 Subiaco, Australia 6008, Ph. & Fax:
09.381.8306. Expressions of interest in membership of PEN are also warmly
welcomed, and should be addressed to the PEN Centre. PEN works for freedom
of speech and on behalf of writers in prison.
A FESTIVAL OF AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE "COUNTRY VICTORIA
CELEBRATING THE GOLDEN JUBILEE OF THE CHILDRENS' BOOK COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA"
Saturday September 16th to Tuesday September 19th
To celebrate 50 years of the CBC, Latrobe University, Bendigo is holding a
Festival of Children's Literature, offering sessions for all people
interested in children's books, writing and illustration.
The program features addresses and workshops with major figures in
Australian Children's Literature such as Maurice Saxby, Lilith Norman and
Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, authors Margaret Aitken and James Moloney, and
illustrators Noela Young, Terry Denton and Geoff Hocking.
A curated exhibition of the work of Noela Young ("The Muddle-headed
Wombat", "An Older Kind of Magic", "Pigs might fly" ...) and of Terry
Denton ("The Paw", "Mr Plunkett's Pool", "Spooner or Later"...) will
provide a centrepiece of the Festival and will be available for public
viewing all week.
The Festival will be opened by Maurice Saxby at a cocktail party at the
exhibition on Saturday evening, with a display of 50 years of winners of
the CBC Book of the Year awards as well.
Sunday will see papers on Children's Literature from Maurice Saxby, Lilith
Norman and Terry Denton, and workshops featuring Noela Young, Terry Denton
and Geoff Hocking. Lunch is included.
Monday has sessions for schools from *No Mates Drama in Action* during the
day, and a lively panel discussion on the current state of Australian
Children's Literature in the evening. Margaret Aitken, Terry Denton, James
Moloney, Lilith Norman, Maurice Saxby and Noela Young will be on the panel.
On Tuesday, schools will be able to choose from more *No Mates* action or
from two *Bookgigs* - Terry Denton discussing "The Paw" with primary
students and James Moloney discussing "Gracey" with secondary students. The
Festival winds up on Tuesday evening with Agnes Nieuwenhuizen talking about
Young Adult fiction.
Tickets for the whole Festival ($100) or various parts (various prices) are
now available!
For further information contact David Beagley at Learning Resource Centre
Latrobe University, Bendigo PO Box 199, Bendigo phone (054) 447334
Victoria, Australia 3550 e-mail biggles@bendigo.latrobe.edu.au.
THE IRISH CENTRE FOR AUSTRALIAN STUDIES: AUSTRALIAN STUDIES CONFERENCE
The Irish Centre for Australian Studies will be holding an Australian
Studies Conference in Dublin from 3-6 July 1996. The three major streams
will be history, culture and the environment. For further details contact
David Day Professor of Australian History Department of Modern History
University College Dublin Ireland.
****************************************************************************
****
While AWOL makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of Happenings listing
we suggest you confirm dates, times and venue.
AWOL would like to thank the following organisation who provided
information for this list: NSW Writers Centre, Queensland Writers Centre,
Tasmanian Writers' Union, AusLit discussion group (internet), WIPround
(Women in Publishing), Northern Territory Community Writing Program, FAW
WWW LINK (http://www.ozemail.com.au:80/~faw/) and the other individuals and
organisations who supplied information about their events directly to AWOL.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 21:55:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: aldon to alan
In-Reply-To: <199508300356.UAA19489@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
alan -- do you know when that anthology will be out? I'm teaching Cha's
_Dictee_ again, and would like to see that essay --
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 21:59:24 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: ". . ."
In-Reply-To: <199508300356.UAA19489@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
I don't see how we could import Japanese patriarchy along with the Renga
form when we haven't, in fact, been importing the Renga form. Could the
name alone lord it over us?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 22:05:24 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: progressive v regressive
In-Reply-To: <199508300356.UAA19489@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
That metion of the observable difference in patterns of award between
music and literature brings something to mind. It appears to this reader
that universities and university presses have been willing to print and
reward some of the most progressive critical writings, but have pretty
much stuck to the most mainstream of poetry publications and reward
systems. I don't think this is entirely attributable to the MFA
machinery, though I'm sure that's a large part of it (given who's in
charge of most university press poetry series). What's odd about this is
that while thousands of Americans have now read Derrida on Jabes, for
example, few of them read any American poets as interesting (to me at any
rate) as Jabes. (This ain't a French thing -- we can easily substitue
similar examples from other languages.) (for one such counter-example --
how many American profs have read Juan Luis Martinez??)
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 01:28:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Words Vanish First
Some books that are taking the sting out of my summer's end:
A F T E R R I M A G E S by Joan Retallack (Hanover: Wesleyan UP / UP of New
England, 1995). MADE TO SEEM by Rae Armantrout (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon,
1995). SELECTED POEMS by Barbara Guest (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1995).
All stunning, and to add perspective:
Having a look at Retallack's 1984 review article of language-centered
writing in Parnassus as well as the recently mentioned piece in Feminist
Measures (and thinking of her while watching Cage in the Bravo documentary
a few night's ago).
A few weeks ago had the pleasure of reading the special issue of TOTTEL's
(#3/1971) dedicated to Armantrout's work. It helped me clarify why it is
that her work always comes to mind when I try to explain Zukofsky's notion
of "objectification" to myself. (No disrespect for James Laughlin or Bill
Corbett, but I have no trouble deciding where to be on September 14.)
Can't shake the line, which sort of consumately puts me in my place: "From
dreams and memories, words vanish first" ("The Work," which also appears in
the STEIN AWARDs volume).
The Guest SELECTED is a case, for me, of finally "coming to" someone's work
who had hovered just outside comprehension. The physical presentation is
certainly one element--I find this book wonderfully balanced, weighted (I
got the hardback), well-printed, etc. (A caveat being the absurd heights
Sun & Moon hyperbole often reaches in jacket-copy: totally out of keeping
with Guest's own rhetorics.) I don't know Guest's oeuvre well enough to
judge the selection (presumably her own, since no editor is credited), but
I was especially drawn to THE TURLER LOSSES (1979) and "Byron's
Signatories" (from MOSCOW MANSIONS, 1973). As I read "A Handbook of
Surfing" (from THE BLUE STAIRS, 1968) for the first time I was made aware,
by its divergences from the "kind of poet I thought she was," of the
inadequacy of my previous take on her (she had been for me, I realize now,
primarily the author of "Parachutes My Love...").
Maybe it's that issue of AERIAL, but I've also found myself in what Ron
Silliman called, some while back, "the age of Watten." Even against the
backdrop of great editing projects of the 1970s-1980s, THIS still stands
out, and judging from recent rereadings neither DECAY (1977) nor PROGRESS
(1985) have "aged" noticeably. I'm watching for more "Bad History" in the
magazines.
I have what can only be described as a transrational love for Bill Luoma's
poem, GOBI, which scrapes interstellar space in THE IMPERCIPIENT #7. While
no Luoma stanza can be hummed to "The Yellow Rose of Texas" the sound of
birds whistling early Ramones can be heard distinctly in such quatrains as:
big yeska anna billet
clare voler gringa
lunch docket oui blinker ato
cran nowheres un off.
Best surprise while reading (archival): coming upon a little glycene (?)
envelope towards the back of the first issue of THE DIFFICULTIES (1980), in
which a "y" and an "s" were jutting (minutely) against one another, part of
Tom Raworth's "Loose Alphabet."
And many other pleasures: Palmer's AT PASSAGES (New York:New Directions,
1995), Rod Smith's THE BOY POEMS (Washington DC: Buck Downs, 1995), Pat
Reed's journal excerpts in BLOO 3 (about teaching English as a foreign
language to Asian students), the pieces of DURA by Myung Mi Kim that appear
in recent numbers of SULFUR and CONJUNCTIONS, Dodie Bellamy's "final" (?!)
Mina Harker letter in the regrettably typo-ridden RIVER CITY (Summer 1995),
Bruce Andrews's DIVESTITURES (especially "E," from Leave back in 1993 I
think) and STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL, Brian Schorn's STRABISMUS just out days
ago from Burning Deck....
What did Schuyler say, "I salute that various field"
Steve Evans
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 00:31:25 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: "getting" jazz
Comments: To: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
On 29 Aug 95 at 20:02, Steve Carll wrote:
> I don't honestly know why, but all of a sudden, after 25-some years of not
> being real interested in jazz (I grew up on pop and rock--everyone from the
> Beatles to Simon & Garfunkel to punk and Motorhead), I just all of a sudden
> had some unquenchable interest in it.
That happened to me, too, after 20-some years of strict classical
snobbery. I can pin down the pieces that did it,too: Coltrane's "A
Love Supreme" (which a friend got me to listen to as minimalism, all
built up from that 4 note motif), Ornette Coleman's "Beauty is a Rare
Thing" (which sounded to me like improvised Webern), and a whole
evening of listening to Art Ensemble of Chicago records. I was
hooked, and dove headfirst into the Smithsonian Collection --
listening to the sides in reverse order so I could hear how the
avant-garde stuff, that I clicked with, could give me clues on how to
listen to the older material.
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 00:31:19 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Renga
Comments: To: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
On 29 Aug 95 at 18:54, Jorge Guitart wrote:
> > >> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > >> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning>> >> First in
> verted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > >> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > >> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >> >> (inspection
> > >> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >> >> kook!"
> > >> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >> >> warehouse, curls
> > >> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > >> >> dry cleaners
> > >> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > >> >> prescience
> > >> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > >> >> encore
> > >> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > >> >> moments to be
> > >> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > >> >> were hooks.
> > >> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > >> >> darkness
> > >> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > >> >> fruit
> > >> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > >> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > >> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > >> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > >> >> go ahead
> > >> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > >> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > >> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > >> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> > >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
> down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
> whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
> > of participation, a kind of rhomboid pastry it turns out
> reading, "sex is true happiness;the idea that merely by screw-
drivers, mimosas, and those bloody marionettes we can
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 22:30:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: "getting" jazz
In-Reply-To: <199508300302.UAA19552@slip-1.slip.net> from "Steve Carll" at Aug
29, 95 08:02:04 pm
I think Steve's right; there is just something that gets certain
people re jazz. I was a honky kid growing up in an orchard town in
B.C., and I loved jazz more than any other music when I was, I dunno,
eleven, I guess. Of couirse in them days there was lots of jazz on
A.M. radio. No one else in my family could ever hear anything in it.
My mother couldnt even understand how Louis Armstrong's singing could
be called singing. Of course, she couldnt understand what was funny
about "Pogo" either.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 22:55:59 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9508291831.C539677933-0100000@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
from "Jorge Guitart" at Aug 29, 95 06:57:17 pm
>
> > > >In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> > > >And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > >First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > >The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > >Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > >The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > >These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > >Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > >but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > >Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> > > >& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > >bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > >kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> > > >gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > >flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > >halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > > (inspection
> > > >denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > > >pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > >mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > >when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > > kook!"
> > > >Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > > warehouse, curls
> > > >no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > > > dry cleaners
> > > >piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > > prescience
> > > >the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > >the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > > > encore
> > > >Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > > > moments to be
> > > >of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > > were hooks.
> > > >All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > > > darkness
> > > >falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > >sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > > fruit
> > > >of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > > >la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > >and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > >shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > > >flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > >by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > >petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > > >alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > > > go ahead
> > > >and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > > >saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> > > >out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > > >inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > > uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> > which explains why the pump is busted and why
> > he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> > > >capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 02:18:09 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Laughlin/Corbett
You wrote:
>
>On the same day that Bill Corbett and James Laughlin read in Boston,
>we'll have Rae Armantrout reading in Providence. Alas, cloning seems
>an unlikely solution to making it to both readings...
>
>Gale Nelson
>
Rae will be reading at Penn on the following day, Friday, September 15.
The event of the autumn here in Philadelphia. Bob Perelman (who will be
back on line next week he tells me) will have the details.
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 02:39:25 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: wac
My mother apparently contemplated joining the WAVES briefly before I
came along right at the end of WW2.
Keanu Reeves is an interesting case. There is a long tradition of
leading men who were remarkably awkward and "non actorly" on the
screen, but mostly they have been macho types (John Wayne, who couldn't
act his way out of a paper bag, Robert Mitchum, Broderick Crawford in a
more character actor type). Keanu brings a vulnerability to the "deer
caught in the headlights" school that is new.
Winona is becoming the actress that Molly Ringwald shoulda been.
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 09:12:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Subjects
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%95082917131364@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
A couple of people have asked: The listserv CREWRT-L, Creative Writing in
Education for Teachers and Students, can be subscribed to in the usual
way in care of listserv@mizzou1.missouri.edu. Be warned: this is a *very*
high-volume list with a great deal of chitchat mixed in and around the
writing discussions.
Gwyn McVay
gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 09:59:16 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Millay
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 29 Aug 1995 22:04:34 -0700 from <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Nancy Milford, author of _Zelda,_ a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, recently
completed a biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. We'll have to wait to see
the results...
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 11:15:26 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: Music and the Renga
I just this minute learned that a certain Guido of Arezzo, round about
the year 1025, invented a way of combining poetry and music. He made
each of the vowels equivalent to a note on a scale: a=C, e=D, i=E,
o=F, and u=G.
All you do is sing each syllable according to the right pitch. So if
anyone wants to set the Renga to music--well, there you go!
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 12:44:27 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: Re: Music and the Renga
Comments: To: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
I just this minute learned that a certain Guido of Arezzo, round about
the year 1025, invented a way of combining poetry and music. He made
each of the vowels equivalent to a note on a scale: a=C, e=D, i=E,
o=F, and u=G.
All you do is sing each syllable according to the right pitch. So if
anyone wants to set the Renga to music--well, there you go!
I'd like to hear hear him sing his own name.
-dan bouchard
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 13:34:36 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: Re: Music and the Renga
Comments: To: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com>
>
>
> I'd like to hear hear him sing his own name.
>
> -dan bouchard
>
Let's see: Guido da Arrezo--
I tried it, and it comes out a little like "Some Enchanted Evening."
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 11:33:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lisa Robertson <Lisa_Robertson@MINDLINK.BC.CA>
Subject: Vancouver this fall
BOB PERELMAN AT THE KOOTENAY SCHOOL OF WRITING: OCT 13 - 15
CultureWriting
"It's
No longer an age of transition, your prophecies
are driven deep into jargon, there is no standard
so purifying the world you speak all day,
hours of air, more things fall."
(Song)
Poetry can function as a discursive struggle to transform the relation of
forces
inside society. Cultural "battles" erupt for stronger social
identities and better access to the public domain of the "real". Has the
utopian notion of identifying with the world accomplished anything more
significant than a greater variety of retail services in the mall? If
alternatives exist, do they merely lead to a more dispersed network of
powerless
micro-political agencies?
These questions and more will be explored in a special two day workshop on
aesthetics and social opposition, a cultural theme that can be traced from
Olson's modernisms to the pleasure politics of contemporarty utopian
poetics.
Seeking to inspire an in-depth discussion on contemporary writing spaces,
Perelman will focus upon such important concepts as "the pastoral" in all
its
up-to-date retro-modes and the production a space as "field, as it appears
in
Olson's "composition by field: and in bourdieu's notion of "literary
field".
This will be a two evening seminar, Oct. 13 & 14, 7 - 9pm
Perelman will also read from his work sun Oct 15, 3pm
For more information: Andrew Klobucar, Kootenay School of writing, 112 w.
Hastings St., Vancouver, B.C. V6B 1G8 (604) 688-6001
under development: KSW Web homepage
RADDLE MOON 14 now available. Contents: Perelman Essay --A false account
of
talking with Frank O'Hara and Roland Barthes in Philadelphia, and the
long(ish)
poem "The Manchurian Candidate: a remake"
Also, work by Deanna Ferguson, Kevin Davies, Melissa Wolsak, Anne Tardos
and
Yasmin Ladha. Cover Art Judy Radul. Orders to 2239 Stephens St, Van, V6K
3W5, or
for quicker response email me lisa_robertson@mindlink.bc.ca Single issue
$7;
sub, $12, $17 institutions.
FORTHCOMING FROM TSUNAMI
Mouthpiece, by Kathryn MacLeod
McLeod's work has appeared in Avec, Big Allis, Raddle Moon and
WestCoastLine, as
well as in her chapbooks How To, (tsunami, '87), and ...a little closer
(pomflit
'92)
"This time, rebuilt. A vital walk. A very long story, a holiday, our needs
met.
There is one organization running the whole country. The river teemed with
death. We missed you."
Avail. Dec. $7.95
Also from Tsunami ( Box 3723 MPO, Vancouver, BC V6B 3Z1)
The Garcia Family Co-Mercy Lissa Wolsak $8.95
Thimking of You Dan Farrell $8.95
XEclogue Lisa Robertson (Cover art and photographs by Kelly Wood) $8.95
Pause Button Kevin Davies $8.95
Ambit Gerald Creede $7.95
The Relative Minor Deanna Ferguson $9.95
Raddle Moon and Tsunami also available through SPD
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 11:39:33 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lisa Robertson <Lisa_Robertson@MINDLINK.BC.CA>
Subject: corrected vancouver
apologies for what is mostly a repeat of what I just sent-- but slash-marks
in the original text screwed up the message a little. I think.
BOB PERELMAN AT THE KOOTENAY SCHOOL OF WRITING: OCT 13 - 15
Culture - Game - Theory: Language Politics and the Contemporary Social
Situation
of Writing
"It's
No longer an age of transition, your prophecies
are driven deep into jargon, there is no standard
so purifying the world you speak all day,
hours of air, more things fall."
(Song)
Poetry can function as a discursive struggle to transform the relation of
forces
inside society. Cultural "battles" erupt for stronger social
identities and better access to the public domain of the "real". Has the
utopian notion of identifying with the world accomplished anything more
significant than a greater variety of retail services in the mall? If
alternatives exist, do they merely lead to a more dispersed network of
powerless
micro-political agencies?
These questions and more will be explored in a special two day workshop on
aesthetics and social opposition, a cultural theme that can be traced from
Olson's modernisms to the pleasure politics of contemporarty utopian
poetics.
Seeking to inspire an in-depth discussion on contemporary writing spaces,
Perelman will focus upon such important concepts as "the pastoral" in all
its
up-to-date retro-modes and the production a space as "field, as it appears
in
Olson's "composition by field: and in bourdieu's notion of "literary
field".
This will be a two evening seminar, Oct. 13 & 14, 7 - 9pm
Perelman will also read from his work sun Oct 15, 3pm
For more information: Andrew Klobucar, Kootenay School of writing, 112 w.
Hastings St., Vancouver, B.C. V6B 1G8 (604) 688-6001
under development: KSW Web homepage
RADDLE MOON 14 now available. Contents: Perelman Essay --A false account
of
talking with Frank O'Hara and Roland Barthes in Philadelphia, and the
long(ish)
poem "The Manchurian Candidate: a remake"
Also, work by Deanna Ferguson, Kevin Davies, Melissa Wolsak, Anne Tardos
and
Yasmin Ladha. Cover Art Judy Radul. Orders to 2239 Stephens St, Van, V6K
3W5, or
for quicker response email me lisa_robertson@mindlink.bc.ca Single issue
$7;
sub, $12, $17 institutions.
FORTHCOMING FROM TSUNAMI
Mouthpiece, by Kathryn MacLeod
McLeod's work has appeared in Avec, Big Allis, Raddle Moon and
WestCoastLine, as
well as in her chapbooks How To, (tsunami, '87), and ...a little closer
(pomflit
'92)
"This time, rebuilt. A vital walk. A very long story, a holiday, our needs
met.
There is one organization running the whole country. The river teemed with
death. We missed you."
Avail. Dec. $7.95
Also from Tsunami ( Box 3723 MPO, Vancouver, BC V6B 3Z1)
The Garcia Family Co-Mercy Lissa Wolsak $8.95
Thimking of You Dan Farrell $8.95
XEclogue Lisa Robertson (Cover art and photographs by Kelly Wood) $8.95
Pause Button Kevin Davies $8.95
Ambit Gerald Creede $7.95
The Relative Minor Deanna Ferguson $9.95
Raddle Moon and Tsunami also available through SPD
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 15:51:35 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: desire / and the 39 steps
and done, his artifice outside the edge. what's real is on a screen. the young man in his bed has the coverlet, can trace dry stitching in his sheet. "wild pumping valve"? true? in his determination: yours, and mine.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 16:01:57 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: hey, ron, watch it!
memo to rs: rumor has it you compared me, coupla weeks ago, to jersey city sleaze. hey, ron, it's folks like you, swimming against the tide, that make up my nearest, dearest. what's a little ideological difference among friends? best to you, r.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 16:10:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Repost #2
all of us at rosy's diner here in jersey city record our outrage at rs's comparing a local sleaze with OUR NEXT PRESIDENT; sleaze is sleaze, whereas OUR NEXT PRESIDENT is dignified, upstanding, and always wears a suit. -tony and the gang
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 13:13:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: referring
Comments: cc: es051177@orion.yorku.ca
In-Reply-To: <199508292127.OAA14558@fraser.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
Aug 29, 95 02:27:01 pm
>
> I have been rifling the books and staying up all night thinking and
> drinking only mineral water from the Rockies, and I think I have it:
>
> every word in every language refers
>
> and when you get right down to it, none of them does, really.
>
-- all and nothing
c
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 16:17:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: shocked and dismayed
i just returned to town to discover that in my absence, someone (who shall be nameless) has compared me here to--well, you know who. i'm shocked and dismayed at this mudslinging, comparing ME, yr everyday sleaze, to... oh, i just can't go oon.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 16:25:37 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga-Z
Comments: To: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@humansystems.com>
In-Reply-To: <199508300530.AAA22255@zoom.bga.com>
> > > >> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
> > > >> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning>> >> First in
> > verted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > >> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > >> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > >> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > >> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > >> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > >> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > >> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
> > > >> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > >> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > >> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
> > > >> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > >> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > >> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > >> >> (inspection
> > > >> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > > >> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > >> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > >> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > >> >> kook!"
> > > >> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > >> >> warehouse, curls
> > > >> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > > >> >> dry cleaners
> > > >> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > >> >> prescience
> > > >> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > >> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > > >> >> encore
> > > >> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > > >> >> moments to be
> > > >> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > >> >> were hooks.
> > > >> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > > >> >> darkness
> > > >> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > >> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > >> >> fruit
> > > >> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > > >> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > >> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > >> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > > >> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > >> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > >> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > >> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > > >> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > > >> >> go ahead
> > > >> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > > >> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > > >> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > > >> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
> > > >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
> > down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
> > whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
> > > of participation, a kind of rhomboid pastry it turns out
> > reading, "sex is true happiness;the idea that merely by screw-
> drivers, mimosas, and those bloody marionettes we can
inflict the something that is on the many who are. But the meager
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 16:35:03 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508300556.WAA10077@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Tue, 29 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> >
> > > > >In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> > > > >And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > > >First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > > >The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > > >Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > > >The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > > >These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > > >Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > > >but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > > >Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> > > > >& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > > >bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > > >kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> > > > >gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > > >flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > > >halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > > > (inspection
> > > > >denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > > > >pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > > >mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > > >when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > > > kook!"
> > > > >Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > > > warehouse, curls
> > > > >no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
> > > > > dry cleaners
> > > > >piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
> > > > > prescience
> > > > >the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > > >the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
> > > > > encore
> > > > >Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
> > > > > moments to be
> > > > >of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
> > > > > were hooks.
> > > > >All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
> > > > > darkness
> > > > >falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > > >sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > > > fruit
> > > > >of subject's object status, violent transformation
> > > > >la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > > >and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > > >shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> > > > >flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > > >by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > > >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > > >petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> > > > >alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
> > > > > go ahead
> > > > >and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > > > >saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> > > > >out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> > > > >inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > > > uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> > > which explains why the pump is busted and why
> > > he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> > crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> > > > >capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
shade of the mimetic & chewing on the emetic stuff. Yet he
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 17:31:46 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Millay
I believe Marisa J has been kicking around a piece on "renascence" by esvm
for a while now. At the very least, she's a millay booster who got me to read
her as a modernist on par with Niedecker and Loy... maybe...
Jordan70@aol.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 17:39:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
The caravan of windows to what they flee
These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
(inspection
denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
kook!"
Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
warehouse, curls
no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
cleaners
piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
to be
of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
hooks.
All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
fruit
of subject's object status, violent transformation
la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
which explains why the pump is busted and why
he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
crap about not having a cousin on the moon
capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 14:53:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga-Z
>> > > >> >> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.
>> > > >> >> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning>> >>
Firs
>t in
>> > verted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>> > > >> >> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>> > > >> >> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>> > > >> >> The caravan of windows to what they flee
>> > > >> >> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>> > > >> >> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>> > > >> >> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>> > > >> >> Over coffee topped with whipped cream, the Times blowing
>> > > >> >> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>> > > >> >> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>> > > >> >> kissing the weatherwoman between her breasts as she
>> > > >> >> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>> > > >> >> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>> > > >> >> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> > > >> >> (inspection
>> > > >> >> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>> > > >> >> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>> > > >> >> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>> > > >> >> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> > > >> >> kook!"
>> > > >> >> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> > > >> >> warehouse, curls
>> > > >> >> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the
>> > > >> >> dry cleaners
>> > > >> >> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on
>> > > >> >> prescience
>> > > >> >> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>> > > >> >> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
>> > > >> >> encore
>> > > >> >> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for
>> > > >> >> moments to be
>> > > >> >> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams
>> > > >> >> were hooks.
>> > > >> >> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
>> > > >> >> darkness
>> > > >> >> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>> > > >> >> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> > > >> >> fruit
>> > > >> >> of subject's object status, violent transformation
>> > > >> >> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>> > > >> >> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>> > > >> >> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>> > > >> >> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>> > > >> >> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>> > > >> >> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>> > > >> >> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>> > > >> >> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to
>> > > >> >> go ahead
>> > > >> >> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>> > > >> >> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>> > > >> >> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>> > > >> >> of boys talking on their feet and men talking to their hands
>> > > >> in whispers conducive to disrobing weaponry
>> > down where dead men tell no lies and misdemeanors
>> > whisper the lies of sleep to form small scented chapters
>> > > of participation, a kind of rhomboid pastry it turns out
>> > reading, "sex is true happiness;the idea that merely by screw-
>> drivers, mimosas, and those bloody marionettes we can
> inflict the something that is on the many who are. But the meager
cheshiring goes global last (repasting where we thought we were
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 15:04:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Reeves
In-Reply-To: <199508300939.CAA11607@ix5.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at
Aug 30, 95 02:39:25 am
There is an obvious reason for Keanu Reeves's perceived vulnerability
and lack of Waynesian swagger etc. Canadians are more sensitive and
less aggressive and all that stuff. Isnt that normal?
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 16:20:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: More Movie talk.
Keanu shouldn't speak. He's performing best when he just stands there
with his mouth open, gazing into space. HE butchers some of the best
dialogue from Henry IV in MY Own Private Idaho, which is a pretty good
adaptation of Will's play. MAtt Dillian was the first choice for the
part, but he was a little scared of the love scenes with RIver, and didn't
like being portrayed as a male prostitute as Drug Store Cowboy and the SE
HInton films had type cast him enough already as the moody outsider. I
also think that KEanu has ruined A Walk in the Clouds. It's such a
beautiful film witha great cast, and then there's dork boy standing there.
It turns my stomah.
Lindz
Hey I was thinking why don't we start doing limericks, there always
oodles of fun. I'll start
There once was a girl from Moose Jaw
Who ran very far and saw . . .
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 19:55:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: More Movie talk.
Comments: To: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950830160554.4247A-100000@interchg.ubc.ca>
The best thing K. Reeves ever did was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 22:36:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <gleaeri@HARPO.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>The caravan of windows to what they flee
>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> cleaners
>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> to be
>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> hooks.
>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
>of subject's object status, violent transformation
>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
>which explains why the pump is busted and why
>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
he through herself night outright read backwards this
_____________________________________!________________________________________
Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason If I weren't a monkey, there'd
71 E. 32nd St. Box 949 be problems.
Chicago, IL 60616
gleaeri@harpo.acc.iit.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 21:10:35 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>The caravan of windows to what they flee
>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> cleaners
>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> to be
>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> hooks.
>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
>of subject's object status, violent transformation
>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
>which explains why the pump is busted and why
>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
shimmy toward the portabello traction
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 21:12:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
>>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
>>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
>>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
>>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
>>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
>>The caravan of windows to what they flee
>>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
>>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
>>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
>>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
>>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
>>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
>>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
>>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
>>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
>>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
>> (inspection
>>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
>>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
>>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
>>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
>> kook!"
>>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
>> warehouse, curls
>>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
>> cleaners
>>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
>>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
>>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
>>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
>> to be
>>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
>> hooks.
>>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
>>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
>>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
>> fruit
>>of subject's object status, violent transformation
>>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
>>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
>>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
>>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
>>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
>>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
>>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
>>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
>>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
>>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
>>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
>>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
>>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
>>which explains why the pump is busted and why
>>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
>>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
>>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
>>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
>he through herself night outright read backwards this
petrified tangle of consonants supposed to mean
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 00:29:33 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Music and the Renga
Comments: To: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
On 30 Aug 95 at 11:15, H. T. KIRBY-SMITH wrote:
> I just this minute learned that a certain Guido of Arezzo, round about
> the year 1025, invented a way of combining poetry and music. He made
> each of the vowels equivalent to a note on a scale: a=C, e=D, i=E,
> o=F, and u=G.
Jackson MacLow did much the same thing (I wonder if he knew of GofA
at the time?) in his Instruments pieces..
Speaking of MacLow: I'd like to quote a piece of his (the "Statement"
from "The Poetics of the New American Poetry") on my Web page, since
he explains stuff about poetry and anarchism far better than I could.
How could I get permission?
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 22:37:52 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: your mail
>> Or, to bring the question into poetics list currency, let's note that renga
>> is, by tradition, a Japanese form. Japan's society is every bit as
>> patriarchal as, well, most of the others on the globe, last time I heard.
>> So are we importing the local Trojan Horse for Japanese-style patriarchy by
>> playing around with this form?
>>
>> Steve
>>
To which Jorge replies:
>And, let's not show any more of Shakespeare because when he was around
>there were no female actors in his plays?
>
>Did you notice that women have been active in the renga here? It's not a
>boy thing.
Well, that by itself doesn't affect my question; uncounted women throughout
history have been complicit in their own oppression. But I'm really only
playing devil's avocado here anyway, so I'll stop. I don't believe the form
(and as A.L. Nielsen points out, we're using a pretty adapted form of the
form anyway) necessarily sneaks its own intent in under that of the user,
provided she's aware of what she's doing adapting the form for her use anyways.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 00:55:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga!
In-Reply-To: <199508310412.VAA04069@bob.indirect.com> from "Sheila E. Murphy"
at Aug 30, 95 09:12:48 pm
>
> >>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> >>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >>The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> >>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> >>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> >> (inspection
> >>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> >> kook!"
> >>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> >> warehouse, curls
> >>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> >> cleaners
> >>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> >>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> >>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> >> to be
> >>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> >> hooks.
> >>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> >>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> >> fruit
> >>of subject's object status, violent transformation, William
> >>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging, Dean,
> >>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten, Howells
> >>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> >>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> >>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom^h
> >>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> >>which explains why the pump is busted and why
> >>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> >>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> >>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> >>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
> >he through herself night outright read backwards this
> petrified tangle of consonants supposed to mean
> >>a lower on-base percentage in September, the long season
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 01:00:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: limerick
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950830160554.4247A-100000@interchg.ubc.ca> from
"Lindz Williamson" at Aug 30, 95 04:20:31 pm
Lindz, your lines dont have limerick scansion.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 10:10:35 GMT0BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Larkin <LYAAZ@LIBRIS.LIB.WARWICK.AC.UK>
Organization: UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK LIBRARY
Subject: New Publication
May I alert my fellow lurkers or loquacionists to the appearance of a
new book of mine, from Spectacular Diseases: Seek Source Bid Sink.
28pp $6.50, stlg3.00:
For first passage times across general boundaries, consider earth
in columns as of two soils, its start-away and sink-in. A net
absorber, in open circuit, at the candour of origin.
The massable irreversive, simplifying new which is impotence in
setting, a stride in sinking.
The publisher, Paul Green, also asks me to mention an earlier book,
Six Affermed (sic) Elegies ($2.50, stlg1.00).
Also: Spectacular Diseases Issue 10: Allen Fisher: SCRAM, or the
transmution of the concept of cities. $7.50 stlg4.00
All this and much more is available from: Paul Green, Spectacular
Diseases, 83B London Road, Peterborough PE2 9BS UK
Peter
Peter Larkin Philosophy & Literature Librarian
University of Warwick Library,Coventry CV4 7AL UK
Tel:01203 524475 Fax: 01203 524211
Email: Lyaaz@Libris.Lib.Warwick.ac.uk
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 03:28:25 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Keanu, the living god
But did you like him as Buddha in The Little Buddha?
Limerick is the name of a nuclear power plant on the other side of
Valley Forge.
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 13:27:28 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: New books
In-Reply-To: <199508310400.FAA29273@tucana.dur.ac.uk>
Since Bill Corbett's cropped up on this list, it's worth giving a plug
for his NEW AND SELECTED POEMS just out from Zoland Books, 246 pages of
exact and physical writing as good as you'll get. Corbett was the subject
of a special issue of LIFT magazine earlier this year.
Then there's a new SELECTED POEMS by John Riley from Carcanet. Riley was
connected with the "Cambridge School" poets (Prynne, Crozier, Oliver etc),
and to my mind his "Czargrad" (included in full in its final version in
this edition) is one of the finest poems out of the UK in the last twenty
years.
I've had two or three enquiries from US about recordings of Bunting: the
best set is available from Richard Swigg, English Dept., Keele University,
Keele, Staffs., ST5 5BG UK. Eight cassette set, including most of the
major poems, some lectures and two interviews, $100. "Briggflatts" (v.1 of
this set) is available on its own, $19. Cheques made to Keele University.
The same outfit does all kinds of other tapes - Williams, Roy Fisher,
MacDiarmid...
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: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 10:02:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <950830173941_67282726@mail06.mail.aol.com>
On Wed, 30 Aug 1995, Jordan Davis. wrote:
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> which explains why the pump is busted and why
> he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
what if the trees are conservative well i hate them
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 10:16:46 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga
In-Reply-To: <199508310410.VAA04036@bob.indirect.com>
On Wed, 30 Aug 1995, Sheila E. Murphy wrote:
> >In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> >And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> >First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> >The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> >Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> >The caravan of windows to what they flee
> >These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> >Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> >but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> >Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> >& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> >bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> >kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> >gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> >flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> >halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > (inspection
> >denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> >pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> >mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> >when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > kook!"
> >Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > warehouse, curls
> >no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> > cleaners
> >piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> >the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> >the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> >Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> > to be
> >of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> > hooks.
> >All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> >falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> >sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > fruit
> >of subject's object status, violent transformation
> >la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> >and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> >shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> >flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> >by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> >through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> >petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> >alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> >and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> >saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> >out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> >inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> >uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> >which explains why the pump is busted and why
> >he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> >crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> >capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> >prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
> shimmy toward the portabello traction
and I'll carry you to your logical conclusion, but don't
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 10:22:37 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga!
In-Reply-To: <199508310755.AAA25914@fraser.sfu.ca>
On Thu, 31 Aug 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> >
> > >>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> > >>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >>The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> > >>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> > >>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >> (inspection
> > >>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >> kook!"
> > >>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >> warehouse, curls
> > >>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> > >> cleaners
> > >>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> > >>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> > >>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> > >> to be
> > >>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> > >> hooks.
> > >>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> > >>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > >> fruit
> > >>of subject's object status, violent transformation, William
> > >>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging, Dean,
> > >>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten, Howells
> > >>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> > >>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > >>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> > >>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom^h
> > >>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > >>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> > >>which explains why the pump is busted and why
> > >>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> > >>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> > >>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> > >>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
> > >he through herself night outright read backwards this
> > petrified tangle of consonants supposed to mean
> > >>a lower on-base percentage in September, the long season
and "The environmentalists are trying to destroy your daddy"
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 12:45:00 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga!
> > >>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> > >>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > >>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > >>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > >>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > >>The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > >>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > >>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > >>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > >>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> > >>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > >>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > >>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> > >>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > >>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > >>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > >> (inspection
> > >>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > >>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > >>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > >>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > >> kook!"
> > >>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > >> warehouse, curls
> > >>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> > >> cleaners
> > >>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> > >>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > >>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> > >>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> > >> to be
> > >>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> > >> hooks.
> > >>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> > >>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > >>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > >> fruit
> > >>of subject's object status, violent transformation, William
> > >>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > >>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > >>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging, Dean,
> > >>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > >>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > >>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > >>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten, Howells
> > >>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> > >>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > >>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> > >>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom^h
> > >>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > >>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> > >>which explains why the pump is busted and why
> > >>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> > >>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> > >>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> > >>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
> > >he through herself night outright read backwards this
> > petrified tangle of consonants supposed to mean
> > >>a lower on-base percentage in September, the long season
and "The environmentalists are trying to destroy your daddy"
but we are loving you madly upstairs in the evening
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 12:42:38 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga
> In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> The caravan of windows to what they flee
> These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> & opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> (inspection
> denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> kook!"
> Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> warehouse, curls
> no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> cleaners
> piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> to be
> of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> hooks.
> All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> fruit
> of subject's object status, violent transformation
> la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging
> flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten
> alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom
> inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> which explains why the pump is busted and why
> he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
what if the trees are conservative well i hate them
the emir said as much as any garrulous ill-advised backbiter
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 11:15:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Willa Jarnagin <jarnagin@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: New books
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91-941213.950831125151.8891C-100000@deneb.dur.ac.uk>
On Thu, 31 Aug 1995, R I Caddel wrote:
> Since Bill Corbett's cropped up on this list, it's worth giving a plug
> for his NEW AND SELECTED POEMS just out from Zoland Books, 246 pages of
> exact and physical writing as good as you'll get. Corbett was the subject
> of a special issue of LIFT magazine earlier this year.
YES!!! Bill's poems are great. He doesn't get half the attention he
deserves. Check him out! If anyone is interested in getting the *lift*
issue mentioned above, write to Joe Torra, 10R Oxford St., Somerville MA
02143.
Willa
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 10:07:05 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Keanu, the living god (fwd)
No, I haven't seen little Buddha but a friend told me it was brutal. What
was really killing me is that he was in Winnipeg doing Hamlet for a while,
curiosity was ripping me apart. I assume he was better than MEl Gibson,
atleast I hope so. However, I'm really looking forward to Othello when it
comes out, but I cam't remember is Samuel l JAckson, or Lawerence Fisborne
playing Othello?
And sorry about the wrong scansion in the limerick, the only ones I know
are about some girl from Nantucket, and a large bucket.
And there is a group of New York poets that I read about a year ago, and
I was wondering if anyone knew them or about them. They're called The
Pussy Poets, in partiular I'm interested in Kathy Ebel. SHe wrote this
great poem called Driving Miss Lazy.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 13:50:37 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: "Related" Listservs
----------------------------------
EPC --> "Related" List Suggestions
----------------------------------
I am revamping/building a list of "related" listservs, by not too
restrictive a definition, other listservs that *may* be of interest to
Poetics list people/visitors to the Electronic Poetry Center. I
thought to expand this list in time for the EPC's grand opening on
Sept. 1 at our new location. So, I would be most grateful if anyone
who has a list (or lists) to suggest might send *directly to me* (I
don't want to cause too much list traffic) info about lists they think
I should include. Please send, along with the "handle" (acronym) of
the list, its "name", a subscription address, and, only if you wish, a
line or two about it. I thank you in advance, Loss
-->Loss Glazier
-->lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu
PS. If you can't get your suggestions to me by Sept. 1st, still send
them, I can always update the list later.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 14:11:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Renga!
In-Reply-To: <950831124455_67961570@mail06.mail.aol.com>
On Thu, 31 Aug 1995, Jordan Davis. wrote:
> > > >>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> > > >>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > >>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > >>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > >>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > >>The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > >>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > >>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > >>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > >>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> > > >>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > >>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > >>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> > > >>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > >>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > >>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > >> (inspection
> > > >>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > > >>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > >>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > >>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > >> kook!"
> > > >>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > >> warehouse, curls
> > > >>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> > > >> cleaners
> > > >>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> > > >>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > >>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose encore
> > > >>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> > > >> to be
> > > >>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> > > >> hooks.
> > > >>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of darkness
> > > >>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > >>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > >> fruit
> > > >>of subject's object status, violent transformation, William
> > > >>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > >>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > >>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging, Dean,
> > > >>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > >>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > >>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > >>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten, Howells
> > > >>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> > > >>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > > >>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> > > >>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom^h
> > > >>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > > >>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> > > >>which explains why the pump is busted and why
> > > >>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> > > >>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> > > >>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> > > >>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
> > > >he through herself night outright read backwards this
> > > petrified tangle of consonants supposed to mean
> > > >>a lower on-base percentage in September, the long season
> and "The environmentalists are trying to destroy your daddy"
> but we are loving you madly upstairs in the evening.
However, can you put that heuristic chainsaw down? Thanks!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 14:23:15 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: Fate
This list is pretty handy. Had I not posted that Laughlin and Corbett were
reading in Boston on 9/14, I might never have found out that Rae A. was reading
in Providence on the same night. This posed a dilemma. Walk a few blocks in
Boston, or amtrak to RI? As it turns out, the hosting bookshop in Boston
burst into flames last night, and will be lucky if they open by Xmas. Gale:
what time does the reading start and where is it being held?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 13:36:42 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Rejected posting to POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 19:51:33 -0700 (MST)
From: mnamna@imap1.asu.edu
To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu>
Cc: Multiple recipients of list POETICS <POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Re: Rejected posting to POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
I found Julianna's comments very interesting--particularly (and I don't
want to beat any dead animals here) as they related to "outsiders"
intruding into the POETICS listserv. I think it is good--even if the
interlocutor (sp) was not up to snuff for some folks--that we attempt to
engage those that do not share our ideology. I think we lose twice when
we first reject those that do not share our views and then vent on them.
I only skimmed the whole exchange so forgive me if I'm not seeing this
thing clearly enough. Also, her comments about teaching "alternative"
poetry were great. It is worthwhile, I believe, to discuss the success
or failures of such classroom (or other) experiences with other than
"mainsteam" poetries (and we all know it when we see it. I guess one
question might be, is identification necessary for the aesthetic
experience? I mean, is identification with poetry taught as a way to
engage with it? I am curious as to why such a mode of response seems so
prevalent. I'd like to see more discussion of such work with poetry.
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 16:34:26 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Fate
In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 31 Aug 1995 14:23:15 EDT from
<Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Rae Armantrout reads on Thursday, 14 September at 8 p.m. in the Russell
Lab, T.F. Green Building (not the airport out in Warwick). T.F. Green
is located at 5 Young Orchard.
Directions:
Take Highway 95 to
Highway 195 East (the only direction you can go, as this is the start of the
highway)
Highway 195 to exit 3 (Gano St.)
From the offramp, turn Right onto Gano St.
Turn left onto Power St.
Turn right onto Hope St.
Park where parking is available.
Young Orchard is one street north of Power.
Any additional questions, please feel free to call 401 863 3260
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 14:18:41 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Renga!
In-Reply-To: <950831124455_67961570@mail06.mail.aol.com> from "Jordan Davis."
at Aug 31, 95 12:45:00 pm
>
> > > >>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> > > >>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > >>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > >>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > >>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > >>The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > >>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > >>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > >>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > >>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> > > >>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > >>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > >>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> > > >>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > >>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > >>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > >> (inspection
> > > >>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > > >>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > >>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > >>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > >> kook!"
> > > >>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > >> warehouse, curls
> > > >>no ideas but in the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at
the dry > > > >> cleaners
> > > >>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> > > >>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > >>the odor day boy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
> > > >>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> > > >> to be
> > > >>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> > > >> hooks.
> > > >>All belled like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
> > > >>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > >>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > >> fruit
> > > >>of subject's object status, violent transformation, William
> > > >>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > >>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > >>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging, Dean,
> > > >>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > >>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > >>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > >>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten, Howells
> > > >>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> > > >>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > > >>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> > > >>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom^h
> > > >>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > > >>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> > > >>which explains why the pump is busted and why
> > > >>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> > > >>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> > > >>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> > > >>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
> > > >he through herself night outright read backwards this
> > > >petrified tangle of consonants supposed to mean
> > > >>a lower on-base percentage in September, the long season
> and "The environmentalists are trying to destroy your daddy"
> > > >>but we are loving you madly upstairs in the evening
> > > >>l'abondance des touchers, ni la lenteur furtive,
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 17:25:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: re pussy poets
Lindz
The pussy poets disbanded sometime late last year. Janice Erlbaum has been
writing her memoirs for a free paper, the New York Press, which is slated for
demolition as soon as Time Out New York hits the stands at the end of
September. Janice also works for a local online service as a facilitator and
she reads around NY quite a bit. Douglass Rothschild alias Tony Door and
Janice hosted a talk show at the Poetry Project for a while last year. Kathy
Ebel is the only other pussy poet _I_ know, and though I don't know "Driving
Miss Lazy" I do like her work at least as much as Janice's. I haven't seen
the other two around lately (on the street or the Poetry Calendar)... anybody
else have info?
Jordan
PS the pussy poets was a group of four young women in NYC who read performed
rapped sang their poetry together, something like the Last Poets or Cayenne
or bloodtest (correct name?) groups
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 17:27:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Renga!
> > > >>In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books.>
> > > >>And flew through windows, lightning green and fine morning
> > > >>First inverted whistle of a cardinal in the poplar
> > > >>The book and the oboe on the grass under sun and cloud
> > > >>Go endlessly, an obtuse Prussian blue, it binds
> > > >>The caravan of windows to what they flee
> > > >>These lace curtains, more gauze than bondage, more
> > > >>Mollycoddled than aware, thin-spined and pebbling
> > > >>but narrow in the waist or waspish Sunday years ago
> > > >>Over coffee topped with whipped lads, the Times blowing
> > > >>& opining, heavy humid air, cumulus amusing against the
> > > >>bleached ribcage ripcorded into compassed wind
> > > >>kissing the weatherwoman between her beasts as she
> > > >>gives gracious problem: fanatical snacks, landscape of
> > > >>flicka my best friend and the storm in the glass of water's
> > > >>halfway pertinent incision we keep making safe for ignorance
> > > >> (inspection
> > > >>denied for not knowing how credenza was meant) & neo-colonizing
> > > >>pockets in small furniture intended house sequentially several
> > > >>mountains away but it wasn't, you know, a big tango
> > > >>when the attorney general came, selah hales said, "Dias, oh,ho,
> > > >> kook!"
> > > >>Edward Kennedy Ellington! "Tootin' Through the Roof" Tobacco
> > > >> warehouse, curls
> > > >>no ideas but the woven fabric the texture so to speak was at the dry
> > > >> cleaners
> > > >>piping hot and gloved-in somewhere unsalted, perched on prescience
> > > >>the chair is sad, alas, and i've lusted tootles' livers
> > > >>the odor day toy a cello day dis chevys a bo coo daughter chose
encore
> > > >>Flaubert because we're waiting all throughout eternity for moments
> > > >> to be
> > > >>of such suchness. In the nooks were creams and in the streams were
> > > >> hooks.
> > > >>All melded like striated film leftover in the pastel seeds of
darkness
> > > >>falling like a counterirritant around the manchineel. Likewise
> > > >>sandpaper juxtaposed with seasoned instruments and recently soft
> > > >> fruit
> > > >>of subject's object status, violent transformation, William
> > > >>la Ste. Therese into beaming cumulus apokoinu switchback
> > > >>and in the u-turns were bookmobiles rounding angles considered
> > > >>shrill as pine left in the acres to be aging, Dean,
> > > >>flawlessly, flutes sing genderless in trio, surprised
> > > >>by how quiet effort really is or is not, fast enough to sleep
> > > >>through thunderstorms, arm over thigh until light shakes
> > > >>petals free of names that rain across known skin forgotten, Howells
> > > >>alive in our hearse hurts, projective nurse if she is to go ahead
> > > >>and dance, composing instead of straining muscles, far eyes
> > > >>saunter lope pentecost beam operator will you cockpit
> > > >>out, transplanted organs speak, the idiom^h
> > > >>inseams, a snare as solvently unequal-- the power
> > > >>uncreased although each snare still trembles quantum
> > > >>which explains why the pump is busted and why
> > > >>he preferred whole afternoons on the phone to that
> > > >>crap about not having a cousin on the moon
> > > >>capable of keeping the canoe right way up in the cool
> > > >>prose of the upper Hudson, dinner's at seven so
> > > >he through herself night outright read backwards this
> > > petrified tangle of consonants supposed to mean
> > > >>a lower on-base percentage in September, the long season
> and "The environmentalists are trying to destroy your daddy"
> but we are loving you madly upstairs in the evening.
However, can you put that heuristic chainsaw down? Thanks!
Hey! Hey! Hey! Stripmine your family! Encode your boredom!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 15:03:44 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Help..
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950828213420.3282B-100000@interchg.ubc.ca>
On Mon, 28 Aug 1995, Lindz Williamson wrote:
I still see poetry as a form of communication as that is the primary use
of language. POetry
although not directly conversive still does perform this task, why eles do
> we feel the need to write poems in response to other poems. Or even why
> do we renga? Word play, concrete images, and phonetics are experiments
> within the realm, but communication is the goal. If not then why bother
> showing it to anyone else. If its not going to invoke emotion or atleast
> a reaction then I don't understand the purpose.
However, the sorts of responses generated by poetry--and I'll include
music or, even more generally, sound--are not necessarily communicative,
or even concerned with communicating a specific intention. I agree that
evoking response of some sort is commonly assumed to be at the root of
poetry--sound, aesthetics--but limiting it to communication is a highly
instrumental or use-value point of view. That is, it tends, as I see it,
to reduce poetry--art in general--to its functionality, when in fact much
can be made of the fact that 20th century aesthetics deliberately upsets
such notions. That seems to be an important aspect of
non-referentiality, to upset such clearly instrumental perspectives of
art. When I listen to "noise"--as in deliberately produced as art noise--
I do not hear communication, but the upseting of the very basis of
communication. I live in it and relish it for its simple inversion of
the ideology of opacity that permeates our lives. Or something like that....
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 20:17:08 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Fate
Daniel Bouchard writes:
As it turns out, the hosting bookshop in Boston
>burst into flames last night, and will be lucky if they open by Xmas.
Which bookstore?!