========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 21:34:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: tiles, miles, ali, and me In-Reply-To: <01IIBBN7BDFA8ZHQAJ@iix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One time, when I was sitting at a front table by myself at an Ayler Brothers gig, Rashied Ali was drumming so fast he let slip a stick and I caught it on one bounce off the floor, and gave it back to him after the (55 minute) piece. Damn. I shda kept it, eh? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 00:41:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: topsy-turvy >From: Pierre Joris >Subject: Subject > >My humble apologies for making the subject such a bloated object in > my AG Howl censorship post -- overhasty cut&paste cleared the > difference between head(er) & body Sort of an upfront, in-your-face cultural gesture? (Or like the Peruvians who wear the soul's indicia about the circumference of the hat? [Vide Eduardo Galeano, *Memory of Fire,* re: the latter.]) When the subject becomes all, the message becomes superfluous. When all is topic, comment can idle away the time chewin' the fat & shootin' the breeze. When all is formulaic in the "when all" manner, the conclusion is precisely like this. In certain cultures, the subject is veiled. Then (by way of revolutionary gesture, out of bordom, in quest of novelty, or for love of candor), the tables turn. To turn the tabale, lift from anywhere along surfaces A and B simultaneously, with the proviso that due coordination is requisite. Turntables are CDed eventually, but that's a whole nother alterety [a word for which my spellchecker suggests "altered"]. Arguendo, all is arguendo, from rover to romeo, from breadbox to brickbat. Sea and season: the father, here, is the mother. The ship hath not a sale. By their CDs shall ye know them. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 23:44:39 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Subject: Partial Review of Hypertext '97 -- long post Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ** Please note ** A couple of people have suggested that I should post this on Poetics. I've decided to do so, but only the more relevant bits. I can send the complete thing (there isn't too much more) to anyone asking for it back-channel. The complete 'review,' such as it is, will be mounted on the web by the _electronic book review_ in mid-May. The exact URL is not yet available. And *hey* I've, personally, got poetics set to 'nomail' at the moment, and will not turn the daily digest back on until the end of May, so fi I don't respond to postings on the list, please forgive me, but my text fields overfloweth.... [Apologies: This is not a 'balanced' review of the Hypertext '97 conference, but only, as Ted Nelson would put it, one particular, packaged, 'point of view'. I haven't named all the names I should have or even many and I have not explicitly acknowledged the herculean efforts of the many organizers. Readers are referred to the full published conference proceedings, _The Eighth ACM Conference on Hypertext_, edited by Mark Bernstein, Leslie Carr and Casper Osterbye, New York: ACM, 1997. My perspective is that of a practitioner of literary cybertext. This piece was written quickly as draft towards a (probably shorter) review of the conference which is to be published in the UK-based periodical (presently a quarterly newspaper) of 'digitalartcritique' entitled _Mute_ (and web-posted as part of the _electronic book review_). I would be very grateful for any suggestions, comments or corrections. It won't be edited or finalized for some time. With thanks in anticipation, John Cayley] 'The King is dead, long live the King,' was the challenging title of John B. Smith's opening keynote address at Hypertext '97. It was especially contentious given the animated and perpetually stimulating presence of Ted Nelson, uncrowned Emperor of an expanding (ballooning?) Docuverse. From April 6-11, the University of Southampton, where there is a strong tradition of hypertext research, hosted the eighth international conference of the Hypertext research community since its first official meeting ten years ago, chaired by this year's opening speaker. The conference convenes under the auspices of the ACM, or Association for Computing Machinery, a no-nonsense umbrella organization offering support and accreditation for the activities of over 80,000 IT professionals and students worldwide. The papers given were strictly refereed, yet there was an air of openness, excitement and innovation which may be a function of hypertext's substantive engagement with intellectual and cultural 'emergencies' (its apparent structural homologies with critical theory, for example), or more practically, because the conference proper had been proceeded by open workshops and tutorials, or because there were live demos of new systems, or because there has, traditionally, been a strong literary thread to hypertext programmes, or simply because those visionary ironies instilled in us by a certain living 'literary machine' have not faded. Clearly, Smith, from the University of North Carolina, was primarily concerned with the relationship between the hypertext (research) community and the parallel or splintered groupings more recently clustered around the World Wide Web. The great irony is, that if the (non-specialist) wired masses recognize the word 'hypertext' at all this is because the Web has popularized an actually existing technology which realizes vital but limited hypertextual potentialities, whereas, historically, many of the concepts underlying hypertext were outlined by Vannevar Bush in 1945, while the term itself was coined by Nelson in the 1960s, and the latter's only half-mocking view is that even hypertext researchers are now working on conceptual problems that were essentially solved twenty years ago. But as Nelson put it succinctly in his only formal contribution to the conference - a hilarious and thought-provoking after-dinner speech - we were all, including even Bill (Great-Satan or Road-Ahead) Gates, 'blind-sided by the Web.' He'd rather thought that _he_, Ted Nelson, would be taking over the world, sending forth his cohorts from the heart of Xanadu.... Nonetheless, it is fact that the hypertext community has developed working systems and concepts to go with them which would allow us far richer, more varied and extensible models of the new information culture than those which are provided by today's Web technologies. Taking just one example, 3W links are uncomplex, unidirectional, unintelligent and unmanaged (unmanageable?), while the links of many true hypertext systems - mostly locked away in computer labs or tied to barely accessible 'platforms' - are richly structured, communicative, open and extensible. They offer a great deal to future content-providers but seem only just beginning to be able to supply. Meanwhile, most of the bells and whistles on the 'cooler' pages of the Web are cosmetic rather than subtantive add-ons to its largely passive, if immense and tangled, structures. Today's Web interaction is invariably, perhaps inevitably 'kludgey' and sometimes it is positively 'foobar'. =2E.. =2E.. But the fascinating prospect, as Smith pointed out, is a Web turned inside out, where the open programming environments which are currently tacked onto operating systems, servers and browsers enact a quiet revolution, such that today's relatively simple Web protocols (http) end up _inside_ richer, more articulate, hypermedia architectures, while the users remain unperturbed by a paradigm shift that is all but invisible. Nelson, the inventor of hypertext _per se_, is a self-confessed 'generalist'. His background was in 'science fiction, movie-making, theatre and writing.' He expected to go into media but found that he 'couldn't leave the rich... combative abstractions of academia behind.' Perhaps, once more, it is the tenor of his influence which underpins a strand of serious literary and artistic engagement with both 'Hypertext Rhetoric,' and with the ever-increasing practice of literary hypertext, which now extends from scholarly, pedagogic web-building, through hypertext fiction (close on becoming an established, if problematic, genre), to hyper- and cybertextual poetics. As this is the area of my own particular concern, I hope readers will forgive me if I pay it an attention which is disproportionate to its overall place in the conference. Two papers in this strand of 'hypertext rhetorics' were accepted into the main conference program. In addition there was a panel, moderated by Marc Bernstein (who couldn't attend the conference due to illness) and including myself, on 'The Future of Authorship'. In the first of the papers, David Kolb, 'author' of _Socrates in the Labyrinth: Hypertext, Argument, Philosophy_ (Eastgate, 1994) explored some of the yet unrealized potential of scholarly hypertext, arguing the need for a 'self-represented complexity' far beyond the capabilities of current systems, not for its own sake, but because, he suggested, we require such structures in order to transfer and extend complex, often traditional forms of argument (such as are found in philosophy) into the hypertextual Web-centred docuverse. Loss Peque=F1o Glazier, webmaster of the the most important resource for poetics on the internet, the Electronic Poetry Center based at the Unversity of Buffalo (http://writing.upenn.edu/epc), gave a paper which structured links, historical and theoretical, between the poetics of a tradition of innovative writing and the specific poetics and rhetorics which are emerging from hypertextual practice. Essential feedback loops were put in place and many questions raised. The Future of Authorship panel included three representatives of the wide-ranging hypertext community in France - Marc Nanard, working on hypermedia design and providing an excellent overview of the issues, Michel Crampes, developing software agents for generative hypermedia and interactive editing, and Jean Pierre Balpe, a poet and editor working on generative fiction, who missed the panel itself but made the conference later - and one researcher from the MIT media labs - Kevin Brooks, working on the automatic generation of filmed story telling. On the same panel, I spoke of writing as programming, where the process of writing itself (which may include the readers' interactions) may be seen as a 'prior writing,' as inscription prior to performance (in codexspace or cyberspace or anyspace). An emergent theme of the panel was the convergence of 'engineered and creative authorship,' further complicating and problematizing that rightly troubled term with an uncertain and highly programmed future. The literary strand of the conference had an addendum in London, where Jim Rosenberg, Loss Glazier and Chris Funkhouser read and performed their (cyber)poetic work at one of the regular London venues for innovative poetics. A number of figures from the hypertext community attended alongside the more usual hard-bitten poetics audience. Glazier's reading was lo-tech but laced with the language poetry of Unix, 'grep'ing across tribal, national and disciplinary dialects to 'chmod' files of poems for our use. Funkhouser, a musician, writer and editor in many media including the 'new,' was a living 'open system,' a neo-Beat mourning Ginsberg's passing, chanting and reciting words from the MOO space to extend his own poetry. Rosenberg is an essential cross-over figure who gave a much cited paper (by a wide range of even the most technology-orientated researchers) at the previous Hypertext conference. In London, as a PowerBook was passed from lap to lap in order to demonstrate, hands-on, the interactive structures which he composes and from which he read, the audience was treated to the audio channel of his word clusters, simultaneities and underlying diagrams of syntax. It was a brief and small-scale but important meeting of convergent galaxies - of hypertext researchers and a few of the pioneering practioners of emergent literary forms. Earlier that day, the conference had been closed by the keynote address of Cathy Marshall, who also attended the reading in London. With a brief to 'look forward,' Marshall eschewed the temptations of a visionary perspective in order to review and analyse current and anticipated research, but also, through an extended 'defensive driving' metaphor (the Smith System) to set out five practices for 'safer hypertext.' Her talk was a model of complex and illuminating interaction with the specific inputs and outputs of the community of researcher/practioners who are actively reading her texts. In fact the spin she put on her chosen metaphor was not overly concerned with 'safety' as a function of defensiveness or restraint. Rather, she suggested a heightened awareness and openness to whatever is 'out there' and whatever is out _here_ in the 'wet world' which may emerge when you 1) steer high, 2) keep your eyes moving, 3) get the big picture, 4) leave yourself an 'out' and 5) make sure the other drivers see you. If the hypertext community takes her advice, not only will there be an implosive revolution within the Web, but poets and philosphers will be welcomed on the way. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > John Cayley / Wellsweep Press http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/ 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD UK Tel & Fax: (+44 171) 267 3525 Email: cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 07:17:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: six Yesterday, Ron Sillman wrote: >Alterity, by the way, teaches at UC Berkeley. 1. advertently, or in- ? 2. tenure-track? 3. if curiousity (as has been alleged) killed the proverbial cat, in what wise, praytell, did alterity terrorize the cliche hypothetical feline? 4. under what conditions, and at what temperature, is alterity tantamount to "too much of a good thing"? 5. might the locution "in other news" spotlight the doings of this Prof.? 6. distinguish these conditions (14 stanzas): integrity perplexity alterity perversity economy complexity sobriety diversity propriety society conversity disbursity reliety repliety deniety untersity amenity profanity humanity rehearsity insanity infinity the quiddity of worsity placidity lucidity plasticity recursively the tallow of necessity the wallow of confessedly a bramblesome obesity a nettlesome diplomacy an adjectival infancy a faux-prodigious tersity an amphoteric anti-cleric para-steric corset E F G H I J kayety l m n o pequety arrest he you VW-ty an Ex to Why the zeity omega of the diety an alif in eternity whatever there might beity with buttersome fortuity the puddle of all charity the poodle of screwyouity the muddle of intuity the fuddle of reviewity the subtle of eschewity the huddle of her bluity the cuddle of the riddle of the middle of the truity the trinity of youity the unity of zooity whaddity of iffity the whyity of thenity the varsity of vanity the sparsity of spanity a cup of tea to sanity! the thimble of "I do"ity a tacit incredulity a probable annuity a comedy a threnody a tragedy amenity a kamikaze kennedy without a proper planety the mousie in the housie had a dousie of alterity the spousie in the blousie had a wowsie of some clarity & other suchlike circumstances, if you would (25 words or less). d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 07:19:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: six questions on alterity (that was "my" "intended" "subject"-line, but somehow 'twas truncated so this errats it) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 07:54:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: conf In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 7:17 AM -0400 5/1/97, David Israel wrote: >Yesterday, Ron Sillman wrote: > >>Alterity, by the way, teaches at UC Berkeley. > in fact, one cute moment at the Poetry & public sphere conference was when the roundtable moderator introduced first charlie altieri, and then mick taussig, the latter as the author of "mimesis and altieri." speaking of the conference, i was in 7th poetry and cult stud heaven. it started w/ me and cary nelson, introduced by the gracious and beautiful harriet davidson. i talked about some articles in the nyt that offered possibilities (all limited) for poetry & pubsphere, then sounded a yay for populist poetry and cultural studies, which i defined according to renato rosaldo's brief definition in the new book _Mass Culture and Everyday Life_ (ed. peter gibian, routledge). Cary talked abt the spanish civil war and poetry about it. then a roundtable where amiri baraka got into a rousing argument with miguel algarin about political poetry of the 60 vs that of the 90s. baraka was right. i read some previously unpublished bob kaufman poems, keith roach talked abtout the nuyo poets cafe, reg e gaines talked about getting turned on to poetry and social change by an etherdge knight poem, and sonia sanchez talked about her memories being politically involved. then dinner. i had some pals, ed cohen, ira livingston, elaine chang, amitava kumar, and julie chang, whom i hung out w/ at dinner. Then the fabulous NuYorican poets cafe readers, including Reg E, Algarin, Baraka (who got a standing ovation), Carl Hancock Rux (new to me, wowee, what a presence!), Tracie Morris (diplomat of the poetry world and high priestess of African American sound poetry), Aileen Reyes, keith roach. man o man, it was energizing, smart, emotionally stirring, and aesthetic as heck!! okay, i've done the first day. someone else take over. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 07:59:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: AG's Re-censored Howl In-Reply-To: <33674851.200D@cnsunix.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >The partial reading generated compliments - "A girl called afterward >and said, 'You are too cool. I'm very interested in what you read and >would like to get a copy of it,'" Gilly said - and one complaint. "A >guy flipping stations was driving around with his 13-year-old >daughter, and called the station to say that he was 'offended' by the >F-word," he said. > >And that is what brought an end to the show. > >"I didn't hear the program," said Hill, "but the only thing I know is >that the language used was deemed inappropriate for the station." am i the only person wondering what some guy was doing driving around at 2 am with his 13 year old daughter? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 09:11:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Galaxy Craze & Bruce Morrow @ Poetry City In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII POETRY CITY Friday May 2 7 pm GALAXY CRAZE reads with BRUCE MORROW 5 Union Square West, 7th Floor, New York City (food wine and books) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 09:21:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Rain Taxi Vol. 2 No. 2 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Free book review publication out of Minneapolis features in its current issue reviews of Jennifer Moxley, Juliana Spahr, Laura Moriarty, Ben Marcus, John Wieners, C. D. Wright, Clark Coolidge, Janice Edius, Stephen Dixon, Wallace Shawn et al. I found a copy at Posman's on University Place (NYC). Their email is raintaxi@bitstream.net, their mail is PO Box 3840, MPLS MN 55403, and their rate is $10 for 4 issues. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 09:38:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: conf Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII >>> then a roundtable where amiri baraka got into a rousing argument with miguel algarin about political poetry of the 60 vs that of the 90s. baraka was right<<< Maria, Can you tell us some more about this? daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 09:59:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Rain Taxi Vol. 2 No. 2 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII capitalism bait and switch: Rain Taxi is free if you find a stack of it in a store (I hope... I walked away with one ulp!) .. but costs money if you have to write to them for it. So may I recommend that you stop by Posman's, hear our listhost read from the Commutative Function of the Alphabet Poetry Book, and pick up a copy. So much for posting before 9:30 ... Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 10:24:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: the Caucus Conversation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark P. asks the significance of the tagline on my email signature file (e.g. below). Mostly "the Caucus Conversation" as present here signifies that my business signature file is appended to my posts to the list -- I can't figure out how to have different signatures on messages to different destinations; that I would even *have to* figure this out indicates the issue of impoverished identity on computers and networks. Screen Porch is my workplace, and Caucus is our first product. Caucus is a software program that runs on Web servers -- "community-building" software, or groupware, or conferencing. Multiple polysyllabic words to describe the tool mean that there's poor vocabulary for get-together, work-together contexts on computers and networks (more impoverished identity). A typical application for Caucus would be the Poetics list -- it's used for lots of stuff like that. About sixty organizations worldwide -- universities, big companies and government agencies, communities like Echo in NY, non-profits, etc. -- use Caucus at present counting. Mark, (or anyone else) if you're interested in knowing more, go to the URL in my signature, follow the "Conferences" link, and register in the Caucus site at screenporch.com. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 10:33:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: altera-tea Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re: "alterity teaches in Berkeley" (I think those were Ron's words), I remember altera tea; the way it rolled up, tho, you couldn't pick your teeth with it. But, then, you didn't want to. Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 14:56:25 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: uk election Comments: To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The Sun, certainly the most influential tabloid in the uk since Thatcher came to power (remember her extraordinary utterance 'deep in the surface of things') and responsible for such classics as 'GOTCHA!' when the Belgrano was sunk during the shame of the Falklands fracas, ended out the 1992 election campaign with an election day cover that showed someone wheeling their luggage through the departure lounge at Heathrow (of course my memory might be inflated here) a bubble image of Neil Kinnock (Labour's leader of the day) and the banner headline 'Will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights'. Later that night Kinnock, in tears, on the steps at Walworth Road (Labours Central Office) announced that Britain Deserves Better. It is that phrase that the Blair (rabbit) campaign has turned on. Today, The Sun features the smiling face of Tony (Phoneme) Blair and has the top of his head being blessed (or annointed or knighted) by the pointing finger (shades of 'Your Country Needs You' from WW1 propaganda) and starry hand from the advertising of the National Lottery. The banner reads (nat lot slogan 'It Could Be You) 'It Must Be You' - then runs on to conflate the copy beautifully: 'TODAY you have the unique opportunity to join the greatest jackpot syndicate ever. The guaranteed prize is a share in our country's future, a brighter tomorrow. But this is no gamble. It costs you nothing. Everyone's a winner. . .' all offers of employment beyond these islands will be welcome. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 09:54:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: conf In-Reply-To: <8525648A.004AD7E1.00@krypton.hmco.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" the reason i restricted myself to the 1st day was that i'm exhausted and overworked rightnow; maybe this summer i can catch up; but can someone else rise to this occasion?--md At 9:38 AM -0400 5/1/97, Daniel Bouchard wrote: >>>> then a roundtable where amiri baraka got into a rousing argument with >miguel algarin about political poetry of the 60 vs that of the 90s. baraka >was right<<< > >Maria, > >Can you tell us some more about this? > > > >daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 10:53:38 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Amittai F. Aviram" Subject: The PPS Conference In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 1 May 1997 00:05:39 -0400 from Well, I was there (I was the man, I enjoyed, I was there) at the Rutgers conference. It was awesome and monumental. Trying to summarize it seems right now a daunting task--I'm still sort of "processing" it (ugh!). Sorry to delurk just to say this, but, if I have any time this weekend-- a big _if_--I'll try to do some sort of summary for this group. For me, anyway, it was an emotionally intense, elating, and draining experience, with a lot of magnificent poetry, spellbinding performances, provocative papers, energetic discussions, delightful conversations, and large roomfuls of people who are _very seriously interested in poetry_! I should say, as part of this message of deferral, that I found Charles Bernstein's talk/reading delightfully, brilliantly witty, and Rachel Blau du Plessis, in two short readings I heard, to be quite poignant and utterly captivating. Well, more soon, I hope. Amittai ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 11:04:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: The PPS Conference ditto maria and amittai. burt maybe next week or so i too might find some time to share muy my perspective on the conference. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 11:30:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: new from fi & call for submissions (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 17:58:04 -0400 From: Prose & Contexts Subject: new from fi fingerprinting inkoperated announces: new publication left,left= =E0 no(u)n by Stephen Cain this is a collection of 30 language poems written in a style that pays tribute to Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons. but this dense work is more than an homage. delving deep into language, this is not exactly light reading. the book is divided into three sets of ten poems under the headings "person," "place," "thing." for those who like to try before you buy, the first poem can be found on line in the in print section of the fi website <. this a typical handcrafted fi publication: 44 pages, japanese-bound card covers with a paper dustjacket, published in an edition of 76 numbered & initialled copies, available for only C$6.25. subscribers as always, subscribers receive a 20% discount off the list price of all publications, & are guaranteed copies of all productions. to subscribe, deposit C$25 (US$20) or more into an fi account; the cost of publications & actual postage is debited from your account when the items are posted every few months. send cheques or money orders (payable to d lopes) to the address below. new schedule & call for submissions fi is now on a regular publishing schedule, producing a major chapbook or odd object each month. of course to sustain this schedule, fi is inviting submissions of work that pushes hard at boundaries of communication & that explores the complexities of form/at. see the submit page at < for more information. Toronto Small Press Fair & finally, one last reminder for those in the Toronto area: the Toronto Small Press Fair is this Saturday, 3 May, from 11am-6pm at Club 360 (located at 326 Queen West). fi will be there, so come say hi & check out what's going on in the small press scene... __________________________________________________ fingerprinting inkoperated damian lopes Box 657 Station P Toronto Canada M5S 2Y4 < for pgp key, email: pgp-key < a micropress specializing in innovative writing exploring form/at ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 11:33:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: armand schwerner Subject: DRAGON BOND RITE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gwyn McVay asked whether the Tuvan singer in Dragon Bond Rite is the same one who's in Huun-Huur-Tu. Yes. He is also the man who made a recording with San Fran bluesman David Pena and taught him to sing khomei. In response to David Israel's query about Margi Madhu; Madhu is probably one of the two greatest living practitioners of kudiyattam, which is not a form from Orissa, a north Indian state; Madhu lives and practices kudiyattam in its essential site, southern India (Kerala.) Composer and instrumentalist Jin-Hi Kim, who conceived DBR, plays a 6-string fretted zither, the komungo, which has an ancestry going back about 1,400 years in Korea. Ms. Kim has been trained in traditional Korean musical practice, having earned a degree in Korean traditional music at Seoul National University before coming to the US; she received an MFA in electronic music/composition at Mills College.Her work LINKING, written for the Kronos Quartet, was performed at the Darmstadt Festival, BAM Next Wave Festival, Institute for Contemporary Art in London and the Asian Pacific Festival in New Zealand. Other works have been presented at Merkin Concert Hall in NYC, the Juillard School's Focus Festival '96, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in NYC and other venues. She has developed the world's only electric komungo. David Israel asks for some words about what I've written for this new music/theater work, whether the piece has "any spoken words, or what?" Briefly, I've drawn material from my Tablets as well as from other sources, including Virgil. The Tablets is often a kind of entropic narrative whose form may encourage semi-aleatoric borrowings. We have produced approximately 40 slides. Some slides feature graphics derived from Sumerian pictographs; I have made these with font-generating software on the Mac, and have used a number of them in the later Tablets, XXVI and XXVII. The forthcoming issue of Boxkite, (its initial issue,) from New South Wales, edited by James Taylor, will contain my essay GLOSSES which discusses some of these matters. Some of the words and phrases are spoken, sometimes in English, sometimes in Korean, Japanese, Tuvan, Sanskrit and/or Indonesian. Other sequences are printed on slides, made by using Microsoft PowerPoint. There are other permutations. All the language sequences on the slides are in English. Jin-Hi Kim and I, along with Rick Emmert--who teaches Noh in Tokyo, and has a crucial role in the work--have been working for three years to arrive at a theater piece which presents the work of great traditional artists in delicate relationship with the contextual urgings of post-modernity, a word I'm not crazy about; this is a description whose simplicism frustrates me but I'll use this language as a shortcut for this brief response. In DBR, we try assiduously to respect the integrity of the traditionalist forms and practices all the while we are attempting to create a working consanguinity; for most of the artists this is the first time they will have worked closely with members of other Asian traditions; there are occasional language problems, but on the whole we manage extremely well, the performers show great enthusiasm and are eager to learn from each other. We're in the final activity of preparation before the last week of rehearsal at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis the last week of May. I very much appreciate the interest in DBR. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 11:52:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: conf In-Reply-To: <8525648A.004AD7E1.00@krypton.hmco.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII yes: what was he right about: what were the terms: On Thu, 1 May 1997, Daniel Bouchard wrote: > >>> then a roundtable where amiri baraka got into a rousing argument with > miguel algarin about political poetry of the 60 vs that of the 90s. baraka > was right<<< > > Maria, > > Can you tell us some more about this? > > > > daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 12:46:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: the Caucus Conversation In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970501102455.007086b8@cais.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanx for the trouble-taking and informative reply, Tom; pretty interesting, actually. Mark P. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 11:01:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: Rational Meaning is now out In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19970428162715.00bbd554@bway.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 28 Apr 1997, Charles Bernstein wrote (in part): "No North American or European poet of this century has created a body of work that reflects more deeply on the inherent conflicts between truth telling and the inevitable artifice of poetry than Laura (Riding) Jackson." --Charles Bernstein, from the introduction Granted, Charles, and a belated congratulations for posting the existence of this work to the list and for your part in it. I was once heavily preoccupied with Riding (Jackson), both her poems and the only prose document I'd been aware of, _The Telling_, both of which I recommend. They're not exactly light bedtime reading, though! > At the age of forty, having already produced a substantial and challenging > body of poetry, stories, and criticism, Laura (Riding) Jackson renounced > poetry and began to concentrate on the discovery of the principles that > embed truth and meaning in words. She believed that, if words and meaning could be irrevocably fused, people would become "morally articulate" and thus could never lie. Quite a statement! I was interested in her exemplary renunciation of poetry, taking it as a challenge and implicit criticism of my own work and everyone else's, and wondered if it could be compared to others' rejections -- specifically, Rimbaud's. I concluded that it couldn't! Following the logic of some of her sentences made me dizzy, however. Are you, or are others, aware of any biography of her? Her early years, when she was supposedly the model for Graves' _White Goddess_ and the author of many critical essays skewering the models of the time (William Empson? Stephen Spender?) would make for good reading, I'd think. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 14:10:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: further individual complications Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Found this re: mayday UK elections, a Thatcher quote: ''There is no such thing as society; there are individual men and women and there are families.'' Thatcher, October 1987. This would put Mark's comment (an echo of a Silliman line) in the context of a right wing rugged-individualism that wants to dismantle any kind of social program. To be less polemical about it, I'd modify Mark's statement to read .. "You might think you're an individual, but to the entities considered persons by the law who are deciding what you're worth, you're far less than three-fifths..." May Blair work out better than Clinton has, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 14:17:07 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: further individual complications In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 1 May 1997 14:10:01 -0400 from On Thu, 1 May 1997 14:10:01 -0400 Jordan Davis said: > ''There is no such thing as society; there are individual men and >women and there are families.'' Thatcher, October 1987. > >This would put Mark's comment (an echo of a Silliman line) in the context >of a right wing rugged-individualism that wants to dismantle any kind of >social program. To be less polemical about it, I'd modify Mark's statement >to read .. "You might think you're an individual, but to the entities >considered persons by the law who are deciding what you're worth, you're >far less than three-fifths..." Religious people offended by the religious right are not going to give up using various versions of the word "God" for that reason. Nor will people who think they might be individuals surrender the meaning of the word because Thatcherism & Reaganism manipulated it. But there sure are further complexities roun' here & I wonder if the Rutgers conference got into them. I wonder if someone could make a valid argument that one of the reasons poetry lacks attention & status (until recently) is because in the long development of "literature" the activity of lyric SELF-expression has broken the borders of the lyric poem & infused all genres. That the normative expectation now of a novelist or playwright or etc. is a lifelong devotion to a private, personal, individual mode of expressing personal experience. That this is the crux of the "quest" of the artist - to integrate & interiorize everything. & in the process poetry just got absorbed - it's all poetry. Even language poetry or public performance art is a supremely individual rendering of impersonal language or group history. Easy to scoff at this in an ideological approach, but for the maker whose words are manna & life itself - life is sometimes on the line. Reagan used the same lever to dismantle decent government. And we are all put off by the ego of the artist. Reagan & his era could be looked at in the lens of Aristotle, maybe. There's the Actor masquerading as a Man of Action (opposite of Hamlet, who in order to act had to become an actor). There's the res publica becoming an artifice of rhetoric, a disneyland phantasm. Good ol Mandelstam has a wonderful poem about Crete, last stanza something like: This was, turned blue, and was sung long before Odysseus, long before food and drink were called "mine." - Henry Gould "Classicism is revolution." -Osip Mandelstam ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:30:16 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: individuwobbles addendum to previous post: what is that gist or spark that transcends all analyses of self-expression, etc? Is it the secret of writing/ reading itself? the oscillation between je and autre? 2 poets who broke through the modernist revolution & postmodernist devolution & (re)created the forms of civic poetry: Auden, Brodsky (more for the Russians than Americans). Probably not much read on zis list (a big assumption). But I heard some Auden in J. Moxley's recent book (then I'm often hearing things in the dark...). A dry-eyed almost scientific approach to poetry, sceptical, rhetorical in a political sense (I'm talking about Auden here). 18th century. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:47:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian McHale Subject: Re: Rational Meaning is now out In-Reply-To: Message of 05/01/97 at 11:01:22 from jsafdie@SEACCD.SCCD.CTC.EDU Joe Safdie inquired after biographies of Laura (Riding) Jackson. There is, in fact, a very big one by (is it?) Deborah Baker, came out a couple of years ago. The bookshelf where my copy reposes isn't near at hand, so I can't supply par- ticulars at this moment; if you need more details, Joe, contact me back-chann- el & I'll ferret them out for you. Brian ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:48:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: conf Maria, Would you care to elaborate on this? In a message dated 97-05-01 14:24:02 EDT, you write: << then a roundtable where amiri baraka got into a rousing argument with miguel algarin about political poetry of the 60 vs that of the 90s. baraka was right. >> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:50:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Auden, Resuscitated in a Thunderstorm Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Auden and Ashbery, Scotch and soda, Kisangani and Kinshasa... anyone read Mary Sidney's psalms? found the one that's an alphabetical acrostic last night... X, J ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:54:08 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Auden, Resuscitated in a Thunderstorm In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 1 May 1997 15:50:30 -0400 from On Thu, 1 May 1997 15:50:30 -0400 Jordan Davis said: > >X, >J I always thought I detected some XJ Kennedy in your work, Jordan. My lengthy review will be posted momentarily. You're a closet sonnet-man. - Big Wind ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 16:03:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Auden, Resuscitated in a Thunderstorm Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry, are you thinking of my "Dude Rescinding a Starcase"? Jordan mysteriously jocular ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 13:15:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: individuwobblies In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII but Brodsky somehow seemed to redevolve upon arrival in the U.S. -- his civic never quite encompassed the new surroundings in a way recognizable to me (unless we mean the Honda Civic?) Isn't Olson instructive in this regard, still? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 16:07:35 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Auden, Resuscitated in a Thunderstorm In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 1 May 1997 16:03:38 -0400 from >Henry, >are you thinking of my "Dude Rescinding a Starcase"? >Jordan >mysteriously jocular wasn't that your parody of the Providence School? I appreciated your manipulation of scoff-rhyme but it cut rather close. I sent it to the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies - there's a prof. there who thinks it might reflect a realistic elevator-shoe-device to help hold up the Fermat Conundrum. You'll probabilitally be hearing from them any light-day now. - Hgendrik ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 16:20:56 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: individuwobblies In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 1 May 1997 13:15:48 -0700 from On Thu, 1 May 1997 13:15:48 -0700 Aldon L. Nielsen said: > >Isn't Olson instructive in this regard, still? The Olsonmobile (as opposed to the Honda Civic) was the most tragic, Lear-esque, INDIVIDUAL, SUBJECTIVE, POLIS 10-4, JUNGIAN, JUNGLE drive there ever "wuz". - Road Islander H. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 13:39:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: six In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yeah, Charlie Alterity used to teach at U. of Washington. He is a snappy dresser, which will be an anomaly at Cal. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 13:41:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: AG's Re-censored Howl In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >am i the only person wondering what some guy was doing driving around at 2 >am with his 13 year old daughter? Yeah, and which F word did he complain about? My guess is Ferlinghetti, but then there must be others. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 17:59:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: Auden, Resuscitated in a Thunderstorm In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII well, yes, I've read Mary Sidney's psalms and her brothers and Wyatt's too: you might be interested in Roland Greene's work on the early modern lyric sequence (and also on early modern shaped poems): On Thu, 1 May 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > Auden and Ashbery, > Scotch and soda, > Kisangani and Kinshasa... > > anyone read Mary Sidney's psalms? found the one that's an alphabetical > acrostic last night... > > X, > J > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 18:10:05 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Auden, Resuscitated in a Thunderstorm In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 1 May 1997 17:59:13 -0400 from ARROWHEAD (IN THE SHAPE OF A STATE) A maze of lakes in northern Minnesota, crisp air adrift on owl's wings between the wide gray skies and a long swath of muted pines, waves lapping, lapping against the riding prow of the motorboat, my father at the tiller, smiling, looking out toward the shore, quiet, his beard growing rough now after a day or two in the woods-- I'm afraid of diving too deep back into the skin of the past, my callow bones, the large boy head full of springing phantasms, upstart to replace a sense of imperfection with voracious all-devouring enveloping thought--fishline, this daily bread of blind birdsong. Before you, Iron Range long gone, I will always be that unbound, reedy son. - Big Wind (Ojibway) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 17:19:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Talismanic virtues MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN This just in from our foreign poetics desk: Per Mark Presjnar and other librarians on the list, I tried ordering Talisman for the University of Colorado's periodical collection. Lo and behold, it worked! I'm told by "Skip" Hamilton - subject bibliographer - that no faculty member had heretofore requested it - hence, its absence from the shelves. (O dismal backwater, o arterial hardening!) But he was very glad to acquire it and sd he wld have long before - except he can only do so by request. I will be ordering other mags and books shortly since Skip seems happy to comply with my "research needs." Mark et al - thanks! Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 19:24:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: Talismanic virtues Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Patrick--perhaps he/you might subscribe to the Backwoods Broadsides Chaplet Series. So far, only "B" libraries subscribe: Buffalo, The Beinecke, Brown, and Kent State. (Well, this is the innovative list, right? Whadd'ya, logo-phallo-alphabocentric?) etc. etc. sp >This just in from our foreign poetics desk: > >Per Mark Presjnar and other librarians on the list, I tried ordering >Talisman for the University of Colorado's periodical collection. Lo and >behold, it worked! I'm told by "Skip" Hamilton - subject bibliographer - >that no faculty member had heretofore requested it - hence, its absence from >the shelves. (O dismal backwater, o arterial hardening!) But he was very >glad to acquire it and sd he wld have long before - except he can only do so >by request. I will be ordering other mags and books shortly since Skip seems >happy to comply with my "research needs." Mark et al - thanks! > >Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 01:10:09 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: uk election news Comments: To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" seismic shift in British party politics massive Labour majority subtle gradation of sound bites ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 12:41:16 GMT+12 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: Univ of Auckland Subject: Re: NYC Reading In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970429205634.006a04b8@bway.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dear Charles 'n Bruce( the double Bill) Wish I could be there (seems like I'm always saying this) and save me a copy. It years now since my L= book went walkabout and I've had to get by without it. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 03:07:16 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: uk election news Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Got to say there are incredible results here - meltdown for the Conservatives almost all major challenges for Tory leadership in what promises to be a bitter bloodbath in the aftermath but most noticeable a massive influx of women into Parliament good tv ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 01:31:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Rational Meaning is now out Comments: cc: davidi@wizard.net Thu, 1 May, from Joe Safdie: << I was interested in [Laura Riding Jackson's] exemplary renunciation of poetry, taking it as a challenge and implicit criticism of my own work and everyone else's, and wondered if it could be compared to others' rejections -- specifically, Rimbaud's. >> One thinks, of course (for comparison), of Marcel Duchamps (though he did tinker out that great late work in secret) -- Interesting that she continued to write in prose while renouncing poetry -- i.e., seemingly distrusted (?) poetry, but not (in the same way) prose? (I realize these aren't questions for glib answer -- & no doubt the vol. that Charles announced addresses some of this . . .) << Are you, or are others, aware of any biography of her? Her early years, when she was supposedly the model for Graves' _White Goddess_ and the author of many critical essays skewering the models of the time (William Empson? Stephen Spender?) would make for good reading, I'd think. >> Joe, at first I misread this as "are you aware of my biography of her?" ! -- as well. Yes, I have (somewhere) a copy of a promising-looking bio entitled *In Extremis* (but haven't taken time yet to delve into it . . . ) Incidentally, there's a play, *The Beekeeper's Daughter,* based (with changes of names and with a particular emphasis etc.) on the figures of Robert Graves & Laura Riding -- written by Karen Malpede (the NYU theatre professor). I saw this in Lee Nagrin's Bleeker St. studio a couple years ago (Nagrin -- an old frirend -- had a role in the piece). I know Karen was looking toward developing it further, but don't know present status of those efforts. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 08:03:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: LIBARARIAN virtues In-Reply-To: <01IID3E29UU08ZH8WO@iix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hey librarian groovoids, how 'bout gettn yr libraries to subscribe to the new and groovy Cross Cultural Poetix? At 5:19 PM -0500 5/1/97, Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote: >This just in from our foreign poetics desk: > >Per Mark Presjnar and other librarians on the list, I tried ordering >Talisman for the University of Colorado's periodical collection. Lo and >behold, it worked! I'm told by "Skip" Hamilton - subject bibliographer - >that no faculty member had heretofore requested it - hence, its absence from >the shelves. (O dismal backwater, o arterial hardening!) But he was very >glad to acquire it and sd he wld have long before - except he can only do so >by request. I will be ordering other mags and books shortly since Skip seems >happy to comply with my "research needs." Mark et al - thanks! > >Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 09:16:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: psalmody In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Looking back at Lab Book from UB Poetics (1992), and it's just about coming into focus. If copies still exist, I endorse heartily the purchase. Of interest not merely because it contains early (but representative) work by Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace, Jena Osman, Lew Daly, Jeff Hansen, Bill Tuttle, Elizabeth Burns, Elizabeth Willis, Cynthia Kimball and Peter Gizzi, but also because it provides a record the closest thing to a POETICS archive for the workshop process short of a documentary film. To refresh the memory: each workshop participant submitted a poem to the group to be responded to; the poems and their responses are revealing. When the book came out, I had no idea what any of these people were talking about (my bad). Now, the styles are clearer (more work exists, more reading has transpired, and I'm getting older too...). That said, thanks, Joseph, for the bibl. ref. for those psalmists -- do others on the list know of other psalm translators worth looking into? Jordan On Thu, 1 May 1997, Joseph Lease wrote: > well, yes, I've read Mary Sidney's psalms and her brothers and Wyatt's > too: you might be interested in Roland Greene's work on the early modern > lyric sequence (and also on early modern shaped poems): > > > > On Thu, 1 May 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > > > Auden and Ashbery, > > Scotch and soda, > > Kisangani and Kinshasa... > > > > anyone read Mary Sidney's psalms? found the one that's an alphabetical > > acrostic last night... > > > > X, > > J > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 10:11:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: Auden, Resuscitated Sidnean Psalms In-Reply-To: <9705020406.AA26845@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > Jordan Davis wrote: > > > anyone read Mary Sidney's psalms? found the one that's an alphabetical > > acrostic last night... > > > Joseph Lease wrt: > > well, yes, I've read Mary Sidney's psalms and her brothers and Wyatt's > too: you might be interested in Roland Greene's work on the early modern > lyric sequence (and also on early modern shaped poems): great stuff! hard to believe 164 different stanzaic and 94 different metrical patterns in mary's psalms. i like also that her translations are based not on a single source-text but an amalgamation of prose psalters in english, french metrical psalters, a coupla versions of the bible, etc. just actually found this line in wyatt last night: (psalm 38) So ar myn entrayles infect with fervent sore, Fedyng the harme that hath my welth oprest, That in my fleshe is lefft no helth before. yikes! his only use of the word "entrayles" according to the concordance. cheers, tom ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 07:26:46 -0700 Reply-To: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Lew Daly Essay MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone have a copy of the Lew Daly _Apex of the M_ essay that was published as a supplement? A student of mine needs a copy ASAP for his paper -- the student's email address is: markyd@got.net If anybody has a copy they could xerox & ship to him, it would be much appreciated ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 12:08:35 -0400 Reply-To: Jordan Davis Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Sidneian In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tom Orange, I'm mad for those quotations in your messages -- first Iggy Pop, now Wyatt. Would I could serve POETICS a pot of senegalese peanut soup in Union Square Park today. Anybody crack the shrink wrap on Mason & Dixon yet? Jordan who started out with something in mind when he pressed 'compose' ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 14:01:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Godfrey playlist MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Had to step out before Creeley read (early work, I hear) but I caught John Godfrey and Cecilia Vicuna at the opening reading of the Poetry Project's 30th anniv. party. Godfrey, subdued, was _on_, especially on "For Ice" and "Day Goo". He opened with two elegies (for Allen Ginsberg and for Jim Brodey, respectively), followed with what I think he referred to as "the difficult ones", and sailed on through in his Michael Learned as Celine manner. Titles: Big Lips The James Brother Grasp Is Provide Ten Times Lighter Very Worn Cloth For Ice Day Goo Same Feet Evil Tunnels The Slightest Foam and before I knew it they were introducing Cecilia Vicuna, pow, they're done, no one gets up. Some laughter. No reader, but then a scratching noise from the front (and the important thing to know is that Ed Friedman had the room turned around so that people were sitting up on the stage looking past the podium at the front door which Ed dramatically closed at the start of the reading) and eventually singing. CV got up and read in a whisper, then very loud, and startled by the duration she suddenly realized she was expected to read for, finished with poems from her light book. Then there was an intermission... In the audience: Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, Phil Good, Dug Rothschild, Daniel Cane, Bill Luoma, Greg Masters, Brenda Coultas, Anselm Berrigan, Elinor Nauen, Richard Hell and like sixty or so others. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 10:51:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: psalmody Comments: To: Jordan Davis MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN The English poet Peter Levi recently did some trans. of Psalms for Penguin, but I've not looked at them closely and don't know if they merit further attention. Also, (I think) the seemingly ubiquitous Stephen Mitchell? Sidney's stuff with his sis the Countess of Pembroke is great to read alongside the KJV. Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 12:43:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Benedetti Subject: Re: Books & Co. In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > Books & Co., long one of Manhattan's best poetry/philosophy/critical > writing bookstores, is slated to close May 31. The following message from > Paul Auster is posted in the window:"For twenty years, Books & Co. has > been a sanctuary for readers and writers, a spiritual home for everyone > who still believes in the importance of words. New York has been blessed > to have this store, and the thought that it may be forced to close has > filled me with sorrow. I feel like someone who has just been told that one > of his dearest friends is dying.Does money always have to have the last > word? Can a squabble over a few pennies actually shut down a place that > has meant so much to our city? Don't the people bent on destroying this > landmark realize the damage they will be doing? Subtract Books & Co. from > New York, and New York loses part of its soul."(signed) Paul Auster > 4/21/97 > Yes, out here in Albuquerque the University of New Mexico Bookstore expanded and moved across the street (Central) from The Living Batch Bookstore, and so The Living Batch died a pathetic death--along with The Salt of the Earth Bookstore down the street. These two independent bookstores were crushed by the chains and UNM conglomerate, and were the only real places in Allblueturkey to get poetry, Latin American lit and books, postmodernism, theory, lit crit, obscure, etc. etc. Not to mention great readings, expert advise, local news, actual people, etc. So, killing of smaller independent bookstores is going on all over. Paul Auster's obit about covers it. David Benedetti ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 15:13:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Please post this to the list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For those of you who have been following this on 20/20: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 02 May 1997 00:41:40 -0700 From: Jennifer To: POETICS-request@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Cc: conaripub@aol.com Subject: Please post this to the list Please post the following message to the POETICS list. Thanks! Subject: ERRATUM: Helen Adam / Women of the Beat Generation ----------------------------------- ERRATUM Due to an unfortunate combination of computer glitches and copy editor confusion, portions of the biographical sketch of Helen Adam in the Conari Press title "Women of the Beat Generation," that were drawn from the work of Kristin Prevallet, appeared without complete attribution. Ms. Prevallet generously provided us with her excellent research on Helen Adam and we apologize for any harm that might have occurred. Future printings will restore the original accurate acknowledgments. Thank You, Will Glennon Publisher, Conari Press Brenda Knight Author, "Women of the Beat Generation" e-mail: conaripub@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 15:03:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: Books & Co. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Cambridge & Boston continue to have an incredible variety of excellent book stores--mostly used. In fact, I've managed to pick up all my wants in the past few weeks in the form of review copies--small press poetry, university presses, the works--brand new and at half price!! Eat your heart out, America! daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 02:03:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: wyatt, our villon... In-Reply-To: <9705030405.AA08687@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII does this subject line contain a tenable thesis? now accepting candidates for early modern english outlaw poets. of course villon was no diplomat, but wyatt did do his time in the can and messed with the king's wife.... Tho my songes be sume what strange, And spekes suche wordes as toche thy change, Blame not my lutte. cheers, t. jordan davis wrot: > I'm mad for those quotations in your messages -- first Iggy Pop, now > Wyatt. Would I could serve POETICS a pot of senegalese peanut soup in > Union Square Park today. damn good memry there jd, i thot those iggy lines was long fergot! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 23:06:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Please post this to the list In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Am I the only reader who finds the explanation for how Kristen Prevallet's name got dropped from her writing more than a little questionable? I mean, I've experienced any number of computer glitches and copy editing confusion, but given the fact that the attribution should have appeared in at least three places (on the essay, in the contents, and in the acknowledgements) this seems a bit of a stretch to me -- On a happier note -- Cinco de Mayo celebrations will be held in San Jose on Sunday -- come on down! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 09:44:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: Please post this to the list/beat women Comments: cc: anielsen@athens.sjsu.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" aldon-- no, they're just tryin to bullshit their way out of a jam... when i talked to the editor, he at first denied that there was any significant plagerism, when i started citing paragraph by paragraph th copied & paraphrased sections he backed up a little, shifted blamed to the author's incompetence w/ computers or some such. i understand that kristen had initiated a suit? praps their announcement has to do w/ that. as she pointed out, tho, it also raises th question of the reliablity of the rest of the scholarship, lacking as it does any substantial references or footnotes... sad, and ironic, that a project i would otherwise be enthusiastic about shd be so discredited... lbd >Am I the only reader who finds the explanation for how Kristen Prevallet's >name got dropped from her writing more than a little questionable? I >mean, I've experienced any number of computer glitches and copy editing >confusion, but given the fact that the attribution should have appeared in >at least three places (on the essay, in the contents, and in the >acknowledgements) this seems a bit of a stretch to me -- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 09:29:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Please post this to the list/beat women In-Reply-To: <199705031337.JAA08786@csu-e.csuohio.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" yeah, it's too bad that they can't just apologize and promise future appropriate reference without having to lie. computer glitches indeed. i'd like to know if kristen feels that this is an adequate and satisfactory settlement. kristen are you out there? any comment?--md At 9:44 AM -0500 5/3/97, robert drake wrote: >aldon-- > >no, they're just tryin to bullshit their way out of a jam... when i >talked to the editor, he at first denied that there was any significant >plagerism, when i started citing paragraph by paragraph th copied & >paraphrased sections he backed up a little, shifted blamed to the >author's incompetence w/ computers or some such. i understand that >kristen had initiated a suit? praps their announcement has to do w/ >that. as she pointed out, tho, it also raises th question of the >reliablity of the rest of the scholarship, lacking as it does any >substantial references or footnotes... sad, and ironic, that a >project i would otherwise be enthusiastic about shd be so discredited... > >lbd > >>Am I the only reader who finds the explanation for how Kristen Prevallet's >>name got dropped from her writing more than a little questionable? I >>mean, I've experienced any number of computer glitches and copy editing >>confusion, but given the fact that the attribution should have appeared in >>at least three places (on the essay, in the contents, and in the >>acknowledgements) this seems a bit of a stretch to me -- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 13:38:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: adieu, Corpse! MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I received this in the mail yesterday: (Patrick Pritchett) April 15 Tax Day, In the American Tradition of Anguish Dear Friends: After fourteen years and sixty-three issues of Exquisite Corpse, the editors have decided to kill themselves. The magazine will continue to appear, of course. After one minute of thinking about this, however, we have reversed our position, and decided to kill the Corpse instead. After that minute, however, we realized that a Corpse cannot be killed. Given the difficulty of this paradox, we have decided that: The bi-monthty publication of Exquisite Corpse will be suspended while the editors prepare a massive anthology culled from our sixty-three issues, to be published in 1988. After the anthology appears, we will either reappear in a new format or produce a yearly anthology. Meanwhile, ghost Corpses will continue to be telepathically issued, available free from the community of writers we have nurtured. Their collective ectoplasmic connections will produce many more issues than we could have delivered in the cumbersome typographic manner. It has always been our intention to cease and desist when we got bored. Until now, neither penury nor overwork, stopped us from our task of delivering the news, but the time came, finally, when Baudelaire's certitude that we "know this monster well," sank home with the finality of one thousand printer's bills, mailing lists, unsolicited offenses, and institutional rigidity. To our contributors we say, "do not hold a wake, unless we can be there," to our readers we say, "remember us until we return," and to our subscribers we declare, "subtract what remains of your subscription from the price of the anthology, which we will send to you postage-free," and to those who never read us we say, "you are old, your taste is execrable." Until we return, remember the good days. We love you. Andrei Codrescu, editor Laura Rosenthal, executrix Jean C. Lee, manageresse ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 16:21:26 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Amittai F. Aviram" Subject: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) Here are a few more comments about the Poetry and the Public Sphere Conference, which I'm writing even though I really need to be grading papers. This is all from memory--I never take notes--so forgive me for lapses. First of all, I differ strongly with Maria Damon, whom I unmet--i.e., met in passing by way of saying goodbye, and whose opening statement, alas, I missed, because my flight got in at 4:00. No, Amiri Baraka was most certainly _not_ right. Baraka was and is full of baloney. His arguments were just more boring, thoughtless Old Left rant, as was his "reading," during most of which he _yelled_ into the microphone of an already loud PA system, as if to punish us "academics" for our "complicity" with The Oppressor Capitalist Pigs, etc., etc. All total bullshit. The debate between him and Miguel Algarin, a very gentle soul, was about political poetry of the 60s and 90s. Baraka, of course, was saying that the political poetry of the 60s was better because it was direct, upfront, "truly" political, spoke to The People, blah blah blah--the stuff that I assume Maria agrees with and that I find really obnoxious nonthought (sorry, Maria, I know this is getting off on the wrong foot with you, and I regret that). Algarin was saying that the "political" poetry of the 60s is outmoded because it is unsubtle and lacking in the theoretical sophistication we need in the 90s. It boiled down to Algarin saying, "We need _theories_," and Baraka cutting him off and yelling, "No we don't, we need _action_!" A nice moment of comic relief was had when Algarin pointed out, in the midst of Baraka's ranting about academics and their salaries (oh, yes, we make just _so_ much money!) that ties them to the Capitalist System--that Baraka himself was paid $5,000 for his appearance. Plenty of poets and scholars there were not paid a cent for being there, AFAIK. Baraka was shut up for a second or two as he tried to figure out something clever to say. There were a lot of really great readings of poetry throughout the conference, but Baraka's was not, IMO, one of them. Same for Reg E. Gaines and keith roach, so far as I remember. As for this Reginald Rux guy, he went on forever with a lot of "political" and somewhat egocentric blather that I found supremely boring. By contrast, I found Tracie Morris really stunning and Aileen Reyes wonderful. So I thought the first evening was a thought-provoking mixed bag. Now that that's all off my chest, I have to say, of course, that I was grateful to hear all of these poets, even the ones I didn't like. Every afternoon, evening, and night, there were great readings (sometimes embedded within panel discussions) by great poets, including--going on memory now--Reyes and Morris (mentioned above), Charles Bernstein, Robert Hass, Meena Alexander, Abena Busia, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Alica Ostriker, Bob Perelman, Adrienne Rich, Robin Pastorio-Newman, Cheryl Clarke, Regie Cabico, Rafael Campo, Andy Clausen, Rachel Hadas, Rebecca Reynolds, Michael Weaver, Ross Talarico, Eliot Katz, and others. I actually didn't like Abena Busia very much, either as poet or in her talk on the "Locations of Poetry" panel shared with Charles Altieri and Arnold Rampersad. (This was generally a dreadful panel-- summary below.) I also don't quite know why Meena Alexander is such a big noise--I just didn't find it in the poetry, although she did give a very compelling statement in the "Poetry, Feminism, and the Difficult Wor(l)d" panel, that was sort of a poem, or anyway quite poetic. More Details: I've already covered Thursday night as best I can. I missed most of the first Concurrent Panels session Friday morning because it involved getting on a bus from the hotel at 8:15, which I missed :-( . I just barely made it to the last 3/4 or so of Brian McHale's paper in the panel on "The Feminist Avant-Garde," on Susan Howe, in which he showed how some poems of Howe were playing with Spenserian and Shakespearean phrases that have been known so well over the centuries that they have become more or less part of the permanent detritus or soil of English-speaking culture. Thus they are already out of context (so to speak), but Howe would then put these phrases in yet more strained contexts, to defamiliarize them anew, as a kind of intervention in the economy of poetical discourse. (Is that about right, Brian?) Interesting discussion afterwards in which just about everybody missed the point that Howe was not Pound and not merely alluding, but estranging the overfamiliar that has literary origins. Keynote Panel: "Cultural Poetics, Cultural Politics," with Meena Alexander, Charles Bernstein, and Tricia Rose, hosted by Elin Diamond. Alexander's talk was more or less (I think) about the complexities of identity created by postcolonialism and a multicultural world, and she closed with a poem reflecting upon her self--both poetic and personal--in the setting of Riverside Park (I guess), overlooking the Hudson and the Washington Bridge. The Bridge would be the operative metaphor here, I think, as well as the river. Bernstein talked about how poetry works precisely (I think this is right!) by _undermining_ the apparently simplicity of the social self, by foregrounding its discursively constructed nature, and he closed, as I recall, with a brilliant poem. I was thinking the whole time about the ways that his talk was addressing some of the issues in my paper better than my paper did, or whatever. It questioned the sincerity of the personal voice in "political" poetry and suggested that the truly political act of poetry was precisely to render the personal voice an artifice and an object of play. His poem exemplified this, among other things, by containing a long and delightful catalogue of what kind of poet "he" "is." The first of these items was: "I am a New Formalist poet." This got a lot of laughs, but it is also remarkably _true_, insofar as much of what Bernstein read at the conference _is_ in meter--thus exploding the rightwing identification of "formalism"--something I wsa trying to do in my paper as well. Tricia Rose's paper, on "Poetic Testimony: Race, Gender, and Popular Poetry," claimed (a) that testimony doesn't _really_ require that the events told _really_ happened (and thus that the speaker is still understood to be a poetic artifice), and (b) that, insofar as there _is_ some connection to reality, testimony "complements" the playful artifice of poetry, rather than working against it. During the audience part, Charles Altieri pointed out that Tricia Rose's statement (esp the latter part) and Charles Bernstein's were actually quite at odds with each other, but that they were (I think Rose was) attempting to smooth over the difference. Both of them gave, I thought, an inadequate reply to what I thought to be a correct statement on Altieri's part. Indeed, throughout the conference, one of the running threads turned out to be the question of the relation between "testimony" and "poetic artifice," and, with that, the oral vs. the written, populism vs. some other concept of democracy, representation vs. the aesthetic, the personal vs. the impersonal ... And it seems to me that none of these questions was resolved, which is probably o.k. I went next to the "Feminist Collectives/Identities" panel, but caught only a little--the whole of Linda A. Kinnahan's fine paper on "_HOW/ever_, Then and Now," and a little of Jen Benka's and Jennifer Geigel's joint presentation, which I left after a while because it involved a slide show that was set up so that nobody who came in late could see it. The next session included my own panel, on "Form and Contemporary Publics," with Nick Yasinski and Jonathan Monroe. I enjoyed meeting both of them, finding Nick a particularly delightful and endearlingly modest personality. Nick presented a superb close reading of an "oral" poem by Regie Cabico included in Miguel Algarin's anthology of Nuyorican poets, thus demonstrating that the apparent "identity" in "identity politics" can indeed be complex, playful, and poetic. (I agree--but I also think that some poets manage this better than others.) Jonathan Monroe's talk centered on READ, an educational program that did not include poetry, and how another program that did could easily be integrated into READ's goals. My own paper urged a distinction between populism and democracy (see above), and also the importance of the connection between poetry and literacy (and thus democracy) and therefore the _re_readability of poems. This gave way to an interesting discussion, especially involving my paper and Nick's. I am still unsure how work like that of Tracie Morris fits into what I was saying, because it really is (IMO) superb poetry, but it doesn't seem entirely _literate_--i.e., involving reading and rereading, becoming spatialized int the mind, repeatable. Then again, maybe it _is_. In some ways, Tracie Morris's musical "sound poems" are enactments of the closest kind of close reading--the repetition of words until they become mere sounds in music. Well, obviously, I'm still thinking about all of this. I think people were disturbed by my distinction between populism and democracy, especially WRT the Nuyorican poets, and I'm quite unsure about that relation myself, although I _am_ reasonably sure, otherwise, of the distinction. I was flattered that Charles Altieri came to the panel (at least I _think_ that was he!) and seemed to agree with me, at least a little. Harriet Davidson was there, too, who did not quite agree with me, but who is so totally _agreeable_ a person that it's hard to _disagree_ with her about anything ever. Next came a plenary panel on "The Difference that Poetry Makes." The ever cute (sorry, don't mean to embarrass him!) Nick Yasinski took on the difficult task of presiding over this group of learned people, some of whom were rather longwinded--interestingly, all of them men--the women managed to be quite concise. All of the speakers were asked to answer the question, "What difference does poetry make?" and to respond to two quotations: one, Auden's "Poetry makes nothing happen," and the other, Adorno saying that "Poetry is impossible after the holocaust." Altieri started off with the usual shapeless fuzz, and, as opposed to another talk he gave later, in this case, I honestly couldn't quite follow his point. Sorry! I do seem to remember, however, that this was the talk where he pointed out that young people today are in an awkward position in relation to literacy and literature. Whereas earlier generations could rebel against their parents by _reading_ and getting educated, this is no longer the case, since the parents are usually educated and literate. (This may have come up in another talk.) Robert Hass gave a _very_ long talk, but I confess that I found it utterly fascinating. It had two parts. First, he conducted the thought experiment of what difference poetry makes by imagining a world without poetry to see whether it would be any different from our world. What he found--in a way almost echoing Roman Jakobson--is that poetry is so totally embedded in language in general that it's simply unimaginable to have a "world" in a normal sense that would be totally without poetry. "So," he concluded nonchalantly, "that was a _cul-de-sac_." He then talked about the difference poetry _has_ made, as a kind of benefit of literacy, intimately tied to the history of literacy in modern times, as a distinctively _American_ phenomenon--the growth of literacy being directly tied to certain ideological developments first in the United States and only later in other "developed" countries. Literacy in the US started with the importance the Purtitans laid upon the ability to read the Bible to save one's soul, and literacy in New England throughout early American history was very high--over 90% (I think), while it was rather low elsewhere. In the early 19th century, still, only a minority of American adults could produce a signature (his index for literacy in the most basic sense). (A fortiori, it was always only a small minority throughout Europe.) In the same period--really starting in the late 18th century (Federalist period)--the ideology linking reading to salvation was secularized into one that linked reading to citizenship. During the slavery era, reading also was obviously linked to freedom and political self-determination. By the time shortly before the Civil War, already, a significantly higher proportion of adult nonenslaved men could produce a signature, relative to the proportion of the same in Europe. After the Civil War, public schools were established for all citizens, and literacy rates continued to rise steadily. Literacy was connected with upward mobility. There was also a series of three different ideological rationales for the importance of literacy throughout the 19th century, after its secularization. First, literacy was viewed as a chance at access to the great wonders and beauties (i.e., poetry) hitherto only available to the aristocracy--it was the democratization of verbal wealth. This concept went ahead until around the turn of the century, when the lettered elite was no longer a significant social force, and when poetry was already heavily associated with the middle class rather than the European aristocracy--as typified by Walt Whitman and his imitators. Poetry had been re-formed, in a sense, to become less aristocratic--as the lower classes entered literacy, they transformed it. The next ideology, picking up in the late 19th century, was the association of the reading of poetry and cultivation of beauty with the ennobling of the soul; people who could read and appreciate poetry would be more moral. This idea came to a catastrophic end with the holocaust of WWII, when everyone saw that it was possible to be a great aesthete and lover of poetry and still put millions of people to death. Finally, emerging in the early 20th century was the association of literacy and the reading of poetry with the refinement of cognitive skills, an association still alive today and motivating education to some extent. Literacy in the US crested at around 90% in the year 1960, and has been dropping steadily since then--not only in numbers but in quality: the average 8th grader in Texas reads at only a 4th-grade level. So, poetry makes a difference by contributing to literacy, and what we need is more of both. Tracie Morris took much less time to say something about equally fascinating. She introduced it more personally as the difference that poetry has made _for her_, and therefore presented it as autobiography, but of course it turned out to be a parable. She had wondered as a child whether she was crazy, because she liked talking to herself. "Don't worry," she was told, "You're not crazy if you talk to yourself, so long as you don't _answer_ yourself." Later, in school, reading Poe's "The Raven," she was struck by how crazy the speaker is--he not only talks to himself but also answers himself. Why, if he knows the bird can only say one word, would he be crazy enough to ask it, "Will I ever see my beloved again"? Why not ask, "Will I ever get sick"! As an adult, she went to several different community poetry projects, including, eventually, the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe. She learned about "sound poetry," and tends to use this technique especially to address matters, such as the Middle Passage, that she regards as unspeakable. Thus poetry is a way of dealing sanely with a crazy situation, and a way of being both sane and crazy simultaneously, letting her talk to herself and answer herself without being considered crazy. (I hope I got the drift of that right.) Michael Taussig, next, gave by far the longest talk--endless and shapeless and utterly without a thesis. It wound up moving towards a reference to _The Nervous System_. Charles Bernstein went next, and spoke while a slide behind him projected an image by a French artist: a road sign in a lozenge shape, divided by a horizontal bar into two triangles. In the top one were the words, _DU CALME_ ("Relax!"); in the bottom, "Poetry makes nothing happen." Bernstein, I think, both argued and _showed_ (in prose and verse) how the "nothing" that poetry makes happen is, itself, something important in the political sphere (see above). Lynn Keller came last, with very little time left. She pointed out, first, that the two quotations are out of context, and that both writers thought differently of poetry at other times. Secondly, she focused on the difference that poetry has made, in the (later) 20th century, for _women_, because, before then, women had not been able to publish their poetry before. The possibility for women readers to read poetry by women poets, representing women together or alone and not at objects of male fantasy, has made an immense difference for women. I've run out of time, so I'll have to summarize the rest of the conference in a Part II, to come shortly. Amittai F. Aviram ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 16:59:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" don't worry amitai you didn't get off on the wrong foot w/ me for disagreeing abt baraka. but i do disagree. what i heard was simply different from what you heard. what i heard was algarin saying glibly: 60s poetry was all rhetoric and theory, today its about feelings, not theory. to which baraka rightly pointed out that 1) to claim to have no theory is a theory and 2) political poetry of the 90s owes a lot to political poetry and poets of the 60s. it is miguel who was anti-theoretical. i'm glad we're talking about tracie morris; about a year ago i asked why there was no discussion of her on the list and now there is. i hope it's not just bcause she mentioned kurt schwitters. she's unbelievable, and quite the poetry diplomat as well. i found hass boring, suspect him of underestimating the educational level of his audience. i found reg e gaines terrific on the roundtable, pretty good at his reading, tho i'd heard most of the material before. i'm a big baraka fan, so there you have it. i found algarin's reading less compelling than i have in the past. bernstein and morris were big favorites of mine and that seemed a crowd consensus. i love mick taussig tho i seem to be in a minority on that score; everythng he sez is fascinating to me. i wa with folks who watned to leave after bernstein so didn't get to hear lynn k, sorry lynn. i too had trouble following charlie ulterior's talk. ditto both exposures to meena alexander. adrienne rich was impressive. now i'm skipping all over the place. i was very pleased to hear steven caton, who told a tale of the role poetry played in a very tense political negotiation between two factions of a yemeni tribe who ended up going to war over an abduction of 2 young women; and walter kalaidjian on trauma theory and poetry, focussng on th armenian genocide. i was sorry to miss mdavidson's talk, but went to a wonderful demonstration of poets in the schools state of the art with craig czury, tobey kaplan and someone else i missed cuz i was having coffee w/ andy clausen, an old friend i hadn't seen in almost 20 yrs, who gave a rousing 7-minute beat style reading...also took in tracie morris's panel on sound poetry in the africn amercan tradition, which featured beans, a very exciting dj/mc/rapper who's gotten into poetry in a more purposive way, and cheryl boyce taylor, a member of the performance group cayenne. another good panel was lynn keller on alice fulton, michael eldridge on linton kwesi johnson and the construction of "black britain," and a third speaker i missed. eliot katz's reading was quite charming, and ed roberson's was haunting. i was exhausted and had seen sonia sanchez a month or so earlier so skipped out on her and the poet laureate, and the wild locals reading that followed. the final roundtable, with walter k, bob holman and others was also exciting to me. there, maybe you'all can piece together some general idea of the proceedings from all these conflicting reports. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 19:21:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Julie Marie Schmid Subject: Re: Help! History of the Voice Query In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Poet Folk: I'm in the process of revising an essay and need a citation from Brathwaite's History of the Voice. It's out of print and the one copy in the U of Iowa Library is checked out. I am looking for a short passage (about 4 or 5 lines) on p. 13 where EKB discusses the difference between a dialect and a nation language. (I had notes on this section of the book that I can't seem to find.) Could someone be a peach and either post it or backchannel me? Thanks a bundle! Julie Schmid Dept. of English University of Iowa ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 18:49:23 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "linda v. russo" Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Amattai & Maria -- thx so much for the reports -- i'm looking forward to part 2. Amattai -- you mentioned Linda Kinnehan's paper on How(ever) & the panel on the difficult wor(l)d briefly -- could you say more? thx. again -- l. -- linda v. russo linda.russo@m.cc.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 20:32:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: Help! History of the Voice Query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Julie: "History of the Voice" has been reprinted in _Roots_ (U. of Michigan, 1993), which is where this appears on page 266: I think, however, that language does really have a role to play here, certainly in the Caribbean. But it is an Enlgish that is not the standard, imported, educated English, but that of the submerged, surrealist experience and sensibility, which has always been there and which is now increasingly coming to the surface and influencing the perception of contemporary Caribbean people. It is what I call, as I say, _nation language_. I use the term in contrast to _dialect_. The word dialect has been bandied about for a long time, and it carries very pejorative overtones. Dialect is thought of as "bad" English. Dialect is "inferior" English. Dialect is the language when you want to make fun of someone. Caricature speaks in dialect. Dialect has a long history coming from the plantation where people's dignity was distorted through their languages and the descriptions that the dialect gave to them. Nation language, on the other hand, is the submerged area of that dialect that is much more closely allied to the African aspect of experience in the Caribbean. It may be in English, but often it is in an English which is like a howl, or a shout, or a machine-gun, or the wind, or a wave. It is also like the blues. And sometimes it is English and African at the same time. Hope the lines you're looking for are here somewhere... Best, Stephen Cope >Dear Poet Folk: > >I'm in the process of revising an essay and need a citation from >Brathwaite's History of the Voice. It's out of print and the one copy in >the U of Iowa Library is checked out. I am looking for a short passage >(about 4 or 5 lines) on p. 13 where EKB discusses the difference between >a dialect and a nation language. (I had notes on this section of the book >that I can't seem to find.) Could someone be a peach and either post it >or backchannel me? > >Thanks a bundle! > >Julie Schmid >Dept. of English >University of Iowa ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 00:20:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: More Poetry ... more Tracie Morris In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks Amittai for the plug for this week's POETRY CITY TRACIE MORRIS & PATRICIA HAMPL Friday May 9, 7 pm in the offices of Teachers & Writers Collaborative 5 Union Square West, 7th Floor, New York City (the day after our big Rukeyser rockestra) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 00:08:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: How Public Is the Sphere In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII So . . . could somebody who did hear Michael Davidson's presentation give us a word or two about it???? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 08:57:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: More Poetry ... more Tracie Morris In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" wow, what a wild pairing, but terrific, as trish teaches in my dept and i'm anxious for the writers i adore to gain some credibility among my colleagues, so let's hope trish comes back a tracie fan, if she isn't already!!!md At 12:20 AM -0400 5/4/97, Jordan Davis wrote: >Thanks Amittai for the plug for > >this week's POETRY CITY > >TRACIE MORRIS & PATRICIA HAMPL > >Friday May 9, 7 pm > >in the offices of Teachers & Writers Collaborative > >5 Union Square West, 7th Floor, New York City > >(the day after our big Rukeyser rockestra) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 10:16:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) In-Reply-To: from "Amittai F. Aviram" at May 3, 97 04:21:26 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks, Amittai, for your "long" but informative post. I feel like digressing from the issue of the conference itself to pursue something you said: "the ideology linking reading to salvation was secularized into one that linked reading to citizenship. During the slavery era, reading also was obviously linked to freedom and political self-determination." (Hass?) The Puritan/Slave connection is not, to my mind, simply coincident. Some crucial writers (crucial to me anyway) significantly receive both - the one who comes most to mind is W.E.B. Du Bois who, taught by William James at Harvard, credits James with providing him with the philosophic tools it took to produce *The Souls of Black Folk* - through James, Du Bois got basically the whole history of Puritan thought as regards reading - on its far end I'd say its embodied by Emerson's statement that grammar is "organization tyrannizing over character" something that James himself spells out more systematically in the *Psychology* by deemphacizing grammatical "substantives" (nouns, etc) and emphacizing instead words like "if" "and" "to" "but" (no coincidence either that G. Stein was also his student). So Du Bois gets a serious education in Puritan-style poststructuralism. At the same time he has (or discovers) the history of the relationship between slavery/post-slavery and reading/literacy. Frederick Douglas takes the words of his "master," "if you teach that nigger how to read there would be no keeping him" and simply reverses its intended value - "what he most dreaded that I most desired" - saying "From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery." At the same time, however, he has an incredible awareness of the materiality of writing, its implication in the history of slavery and as such the scarred nature of the word, captured stunningly in that metaphor I can never get out of my head: "My feet have been so cracked with the frost, that the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes." Here the Puritan suspicion that words are - for the human being - scarred and cracked (that they don't signify as intended, that they can't be read "accurately") meets an unintended double that wouldn't have been lost on Du Bois. Freedom, then, or democracy, concepts which get so much play in latter-day fromulations of Puritan antimonianism, always involves a scar. Du Bois's long flirtation with and ultimate acceptance of CPUSA seems to me to have come out of his frustration that these scars continued to be inflicted willfully (his communism - at least on the philosophic level - remained uneasy, still quoting Emerson on democracy as late as '61). Anyway, thanks again for the post, it got me thinkin'. Baraka too, seems interesting in this context - as late as *Blues People* ('63) he's celecrating the tradition of "Western Non-Conformity" - a tradtion which of course prominently includes Puritan antinomians from Ann Hutchinson to Emerson ("Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist") though his mid-sixties break with Greenwich Village culture would have included that tradition ("the Party of Insane Hope" as he would later call it). Ok, I'll shut up now. -Mike. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 11:36:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Maria, can you say more about the Linton Kwesi Johnson/"construction of a black Britain" paper? Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 11:42:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: in other sports: Kasparov outwits cyberbrain MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Poetas, continuing the hop, skip & jump (from hoop to tabletennis to whatnot), this just in from the cyber / human interface . . . Kasparov Beats IBM in Game One of Chess Match NEW YORK (Reuter) - World chess champion Garry Kasparov slowly squeezed the best chess-playing supercomputer into submission Saturday to win the first game of their $1.1 million re-match in New York. The game began with a quiet, closed opening more suited to the 34-year-old Russian grandmaster's ability to form long-term judgement about his game plan, then exploded in the middlegame with a sacrifice by Kasparov and ended with the champion forcing home a positional advantage. "Kasparov won this game with such finesse," said International Master Maurice Ashley of the United States, who was one of the official commentators. "His understanding of the computer's weaknesses was pushed to a higher level today." "It was very complicated and tense," Kasparov said. "I couldn't calculate the position but I felt with these two pawns it would be enough in the endgame." Kasparov frequently says that the machine's huge calculating powers are no match for his vast experience and intuition about chess. The Russian, world champion since 1985, is considered by most experts to be the best ever player of the ancient game. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ======================= | Many cities of men he saw | and learned their minds, | many pains he suffered, heartsick | on the open sea, | fighting to save his life and bring | his comrades home. . . . | Launch out on his story, Muse, | daughter of Zeus, | start from where you will . . . ////////////////////////////////////////////////// Homer, The Odyssey Book 1: Athena Inspires the Prince trans. Robert Fagles (1996) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ svaha ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 11:41:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well, not too much, except that let's see, i hate to do the paper injustice thru inaccurate paraphrase: it documented the establishment of black britain as primarily caribbean (much as gates's article in the new yorker does) but then goes on to talk about the alliances that were made w/ other ethnic immigrants of color most notably south asians who were subsumed under the label "black," but never got as much airplay until, or even after, l'affaire rushdie. talked about "black britain" as a trendy import to the u.s. complete w/ theorists such as gilroy, mercer and hall... parallel to lkj's rise as first a poet then public dub poet now mostly journalist who has become disillusioned w/ attempt to do political, cross-ethnic alliance cultural work... At 11:36 AM -0400 5/4/97, Gwyn McVay wrote: >Maria, > >can you say more about the Linton Kwesi Johnson/"construction of a black >Britain" paper? > >Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 03:11:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: IMBURGIA Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="---- =_NextPart_000_01BC51EF.B2B3E960" ------ =_NextPart_000_01BC51EF.B2B3E960 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Amittai F Avriam, thank you very much for your comments on the = conference. Do you think that it would be possible to somehow get a = copy of Brian McHale's paper in the panel on "The Feminist = Avant-Garde," on Susan Howe, or perhaps some of the other papers? will = something be published? Let me know if you get a chance, and thanks = again. dan ------ =_NextPart_000_01BC51EF.B2B3E960 Content-Type: application/ms-tnef Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 eJ8+IicKAQaQCAAEAAAAAAABAAEAAQeQBgAIAAAA5AQAAAAAAADoAAENgAQAAgAAAAIAAgABBJAG ACgEAAACAAAAFAAAAAMAADAFAAAACwAPDgAAAAACAf8PAQAAAFsAAAAAAAAAgSsfpL6jEBmdbgDd AQ9UAgAAAABVQiBQb2V0aWNzIGRpc2N1c3Npb24gZ3JvdXAAU01UUABQT0VUSUNTQExJU1RTRVJW LkFDU1UuQlVGRkFMTy5FRFUAAB4AAjABAAAABQAAAFNNVFAAAAAAHgADMAEAAAAiAAAAUE9FVElD U0BMSVNUU0VSVi5BQ1NVLkJVRkZBTE8uRURVAAAAHgAaAAEAAAAUAAAAUkVQT1JULklQTS5OT1RF Lk5EUgBAADIAQAHDGypSvAEDAAQMAAAAAAMABQz/////AwAVDAAAABADAP4PBgAAAB4AARABAAAA RAAAAE5vIHRyYW5zcG9ydCBwcm92aWRlciB3YXMgYXZhaWxhYmxlIGZvciBkZWxpdmVyeSB0byB0 aGlzIHJlY2lwaWVudC4AHgABMAEAAAAeAAAAJ1VCIFBvZXRpY3MgZGlzY3Vzc2lvbiBncm91cCcA AAACAQswAQAAACcAAABTTVRQOlBPRVRJQ1NATElTVFNFUlYuQUNTVS5CVUZGQUxPLkVEVQAAAwAA OQAAAAACARI6AQAAAFsAAAAAAAAAgSsfpL6jEBmdbgDdAQ9UAgAAAABVQiBQb2V0aWNzIGRpc2N1 c3Npb24gZ3JvdXAAU01UUABQT0VUSUNTQExJU1RTRVJWLkFDU1UuQlVGRkFMTy5FRFUAAB4AEzoB AAAAHgAAACdVQiBQb2V0aWNzIGRpc2N1c3Npb24gZ3JvdXAnAAAAAgEUOgEAAAAnAAAAU01UUDpQ T0VUSUNTQExJU1RTRVJWLkFDU1UuQlVGRkFMTy5FRFUAAAsAQDoBAAAAAgH2DwEAAAAEAAAAAAAA BQ4AAAADAAAwBgAAAAsADw4BAAAAAgH/DwEAAABbAAAAAAAAAIErH6S+oxAZnW4A3QEPVAIAAAAA VUIgUG9ldGljcyBkaXNjdXNzaW9uIGdyb3VwAFNNVFAAUE9FVElDU0BMSVNUU0VSVi5BQ1NVLkJV RkZBTE8uRURVAAAeAAIwAQAAAAUAAABTTVRQAAAAAB4AAzABAAAAIgAAAFBPRVRJQ1NATElTVFNF UlYuQUNTVS5CVUZGQUxPLkVEVQAAAB4AGgABAAAACAAAAElQTS5OT1RFAwAVDAEAAAADAP4PBgAA AB4AATABAAAAHgAAACdVQiBQb2V0aWNzIGRpc2N1c3Npb24gZ3JvdXAnAAAAAgELMAEAAAAnAAAA U01UUDpQT0VUSUNTQExJU1RTRVJWLkFDU1UuQlVGRkFMTy5FRFUAAAMAADkAAAAAAgEUOgEAAAAQ AAAA80HBX9y90BGRlkRFU1QAAAsAQDoBAAAAAgH2DwEAAAAEAAAAAAAABo3jAQiABwAYAAAASVBN Lk1pY3Jvc29mdCBNYWlsLk5vdGUAMQgBBIABADgAAABSRTogTW9yZSBQb2V0cnkgJiB0aGUgUHVi bGljIFNwaGVyZSBDb25mIFN1bW1hcnkgKExPTkcpACkSAQWAAwAOAAAAzQcEABoAAwALABMABgAZ AQEGAAcAGAAAAElQTS5NaWNyb3NvZnQgTWFpbC5Ob3RlADEIASCAAwAOAAAAzQcEABoAAgAwAB8A BgBJAQEJgAEAIQAAAEYzNDFDMTVGRENCREQwMTE5MTk2NDQ0NTUzNTQwMDAwAOsGAQOQBgCMAwAA EwAAAAsAIwAAAAAAAwAmAAAAAAALACkAAAAAAAMANgAAAAAAQAA5AMApJS8qUrwBHgBwAAEAAAA4 AAAAUkU6IE1vcmUgUG9ldHJ5ICYgdGhlIFB1YmxpYyBTcGhlcmUgQ29uZiBTdW1tYXJ5IChMT05H KQACAXEAAQAAABYAAAABvFInn5hfwUH0vdwR0JGWREVTVAAAAAAeAB4MAQAAAAUAAABTTVRQAAAA AB4AHwwBAAAAFQAAAGltYnVyZ2lhQHdoaWRiZXkuY29tAAAAAAMABhAcGNMTAwAHEBIBAAAeAAgQ AQAAAGUAAABBTUlUVEFJRkFWUklBTSxUSEFOS1lPVVZFUllNVUNIRk9SWU9VUkNPTU1FTlRTT05U SEVDT05GRVJFTkNFRE9ZT1VUSElOS1RIQVRJVFdPVUxEQkVQT1NTSUJMRVRPU09NRUhPAAAAAAIB CRABAAAA0gEAAM4BAACwAgAATFpGdQCKRnz/AAoBDwIVAqgF6wKDAFAC8gkCAGNoCsBzZXQyNwYA BsMCgzIDxQIAcHJCcRHic3RlbQKDM7cC5AcTAoM0EswUxX0KgIsIzwnZOxefMjU1AoAHCoENsQtg bmcxMDNvFFALChViDAFjAEAUsG2maQJAC3AgRhSwdgchEG0sIHQRgG5rIBJ5CGAgdgSQeSBt+nUR cCACEAXAHgEFwAWgvm0HgAIwBCACIB2RZR9hDG5mBJAJ8GNlLiD4IERvHfMdoAuAHeAdoRMFQByg IHcIYGxkINJiIFBwbwQQaQJgIFCKdCFQcwNwZWhvB+BSZxHAIGEfYXAecG+eZiEgC0YUUQvxIEIH IZEDoE1jSAdAZScEID0KsHAEkCJQIBQKsG5l0wMgIAEiVCBBRhPgC4CPBAAFQB0gAHB0LUcLEYhl LCIf8lN1cwORfkgkMCoQH/AFwCdREYBw7wQgI+IlAiAybyAxK1EnQuxzPyEgA/BsAyAj4iGyumci 43UCYAQAIEBkLXDmTCRxLBFrbiQxBpAd8/8kZR2xIPAdgABwItAdowQg7GFnC3EhEGQAcAqPG6zn MtUy2y7wMzYN8CVsMtUFFsEAN/AAAAMAEBAAAAAAAwAREAAAAABAAAcwIDKz/yZSvAFAAAgwIDKz /yZSvAECARQ6AQAAABAAAADzQcFf3L3QEZGWREVTVAAAHgA9AAEAAAAFAAAAUkU6IAAAAADq6Q== ------ =_NextPart_000_01BC51EF.B2B3E960-- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 14:31:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Mayday! Mayday! (and the day after) Comments: To: maz881@aol.com, CHRIS1929W@aol.com, Levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, daviesk@is4.NYU.EDU, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, drothschild@penguin.com, jdavis@panix.com, jms@acmenet.net, maj6916@u.cc.utah.edu, AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM, jarnot@pipeline.com, lgoodman@acsu.buffalo.edu, lppl@aol.com, poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, aburns@fnbank.com, normacole@aol.com, acornford@igc.org, olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbg.com, tlovell@sfsu.edu, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, peacock99@aol.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thursday night at New College, Ron Johnson gave a criminally underattended reading from the now-complete, probably last modernist poetry epic of the 20th century, _ARK_. Prefacing by saying he "wanted NOT to include history" in his epic as Zukofsky, Olson and Pound had in theirs, and that he was influenced by the architecture of famous buildings such as Watts Towers, he proceeded to read variously from the Foundations, Spires, Arches that comprise the work. Some of the lines I brought away with me were: the eye may be said to be sun in another form all men are lidless visionaries through the night the lord is a delicate hammerer a vaulting of arteries beating against the dark. This is the body of light primrose abysm at the back of it all, ardor and fire riddle iota sublime where heat sweats wheat for purple mountain majesties Ron also read from a work of 67 short, dark quatrains about death and resurrection that was made into a poster with the poems arranged in the shape of a pyramid. These poems packed quite a punch, too. Others in the spellbound audience included MC Adam Cornford, Andrew Joron, Charles Smith, Kevin Killian, Cliff Gassoway, and Kush. Some 6 of us retired to Picaro afterwards and chatted over tapas. Ron said it took him 20 years to write ARK, but wouldn't tell me how old he was when he started. Friday night (also at New College but this time via Small Press Traffic) Dale Smith returned from Austin to read with Joanne Kyger. Dale read newer work including stuff influenced by his reading _Anna Karenina_. The list of lines includes: love's embarrassing lack of eros there is no fair way to love death the fine product of an age incapable of itself the blunt jolt of breath pushing out at you I fear the music fizzles [through?] space learn to connect and think not no self? I am a little uptight, if you want to know the truth Host Dodie Bellamy reintroduced us immediately to Bolinas' Joanne Kyger, who read us her New York and Buddhism-inspired work, such as: Ahoy! Electronic nightmare! [a poem addressed to the television, of course] new-age metaphysical smoothies constant creation of self is a tricky mess the nothingness bound to get sucked into the bag [Joanne's description of NY skinny-left-margin poets working: "Bang! Bop-a-bop. Bang! Bop-a-bop"] all of a sudden the space between raindrops was filled with rain but what about hoarding ideas and feelings? Ouch! bangs shin on buddha The audience included Stephanie Baker and Nicole at the door, Kevin Killian on lead Tab, and Renee Gladman, Elizabeth Robinson, Steve Dickison and Tina Rotenberg, Michael Price, Sarina, Duncan McNaughton, Charlie Palau, Rob Hale, Tom Stolmar, Ed Ainsworth, Etel Adnan and Simone Fatel (my spelling undoubtedly needs help here) overdubbing handclaps. Duncan and Jean McNaughton hosted a lovely gathering at their new Mission home after the reading. ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 18:49:37 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 3 May 1997 16:21:26 EDT from Thanks for wonderful, thorough reports from Amittai & Maria. Glad to hear Charles Bernstein is a new formalist. If he finds a stable identity he can join the Providence School. We're publishing a Prov School anthology in 1978 - watch for it - focusing on poetic/political problems from a red shift perspective. From where I sit today, the issues of poetry & literacy seem less interesting than the connection between poetry & storytelling & mythology. Maybe it's just the pale green appearing on all the trees now. It's Persephone, Orpheus in the land of the dead. Nativerican mythology is full of Orpheus stories. It's Dylan's basement tapes. Poetry doesn't feed your liberation it possesses you. You can vote for literacy, that's fine: the literate poet will continue to write form letters on stock themes. It's something else, not power, not convention. It's in between Authority (sleepwalking) and Will (sleepwalking). It's a big wind, I say. Beyond who's in charge or who's down under. Plot. Drama. Story. Recognizing its human power in this way will help see what it MIGHT mean in a political sense. Sing, sing along in sing-sing... - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 21:55:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grotjohn Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Thanks for wonderful, thorough reports from Amittai & Maria. Glad to hear > Charles Bernstein is a new formalist. I thought he was a nude formalist, but maybe the impurer has knew close. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 23:29:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Ganick Subject: announce POTEPOETZINE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" POTEPOETZINE, a new experimental e-zine devoted to experimental poetry and e-art which will appear irregularly, but frequently, is taking subscriptions for the first issue of its series to be sent by e-mail to subscribers before june 1, 1997.... issue ONE will feature approximately 10 poet's work and a section of e-art by hartford ct area artists.... if you want to receive POTEPOETZINE, please send you e-mail address to one of the following e-mail addresses: before may 7, 1997: potes@erols.com after may 9, 1997: potepoet@home.com the ZINE will be unavailable may 8, 1997; please mention this list in your reply.... no submissions, please, with your message, ONE will include information about submitting texts to TWO and beyond.... do not attempt to fax, telephone, or snail-mail us, only e-mail will receive a response.... POTEPOETTEXT, a series of longish electronic texts surrounding the on-going worldwide discourse about culture, experimental art, and critical theory will also be included in your subscription, submissions to this series are now being accepted.... POTEPOETZINE....POTEPOETTEXT.... experimental poetry and cultural discourse.... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 May 1997 23:58:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: manny savopoulos Subject: SAVE NPR (petition Comments: To: Alex Reid , ann green , anthony miccoli , christina milletti , deyon warren , diane olson , dimitri anastasopoulos , don byrd , graduatites , ilja o keil , jeffrey tobin , jennifer beck , joan goodman , "k. hyoejin yoon" , lori a horvitz , meegan tomlins , michael blitz , michael t welch , michael vlamakis , nirmal k bhagabati , paula orlando , pierre joris , robert cheatham , robert wilkie , robert williams , ross prinzo , sal renzo , sarah bowman , stephen livingston , 't'-eduard fristrom , tom mackey MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Please read this VERY IMPORTANT petition! I hope you will then sign it and pass it along to everyone you know. We've got to be active in saving these important institutions! Please sign! Thanks! This is for anyone who thinks NPR/PBS is a worthwhile expenditure of $1.12/year of their taxes, a petition follows. If you sign, please forward on to others (not back to me). If not, please don't kill it -- send it to the email address listed here: wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu PBS, NPR (National Public Radio), and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and streamline their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as "unworthwhile". Currently, taxes from the general public for PBS equal $1.12 per person per year, and the National Endowment for the Arts equals $.64 a year in total. A January 1995 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll indicated that 76% of Americans wish to keep funding for PBS, third only to national defense and law enforcement as the most valuable programs for federal funding. Each year, the Senate and House Appropriations committees each have 13 subcommittees with jurisdiction over many programs and agencies. Each subcommittee passes its own appropriation bill. The goal each year is to have each bill signed by the beginning of the fiscal year, which is October 1.The only way that our representatives can be aware of the base of support for PBS and funding for these types of programs is by making our voices heard. Please add your name to this list and forward it to friends if you believe in what we stand for. This list will be forwarded to the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and Representative Newt Gingrich, who is the instigator of the action to cut funding to these worthwhile programs. If you happen to be the 150th, 200th, 250th etc. signer of this petition, please forward a copy to: wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu. If that address is inoperative, please send it to: kubi7975@blue.univnorthco.edu. This way we can keep track of the lists and organize them. Forward this to everyone you know, and help us to keep these programs alive. Thank you. 1) Elizabeth Weinert, student, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley,CO 2) Robert M. Penn, San Francisco, CA 3) Gregory S. Williamson, San Francisco, CA 4) Daniel C. Knightly, Austin, TX 5) Andrew H. Knightly, Los Angeles, CA 6) Aaron C. Yeater, Somerville, MA 7) Tobie M. Cornejo, Washington, DC 8) John T. Mason, Dalton, MA 9) Eric W. Fish, Williamstown, MA 10) Courtney E. Estill, Hamilton College, NY 11) Vanessa Moore, Northfield, MN 12) Lynne Raschke, Haverford College, PA (originally Minnesota) 13) Deborah Bielak, Haverford, PA 14) Morgan Lloyd, Haverford, PA 19041 15) Galen Lloyd, Goucher College, MD 16) Brian Eastwood, University of Vermont, VT 17) Elif Batuman, Harvard University, MA 18) Kohar Jones, Yale University, CT 19) Claudia Brittenham, Yale University, CT 20) Alexandra Block, Yale University, CT 21) Susanna Chu, Yale University, CT 22) Michelle Chen, Harvard University, MA 23) Jessica Hammer, Harvard University, MA 24) Ann Pettigrew, Haverford College, PA 25) Kirstin Knox, Swarthmore College, PA 26) Jason Adler, Swarthmore College, PA 27) Daniel Gottlieb, Swarthmore College (but truly from Lawrence, KS) 28) Josh Feltman, Tufts University, MA 29) Louise Forrest, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA 30) HongSup Park, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA (originally from Portage, Wisconsin) 31) Ana Sandoval,Massachusetts Institute of Technology 32) Katherine Navarrete, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 33) Mandisa Washington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 34) Stephen Balzac, San Francisco, CA 35) Howard Yermish, Los Angeles, CA 36) Danielle Yermish, Los Angeles, CA 37) David S. Lefkowitz, University of California - Los Angeles 38) Frank S. Albinder, San Francisco, CA 39) Read S. Sherman, Harvard Divinity School 40) Stephane Lemelin, Cambridge, MA 41) Thomas Ouellette, Cambidge, MA 42) Richard Russell, Cambridge, MA 43) Nella Wennberg, Jamaica Plain, MA 44) Eric Smith, Jamaica Plain, MA 45) Alex Graham, Boston, MA 46) Dean Wei, Chicago, IL 47) Luisita Frances, Chicago, IL 48) Roy Vella, Stanford, CA 49) Alan Hellawell, Mountain View, CA 50) Timothy A. Scott, San Francisco, CA 51) Albert M. Yeh, Mountain View, CA 52) Susan Yeh, Seattle, WA 53) Jonathan Payne, Seattle, WA 54) Cena Pohl, Seattle, WA 55) David Perk, Seattle, WA 56) Robert Srygley, Seattle WA 57) Katarzyna S. Kubzdela, Chicago, IL 58) Katy Human, Stanford, CA 59) Erica Fleishman, Reno, NV 60) C. Richard Tracy, Reno, NV 61) Kenneth E. Nussear, Reno, NV 62) Christopher R. Tracy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 63) Kristin Komives, Carrboro, NC 64) Jennifer Goldman, Chapel Hill, NC 65) Darcy Leach, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 66) Van Luong, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 67) Aurora M. Sherman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 68) Paul O. Stern, Seattle, WA 69) Erika Tapman, U. of Vermont College of Medicine 70) Opher Donchin, Urbana, IL 71) Prof. Pamela Cosman, University of California, San Diego 72) Ari Levitt, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 73) Nathan Martin, Berkeley, California 74) Lynn Price, Kensington, California 75) Leslie Shown, Kensington, CA 76) Mike Boals, Berkeley, CA 77) Wendy Boals, Berkeley, CA 78) Effie Westervelt, Tiburon, CA 79) Mary Burns, Taos, NM 80) Karen Page, New York, NY (karenapage@aol.com) 81) Gary Holleman, Bemidji, MN (holleman@chefnet.com) 82) Tim Rosa, Newton, MA (trosa@world.std.com) 83) Doug Hersh, Sherborn MA (hersh@ultranet.com) 84) Ruel Little, Somerville, MA (rlittle@ascensiontech.com) 85) Stefan Wennik, Andover, MA (SWennik@aol.com) 86) Melissa Walia, SF, CA (color@well.com) 87) Tracy Brown, SF, CA (tracy@nrh.com) 88) John T. Miller, SF, CA (johncom@dnai.com) 89) M. Todd Davis, SF, CA (todd_davis@gensler.com) 90) Michael Demetrios, SF, CA 91) J. Marc Perrin, NY, NY (mperrin@sbi.com) 92) Alyse Daberko, NY, NY (adaberko@sbi.com) 93) Jessica Guertin, Washington Univ. St. Louis(jg3@cec.wustl.edu) 94) Ellen Watson, San Francisco, CA 95) Bridgitt Arnold, Seattle, WA 96) Erica Yenni, Seattle, WA 97) Kerri Karvetski, Seattle, WA (70007.4401@compuserve.com) 98) Mark Butler, Seattle, WA 99) lazlow jones, long beach, ny lazlow@undernet.com 100) Laura Bykowski, NYC, NY laurab@gbcom.com 101) Amy Stettler, NYC, NY ZiolaS@AOL.com 102) F Ben Dana, Burlington, Vermont 103) Bill Dahill-Baue, Brattleboro, VT 104) S. Ryan Quick, Yale University, New Haven, CT 105) Jerry Anne Dickel, Yale University, New Haven, CT 106) Donald Beebe, Yale University, New Haven, CT 107) Stephanie Seery, School of Theology at Claremont, CA 108) Katherine A. Johnson, Baltimore, MD 109) Cynthia J. Halstead, Burke, VA 110) Ronald Northrip, Falls Church, VA ronnlee@clark.net 111) Jane Levandoski, University of Delaware, DE 112) Denise J. Hills, University of Delaware, DE 113) David P. Sobel, College of William & Mary, VA 114) Amey T. Sadler, College of William& Mary, VA 115) Donna M. Livingston, Woodbridge, VA 116) Karen A. Morris, Burke, VA 117) Michael E. Perdue Atlanta, GA 118) David Cour, Washington D.C. 119) Katie Sergent, Washington D.C. 120) Nathan Sewell, Nashville, TN 121) Peter Eby, Nashville, TN 122) jeff taraday, seattle, WA 123) Julie Taraday, Seattle, WA 124) Stephanie Cooper, Seattle WA 125) Kailen Mooney, Seattle, WA 126) Dylan Clark, Univ. of WA, Anthropology, Seattle 98195 127) Daniel Simons, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 128) Kirsten Wild, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 129) Barbara Busetti, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 130) Leslie Macchia, Mountain View, CA (lmacchia@ix.netcom.com) 131) Kris Wollenhaupt, San Jose, CA 132) Ann Bowers, Palo Alto, CA 133) Sue Tysko, Palo Alto, CA 134) Liza Schmeltz, San Jose, CA 135) Judith Schweikert, Palo Alto, CA 136) Joan Wylie, Palo Alto, CA 137) Marcia Pugsley, Palo Alto, CA 138) Daryl Davis, Palo Alto, CA 139) Amy Gerstein, San Francisco, CA 140) Christian Holden, San Francisco, CA 141) Stephen Divenere, San Francisco, CA 142) Karen Yetman, San Francisco, CA (kyetman@nelson.corp.gonelson.corp) 143) Christine D'Elia, San Francisco, CA 144) Rachel Bredemeier, Cambridge, MA 145) Karin Horlbeck, Cambridge, MA 146) Mark Bourne, Cambridge, MA (MarkB@cmbinfo.com) 147) Norm Slocum, Weymouth, MA (SLOCUM@XENSEI.COM) 148) Carol Hughes, Boulder, CO (cehughes@lucent.com) 149) Susan Hagg, San Francisco,CA(shagg@coldwellbanker.com) 150) Dante Landucci, Bethesda, MD (Dante_Landucci@NIH.com) 151) Ann Dannenberg Rosen, Newton, MA 152) Elena Conti, Cambridge, MA 153) Brent Richter, Rowley Ma 154) Libby Jones, Rowley, MA 155) Kitkoon Chan, Pleasanton CA 156) Dennis Crayon, Boston, MA 157) Claude R Labbe, Boston, MA 158) Jeffrey M. Klapes, Lynnfield, MA 159) David E. Knudsen, Somerville, MA 160) Chris Ann Matteo, New York, NY 161) Scott G. Williams, Austin, Texas 162) Linda Wiencken Williams, Austin, Texas 163) Lucinda Martin, Florence, TX 164) Karen E. LeFevre, Austin, Texas 165) David E. Soileau, Austin, Texas (cajundave@aol.com) 166) Kirk P. White, RN, MSN, Austin, TX 167) Lisa Rogers, Austin, TX (oyalisa.@aol.com) 168) Shelley Brown, Denver, CO (lbrown@aol.com) 169) Deborah Chandler, Loveland, CO (deborahwf@aol.com) 170) Linda Temple, Oklahoma City, OK (lgtemple@aol.com) 171) Tom Temple, Oklahoma City, OK (lgtemple@aol.com) 172) Gage Evans, Denver, CO (gevans@carl.org) 173) Kara M. Van Horn, Denver, CO (karav@ihs.com) 174) Carmelia Dyer, Boulder, CO (cdyer@ball.com) 175) Douglas Goldman, Boulder, CO (dgoldman@ball.com) 176) Eugenie Georgas, Boulder, CO (ggeorgas@ball.com) 177) Michael Birdsong, Boulder, CO (mbirdson@ball.com) 178) Todd Arbetter, Boulder, CO (arbetter@spam.colorado.edu) 179) Marika Holland,Boulder, CO (hollandm@orbit.colorado.edu) 180) Adriene Hughes, Brighton, MA 181) Andrew Myerson, Brighton, MA 182) Lucila De Alejandro, San Diego, CA 183) Robin Taylor, San Diego CA 184) Shelly Diaz, NYC, NY 185) Beth Davidson, Incline Village, NV 186) Jon Paul Davidson, Incline Village, NV 187) Kate Glanz, Durham, NH 188) Filson Glanz, Durham, NH 189) Dehan Glanz, San Francisco, CA 190) Justine Reese, San Francisco, CA 191) Carl Bettag, San Francisco, CA 192) Eugenia Lean, Los Angeles, CA 193) Nicole Huang, Berkeley, CA 194) George Krompacky, Yale University, CT 195) Peter Carroll, Yale University, New Haven, CT 196) James Carter, New Haven, CT 197) Eagle Glassheim, Columbia University, New York City 198) David S. Frey, Columbia University, New York City 199) Ellen B. Umland, Bay Village, OH 200) Susanna D. Kopchains, Hawthorne, NJ 201) Mark Margaretten, Denver, CO 202) Jon L. Leland, Mill Valley, CA 203) Steve Blumenthal, San Francisco, CA 204) Paula Mantel, Honolulu, HI 205) Gaile Sickel, Honolulu, HI 206) Robert Wolfson, Fairfax, CA 207) Shams Wm. Kairys, Oakland, CA 208) Donald Halley, New Lebanon, NY 209) David Iman Adler, New Lebanon, NY 210) Robert Barris, Highland Park, 211) Janet Karpus, Kalamazoo, MI 212) Terry Macak, Kalamazoo, MI 213) Lynne Aspnes, Ann Arbor MI 214) Lorna Haywood, U of M Ann Arbor MI 215) Robert Debbaut, Salt Lake City, UT 216) Kaye Ramsey, Salt Lake City, UT 217) Timothy Jones, U of T San Antonio TX 218) Eugene Dowdy, UTSA, San Antonio, TX 219) Lawrence Stomberg, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO 220) Lisa Stomberg, Colorado School of Mines, CO 221) Paula Lynch, Laurel Springs, NJ 222) Cara Kendric, Philadelphia, PA 223) Deborah Conger Hughes, University of Washington, Seattle 224) Dean Heerwagen, Univ. of Washington, Seattle 225) Mark Clayton, College Station, TX 226) Mardelle Shepley, Bryan, TX 227) Mike Blair Bryan Tx (mcblair@myriad.net) 228) David Lucey Oakland, CA 229) Ted Rallis Davis CA. (ted@ucdavis.edu) 230) Leigh Ann Giles, Davis CA (lagiles@ucdavis.edu) 231) Kamala Crompton, Sebastopol CA (kscrompton@ucdavis.edu) 232) Patrick Kelly 233) Alan J. Hiller (hiller@cooper.cpmc.org) 234) Mitchell D. Klein (MrProp@aol.com) 235) Nicholas Wulfekuhle 236) Andrew Downes 237) Kelly Bowers, Washington DC 238) Thomas Unger, Alexandria, VA 239) Dwight Gibbs, Alexandria, VA (dwightg@fool.com) 240) Selena Maranjian, Alexandria, VA (selenam@fool.com) 241) Lynnette A. Simon, Cambridge, MA (lasimon@fas.harvard.edu) 242) Susan Martin, Acton, MA(suemart@tiac.net) 243) Kenneth Lord, West Hempstead, NY (lord@calvin.cs.qc.edu) 244) Christopher Vickery, Holliswood, NY (vickery@babbage.cs.qc.edu) 245) Christopher Winters, Stamford,CT (Abudu@Juno.com) 246) Paul McIsaac, New York City (paulmci@aol.com) 247) John Douglas, Charlotte, VT (jdouglas@together.net) 248) Norio Kushi, Shelburne, VT (ankushi@aol.com) 249) JoAnne Kushi, Shelburne, VT 250) Allan Balliett, Shepherdstown, WV (igg@igg.com) 251) Michael Reilly, NYC, NY (mreilly@sasmp.com) 252) Cindi Weiss, Hoboken, NJ (cweiss@sasmp.com) 253) Sam Cohen, NY, NY 254) Kathryn Mintz, NY, NY (kmintz@randomhouse.com) 255) Brad Greenquist, LA, CA 256) Helga Schier, LA, CA (hschier@randomhouse.com) 257) Kimberly Burns, LA,CA (kburns@randomhouse.com) 258) Laurel Cook, NY,NY(cookl@bdd.com) 259) Todd Gitlin, NY, NY (gitlint@is.nyu.edu) 260) Norris McNamara, Chicago, IL (NorrisMcN@aol.com) 261) Scott Diamond, Chicago, IL 263) Scott Black, Oak Park, IL 264) Linda Marquardt, Oak Park, IL 265) Daniel Marquardt, Oak Park, IL 266) Robert Ginsburg, Fayetteville, Ar 267) Susan Jenkins, Fayetteville, Ar 268) Dianne Schlies, Albuquerque, NM 269) Paul Schlies, Albuquerque, NM 270) Bob Dickey, Portland, OR 271) Elizabeth Dickey, Tucson, AZ 272) Timothy Mayhew, Farmington, NM 273) Marjorie Robertson, Arlington, VA 274) Deron Hurst, Arlington, VA 275) Erika Warner, Arlington, VA 276) Nancy Ward, Arlington, VA 277) Heather Podlich, Washington, DC 278) Lillian Rice, Washington, DC 279) Nicole Dannenberg, Washington, DC (originally from Sunnyvale, CA) 280) Suzanne Isack, Washington DC 281) Iracema de Moura Castro, Washington, DC 282) Tom Sander, Cambridge, MA 283) Peri Smilow, Cambridge, MA 284) Marc Johnson, Cambridge, MA and NY, NY 285) Patty Lyons, Chicago, IL 286) Tom Mula, Chicago, IL 287) Denis O'Hare, Brooklyn, NY 288) Derek Anson Jones, Brooklyn , NY 289) Karole Dill Barkley, New York, NY 290) Vivian Hunt, Cambridge, MA 291) Sengal Selassie, New York, NY 292) Patience R. Singleton, Washington, DC 293) Deneta A. Howland, Takoma Park, MD (deneta.howland@intelsat.int) 294) Rana Dershowitz, New York, NY 295) Maria Politis, New York, NY 296) Anthony Pasca, E.Northport, NY 297) David Schliecker, New York, NY 298) Cynthia Schliecker, Madison, WI 299) Matthew Bazan, Madison WI 300) Samir Sugathan, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 301) Seamus Mulryan, Beloit, WI 302) Amos Blanton, Beloit, WI 303) Brad Blanton, Stanley, VA. 304) James Goldstein, North Potomac, MD 305) David Torrealba, Washington, DC 306) Evan Eller, Annapolis, MD 307) Melaina Eller, Washington, DC 308) Jonathan Morris, East Haddam, CT 309) Veronica Morris, East Haddam, CT 310) E.Richard Brown, Los Angeles, CA 311) Steven P. Wallace, Los Angeles, CA 312) Robert J. Squires, Los Angeles, CA 313) William F. Donaldson, Buffalo, NY 314) Absalom S. Kotulski, New York, NY 315) Rick E. Kotulski, Corbett, OR 316) Louann Wakefield, Corbett, OR 317) Tawnya Napoli, San Francisco, CA 318) Carla Lease, San Francisco, CA 319) James Austin, San Francisco CA 320) Diane Whitmore, San Francisco, CA 321) Margaret Weber, Chicago, IL 322) Kathryn H. Cummings, Lakewood, OH 333) Lawrence J. Taylor, Lakewood, OH 334) Kimberly Cummings, Jackson Heights, NY 335) Nina Kauder, New York City, NY 336) Juliana Luecking, New York, NY 337) Richard Ford, Santa Monica, CA 338) Tamara McDonough, Los Angeles, CA 339) Vince Gatton, Los Angeles, CA 340) John Starr, Santa Monica, CA (JohnSt@foxinc.com) 341) C. Davey Utter, Venice, CA (70055.522@Compuserve.com) 342) Gary Allen, Santa Monica, CA 342) Barbara J. Toennies, Santa Monica, CA 343) Tom Bliss, Sherman Oaks, CA 344) Lynn Karpinski, San Diego, CA 345) Michael Haskins, San Diego, CA 346) Bill Bailey, San Francisco, CA 347) David Cusick, New York, NY 348) Andrew Livanis, New York, NY 349) Emmanuel Savopoulos, Albany, NY ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 00:19:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) "OLD LEFT"? we need more of it "baloney"? i'm an e-mail vegan "theory"? what maria said "Amiri"? an amazing artist well poetics, whaddya think -- was it Kevin Davies said poetry is rhetoric on the edge of a blackout. . . i'd be interested to hear other reports of baraka at rutgers. goodnight ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 01:44:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob Hardin Subject: Lou Stathis, RIP 5/4/97 In-Reply-To: <199705030405.AAA20552@york.interport.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To whom it may concern: Lou Stathis, editor and author, died between twelve and three a.m. on 5/4/97. There will be a wake on Tuesday and a burial Wednesday. All sincerely interested friends are welcome to write for more information. All best always, Rob Hardin PS: Lou was the editor of Reflex, the pulp series for ReSearch, the DC Vertigo line, and the author of the experimental music review column in the 70's French-inflected comic, Heavy Metal. (His column's influence was the only lasting effect of that enterprise.) He was also the author of several whipsmart essays on alternative culture. Among those he helped were Samuel Delaney, Kathy Acker, John Shirley, James Ellroy, David Wojnarowicz, and lesser lights such as yours truly. He taught generations about alt culture and what's more, he was kind, sarcastic, and never spoke of his own work when he had the chance to mention other writers. Your suffering is over, but the rest will be remembered. Sic itur ad astra. No conduit can be lost. http://www.users.interport.net/~scrypt/ http://www.horrornet.com/hardin.htm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 03:55:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth W Sherwood Subject: Ronald Johnson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Interested to read of RJ performance just after setting down ARK on the desk. Steve, Kevin et al, I wonder how you heard the 'historic epic' disclaimer--I hear plenty of affinity (if not influence) of Zukofsky in Ark, if not the dense history of Cantos/Max/Patterson. What do we do with a non-historic epic? Music as much as ark-i-text-ure seems to undergird the poem. Anyone else reading ARK at present? Anyone know if RJ is coming through Buffalo/Toronto area? I've not even heard a tape of him reading. Ken Sherwood ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 08:45:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) In-Reply-To: <336D684B.7587@cit.mbc.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>I thought he was a nude formalist, but maybe the impurer has knew close. No, no, the in-peerer has new cloaks. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 10:31:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: SAVE NPR (petition In-Reply-To: <199705050454.AAA01717@shell.acmenet.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII My personal opinion is that NPR/PBS probably AREN'T worth saving. Many folks I know refer to 'em as Corporate Public Broadcasting, and with good reason. Mark P. On Sun, 4 May 1997, manny savopoulos wrote: > Please read this VERY IMPORTANT petition! I hope you will then sign > it and pass it along to everyone you know. We've got to be active in > saving these important institutions! Please sign! Thanks! > > This is for anyone who thinks NPR/PBS is a worthwhile expenditure of > $1.12/year of their taxes, a petition follows. If you sign, please > forward on to others (not back to me). If not, please don't kill it -- > send it to the email address listed here: > > wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu > > PBS, NPR (National Public Radio), and the arts are facing major > cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce > spending costs and streamline their services, some government officials > believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large > a > portion of funding for something which is seen as "unworthwhile". > Currently, taxes from the general public for PBS equal $1.12 per person > per year, and the National Endowment for the Arts equals $.64 a year in > total. > > A January 1995 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll indicated that 76% of > Americans wish to keep funding for PBS, third only to national defense > and law enforcement as the most valuable programs for federal funding. > > Each year, the Senate and House Appropriations committees each have > 13 subcommittees with jurisdiction over many programs and agencies. > Each subcommittee passes its own appropriation bill. The goal each > year is to have each bill signed by the beginning of the fiscal year, > which > is October > > 1.The only way that our representatives can be aware of the base of > support for PBS and funding for these types of programs is by making > our voices heard. > > Please add your name to this list and forward it to friends if you > believe in what we stand for. This list will be forwarded to the > President > of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and > Representative Newt Gingrich, who is the instigator of the action to cut > funding to these worthwhile programs. > > If you happen to be the 150th, 200th, 250th etc. signer of this > petition, please forward a copy to: > wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu. > > If that address is inoperative, please send it to: > kubi7975@blue.univnorthco.edu. > > This way we can keep track of the lists and organize them. > > Forward this to everyone you know, and help us to keep these programs > alive. > > Thank you. > > 1) Elizabeth Weinert, student, University of Northern Colorado, > Greeley,CO > 2) Robert M. Penn, San Francisco, CA > 3) Gregory S. Williamson, San Francisco, CA > 4) Daniel C. Knightly, Austin, TX > 5) Andrew H. Knightly, Los Angeles, CA > 6) Aaron C. Yeater, Somerville, MA > 7) Tobie M. Cornejo, Washington, DC > 8) John T. Mason, Dalton, MA > 9) Eric W. Fish, Williamstown, MA > 10) Courtney E. Estill, Hamilton College, NY > 11) Vanessa Moore, Northfield, MN > 12) Lynne Raschke, Haverford College, PA (originally Minnesota) > 13) Deborah Bielak, Haverford, PA > 14) Morgan Lloyd, Haverford, PA 19041 > 15) Galen Lloyd, Goucher College, MD > 16) Brian Eastwood, University of Vermont, VT > 17) Elif Batuman, Harvard University, MA > 18) Kohar Jones, Yale University, CT > 19) Claudia Brittenham, Yale University, CT > 20) Alexandra Block, Yale University, CT > 21) Susanna Chu, Yale University, CT > 22) Michelle Chen, Harvard University, MA > 23) Jessica Hammer, Harvard University, MA > 24) Ann Pettigrew, Haverford College, PA > 25) Kirstin Knox, Swarthmore College, PA > 26) Jason Adler, Swarthmore College, PA > 27) Daniel Gottlieb, Swarthmore College (but truly from Lawrence, KS) > 28) Josh Feltman, Tufts University, MA > 29) Louise Forrest, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA > 30) HongSup Park, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA (originally > from > Portage, Wisconsin) > 31) Ana Sandoval,Massachusetts Institute of Technology > 32) Katherine Navarrete, Massachusetts Institute of Technology > 33) Mandisa Washington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology > 34) Stephen Balzac, San Francisco, CA > 35) Howard Yermish, Los Angeles, CA > 36) Danielle Yermish, Los Angeles, CA > 37) David S. Lefkowitz, University of California - Los Angeles > 38) Frank S. Albinder, San Francisco, CA > 39) Read S. Sherman, Harvard Divinity School > 40) Stephane Lemelin, Cambridge, MA > 41) Thomas Ouellette, Cambidge, MA > 42) Richard Russell, Cambridge, MA > 43) Nella Wennberg, Jamaica Plain, MA > 44) Eric Smith, Jamaica Plain, MA > 45) Alex Graham, Boston, MA > 46) Dean Wei, Chicago, IL > 47) Luisita Frances, Chicago, IL > 48) Roy Vella, Stanford, CA > 49) Alan Hellawell, Mountain View, CA > 50) Timothy A. Scott, San Francisco, CA > 51) Albert M. Yeh, Mountain View, CA > 52) Susan Yeh, Seattle, WA > 53) Jonathan Payne, Seattle, WA > 54) Cena Pohl, Seattle, WA > 55) David Perk, Seattle, WA > 56) Robert Srygley, Seattle WA > 57) Katarzyna S. Kubzdela, Chicago, IL > 58) Katy Human, Stanford, CA > 59) Erica Fleishman, Reno, NV > 60) C. Richard Tracy, Reno, NV > 61) Kenneth E. Nussear, Reno, NV > 62) Christopher R. Tracy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI > 63) Kristin Komives, Carrboro, NC > 64) Jennifer Goldman, Chapel Hill, NC > 65) Darcy Leach, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI > 66) Van Luong, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI > 67) Aurora M. Sherman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI > 68) Paul O. Stern, Seattle, WA > 69) Erika Tapman, U. of Vermont College of Medicine > 70) Opher Donchin, Urbana, IL > 71) Prof. Pamela Cosman, University of California, San Diego > 72) Ari Levitt, University of Washington, Seattle, WA > 73) Nathan Martin, Berkeley, California > 74) Lynn Price, Kensington, California > 75) Leslie Shown, Kensington, CA > 76) Mike Boals, Berkeley, CA > 77) Wendy Boals, Berkeley, CA > 78) Effie Westervelt, Tiburon, CA > 79) Mary Burns, Taos, NM > 80) Karen Page, New York, NY (karenapage@aol.com) > 81) Gary Holleman, Bemidji, MN (holleman@chefnet.com) > 82) Tim Rosa, Newton, MA (trosa@world.std.com) > 83) Doug Hersh, Sherborn MA (hersh@ultranet.com) > 84) Ruel Little, Somerville, MA (rlittle@ascensiontech.com) > 85) Stefan Wennik, Andover, MA (SWennik@aol.com) > 86) Melissa Walia, SF, CA (color@well.com) > 87) Tracy Brown, SF, CA (tracy@nrh.com) > 88) John T. Miller, SF, CA (johncom@dnai.com) > 89) M. Todd Davis, SF, CA (todd_davis@gensler.com) > 90) Michael Demetrios, SF, CA > 91) J. Marc Perrin, NY, NY (mperrin@sbi.com) > 92) Alyse Daberko, NY, NY (adaberko@sbi.com) > 93) Jessica Guertin, Washington Univ. St. Louis(jg3@cec.wustl.edu) > 94) Ellen Watson, San Francisco, CA > 95) Bridgitt Arnold, Seattle, WA > 96) Erica Yenni, Seattle, WA > 97) Kerri Karvetski, Seattle, WA (70007.4401@compuserve.com) > 98) Mark Butler, Seattle, WA > 99) lazlow jones, long beach, ny lazlow@undernet.com > 100) Laura Bykowski, NYC, NY laurab@gbcom.com > 101) Amy Stettler, NYC, NY ZiolaS@AOL.com > 102) F Ben Dana, Burlington, Vermont > 103) Bill Dahill-Baue, Brattleboro, VT > 104) S. Ryan Quick, Yale University, New Haven, CT > 105) Jerry Anne Dickel, Yale University, New Haven, CT > 106) Donald Beebe, Yale University, New Haven, CT > 107) Stephanie Seery, School of Theology at Claremont, CA > 108) Katherine A. Johnson, Baltimore, MD > 109) Cynthia J. Halstead, Burke, VA > 110) Ronald Northrip, Falls Church, VA ronnlee@clark.net > 111) Jane Levandoski, University of Delaware, DE > 112) Denise J. Hills, University of Delaware, DE > 113) David P. Sobel, College of William & Mary, VA > 114) Amey T. Sadler, College of William& Mary, VA > 115) Donna M. Livingston, Woodbridge, VA > 116) Karen A. Morris, Burke, VA > 117) Michael E. Perdue Atlanta, GA > 118) David Cour, Washington D.C. > 119) Katie Sergent, Washington D.C. > 120) Nathan Sewell, Nashville, TN > 121) Peter Eby, Nashville, TN > 122) jeff taraday, seattle, WA > 123) Julie Taraday, Seattle, WA > 124) Stephanie Cooper, Seattle WA > 125) Kailen Mooney, Seattle, WA > 126) Dylan Clark, Univ. of WA, Anthropology, Seattle 98195 > 127) Daniel Simons, University of Washington, Seattle, WA > 128) Kirsten Wild, University of Washington, Seattle, WA > 129) Barbara Busetti, University of Washington, Seattle, WA > 130) Leslie Macchia, Mountain View, CA (lmacchia@ix.netcom.com) > 131) Kris Wollenhaupt, San Jose, CA > 132) Ann Bowers, Palo Alto, CA > 133) Sue Tysko, Palo Alto, CA > 134) Liza Schmeltz, San Jose, CA > 135) Judith Schweikert, Palo Alto, CA > 136) Joan Wylie, Palo Alto, CA > 137) Marcia Pugsley, Palo Alto, CA > 138) Daryl Davis, Palo Alto, CA > 139) Amy Gerstein, San Francisco, CA > 140) Christian Holden, San Francisco, CA > 141) Stephen Divenere, San Francisco, CA > 142) Karen Yetman, San Francisco, CA (kyetman@nelson.corp.gonelson.corp) > 143) Christine D'Elia, San Francisco, CA > 144) Rachel Bredemeier, Cambridge, MA > 145) Karin Horlbeck, Cambridge, MA > 146) Mark Bourne, Cambridge, MA (MarkB@cmbinfo.com) > 147) Norm Slocum, Weymouth, MA (SLOCUM@XENSEI.COM) > 148) Carol Hughes, Boulder, CO (cehughes@lucent.com) > 149) Susan Hagg, San Francisco,CA(shagg@coldwellbanker.com) > 150) Dante Landucci, Bethesda, MD (Dante_Landucci@NIH.com) > 151) Ann Dannenberg Rosen, Newton, MA > 152) Elena Conti, Cambridge, MA > 153) Brent Richter, Rowley Ma > 154) Libby Jones, Rowley, MA > 155) Kitkoon Chan, Pleasanton CA > 156) Dennis Crayon, Boston, MA > 157) Claude R Labbe, Boston, MA > 158) Jeffrey M. Klapes, Lynnfield, MA > 159) David E. Knudsen, Somerville, MA > 160) Chris Ann Matteo, New York, NY > 161) Scott G. Williams, Austin, Texas > 162) Linda Wiencken Williams, Austin, Texas > 163) Lucinda Martin, Florence, TX > 164) Karen E. LeFevre, Austin, Texas > 165) David E. Soileau, Austin, Texas (cajundave@aol.com) > 166) Kirk P. White, RN, MSN, Austin, TX > 167) Lisa Rogers, Austin, TX (oyalisa.@aol.com) > 168) Shelley Brown, Denver, CO (lbrown@aol.com) > 169) Deborah Chandler, Loveland, CO (deborahwf@aol.com) > 170) Linda Temple, Oklahoma City, OK (lgtemple@aol.com) > 171) Tom Temple, Oklahoma City, OK (lgtemple@aol.com) > 172) Gage Evans, Denver, CO (gevans@carl.org) > 173) Kara M. Van Horn, Denver, CO (karav@ihs.com) > 174) Carmelia Dyer, Boulder, CO (cdyer@ball.com) > 175) Douglas Goldman, Boulder, CO (dgoldman@ball.com) > 176) Eugenie Georgas, Boulder, CO (ggeorgas@ball.com) > 177) Michael Birdsong, Boulder, CO (mbirdson@ball.com) > 178) Todd Arbetter, Boulder, CO (arbetter@spam.colorado.edu) > 179) Marika Holland,Boulder, CO (hollandm@orbit.colorado.edu) > 180) Adriene Hughes, Brighton, MA > 181) Andrew Myerson, Brighton, MA > 182) Lucila De Alejandro, San Diego, CA > 183) Robin Taylor, San Diego CA > 184) Shelly Diaz, NYC, NY > 185) Beth Davidson, Incline Village, NV > 186) Jon Paul Davidson, Incline Village, NV > 187) Kate Glanz, Durham, NH > 188) Filson Glanz, Durham, NH > 189) Dehan Glanz, San Francisco, CA > 190) Justine Reese, San Francisco, CA > 191) Carl Bettag, San Francisco, CA > 192) Eugenia Lean, Los Angeles, CA > 193) Nicole Huang, Berkeley, CA > 194) George Krompacky, Yale University, CT > 195) Peter Carroll, Yale University, New Haven, CT > 196) James Carter, New Haven, CT > 197) Eagle Glassheim, Columbia University, New York City > 198) David S. Frey, Columbia University, New York City > 199) Ellen B. Umland, Bay Village, OH > 200) Susanna D. Kopchains, Hawthorne, NJ > 201) Mark Margaretten, Denver, CO > 202) Jon L. Leland, Mill Valley, CA > 203) Steve Blumenthal, San Francisco, CA > 204) Paula Mantel, Honolulu, HI > 205) Gaile Sickel, Honolulu, HI > 206) Robert Wolfson, Fairfax, CA > 207) Shams Wm. Kairys, Oakland, CA > 208) Donald Halley, New Lebanon, NY > 209) David Iman Adler, New Lebanon, NY > 210) Robert Barris, Highland Park, > 211) Janet Karpus, Kalamazoo, MI > 212) Terry Macak, Kalamazoo, MI > 213) Lynne Aspnes, Ann Arbor MI > 214) Lorna Haywood, U of M Ann Arbor MI > 215) Robert Debbaut, Salt Lake City, UT > 216) Kaye Ramsey, Salt Lake City, UT > 217) Timothy Jones, U of T San Antonio TX > 218) Eugene Dowdy, UTSA, San Antonio, TX > 219) Lawrence Stomberg, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO > 220) Lisa Stomberg, Colorado School of Mines, CO > 221) Paula Lynch, Laurel Springs, NJ > 222) Cara Kendric, Philadelphia, PA > 223) Deborah Conger Hughes, University of Washington, Seattle > 224) Dean Heerwagen, Univ. of Washington, Seattle > 225) Mark Clayton, College Station, TX > 226) Mardelle Shepley, Bryan, TX > 227) Mike Blair Bryan Tx (mcblair@myriad.net) > 228) David Lucey Oakland, CA > 229) Ted Rallis Davis CA. (ted@ucdavis.edu) > 230) Leigh Ann Giles, Davis CA (lagiles@ucdavis.edu) > 231) Kamala Crompton, Sebastopol CA (kscrompton@ucdavis.edu) > 232) Patrick Kelly > 233) Alan J. Hiller (hiller@cooper.cpmc.org) > 234) Mitchell D. Klein (MrProp@aol.com) > 235) Nicholas Wulfekuhle > 236) Andrew Downes > 237) Kelly Bowers, Washington DC > 238) Thomas Unger, Alexandria, VA > 239) Dwight Gibbs, Alexandria, VA (dwightg@fool.com) > 240) Selena Maranjian, Alexandria, VA (selenam@fool.com) > 241) Lynnette A. Simon, Cambridge, MA (lasimon@fas.harvard.edu) > 242) Susan Martin, Acton, MA(suemart@tiac.net) > 243) Kenneth Lord, West Hempstead, NY (lord@calvin.cs.qc.edu) > 244) Christopher Vickery, Holliswood, NY (vickery@babbage.cs.qc.edu) > 245) Christopher Winters, Stamford,CT (Abudu@Juno.com) > 246) Paul McIsaac, New York City (paulmci@aol.com) > 247) John Douglas, Charlotte, VT (jdouglas@together.net) > 248) Norio Kushi, Shelburne, VT (ankushi@aol.com) > 249) JoAnne Kushi, Shelburne, VT > 250) Allan Balliett, Shepherdstown, WV (igg@igg.com) > 251) Michael Reilly, NYC, NY (mreilly@sasmp.com) > 252) Cindi Weiss, Hoboken, NJ (cweiss@sasmp.com) > 253) Sam Cohen, NY, NY > 254) Kathryn Mintz, NY, NY (kmintz@randomhouse.com) > 255) Brad Greenquist, LA, CA > 256) Helga Schier, LA, CA (hschier@randomhouse.com) > 257) Kimberly Burns, LA,CA (kburns@randomhouse.com) > 258) Laurel Cook, NY,NY(cookl@bdd.com) > 259) Todd Gitlin, NY, NY (gitlint@is.nyu.edu) > 260) Norris McNamara, Chicago, IL (NorrisMcN@aol.com) > 261) Scott Diamond, Chicago, IL > 263) Scott Black, Oak Park, IL > 264) Linda Marquardt, Oak Park, IL > 265) Daniel Marquardt, Oak Park, IL > 266) Robert Ginsburg, Fayetteville, Ar > 267) Susan Jenkins, Fayetteville, Ar > 268) Dianne Schlies, Albuquerque, NM > 269) Paul Schlies, Albuquerque, NM > 270) Bob Dickey, Portland, OR > 271) Elizabeth Dickey, Tucson, AZ > 272) Timothy Mayhew, Farmington, NM > 273) Marjorie Robertson, Arlington, VA > 274) Deron Hurst, Arlington, VA > 275) Erika Warner, Arlington, VA > 276) Nancy Ward, Arlington, VA > 277) Heather Podlich, Washington, DC > 278) Lillian Rice, Washington, DC > 279) Nicole Dannenberg, Washington, DC (originally from Sunnyvale, CA) > 280) Suzanne Isack, Washington DC > 281) Iracema de Moura Castro, Washington, DC > 282) Tom Sander, Cambridge, MA > 283) Peri Smilow, Cambridge, MA > 284) Marc Johnson, Cambridge, MA and NY, NY > 285) Patty Lyons, Chicago, IL > 286) Tom Mula, Chicago, IL > 287) Denis O'Hare, Brooklyn, NY > 288) Derek Anson Jones, Brooklyn , NY > 289) Karole Dill Barkley, New York, NY > 290) Vivian Hunt, Cambridge, MA > 291) Sengal Selassie, New York, NY > 292) Patience R. Singleton, Washington, DC > 293) Deneta A. Howland, Takoma Park, MD (deneta.howland@intelsat.int) > 294) Rana Dershowitz, New York, NY > 295) Maria Politis, New York, NY > 296) Anthony Pasca, E.Northport, NY > 297) David Schliecker, New York, NY > 298) Cynthia Schliecker, Madison, WI > 299) Matthew Bazan, Madison WI > 300) Samir Sugathan, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY > 301) Seamus Mulryan, Beloit, WI > 302) Amos Blanton, Beloit, WI > 303) Brad Blanton, Stanley, VA. > 304) James Goldstein, North Potomac, MD > 305) David Torrealba, Washington, DC > 306) Evan Eller, Annapolis, MD > 307) Melaina Eller, Washington, DC > 308) Jonathan Morris, East Haddam, CT > 309) Veronica Morris, East Haddam, CT > 310) E.Richard Brown, Los Angeles, CA > 311) Steven P. Wallace, Los Angeles, CA > 312) Robert J. Squires, Los Angeles, CA > 313) William F. Donaldson, Buffalo, NY > 314) Absalom S. Kotulski, New York, NY > 315) Rick E. Kotulski, Corbett, OR > 316) Louann Wakefield, Corbett, OR > 317) Tawnya Napoli, San Francisco, CA > 318) Carla Lease, San Francisco, CA > 319) James Austin, San Francisco CA > 320) Diane Whitmore, San Francisco, CA > 321) Margaret Weber, Chicago, IL > 322) Kathryn H. Cummings, Lakewood, OH > 333) Lawrence J. Taylor, Lakewood, OH > 334) Kimberly Cummings, Jackson Heights, NY > 335) Nina Kauder, New York City, NY > 336) Juliana Luecking, New York, NY > 337) Richard Ford, Santa Monica, CA > 338) Tamara McDonough, Los Angeles, CA > 339) Vince Gatton, Los Angeles, CA > 340) John Starr, Santa Monica, CA (JohnSt@foxinc.com) > 341) C. Davey Utter, Venice, CA (70055.522@Compuserve.com) > 342) Gary Allen, Santa Monica, CA > 342) Barbara J. Toennies, Santa Monica, CA > 343) Tom Bliss, Sherman Oaks, CA > 344) Lynn Karpinski, San Diego, CA > 345) Michael Haskins, San Diego, CA > 346) Bill Bailey, San Francisco, CA > 347) David Cusick, New York, NY > 348) Andrew Livanis, New York, NY > 349) Emmanuel Savopoulos, Albany, NY > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 10:24:38 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Amittai F. Aviram" Subject: Re; More on the Poetry and the Public Sphere Conference In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 5 May 1997 00:01:57 -0400 from Thanks, Mike Magee, for very interesting comments about Puritanism, Antinomianism, literacy, William James, Frederick Douglass, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Your comment about Baraka's career (and attitude towards things "Western") coincides well with my own impression that he was much better when he was LeRoi Jones--not a very popular opinion these days, I dare say. In fairness, I must say that Baraka _was_ witty at times--his reading was not without wit. It's just that the bullshit outweighed the wit, for me. Maria, yes, we have very different impressions of the difference between Algarin and Baraka. Granted, I came in late. But I very distinctly remember Algarin saying, "We need new theories ... we need theories ..." while being interrupted and sniped at by Baraka. My impression was that Baraka felt that there was enough "theory" in classical CP-style Marxism--history is a history of class struggle, etc.--that "theory" in the sense of poststructuralism was just a lot of bourgeois claptrap. That was quite consistent with his general anti-academic and anti- intellectual tone throughout both his comments (the ones I heard) and his reading. So I really have no idea why you thought Algarin was anti-theory and Baraka pro-theory. It's not that either one was anti or pro, it's that Algarin was for innovativeness in theory (90s) whereas Baraka thought we had damn well enough theorizing forever, and we should just get on with the molitov cocktails. Baraka was yelling so loud that I wore foam-rubber earplugs (fortunatly still in my very bourgeois blazer pocket from the ultra- bourgeois plane ride), so I could hear him as _loud_ after I put the plugs in but didn't have to suffer permanent hearing loss. Somebody else asked me to elaborate on the paper about _HOW(ever)_. The gist of it was that the magazine provided a _hypertext_ before the electronic technology was available to make it happen in the current sense. The magazine was short and printed on paper, stapled, so it was very cheap to subscribe. It contained notes about the work presented in a general way (called ... ugh! ... I forget ... something like "In Question" or something--Brian, help!), and above the specific literary texts were "Working Notes," either by the author or the editors, either thematic or biographical or both, or artistic in some other way. The notes whose name I can't remember would start on the first page and be continued later, surrounding the literary texts. The whole thing was put together by a collective. So the authorship was multiple but not totally effaced. There were all sorts of interactions among the texts on the pages. As promised, I'll try to cover the rest of the conference shortly--perhaps after I finish the undergrad papers or something. Anyway, I totally agree with Maria (!) about Eliot Katz. Eliot Katz was the "warmup band" for Sonia Sanchez and then Robert Hass. They were all wonderful in very different ways. Katz is, indeed, a "Ginsberg epigone" as Brian said, but he has even more self- effacing humor than Ginsberg, and a kind of freshness and cheerful exuberance that I found quite enchanting. In the center of his reading was a long, Ginsbergesque (but very funny) poem directed to the 20th century and urging it, oratorically, to hurry up and die already. It was quite hilarious, but also very poignant, as he recalled many of the horrors of the 20th century, both on the large scale (the holocaust) and personally (relatives of Katz's lost in the holocaust; friends of Katz's who died of AIDS or committed suicide). This last--the references to young people dying of disease or suicide--formed a powerfully poignant allusion to Ginsberg's _Howl_ and _Kaddish_. The whole poem--and the others-- were quite ingenious at the same time as they were very compelling. One other thing I left out in the last posting. When Altieri posed that challenge to Tricia Rose and Charles Bernstein, Bernstein responded (better than Rose, I thought) by talking about purposeful _frauds_ in the history of poetry. It may have been at that point that he said the sentence that Hass later quoted, "Poetry fakes nothing actually." It was either there or in his talk about the Difference that Poetry Makes. Well, it was a running theme. I don't _really_ think that testimony/witnessing really _does_ fit in with the idea of poetic fraud (even if we consider such "holy frauds" as the Deuteronomic corpus)--i.e., you're not supposed to _know_ that it's a fraud, if it is. That was the point that the two of them didn't want to get into very much, since it's something of an irresolvable question, I think. Amittai ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 10:16:32 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Re; More on the Poetry and the Public Sphere Conference Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" aa sez: >One other thing I left out in the last posting. When Altieri posed >that challenge to Tricia Rose and Charles Bernstein, Bernstein >responded (better than Rose, I thought) by talking about purposeful >_frauds_ in the history of poetry. It may have been at that point >that he said the sentence that Hass later quoted, "Poetry fakes >nothing actually." It was either there or in his talk about >the Difference that Poetry Makes. Well, it was a running theme. >I don't _really_ think that testimony/witnessing really _does_ >fit in with the idea of poetic fraud (even if we consider such >"holy frauds" as the Deuteronomic corpus)--i.e., you're not supposed >to _know_ that it's a fraud, if it is. That was the point that >the two of them didn't want to get into very much, since it's >something of an irresolvable question, I think. > >Amittai again we remember differently: it was my memory that altieri got up, said he had a question about tricia rose's paper, and then asked charles bernstein to respond!! fond as i am of charlie, it seemed to be precisely that kind of erasure of black female subjectivity that we need some...retooling of...? in other words, charles was specifically called on to speak FOR tricia, after the question had been posed, ostensibly, to her --so no wonder he struck you as more articulate than her; it was a set up, albeit unintentional. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 11:21:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian McHale Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) In-Reply-To: Message of 04/26/97 at 03:11:19 from imburgia@WHIDBEY.COM In response to the query about whether papers from the "Poetry & Public Sphere" shindig would be published: it seems that the organizers are looking to set up a web-page with versions of the papers & ongoing discussion. They're aiming to have it up by the beginning of June. You could confirm this by checking in with them at poetry97@fas-english.rutgers.edu. I don't think I want to try to supplement Maria's & Amitai's full-dress ac- counts of the conference (nor do I have the energy to do so). But here are some memorable quotes out of my notebook: At the panel on "Diversity in Avant-Garde Publishing," the moderator, Burt Kimmelman said (it might have been part of the statement for discussion origi- nally circulated to the panelists): "There may never again be a separate 'poe- try' ..." At the same panel, Charles Alexander (who showed some excellent slides of some of the books he's made: pornography for book-fetishists) described an exercise he once did with a group of school-kids, in which they had to make an acrostic poem using the letters of their own names. A kid name Gabriel wrote: "Gay An- gels Break Rules In Every Language." Big applause; best poem of the day. And still at that panel, Ed Foster spoke somewhat caustically of true vs. per- cevied centers & margins in the institutions of poetry. Adrienne Rich, he said, stands "dead center" in the mainstream; and he spoke of her "undeserved aura of victimization." Ouch. At the roundtable on "The Difference That Poetry Makes," Altieri pursued the the motif of "the street" (as the place of "authenticity"), & remarked some- thing to the effect that yes, the street is the place where one lives, but we shouldn't forget that it is also a means of getting to where others live. At the same roundable, Michael Taussig (whom I understood almost not at all) said something about "Digging into language so as to out-constract constructed- ness ...." At the panel on African-American Aesthetics/Sound Poetry, the guy called Beans had a lot of illuminating things to say,but I was listening rather than writing ... however, right at the end, Tracie Morris, who was moderating, said some- thing memorable about the speed of commercial appropriation of popular creativi ty: "Now they can take something away from you & sell it back to you in a Sprite commerical in 6 months, when it used to take them 2 years ...." At the roundtable mysteriously called "Locations of Poetry," Charlie Altieri said: "Social dreaming keeps us sane." And he also talked about a contemporary wisdom poetry, the purpose of which would be "to find a 'we' that can be will- ed." I was too exhausted by the time to closing roundtable to take notes, though Bob Holman & James Haba, in particular, said things worth recording. I'm not a great fan of Alicia Ostriker's, but she had some of the best quotes. She quoted (without identifying the source) a definition of postmodernism: "Postmodernism is modernism without the hope." She quoted Adrienne Rich: "To be a feminist is to have the nerves of a mid- wife." And she quoted the rabbis (but which one?): "It is not incumbent on you to fin- ish the task. Nor are you free to give it up." I recommend reciting the latter in the morning upon rising & again in the eve- ning before going to bed. Brian ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 08:52:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: con-text In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The somewhat elliptical refs. to the Baraka / Algarin dustup are of interest to one (this one) who has known of both a long time. Algarin has had his own anti-theory moments -- and of course, in the years immediately preceding his movement into Marxism Baraka denounced that particular theory as useless white stuff -- but it's important to know that these two have been associated for decades -- I first met Algarin through Baraka's introduction -- and many of Baraka's short plays have been produced at Algarin's performance space -- as for "he was better when he was LeRoi Jones" == well, I know I was better then -- but I continue to think that this way of splitting up his work doesn't really get us anywhere -- If you look at all of his work, you find that there were moments of agit-prop before, and that there continue to be moments of real innovation now -- It's hard for me sometimes to take seriously the "theory" of a person who once thought Hoxa a serious theorist, but Baraka continues to have much to say that does interest me -- as for Algarin's theory, I simply have no idea what theories he advances now -- I guess all I'm saying, all I can say since I wasn't there at Rutgers, is that I know enough of both men to see that the confrontation can't usefully be understood as academic vs antiacademic, theory vs practice, early Jones vs present Baraka etc -- even ,,, or perhaps especially, if that's how the combatants themselves presented it -- ______ on a quite different note: have just spent two days at Stanford -- Friday, in between listening to fascinating tapes of C.L.R. James, I had an interesting lunch meeting with Hilton Obenzinger, whose _New York on Fire_ you should all know, followed by a great poetry reading by Hank Lazer -- Saturday, Susan Dunn and Maeera Shreiber hosted a one day conference sponsored by the Humanities Center -- I've been trying for years to promote better communications among the area universities, and this conference may help advance that cause -- in the course of the day, among several good papers, I got to hear Hank Lazer's "resisting the Rhetoric of Wonder," whose title enacted the very rhetoric it addressed! -- Charles Altieri brought us some aftershocks from his Rutgers panel and Marjorie Perloff presented material from the Yasusada essay I didn't get to hear in Denver -- this last prvoked some intersting responses -- including the suggestion that one of the respondents to Marjorie's _Boston Review_ essay on this might himself be a hoax (I have my doubts on this score, even though the letter is oddly written, as the only reason advanced for the belief that there is no such person was that the believer had never heard of him as someone in Japanese studies) -- and a great dinner hosted by the hosts at the end of the day -- I was having such a good time talking to everybody that I almost missed my train home,, which might have caused me to violate Palo Alto's newly enacted anti-sit-lie statute (and no, it's not a law that says you can't lie) -- ------ in the same vein also at Stanford May 8-10, for those in the area -- a conference on "Movements of the Avant Garde" I'll have to miss most of the sessions myself, but will try to get there for Saturday's presentations -- Several speakers from South America, Europe, even Arizona! the program looks exciting -- you can get info at: http://www-leleand.stanford.edu/~conlon/avantgarde.html says here the event is "free and open to the public" just don't sit on the sidewalk in Palo Alto--home of the derriere garde ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 12:59:50 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 5 May 1997 11:21:06 -0400 from On Mon, 5 May 1997 11:21:06 -0400 Brian McHale said: >And she quoted the rabbis (but which one?): "It is not incumbent on you to fin- >ish the task. Nor are you free to give it up." >I recommend reciting the latter in the morning upon rising & again in the eve- >ning before going to bed. Wasn't that Rabbi Franz K. of Prague? - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 12:34:46 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: con-text Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:52 AM 5/5/97, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > >but it's important to know that these two have been associated for decades >-- I first met Algarin through Baraka's introduction -- and many of >Baraka's short plays have been produced at Algarin's performance space -- > yes. this was a fun brawl between old friends more than anything else, and not something to get all hand-wringy about. md -ps who's hoxa? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 14:18:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grotjohn Subject: Question about Gwendolyn Brooks Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is a call for help from anyone who might know: The fourth sonnet of Gwendolyn Brooks's sequence, "The Children of the Poor," begins, in my *Selected Poems* (54), "First fight. Then fiddle." In the new *Norton* (1587), the poem begins "First flight. Then fiddle." Does anyone know if the *Norton* "flight" rather than "fight" is a misprint, or did Brooks at some time change the word? If she did, when? "Flight" has its own sort of fit in the sonnet, but not quite the same as "fight." Thanks. Bob Grotjohn ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 15:28:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: con-text MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > > At 8:52 AM 5/5/97, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > > > > >but it's important to know that these two have been associated for decades > >-- I first met Algarin through Baraka's introduction -- and many of > >Baraka's short plays have been produced at Algarin's performance space -- > > > > yes. this was a fun brawl between old friends more than anything else, and > not something to get all hand-wringy about. md -ps who's hoxa? Maria, I believe that's former Albanian President Enver Hoxha [hardly a theorist...] --Dan Z ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 15:42:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Question about Gwendolyn Brooks not an answer: or: did some adrenalinic editor fiddle w/ the verb? fight / flight / fiddle -- a trinity of f words? triangle of responses -- write now, triangulate later . . . d.i. > ... Does anyone know if the *Norton* "flight" rather than "fight" is a > misprint, or did Brooks at some time change the word? ... > Bob Grotjohn ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 14:11:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Ronald Johnson and the Speculative Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The Poetry center has a tape of Ronald Johnson reading extensively from ARK on 12/13/90. It can be ordered, or you can get more info, by emailing me. BTW - Thanks to everyone for great posts about the Poetry and the Public Sphere Conference - I also went to Poetry and the Speculative last Saturday at Stanford and really enjoyed the presentations by Robert Kaufman (The End of Negative Capability) and Barbara Guest, Marjorie Perloff's cogent talk about Yasusada, Hank Lazer's talk about anti-wonder - especially enjoyed the Kit Robinson stuff at the end - and Al Gelpi's really mad talk about Jack Kerouac and Robert Lowell at Lowell House (not together) at Harvard - Laura Moriarty the Poetry Center moriarty@sfsu.edu >Interested to read of RJ performance just after setting down ARK on the >desk. Steve, Kevin et al, I wonder how you heard the 'historic epic' >disclaimer--I hear plenty of affinity (if not influence) of Zukofsky in >Ark, if not the dense history of Cantos/Max/Patterson. What do we do >with a non-historic epic? Music as much as ark-i-text-ure seems to >undergird the poem. > >Anyone else reading ARK at present? Anyone know if RJ is coming through >Buffalo/Toronto area? I've not even heard a tape of him reading. > >Ken Sherwood ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 17:47:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: rich text Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable This is a test to see if rich text formatting can be received and read (by those with the capability) on=20 the poetics list 0000,0000,FFFF right,right,left,leftB_Times_B= old indent 2, Times Bold Blue (mondo)right,right,left,leftFFFF,0000,FFFF FFFF,0000,FFFF FFFF,0000,FFFFright,right,right,left,left,leftPalatino= indent 3, Palatino Pinkright,right,= right,left,left,left PalatinoFFFF,0000,FFFF (very big) Palatino= FFFF,0000,FFFF If you can read this message as rich text, I'd be interested to know what email program you are using. Thanks. Blair =20 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 16:43:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Speculative/Wonder MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Aldon, Laura and/or especially Hank "Niblick" Lazer himself - any chance of us here reading that wonderful anti-wonder paper either on the List (too long?) or posted to some other site? Patrick Pritchett who's wondering just what cld Robert Kaufman mean by "the end of negative capability?" Sounds like a doubtful case... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 18:18:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: Speculative/Wonder MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote: > > Aldon, Laura and/or especially Hank "Niblick" Lazer himself - any chance of > us here reading that wonderful anti-wonder paper either on the List (too > long?) or posted to some other site? > > Patrick Pritchett > who's wondering just what cld Robert Kaufman mean by "the end of negative > capability?" Sounds like a doubtful case... Well, Pat, perhaps Kaufman has taught too many composition classes and, like me, finds himself increasingly "irritable" about "reaching after fact and reason"... I dunno, but I'd like to. Does "The End" mean "The Aim"? The Teleology of Negative Capability? Adrift twixt Scylla & Charybdis? Oarless past the Sirens, rudderless too, all the sailors sighing into the sail? In what spirit should one listen to a lecture called "The End of Negative Capability"? Does it imply a prediction? We can only wait to see whether Kaufman will post his piece for the list-- but whether to wait languidly or impatiently I can't quite tell (at least not till I've read it, I suppose... & even then...)... Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 18:22:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: rich text Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" No Problem, Blair. it says indent 2, Times Bold Blue (mondo), but which book of Adrienne's is that in? Maybe new work? sp, on Eudora. > >indent 2, Times Bold Blue (mondo) > >indent 3, Palatino Pink (very big) > > >If you can read this message as rich text, I'd be interested to know what >email program you are using. > >Thanks. > >Blair > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 15:33:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Speculative/Wonder In-Reply-To: <336E86E1.5F8E@tribeca.ios.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII well . . . one of my favorite moments came at the end of the end of negative capability talk, when a fellow in the audience raised his hand to ask "what is 'negative capability?'" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 18:43:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Speculative/Wonder Hi -- I wasn't there & know naught of this debate (if it is one), but at risk of stating the obvious: no doubt the phrase "The End of Negative Capability" is modeled after the well-ballyhooed phrase "The End of History" (by that economics-theory chappie from Stanford U. meseems) "end" thus meaning more "final phase" than "objective" (presumably) (unlike Jorie Graham's "The End of Beauty" which was presumably more on the teleological end of the "end" teeter-totter) -- one thinks of "endgame," Mr. Kasparov not specifically -- more like, "a new phase of poetry w/o Mr. Eliot" (??) (hey pardon my unknowing as to particulars of Kaufman) d.i. >>> Daniel Zimmerman 05/05/97 09:18pm >>> Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote: > > Aldon, Laura and/or especially Hank "Niblick" Lazer himself - any chance of > us here reading that wonderful anti-wonder paper either on the List (too > long?) or posted to some other site? > > Patrick Pritchett > who's wondering just what cld Robert Kaufman mean by "the end of negative > capability?" Sounds like a doubtful case... Well, Pat, perhaps Kaufman has taught too many composition classes and, like me, finds himself increasingly "irritable" about "reaching after fact and reason"... I dunno, but I'd like to. Does "The End" mean "The Aim"? The Teleology of Negative Capability? Adrift twixt Scylla & Charybdis? Oarless past the Sirens, rudderless too, all the sailors sighing into the sail? In what spirit should one listen to a lecture called "The End of Negative Capability"? Does it imply a prediction? We can only wait to see whether Kaufman will post his piece for the list-- but whether to wait languidly or impatiently I can't quite tell (at least not till I've read it, I suppose... & even then...)... Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 16:00:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Re: Speculative/Wonder Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Rob Kaufman is not on this list - The talk he gave, of which I initially posted only a partial title, was complexly supportive of the idea and activity of Negative Capability - The specifics of Keats scholarship (when certain things were said in letters etc.) which he included were of much interest to me - I enjoyed the way Kaufman followed the changes in Keats' approach to his own idea - The full title was "The End of Negative Capability, Coda from Barabara Guest". The piece was written _in opposition_ to claims that Negative Capability, in its various transmutations, is either dead or merely "aestheticist". He brought in Adorno and there was a short part about Barbara Guest at the end which led into her very thoughtful reading and presentation. I can't do his argument justice, and the talk that was given was part of a longer article, but I will post to the list when I know where it is going to be published. Laura Moriarty >Aldon, Laura and/or especially Hank "Niblick" Lazer himself - any chance of >us here reading that wonderful anti-wonder paper either on the List (too >long?) or posted to some other site? > >Patrick Pritchett >who's wondering just what cld Robert Kaufman mean by "the end of negative >capability?" Sounds like a doubtful case... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 16:48:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: Speculative/Wonder In-Reply-To: from "Laura Moriarty" at May 5, 97 04:00:16 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit laura, i wld love to know where the "negative capability" essay is published. i've recently presented 2 conference papers on that and "seeing" in keats' poetry, and have always thot bp was a negative capability writer. looking fwd to that info -- thank you, c. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 21:19:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: alterior plugs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Citoyens! Over the last few weeks on the list, there have been offers to get copies of various chapbooks, etc. I'd strongly recommend that you get hold of _Witz 5.1_, Sylvester Pollet's _Backwoods Broadsides_, and _Shadows: New and Selected Dialogues on Poetics_ from Mark Wallace and Jeff Hansen. Here's another clue for you alll-ll-ll.... "There is no such thing as language." (statement by Mark Wallace in a dialogue from _Shadows_) Much good work by everybody in making space for the various poetries. a bientot, Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 21:27:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS Subject: Re: More Poetry ... more Tracie Morris In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII maria wrote: wow, what a wild pairing, but terrific, as trish teaches in my dept and i'm anxious for the writers i adore to gain some credibility among my colleagues, so let's hope trish comes back a tracie fan, if she isn't already!!!md Maria, i just saw Tracie Morris at the St. Mark's 30th anniversary symposium this weekend. she read saturday nite with Amiri Baraka, Todd Colby, and Dael Orlandersmith. i enjoyed her reading, her energy, her rhythm, her musicality (she does an incredibly good vocal "scratch"), but i had some problems with it. i kept wondering, what does it mean?: a scratch appropriated from rap music. and what meaning does this poetry have, beyond the limited meaning conveyed in a parity of words repeated over and over? for instance, she did "middle passage" which is, essentially, the song of a female slave on a slave ship. i think there were some words interspersed with the wordless chanting/singing. the chant/song was quite beautiful, but i wanted it to give more meaning (i suppose it wasn't enough music to give the ineffable meaning of music, and wasn/t enough words to give the meaning in language.) i/m fascinated with its creation, the fact that there is a Tracie Morris who creates this wonderful and difficult work, and that it is, in some inexplicable, wonderful way, poetry, but i must say, the limit in its meaning holds me off to a certain degree, or maybe i hold myself from it because of the lack of meaning. i spoke to her afterwards and asked if she had seen sonia sanchez read -she had, earlier that night!- and if she knew sonia's "middle passage," which sonia performed at Rutgers -which Tracie didn't know. sonia, i think conveys a gret deal more meaning in sticking to WORDS. true, she does repeat chunks of them several times, AND begins the piece with a burst of quietly intense hysterical laughter that seeps into the piece at various points, BUT the depth of the piece lay in sonia's unwavering attention to the speaker's THOUGHTS. (i'm paraphrasing and guessing at line breaks here) trying to convey the horror of the journey, the female speaker moves through its various aspects: "It was the boat/ the boat/ the boat/ It was/ the boat"...she moves on to "It was/ the raping/ the raping/ the raping..." so we are always held at breath-point with this woman and her experiences. sonia's reading was surely one of the high points of the Rutgers conference for me. it's interesting that Tracie says the experience of the slave ship is ineffable, would account for her translation (sublimation?) (transsubstantiation?) of experience into almost pure sound. towards the end of Tracie's reading, i felt the cognitive part of my brain shutting down in fatigue and frustration, although i cherish this struggle of language and sound. poetry is expansive, never ceasing to surprise in its diversity and inovation. kyle ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 21:49:55 -0400 Reply-To: orpheus Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: GINSBERG READING UPDATE In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This might be of interest to anyone in the Montreal area. The readers will be reading only A.G's work in tribute to the master of "first thought, best thought." A bientot. > > ************************************************************************ > > > > > MEMORIAL READING FOR ALLEN GINSBERG > > > > > MAY 14, AT THE UPSTAIRS BAR, 1254 MacKay Street > > > > > (Guy Metro) > > > > > > > > > > 8 PM - sharp - no charge - > > > > > > > > > > Laszlo Gefin > > > > > Clifford Duffy > > > > > Brian Sentes > > > > > Judith Herz > > > > > Lee Gotham > George Slobodzian will all read poems by the late > > > > > Allen Ginsberg > > > > > > > > > > ************************************************************ > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 19:02:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: More Poetry ... more Tracie Morris . . . more more In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If you're wondering about line breaks in Sonia Sanchez's "improvisation," I believe you can find it improvised yet again in one of her recent collections -- title escapes me at the moment -- "Wounded in the House of a Friend" or something along those lines (my books are on the other side of the continental divide -- forgive me my memory) -- I have to admit it's neither music enough nor poetry enough for me -- I've heard this "improvisation" enough times now that I could probably do it myself as lip synch -- Maryemma Graham is doing a Summer Institute on the Middle Passage in literature -- I suspect the deadlines for applications have passed -- but I'll try to get a report on the proceedings from somebody later in the year -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 22:11:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: More Poetry ... more Tracie Morris MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS wrote: > > maria wrote: > > wow, what a wild pairing, but terrific, as trish teaches in my > dept > and i'm anxious for the writers i adore to gain some credibility among my > colleagues, so let's hope trish comes back a tracie fan, if she isn't > already!!!md > > Maria, > > i just saw Tracie Morris at the St. Mark's 30th anniversary symposium this > weekend. > she read saturday nite with Amiri Baraka, Todd Colby, and Dael > Orlandersmith. i enjoyed her reading, her energy, her rhythm, her > musicality (she does an incredibly good vocal "scratch"), but i had some > problems with it. i kept > wondering, what does it mean?: a scratch appropriated from rap music. and > what meaning does this poetry have, beyond the limited meaning conveyed > in a parity of words repeated over and over? for instance, she > did "middle passage" which is, > essentially, the song of a female slave on a slave ship. i think there > were some words interspersed with the wordless chanting/singing. the > chant/song was quite beautiful, but i wanted it to give more meaning (i > suppose it wasn't enough > music to give the ineffable meaning of music, and wasn/t enough words to > give the meaning in language.) i/m fascinated with its creation, the > fact that there is a Tracie Morris who creates this wonderful and > difficult work, and that it is, in some inexplicable, wonderful way, > poetry, but i must say, the limit in its meaning holds me off to a > certain degree, or maybe i hold myself from it because of the lack of > meaning. i spoke to her afterwards and asked if she had seen sonia > sanchez read -she had, earlier that night!- and if she knew sonia's > "middle passage," which sonia performed at Rutgers -which Tracie didn't > know. sonia, i think conveys a gret deal more meaning in sticking to > WORDS. true, she does repeat chunks of them several times, AND begins > the piece with a burst of quietly intense hysterical laughter that seeps > into the piece at various points, BUT the depth of the piece lay in > sonia's unwavering attention to the speaker's THOUGHTS. (i'm > paraphrasing and guessing at > line breaks here) trying to convey the horror of the journey, > the female speaker moves through its various aspects: "It was the boat/ the > boat/ the boat/ It was/ the boat"...she moves on to "It was/ the > raping/ the raping/ the raping..." so we are always held at > breath-point with this woman and her experiences. sonia's reading was > surely one of the high points of the Rutgers conference for me. it's > interesting that Tracie says the experience of the slave ship is > ineffable, would account for her translation (sublimation?) > (transsubstantiation?) of experience into almost pure sound. towards the > end of Tracie's reading, i felt the cognitive part of my brain shutting > down in fatigue and frustration, although i cherish this struggle of > language and sound. poetry is expansive, never ceasing to surprise in > its diversity and inovation. > > kyle Hello! I also attended that reading, having missed both Baraka's & Morris' reading [though not Morris' right-on panel appearance] at Rutgers last week, and must agree very much with Kyle about Morris & Sanchez [whom I also heard with Bob Haas at Rutgers]. Dael (sp?), too, keeps the words in focus, as does Baraka, who counterpoints scat with signifying in a way I find very engaging, despite Algarin's demurs at Rutgers about the status of theory or lack of same in the 60s' push in which Amiri persists, indefatigable & not to suffer such dissing lightly. I really enjoyed much of Morris' performance [and some of Colby's, too], but primarily as just and only that, as Kyle says, poetic, but hard to call poetry without dilution of the term. In fact, it seems that much of the repetition in such performance pieces functions as a synchronic analogue [by accretion or, better, intensification] of the recursion-over-time [the diachrony available from the page] of what I've known throughout my life as "poetry." Such insistence upon repetition seems to me compensatory, as if to forestall the possibility that the audience might not choose to reread the work by force-feeding at worst [as one does a goose to disease its liver for pate] or by risking overdose at best [as if assuming that the 'message' acts like peanuts: "here, have ONE"--obviously impossible since, as Balke said, "less than All cannot satisfy Man." Well, yeah, but not necessarily all at once...]. In fact, Charles Bernstein, in perhaps the least 'gossipy' segment of a "Gossip" session at St. Mark's the afternoon of the Baraka/Morris/et al. reading, made a germane but perhaps unpopular point by saying that the relatively straightforward, unadorned, individual voice of the poet true to the words read from the page offered the most radical instance of the art, even moreso, he suggested, than the histrionics [however artful and engaging] of the primarily 'performance artist.' I.e., rests, too, constitute an essential part of the music. [Whereupon I, too, shall, for the moment, rest.] Best, Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 23:05:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jena Osman Subject: lab-book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On May 2, Jordan Davis wrote: >Looking back at Lab Book from UB Poetics (1992), and it's just about >coming into focus. If copies still exist, I endorse heartily the purchase. >Of interest not merely because it contains early (but representative) work >by Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace, Jena Osman, Lew Daly, Jeff Hansen, Bill >Tuttle, Elizabeth Burns, Elizabeth Willis, Cynthia Kimball and Peter >Gizzi, but also because it provides a record the closest thing to a >POETICS archive for the workshop process short of a documentary film. To >refresh the memory: each workshop participant submitted a poem to the >group to be responded to; the poems and their responses are revealing. >When the book came out, I had no idea what any of these people were >talking about (my bad). Now, the styles are clearer (more work exists, >more reading has transpired, and I'm getting older too...). > Copies of this project do still exist. Just to clarify, the Lab Book is not the result of a workshop, but a project I organized around the fact of so many different writers being here at SUNY-Buffalo...its procedure is the beginning of what became the format for issue #1 of _Chain_ (the journal I edit with Juliana Spahr). Here's an offer: A copy of the Lab-Book is yours for free with a two-issue subscription to _Chain_. The next issue of _Chain_ (#4), on "Procedures," will be out this summer, with work by Jackson Mac Low, Clarinda Mac Low, Caroline Bergvall, Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop, Leslie Scalapino, Janet Zweig, Margaret Morton, Joan Retallack, Tina Darragh, Bill Fuller, Harryette Mullen, Maria Damon, Kevin Killian and many MANY more. Chain #5 will be on "other languages." Subscriptions are $10 for one issue, $18 for two. Copies of issues 3:1 and 3:2 on "Hybrid Genres" are still available. You can order either by e-mailing me at josman@acsu.buffalo.edu or by sending a request to Chain at 215 Ashland Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222. Mention if you would like a copy of the Lab-Book as well. Thanks, Jena ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 10:19:23 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: negative capability I looked up n.c. in the Princeton Encyclopedia, irritably reaching after fact & reason. Absorption of the poet's personality in the process of composition. Gusto in identification, empathy, sympathy, mimicry to the extent of seeming to be without character or moral compass (Iago interests the poet as much as any good or heroic figure). Contentment with half-knowledg e without irritable reaching after fact & reason. The poem reflects these motives - it is a sympathetic, magnetic form that draws its audience out of themselves into new appreciation of mystery, beauty, truth, etc. Princeton SAYS the concept developed in 2 different/opposed directions: 1) Wildean idea of CONSCIOUS ambiguity - the mask, the persona; 2) modernist idea of "sincerity in objectivity" (objective correlative). Both quite different from Keats' original, less calculated(?) idea of left-brainedness(?)... Does it sound like Keats is saying the poet exhibits traits based on the deep motivation of composition - absorption in a kind of dream- object which unifies (as dreams do) various kinds of beauty & meaning in a sort of uncanny, lifelike, "unexplained" meaning - a dream-action, a mini-drama. And is this impulse based on an "overdetermined" SET of impulses - personal interest in matching/re-making past poems (which hold the same fascination-grip on the poet as on audience in general) - unconscious social disequilibriums or goals - talent as energeia working itself out - & is all this just romantic extra-poetic limburger or is the uncanny in poetry (the tragicomic acting-out) actually the essential thing & what is beautiful about it sings the mockingbird ha ha. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 11:21:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Ronald Johnson In a message dated 97-05-05 04:12:14 EDT, Ken Sherwood writes: << I wonder how you heard the 'historic epic' disclaimer--I hear plenty of affinity (if not influence) of Zukofsky in Ark, if not the dense history of Cantos/Max/Patterson. What do we do with a non-historic epic? Music as much as ark-i-text-ure seems to undergird the poem. >> Ken, I didn't hear any disclaimer of influence in RJ's remarks. More that he *is* working in the long poem tradition of Pound, Williams, Olson, Zukofsky, but that his poem was to be in some sort of (poetic?) "present" & that in distinction to his forbears, the historical would not enter the poem (explicitly, at least--& that raises a number of questions, doesn't it?). Ron has always pointed to LZ as a major influence & it's certainly there in the music of _Ark_. In fact, he read the "Spire on the Death of LZ." He pointed w/ pride that only he & LZ had managged to "finish" their poems. I don't see that he draws off the others so explicitly in Ark; I see the Olson influence more clearly in his early books, _Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses_ & _The Book of the Green Man_. Jonathan Williams would be the other obvious name to mention. Is it useful to talk of _Ark_ as an epic? or _"A"_ for that matter? I asked about _RADI OS_ & he said that is now projected to be included in a collected other works, to be titled the "Outworks." Also to include groupings titled "Obelisk" & the "Reflecting Pool", & that he felt he needs some greenery in his work & is working on the "Shrubbery." Anyone in Buffalo willing to talk about the LZ happenings there? all best, Charles Smith ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 08:01:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Which Rabbi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Brian McHale said: > >And she quoted the rabbis (but which one?): "It is not incumbent on you to fin- > >ish the task. Nor are you free to give it up." > >I recommend reciting the latter in the morning upon rising & again in the eve- > >ning before going to bed. The rabbi is Tarfon, from _Pirke Abot_ (_The Wisdom of the Fathers_), and the task is the study of Torah, so Brian's recommendation would take us all to the yeshiva. I've seen this aphorism quoted in the most outlandish contexts, including at the end of an argument supporting nuclear deterence. Rabbis Tarfon's other famous saying is a better way to start the day: "The day is short, the work is plentiful, the laborers are sluggish, and the reward is abundant, and the master of the house presses." Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 11:45:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: breathing into the body MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Surgery and Suture of Jennifer [Deceptively simple script generates fractal series (not image) based on seconds count; series smears Jennifer-text across screen; series expands and compresses. The series is described in Net1.txt; see "Spew."] Cut and run on MSE or Netscape 3+. ---------------------------------------------------------- Surgery and Suture of Jennifer

Working through the body, Mathesis turns out Jennifer

JENNIFER DIVIDES INTO TWO. JENNIFER DIVIDES YOU INTO TWO.

________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 15:52:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Ronald Johnson In-Reply-To: <970506112122_-366042346@emout06.mail.aol.com> from "CharSSmith@AOL.COM" at May 6, 97 11:21:23 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > Is it useful to talk of _Ark_ as an epic? or _"A"_ for that matter? > I'll bite, Charles (since I've been thinking and reading around Jack Clarke's _In the Analogy_ in similar terms). What do you think? Or is yours a rhetorical question? Mike ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 15:59:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: How Public Is the Sphere Aldon and others--Re: Michael Davidson's talk. His bottom line was that cultural studies work tends to privilege narrative over non-narrative forms. Michael pointed out a range of work, much of it from the Caribbean, that is susceptible (that may be the wrong word!) to the work of cultural studies--work by Brathwaite and others. I'm hoping he gives the talk to non-poetry types as well as to us. This reminds me that Lois-Ann Yamanaka's first novel from Farrar, Straus & Giroux includes a bio note that refers to her first book as a "prize-winning book of short stories" when, in fact, it is a book of poems (poems that are more hard hitting than is her prose). I notice that the paperback version of the book corrects that claim. A job candidate here (at the University of Hawai'i) gave a brilliant talk a couple of years back in which she reported that Yamanaka had referred to her book of poems as a series of "novellas." She then went ahead and talked about the book for upwards of an hour with no mention of its being a book of poems. Michael's interventions are thus most welcome. best, Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 13:06:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: How Public Is the Sphere In-Reply-To: <970506155700_120551075@emout07.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Susan -- Thanks for that brief on Davidson's talk, which I look forward to reading -- At the ALA in Baltimore, some of us will attempt to show what cultural studies might offer to readings of Pound -- Demonstration is the highest form of battery! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 13:45:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: How Public Is the Sphere Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re: Lois Ann Yamanaka In her recent reading at UCSD she referred to the book in question as, alternately, a book of stories and a novel. She also read from an earlier small-press book of poems which struck me as narratives not overly different from the "stories" except in length and not something that I would call poetry despite its entertainment value. At 03:59 PM 5/6/97 -0400, you wrote: >Aldon and others--Re: Michael Davidson's talk. His bottom line was that >cultural studies work tends to privilege narrative over non-narrative forms. > Michael pointed out a range of work, much of it from the Caribbean, that is >susceptible (that may be the wrong word!) to the work of cultural >studies--work by Brathwaite and others. I'm hoping he gives the talk to >non-poetry types as well as to us. >This reminds me that Lois-Ann Yamanaka's first novel from Farrar, Straus & >Giroux includes a bio note that refers to her first book as a "prize-winning >book of short stories" when, in fact, it is a book of poems (poems that are >more hard hitting than is her prose). I notice that the paperback version of >the book corrects that claim. A job candidate here (at the University of >Hawai'i) gave a brilliant talk a couple of years back in which she reported >that Yamanaka had referred to her book of poems as a series of "novellas." > She then went ahead and talked about the book for upwards of an hour with no >mention of its being a book of poems. >Michael's interventions are thus most welcome. > >best, Susan > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 16:24:39 MDT Reply-To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: n/formation MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Brief (sort of) Announcement The server which houses n/formation (choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce) was broken into in mid-April. Fortunately the hackers were not malicious, &, once taken down, it provided good opportunity to upgrade the system, but my sys admin is nervous as a cat these days --So, n/formation is temporarily unavailable, it seems, to users outside of our system. I've asked to be moved to a different server, & should be finding out about that very soon. In any case, this is just to apologize to those of you who may have tried to access the periodical (sporiadical?) & received the mysterious "Forbidden" message. I'll post to the list when we're back online. Chris .. Christopher Alexander, etc. nominative press collective 160S 1300E #16 / Salt Lake City UT 84102 calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 20:16:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: poetry and prose for Mark Weiss--I'll keep it short, as my modem link is tenuous. But I beg to differ on Yamanaka's poetry; their entertainment value is, in fact, part of her incisive critique of Hawaii society. When an audience finds itself laughing at a woman screaming abuse at her children, it can't rest easy with the poem's entertainment value. Y's poems are also aggressively anti-lyrical and so important as poems, it seems to me, in a place where, until recently, poetry was defined as the stuff written by Robert Frost et al (not that I necessarily dislike Frost, but his birch trees and snow are rather far from home here). The poetry--and the form of it--are anti-colonial. (Though now local Asian American writers are being attacked by native Hawaiians for being as colonial as are whites...but that's for another posting.) Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 23:52:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nuyopoman@AOL.COM Subject: Poetry Radio/Poetry Labels I'm developing a national list of poetry radio shows and poetry record labels which will be posted on the Mouth Almighty and Mining Company sites. Would appreciate help in assembling -- send contact info, current playlist/artist rosters, genres, etc. Backchannel - or front for the Word! Bob Holman (current essay at The Mining Company is re:ACCESS, http://poetry.miningco.com) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 21:59:24 MDT Reply-To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: alterior plugs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Alright, then, I'll chime in with a few recommendations: _Story for a Sascatchewan Night_ & _Visible Visions_, 2 from ["our own illustrious"] Douglas Barbour (of the North), & both excellent books. I'm particularly taken with some of the sound poems in the latter, which are a lot of fun to perform. It's hopeless to characterize the work as usual, but for what it's worth I'll say that _Story..._ is, among other things, an extended play on & against the conventions of narrative--in which stories move into & out of narrative & anti-narrative space, the latter often revealing more than the former... at any rate, don't let my bad description keep you from reading these good books. Also--dunno how many times I've said this, but one more won't hurt by now: Peter Inman's _Vel_ (O Books): read it. Chris .. Christopher Alexander, etc. nominative press collective 160S 1300E #16 / Salt Lake City UT 84102 calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 21:49:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: poetry and prose Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm outside the loop on this kind of discussion, so I may have missed something. Why are dramatic monologues formally anticolonial (formally, as opposed to their content, oy vey)? Is "Giuseppe da barber he gotta da mash" formally anticolonial? Is Robert Browning? Another thing: Is the point about Yamanaka's poetry's local importance that it fills a lacuna in Hawaiian culture by creating a body of work that corresponds somehow with what was current in other places fifty years ago? Should someone write Hawaiian Augustan satire because that was missed out on too? All I know of Yamanaka's work is what I heard her read. I thought the prose was interesting. And I thought the poetry was prose. Maybe I'd feel differently if I knew more, and on ne discute pas, etc. At 08:16 PM 5/6/97 -0400, you wrote: >for Mark Weiss--I'll keep it short, as my modem link is tenuous. But I beg >to differ on Yamanaka's poetry; their entertainment value is, in fact, part >of her incisive critique of Hawaii society. When an audience finds itself >laughing at a woman screaming abuse at her children, it can't rest easy with >the poem's entertainment value. Y's poems are also aggressively anti-lyrical >and so important as poems, it seems to me, in a place where, until recently, >poetry was defined as the stuff written by Robert Frost et al (not that I >necessarily dislike Frost, but his birch trees and snow are rather far from >home here). The poetry--and the form of it--are anti-colonial. (Though now >local Asian American writers are being attacked by native Hawaiians for being >as colonial as are whites...but that's for another posting.) Susan > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 05:34:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Peter Ganick asked me to post this. Hopefully I'm not causing any duplication but if so, please forgive ... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- >POTEPOETZINE, a new experimental e-zine >devoted to experimental poetry and e-art >which will appear irregularly, but frequently, >is taking subscriptions for its first issue >to be sent through e-mail before june 1, 1997.... > >issue ONE will feature 10 poets' work and >a section of e-art by hartord ct area artists.... > >if you want to receive POTEPOETZINE, >please send your e-mail address before >may 7, 1997 to: potes@erols.com and >after may 9, 1997 to: potepoet@home.com >mentioning where you saw this announcement.... > >no submissions, please, with your order, >ONE will include information about >submitting texts to TWO and beyond.... > >do not fax, snail-mail, or telephone us, >only e-mail will receive a response.... > >POTEPOETTEXT, a series of electronic texts >surrounding the on-going worldwide discourse >about poetics, culture, and experimental art >will also be included in your subscription, >submissions for this series are being accepted.... > >POTEPOETZINE....POTEPOETTEXT.... >experimental poetry and cultural discourse.... > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 09:05:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Ronald Johnson In-Reply-To: <199705061952.PAA15533@chass.utoronto.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Long texts should be called something else. The context of "epic" was getting pretty indeterminant and squishy even before the early cantos, The Bridge, Paterson etc got started. No question that something about grandeur of gesture, not to mention containing history, was in the minds of various "High Modernists," to whom the word was important. But the sum total of the poetic universe we have now, at 2000 or so, has outlived any focused accuracy for the term. (..among other things you could execute Jed Rasula's great pun, and point out that "containing history" can be understood as a police action: as in american anti-communist "containment" in the fifties). Lots of other reasons I find it unuseful and hyperacademic: what is Rimbaud's Saison en Enfer? It's a long modernist text which has little truck with the models "epic" implies. Those models themselves don't really live for us, as they did when ode and sonnet etc. were major framing gestures in lyric poetry. Mark P. Atlanta On Tue, 6 May 1997, Michael Boughn wrote: > > > > Is it useful to talk of _Ark_ as an epic? or _"A"_ for that matter? > > > > I'll bite, Charles (since I've been thinking and reading around Jack > Clarke's _In the Analogy_ in similar terms). What do you think? Or is > yours a rhetorical question? > > Mike > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 09:15:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: How Public Is the Sphere In-Reply-To: <970506155700_120551075@emout07.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There's always been this impulse to assure people that something is primarily narrative. At least in our culture. The non-narrative is threatening--to the reader and therefore to marketing possibilities. I remember when Bob Dylan's fairly interesting prose text Tarantula came out--Despite the fact that by any conceivable standard it was "poetry", and utterly nonlinear and non-narrative, it was firmly marketed (and discussed) as "Dylan's novel." Many of L. Scalapino's long prose pieces are refered to routinely as novels and stories; I was interested a few years ago to hear her read sections from various such pieces, always refering to them as poems... Mark P. On Tue, 6 May 1997 SSchu30844@AOL.COM wrote: > Aldon and others--Re: Michael Davidson's talk. His bottom line was that > cultural studies work tends to privilege narrative over non-narrative forms. > Michael pointed out a range of work, much of it from the Caribbean, that is > susceptible (that may be the wrong word!) to the work of cultural > studies--work by Brathwaite and others. I'm hoping he gives the talk to > non-poetry types as well as to us. > This reminds me that Lois-Ann Yamanaka's first novel from Farrar, Straus & > Giroux includes a bio note that refers to her first book as a "prize-winning > book of short stories" when, in fact, it is a book of poems (poems that are > more hard hitting than is her prose). I notice that the paperback version of > the book corrects that claim. A job candidate here (at the University of > Hawai'i) gave a brilliant talk a couple of years back in which she reported > that Yamanaka had referred to her book of poems as a series of "novellas." > She then went ahead and talked about the book for upwards of an hour with no > mention of its being a book of poems. > Michael's interventions are thus most welcome. > > best, Susan > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 08:29:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: How Public Is the Sphere In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" one of the themes of my talk at rutgers was an enumeration of the works that have already been done that cd be considered poetry and cultural studies, the field it's my longterm mission to map out...md At 1:06 PM -0700 5/6/97, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: >Susan -- Thanks for that brief on Davidson's talk, which I look forward to >reading -- At the ALA in Baltimore, some of us will attempt to show what >cultural studies might offer to readings of Pound -- Demonstration is the >highest form of battery! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 09:27:52 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: epic/narrative Rolling 2 responses into one: I agree with Mark P. that the term "epic" is thrown around loosely, & when we're talkin specifically about long poems maybe we should try to be more specific - but i don't think the mode is necessarily meaningless or anachronistic now - probably something similar was thought in Milton's day, but he managed it (by re-thinking the hoariest epic machinery) - epic still might be an avenue for poetry as differing from prose fiction - as far as narrative in poetry, I'm starting to think the best approach to the social context of poetry is by seeing it as a narrative concentrate - dramatic poetry is always framed by the plot & there's a plot behind every speech act - I haven't thought this through obviously but others have & maybe have blasts prepared - fire away, Gridley; ringsiders, observe! - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 11:38:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: epic/narrative Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've been informed that there's some (old old) critical work linking Philip Whalen's poetry to the poetry of Ezra Pound, but has anybody written on the connections between Whalen and James Schuyler, their poetry, I mean? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 09:55:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic/narrative Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Actually, everybody and his brother were writing epics in the 16th-17th century--it was a felt need of newly consolidating nation-states that there be a national epic, in emulation of the Greeks and Romans; these were often tied, like Virgil, to Homer. In writing a national epic the author was at once claiming legitimacy for his national-political entity and its institutions and parity with the ancients for his culture. There were also a slew of religious epics. At 09:27 AM 5/7/97 EDT, you wrote: >Rolling 2 responses into one: I agree with Mark P. that the term "epic" >is thrown around loosely, & when we're talkin specifically about long poems >maybe we should try to be more specific - but i don't think the mode >is necessarily meaningless or anachronistic now - probably something >similar was thought in Milton's day, but he managed it (by re-thinking >the hoariest epic machinery) - epic still might be an avenue for poetry >as differing from prose fiction - > >as far as narrative in poetry, I'm starting to think the best approach to >the social context of poetry is by seeing it as a narrative concentrate - >dramatic poetry is always framed by the plot & there's a plot behind every >speech act - > >I haven't thought this through obviously but others have & maybe have >blasts prepared - fire away, Gridley; ringsiders, observe! > >- Henry G. > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 12:56:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: epic/narrative Comments: To: henry gould MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN File this under unsleeping dogs: Perhaps the decline of the traditional epic corresponds inversely to the rise of the idea of the individual, or the cult of the individual, as it may now be called in many of its manifestations, that is, in its decay from an invigorating gesture in the dialectical exchange between society and person to the rampant abuses of Me-ism which ironically play back into the hive mentality of consumerist ideology. (Duby and his colleagues address much of this in their "epic" _A History of Private Life_ - of which I've only read Vol. 2 on the medieval period). ARK is "epic" in scope, certainly - for playing out a single set of ideas or themes sonata-like across a range of variations. It is not epic in the sense that it celebrates the martial spirit or ethos of an era, its arete (not the same thing). I don't think Milton wld recognize it as an "epic." Or wld he? There is the same concern with cosmic or extra-personal scale, for instance. An interesting notion to play with. Patrick Pritchett who from his office cube can see the clouds drifting shadow across the Flatirons with something approching Johnsonian epic grandeur ---------- From: henry gould To: POETICS Subject: epic/narrative Date: Wednesday, May 07, 1997 8:46AM Rolling 2 responses into one: I agree with Mark P. that the term "epic" is thrown around loosely, & when we're talkin specifically about long poems maybe we should try to be more specific - but i don't think the mode is necessarily meaningless or anachronistic now - probably something similar was thought in Milton's day, but he managed it (by re-thinking the hoariest epic machinery) - epic still might be an avenue for poetry as differing from prose fiction - - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 14:23:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart Any view on candidacy of John Ashbery's book-length *Flowchart* for some epic-ish rubric? The booksuggests, at least, something akin to so-called "epic ambition" -- In a noteable phrase in the 1st page or so, the poet refers to "the published city" [something like "who in the published city . . ?"-- and Ashbery thereby invokes (I think) the notion of a poem endeavoring to serve as epic for such an imaginal city-state (comprised of the readership of such publications . . .) As for "the published city" -- along related lines, the opening salvo in Merwin's recent *Travels* says "But who in the total city" -- the total city of Merwin being, I think, not too dissimilar from the published city of Ashbery. Both invoke a contemporary literary readership as "city." One critical jibe (I guess) at Ashbery's tome characterized it as "more chart than flow" (prob. in the pages of *Poetry* or some such). But it does have a lot of flow to it, withal (from such of it as I've read so far) . . and the opening passage anyway (which I've read a number of times) seems to suggest an attempt to reconfigure the notion of what-is-epic. Or so it seemed to me . . . d.i. >>> Mark Weiss 05/07/97 12:55pm >>> Actually, everybody and his brother were writing epics in the 16th-17th century--. . . ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 14:31:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "E. Gottlieb" Subject: Re: epic/narrative Comments: To: henry gould In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Would anyone mind providing a brief definition of "narrative" poetry, as opposed to "non-narrative" poetry? All poetry is linear, I think, in the strict sense, insofar as language moves forward in time ... must narrative poetry specifically "tell a story" to be considered narrative, then? And why should the lack of a story be considered subversive, as some people have intimated? Thanks, Evan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 11:59:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christine Palma Subject: Re: Poetry Radio/Poetry Labels Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I'm developing a national list of poetry radio shows and poetry record labels >which will be posted on the Mouth Almighty and Mining Company sites. Would >appreciate help in assembling -- send contact info, current playlist/artist >rosters, genres, etc. Backchannel - or front for the Word! I am making KXLU's website, perhaps we could be linked from your site once it's up. Thanks again, Christine ______________ christine palma christine@DRUMandBASS.com samples: high-bandwidth, communications, bpm, asia in the yr 2000, fractal structures, cu-seeme fuzzy, memory encapsulated, radio, a sculpture in every living room, a sculpture in every park, a sculpture in every body, cyborgs, e-mail, letterpress, return to drawing, kitchensink genetics, mindoro, coincidence, encaustic, pedestrians rights, sleep depriviation high, the moon . . . ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 15:37:55 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 7 May 1997 14:31:44 -0400 from What I was suggesting was that maybe all poetry could be read as narrative. A lot of the best poetry is simply beautiful word painting. But paintings tell stories too. By narrative I'm thinking of storytelling, plot. Of course this is stretching things to the invisible amorphous. But in the context of the "pub sphere" discussions of late I just wanted to reiterate Aristotle's interesting definition of "poet" as maker of plots, weaver of verbal actions. Maybe it was Blarnes or Spandrift - - but if this be I [who suggested non-narrative poetry was subversive] then... I is another [mortal dust]. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 16:35:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Poetry Radio/Poetry Labels In-Reply-To: from "Christine Palma" at May 7, 97 11:59:09 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Penn's station WXPN recently started a show called "Live at the Writers House" which combines alot of poetry read live with a little music played live - visting and local poets. Get a hold of Kristen Gallagher (hi Kristen if you're reading this) at kristing@pobox.upenn.edu -Mike. According to Christine Palma: > > >I'm developing a national list of poetry radio shows and poetry record labels > >which will be posted on the Mouth Almighty and Mining Company sites. Would > >appreciate help in assembling -- send contact info, current playlist/artist > >rosters, genres, etc. Backchannel - or front for the Word! > > I am making KXLU's website, perhaps we could be linked from your site once > it's up. > > Thanks again, > Christine > > ______________ > christine palma > christine@DRUMandBASS.com > > samples: high-bandwidth, communications, bpm, asia in the yr 2000, fractal > structures, cu-seeme fuzzy, memory encapsulated, radio, a sculpture in > every living room, a sculpture in every park, a sculpture in every body, > cyborgs, e-mail, letterpress, return to drawing, kitchensink genetics, > mindoro, coincidence, encaustic, pedestrians rights, sleep depriviation > high, the moon . . . > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 16:40:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: from "hen" at May 7, 97 03:37:55 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Well, I was just rereading Clarke's _From Feathers to Iron_ and found this provocative (for me) passage from John Thorpe's terrific intro: Clarke doesn't envision the epic as a literary genre so much as an inherent narrative comprehension, wherever there's an interplay of story with its telling. Since this narrative crops up everywhere on earth for the 4,000 years preceding us, he considers it innate enough to be built upon [or, say, improvised on], and acts accordingly. Thorpe's understanding, by returning this mode of narrative to a kind of knowing [both out of _gna_ as is gnosis], frees us from from all the scholastic nit-picking over genre, and delivers us back to the creative imagination. And specifically, what Clarke calls the strengthening method of world completion. Yes, lots of people have used epic badly, and used it for purposes not germane to us, but so what? You could equally argue that the English sonnet is linked to the rise of colonialism, as both can be seen to arise at the same time with Henries VII and VIII, but what's that got to do with Bernadette Mayer? Or Tom Mandel? The phrase "epic scope" seems invented for Cecil B. DeMille movies, and pretty much useless for the purposes of poetry. Surely there are different kinds of Long Poems, and our expectations of them are determined by how they interplay with the past, present, and future. Why let Pound define it for you? What's he got that we ain't got? Maybe we could see epic as a certain kind of conversation. Interestingly, Thorpe (and Clarke) come into this conversation partly by way of what Thorpe calls the "field self", a nifty way around that binary contraction "individual/social" that was barking around here last week. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 16:57:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Misc. Proj. 2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just out: Atlanta poetry mag, Misc. Proj., issue #2 "Incomprehension is the subtitle," or: the goldenrod issue dirt cheap at $1.00 subscribe to the next 4 issues for only $3.50 (economy layaway plan...) some copies still available of the inaugural lilac issue "voice of the pomo South" ...since 1996 send large denomination bills to: Misc. Proj. c/o Prejsnar 641 N. Highland Ave. NE, #11 Atlanta, GA 30306 checks payable to M. Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 14:32:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: How Public Is the Sphere Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Maria: What might some of these works be? Thanks in advance, Stephen Cope >one of the themes of my talk at rutgers was an enumeration of the works >that have already been done that cd be considered poetry and cultural >studies, the field it's my longterm mission to map out...md > >At 1:06 PM -0700 5/6/97, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: >>Susan -- Thanks for that brief on Davidson's talk, which I look forward to >>reading -- At the ALA in Baltimore, some of us will attempt to show what >>cultural studies might offer to readings of Pound -- Demonstration is the >>highest form of battery! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 11:44:14 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: epic/narrative Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 02:31 PM 5/7/97 -0400, you wrote: > Would anyone mind providing a brief definition of "narrative" >poetry, as opposed to "non-narrative" poetry? All poetry is linear, All? No! i think of some of (as eg.s) Susan Howe's, MacLow's, Cage's & Michele Leggott's poetry as very much non-linear - in as much as there is a randomness to the reading of specific lines/words/phrases... there is a randomness in these cases that seems very much to me integral to their readings and existence and is emphatically non-linear. But that wasn't the question. Dan I >think, in the strict sense, insofar as language moves forward in time ... >must narrative poetry specifically "tell a story" to be considered >narrative, then? And why should the lack of a story be considered >subversive, as some people have intimated? > Thanks, Evan > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 20:25:46 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Amittai F. Aviram" Subject: Irena Klepfisz, anybody? Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Quick query. One of the things I have yet to report on was an absolutely _wonderful_ panel I attended the last day of the Rutgers Poetry and the Public Sphere conference, called "Five (Jewish) (Women) Poets." All the presentations were _fabulous_--mostly readings--and the discussion, spurred largely by a provocative and moving comment by Brian McHale (next to whom I have the privilege of sitting, as it happens), was intense and memorable. Anyway, afterwards, I went up to greet some of these five wonderful poets, and was getting autographs (in which I generally don't believe--oh, well) from Rachel Blau du Plessis (who also doesn't believe in them), when Irena Klepfisz left the room. Drat! Does anybody happen to know how to get in touch with Irena Klepfisz? An e-mail address would be ideal, but a snail address would do. I have a close friend who is very interested in Yiddish, and correspondence with Ms. Klepfisz would be just the thing for her. People into Yiddish really need a lot of support--they have to take a lot of abuse from the ignorant, saying things like that it is a useless language to study, etc. So, anybody know an address for Irena Klepfisz? Please send this to me backchannel (e-mail to avirama@vm.sc.edu). Thanks! Amittai ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 20:24:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Irena Klepfisz, anybody? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:25 PM -0400 5/7/97, Amittai F. Aviram wrote: >Quick query. One of the things I have yet to report on was an absolutely >_wonderful_ panel I attended the last day of the Rutgers Poetry and the >Public Sphere conference, called "Five (Jewish) (Women) Poets." All the >presentations were _fabulous_--mostly readings--and the discussion, >spurred largely by a provocative and moving comment by Brian McHale >(next to whom I have the privilege of sitting, as it happens), was >intense and memorable. Anyway, afterwards, I went up to greet some >of these five wonderful poets, and was getting autographs (in which >I generally don't believe--oh, well) from Rachel Blau du Plessis >(who also doesn't believe in them), when Irena Klepfisz left the room. >Drat! Does anybody happen to know how to get in touch with Irena >Klepfisz? An e-mail address would be ideal, but a snail address would >do. I have a close friend who is very interested in Yiddish, and >correspondence with Ms. Klepfisz would be just the thing for her. >People into Yiddish really need a lot of support--they have to take >a lot of abuse from the ignorant, saying things like that it is a useless >language to study, etc. > >So, anybody know an address for Irena Klepfisz? Please send this to >me backchannel (e-mail to avirama@vm.sc.edu). Thanks! > >Amittai and when u find out, let me know, cuz i have a very keen theoretical interest in yiddish. thanks. md ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 15:32:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart Comments: To: David Israel MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Yes, David, I think _ Flowchart_ cld indeed qualify as an epic whose epicness consists in its undermining of the trad. idea of the epic, though like you, I've not read it all yet. As Marjorie Perloff observes in her blurb (I paraphrase) - it's related to Wordsworth's _Prelude_ (which actually revises my earlier idea about the decline of epic and the rise of individualism as a cultural idee fixe). Along those lines - what about Ron Silliman's _Alphabet_? Epic in scale, yes. But wld Ron describe it in those terms? Patrick P. ---------- From: David Israel To: POETICS Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart Date: Wednesday, May 07, 1997 2:06PM Any view on candidacy of John Ashbery's book-length *Flowchart* for some epic-ish rubric? The booksuggests, at least, something akin to so-called "epic ambition" -- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 16:26:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: epic/narrative Comments: To: "E. Gottlieb" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Evan, I'll take a wild stab at this and hope others follow. Narrative in its most basic sense means to tell a story in some way and while most of the time that occurs in a linear way, it need not necessarily do so. Language can be circular; narrative can be circular, or collage-like. Michelle Cliff's _Free Enterprise_ is an excellent example of a contemporary novel told in a non-linear fashion. But even in Conrad you can find the traditional linearity of narrative undergoing a subversion. Paintings can also be considered as forms of narration, as Louis Marin points out in his essay "Toward A Theory of Reading in the Visual Arts." In the same way, the evening news plays out as a narrative thru the deployment of its components: first the serious news, then weather, sports and a human interest tag. Such strategies relate less to an idea of moving thru time to achieve climax & closure than conforming to certain assumptions of how we priortize clusters of meaning/information and how those in turn support (or don't) our epistemological models for viewing the world. But what is a "story" anyway? Is it simply a description of events? Or is it the meaning we take away from a poem or other work or art; less the meaning even than the gestalt of our interaction with the text? This is all way underbaked and quite vague. Hope it helps and prompts someone else to expand/elaborate. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: E. Gottlieb To: POETICS Subject: Re: epic/narrative Date: Wednesday, May 07, 1997 2:16PM Would anyone mind providing a brief definition of "narrative" poetry, as opposed to "non-narrative" poetry? All poetry is linear, I think, in the strict sense, insofar as language moves forward in time ... must narrative poetry specifically "tell a story" to be considered narrative, then? And why should the lack of a story be considered subversive, as some people have intimated? Thanks, Evan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 19:20:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart In-Reply-To: <01IILCZIHPVQ96X64S@iix.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII OK -- so now I have to tell my Ashbery narrative -- few years back I was detailed to drive Ashbery from San Francisco to San Jose for his reading that evening. stopped at Cody's on the way and bought a copy of Walcott's _Omeros_, which had just appeared that week. much confusion connecting with Ashbery at his hotel, 'cause his guy in New York had given him the wrong latitude and longitude, and even the wrong date for the reading -- BUT, we did meet just in time, renewed acquaintance etc -- here I am driving like the proverbial Nielsen out of hell down the 101 to make it no more than a half hour late for the reading (which went beautifully by the way - one of the best I've heard him give) -- driving along I ask, "so John, have you seen this new 'epic' sort of poem that Walcott's published." to which Ashbery responds laughing that yes, of course he knows of it, and he's put out because he too has this long poem of his own,_Flow Chart_, coming out and Derek's is not only out first, but his has more pages in it ----- epic envy, I suppose ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 22:51:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth W Sherwood Subject: R Johnson (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 00:47:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Kenneth W Sherwood To: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: R Johnson Charles: Thanks for that response--I guess it's questionable whether epic is useful re: LZ or RJ given its implicitly totalizing stanze toward history. But what's the line from 'A'--"history is best without the names"--which, in A22/23, leaves quoted voices--a song of voices. I like to keep the 'epic' close at hand with LZ, if only because the personal-history plays into the poem as a 'lived-with-and-through' composition (LZ's contention that the poetry itself obviates biography) gives Epic new possiblities. Does long poem suffice? LZ and RJ find it possible to finish b/c of the nature of the design? In Buffalo, we were talking about the way in which 'A's historical references served a different purpose than Pound's, seemed present for the collusion of thought, as say the Davenport anecdote related in the LZ Man/Poet volume; in conversation GD strains to articulate a point at which LZ leaves room, returns with a 50 year old zine in which he has an essay, opens guickly to a particular page and indicates a paragraph more or less the twin of what GD had been trying to say--and as GD describes it this is not a gesture of arrogance, or claim of precedences, but dwelling in the pleasure that thoughts and lines of poetry coincide. Ken ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 00:52:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Poetics/Writing/Performativity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="1921387416-141103230-863067147=:450" This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info. --1921387416-141103230-863067147=:450 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The attachment above should be opened in an editor, cut at the line, and run in a text-based browser, 3.0 and above preferable. The lines should not be justified. The Jennifer-function plays for itself. 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ZG9jdW1lbnQuYmdDb2xvcj0ieWVsbG93IjsNCmRvY3VtZW50LndyaXRlKCJK ZW5uaWZlcnllbGxvd21pbGsgSmVubmlmZXJicmVhdGhpbmdnZW5kZXIgSmVu bmlmZXJzdXR1cmVhbmRzdXJnZXJ5Iik7fQ0KfQ0KPC9TQ1JJUFQ+DQo8U0NS SVBUPmlmIChqICUgMiA9PSAwKQ0Ke2RvY3VtZW50LndyaXRlKCI8SDI+IiAr ICJKRU5OSUZFUiBJTkhBTEVTIiArICI8L0gyPiIpfQ0KZWxzZQ0Ke2RvY3Vt ZW50LndyaXRlKCI8SDI+IiArICJKRU5OSUZFUiBFWEhBTEVTIiArICI8L0gy PiIpfQ0KaWYgKGogJSAzID09IDApDQp7ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUoIjxIND4i ICsgIkpFTk5JRkVSIEZBTExTIEFQQVJUIiArICI8L0g0PiIpfQ0KPC9TQ1JJ UFQ+DQo8L0ZPTlQ+DQo8SDI+SkVOTklGRVIgWU9VIEpFTk5JRkVSIEpFTk5J RkVSPC9IMj4NCjwvQ0VOVEVSPg0KPC9CT0RZPg0KPC9IVE1MPg0KDQo= --1921387416-141103230-863067147=:450-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 03:49:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: poetry and prose To Mark Weiss--I didn't mean to suggest that Yamanaka's dramatic monologues were de facto post-colonial. What I did mean to say is that I take her use of Hawaiian Creole English (pidgin) in poems that are forcefully anti-lyrical, combined with the content of her poems, can be read as such. The charge of "cultural lag" has been leveled often against Hawai'i writers, but their situation is very different from that elsewhere and thus their methods are, as well, or the timing of their methods. I'm not sure that I, for one, care too much who gets there first. If you look at the _Premonitions_ anthology, edited by Walter Lew, however, you'll see work from here that is more evidently postmodern than is Yamanaka's. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 01:13:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christine Palma Subject: Re: Poetry Radio/Poetry Labels In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" please excuse the post, meant to back channel. - c ______________ christine palma christine@DRUMandBASS.com samples: high-bandwidth, communications, bpm, asia in the yr 2000, fractal structures, cu-seeme fuzzy, memory encapsulated, radio, a sculpture in every living room, a sculpture in every park, a sculpture in every body, cyborgs, e-mail, letterpress, return to drawing, kitchensink genetics, mindoro, coincidence, encaustic, pedestrian's rights, sleep depriviation high, the moon . . . ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 06:51:12 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit FLOWCHART was conceived as/ is a one hundred page poem for his mother's death. (JA's pages, not the publishers.) Does that, if we are playing the category-game, put the poem into another "genre" than epic? A procedural elegy, say? Thinking of procedural works, Allen Fisher's PLACE, hundreds of pages long over a number of books & incorporating performances as well as history, could be thought of as "an epic of South London" though that genre attribution would seem restrictive, even diminishing to the work, which, I would argue, has an epic impulse and then exceeds that "genre" definition on all sides. Narrative is unavoidable as soon as you have more than one word. (In fact, some of Celan's single words are complex narratives in themselves!). Here's a complete narrative by Basho: frog pond plop! -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 07:51:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathleen Crown Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 6 May 1997 to 7 May 1997 In-Reply-To: Automatic digest processor "POETICS Digest - 6 May 1997 to 7 May 1997" (May 8, 12:00am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Amittai, Maria: I did not make it to the Five (Jewish) (Women) Poets panel, but I heard that everyone in the room was glowing at the end of the session. Irena Klepfisz gave a reading in the Saturday "After Hours" session that was terrific. Last fall I assigned her collection of poems (about Holocaust survival, working class women, and Yiddish as the mother tongue) in my Women's Studies course, and it provoked amazing second-generation testimonies from the students. I'll backchannel her permanent address in Brooklyn, but until June you can reach her at the Jewish Studies Department at Michigan State University. Speaking of East Lansing, do any of my fellow MSU alumns out there know where I can reach Marcus Cafagna (who I knew tangentially back when I edited the RED CEDAR REVIEW)? He gave a reading here at Rutgers in March that I did not hear about until too late, and the email I sent to him at Carnegie Mellon was returned. Please backchannel any info. Thanks, KC -- ********************************************************** Kathleen Crown Rutgers English and Women's Studies Conference Co-Coordinator, "Poetry and the Public Sphere" P.O. Box 5054 New Brunswick, NJ 08903-5054 H: 908/572-1128 W: 908/932-8537 Dept. Fax: 908/932-1150 kcrown@rci.rutgers.edu *********************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 21:04:56 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: epic/narrative Hello, New to the list here. Lurked a couple days. As to narrative--does Ted Hughes' CROW qualify? He originally had a more unified narrative frame, complete with a prose bit I believe, and he cut it out. Can the result be called story, narrative, linear? Dwayne ---------- From: DS[SMTP:dpsalmon@IHUG.CO.NZ] Sent: Thursday, May 08, 1997 8:44 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: epic/narrative At 02:31 PM 5/7/97 -0400, you wrote: > Would anyone mind providing a brief definition of "narrative" >poetry, as opposed to "non-narrative" poetry? All poetry is linear, All? No! i think of some of (as eg.s) Susan Howe's, MacLow's, Cage's & Michele Leggott's poetry as very much non-linear - in as much as there is a randomness to the reading of specific lines/words/phrases... there is a randomness in these cases that seems very much to me integral to their readings and existence and is emphatically non-linear. But that wasn't the question. Dan I >think, in the strict sense, insofar as language moves forward in time ... >must narrative poetry specifically "tell a story" to be considered >narrative, then? And why should the lack of a story be considered >subversive, as some people have intimated? > Thanks, Evan > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 08:12:32 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 May 1997 06:51:12 +0000 from I like a couple ideas here from Pierre - one, that maybe it's better not to jump to call things epic, maybe there's a better explanation, which is related to two, the reason we jump to call things epic is that epic has sort of an automatic high culture value - important, great, necessary, etc - which is why so many tiresome ones have been written down the ages - but rather than redefine what the epic impulse actually is, as Mike Boughn suggested, as some mode of originary cognition (like Olson?) - seems to me what defines epic comes back to this social/individual thing. Epic tells the GROUP story. It is a tribal recounting of things EVERYBODY had/ has a hand in. The rise of the individual [which I am not slabbning as TERRIBLE HORRIBLE as some posts here seem to have it] allowed for re-positioning of "epic" - see what Joyce did to Homer, what Zukofsky did to Pound - redefining what is "great" or all-important - but they couldn't do it without the paradigmatically SOCIAL communal storytelling which is epic. Greek tragedy refocused epic in a related way, maybe. so the challenge to the epic poet is to find techniques & allegories which transmit that allness quality to the specific local personal idiosyncrasies & unrepeatable events which make up the story. Dante turning his feud with Florence & the ghost of puppy love into the story of redeemed humankind. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 08:25:17 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 May 1997 21:04:56 +-900 from On Thu, 8 May 1997 21:04:56 +-900 Daniel Tessitore said: > >As to narrative--does Ted Hughes' CROW qualify? He originally had a more >unified narrative frame, complete with a prose bit I believe, and he cut it >out. Can the result be called story, narrative, linear? in my view, even a riddle has a story to tell. - Sherlock Holmes ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 08:54:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Narrative I think does not mean linear, but story-telling. I've never seen a Clark Coolidge poem I would describe as narrative, for instance. Or take (say) Wyatt's anthology-piece "They flee from me"...While it describes events and interactions, and how those interactions have changed thru time, it does so with image, metaphor and dramtic/meditative address, depending on sonorities and rhythms to shape an emotional complex. It is too fixed on a specific moment of existence to be said to tell a story. Pound's first Canto on the other hand tells a story, for all that its astonishing mixture of sound and goosed-up archaism is doing something very aural (and peculiar) to the reader's ear. Mark P. Atlanta On Wed, 7 May 1997, E. Gottlieb wrote: > Would anyone mind providing a brief definition of "narrative" > poetry, as opposed to "non-narrative" poetry? All poetry is linear, I > think, in the strict sense, insofar as language moves forward in time ... > must narrative poetry specifically "tell a story" to be considered > narrative, then? And why should the lack of a story be considered > subversive, as some people have intimated? > Thanks, Evan > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 08:58:57 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 May 1997 08:54:40 -0400 from Coolidge's "At Egypt" is maybe a kind of story... Wyatt's "They flee from me" starts like many a good tale, in medias res. Is it possible that within the all-narrative which is language & speech, lyric poetry is a kind of pause? Dante puts the song-singer in Purgatory, at the beginning - who is it, Arnaut? anyway, he is almost held back by the power of the song - but then pushes on with his journey/story (to the bigger chorus-finale). - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 09:27:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henry's response below, and in a way the whole thread (or threads: the epic one and the narrative/linear one) are valuble for suggesting how much these things depend on **point of view** and **working priorities**. I specifically brought up Wyatt because there are **narrative-like elements** to that sonnet; but to me that don't a narrative make! On the other hand, lots of folks have insisted that anything (even a single word) can resonate outward into narrative; I move in the other direction (because of the way I tend to see my own work: the way I think of music as far more important than story-implying "content"); I'm more likely to see (and value) elements that move away from story into sound, lyric weave and langual/imagistic tension. Not linear so much as forces meeting (clash). Thus my mention of Coolidge, the best shorthand I can think of to suggest the imperatives and promises of the non-narrative. On Thu, 8 May 1997, henry gould wrote: > Coolidge's "At Egypt" is maybe a kind of story... Wyatt's "They flee from me" > starts like many a good tale, in medias res. Is it possible that within the > all-narrative which is language & speech, lyric poetry is a kind of pause? > Dante puts the song-singer in Purgatory, at the beginning - who is it, > Arnaut? anyway, he is almost held back by the power of the song - but > then pushes on with his journey/story (to the bigger chorus-finale). > - Henry G > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 08:34:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: How Public Is the Sphere In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" the works were enumerated in the format of a "dream anthology." i'll post them in the next coupla weeks when the workload eases up...unless someone else out there was listenng and wants to do it At 2:32 PM -0700 5/7/97, Stephen Cope wrote: >Maria: > >What might some of these works be? > >Thanks in advance, >Stephen Cope > > >>one of the themes of my talk at rutgers was an enumeration of the works >>that have already been done that cd be considered poetry and cultural >>studies, the field it's my longterm mission to map out...md >> >>At 1:06 PM -0700 5/6/97, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: >>>Susan -- Thanks for that brief on Davidson's talk, which I look forward to >>>reading -- At the ALA in Baltimore, some of us will attempt to show what >>>cultural studies might offer to readings of Pound -- Demonstration is the >>>highest form of battery! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 09:45:24 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Re envisioning a contemporary epic possibility see also Alice Notley's _Homer's Art_ (in the "Curriculum of the Soul" series), as lovely & sharp corrective to allmale at-swords-point heroic epic. -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 09:47:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: from "henry" at May 8, 97 08:12:32 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > but rather than redefine what the epic impulse actually is, as Mike Boughn > suggested, as some mode of originary cognition (like Olson?) - seems to > me what defines epic comes back to this social/individual thing. Epic > tells the GROUP story. > - Henry Gould That's not exactly what I said, Henry. The question is whether you see it as restricted to some strictly "literary" domain (in which case it's all a question of arbitrary rules--hence the nit-picking arguments about whether or not Paradise Lost or the Commedia are REALLY epics--genre as jail), or whether it arises out of some other relation to the world. To call that a "redefinition" is to assume the literary/scholastic as the definition, which, I think, begs, as they say, the question. That's been the argument all along, hasn't it? Are the gestures and forms of poetry rules or specific ways of knowing? It seems to me that Ark falls outside the realm of epic because its structure is primarily architectonic and in that sense is more closely related to Hesiod than Homer. Falling back on the individual/group binary just confuses further as those Ulronic contraries always will. Is the Odyssey about the "group" or the "individual"? Ditto the Iliad. "Sing, muse, the anger of the socially constructed group self!" "Hey, buddy, construct this!" Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 10:03:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: rules and ways of knowing In-Reply-To: <199705081347.JAA06954@chass.utoronto.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII HOMAGE TO STEVEN HALL I danced with rules then I danced with ways of knowing and I flew to Mars on a quiet Boeing I flew to San Francisco where they drive on the left I flew over Pocantico where they know and make the rules What people should do is very important I don't understand Gauss's notation for modular numbers at all ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 10:18:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The other one to keep in mind is David Gordon's projected ten-book poem. Three volumes out so far: Outward, Repairs, and Rest. Stem, the next one, or Part 1 of it, will be going to press soon. This is the epic to watch, in my opinion. I published a section of Stem as #8 in my broadside series, and the National Poetry Foundation publishes the whole series, so my judgment may be clouded, but I don't think so. To excerpt from the NPF catalogue description: ...its protagonist...despite a wide range of human figures, is nothing less than the life force itself. Gordon, a Pound scholar and the translator of T'ang and Sung poems and Lu Yu, dives deep into the seas of bacteriology, biology, philosophy, music, and epic, and thus into time, myth, document, and symmetrical speculation. see descrip. on website http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ Sylvester Pollet >Re envisioning a contemporary epic possibility see also Alice Notley's >_Homer's Art_ (in the "Curriculum of the Soul" series), as lovely & >sharp corrective to allmale at-swords-point heroic epic. >-- >========================================= >pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 >tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu >http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Everything that allows men to become rooted, through >values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in >_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which >constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, >[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality >and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose >it as a conquering assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot >========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 09:13:19 -0500 Reply-To: balong@ipa.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Organization: Self Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Also, Frank Stanford's The Battlefield where the moon says I Love you. The thing weighs eight pounds and is almost 600 pages long. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 07:38:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII there is such a thing as narrative knowledge, and any individual item or experience will become narrative in consciousness -- but , following Mark, I would make a distinction of convenience between a Coolidge poem like "ing" (or whatever the title was) and "At Egypt," "Fed Drapes" etc. -- as someone in England years ago said of nomination generally -- better to think of these descriptors as naming a locus of shading from one area to another than attempt to claim a sharp break between the narrative and the non -- this many years post-structuralism it shouldn't be all that hard for us to agree that, for instance, "narrative" and "lyric," while naming difference, are inextricably and definitionally bound up in one another's cloudy metahphrical arms -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 10:43:50 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 May 1997 07:38:40 -0700 from >non -- this many years post-structuralism it shouldn't be all that hard >for us to agree that, for instance, "narrative" and "lyric," while naming >difference, are inextricably and definitionally bound up in one another's >cloudy metahphrical arms -- Aldon, there's a story there somewhere - maybe even a screenplay. - HG ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 10:48:43 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 May 1997 09:47:37 -0400 from On Thu, 8 May 1997 09:47:37 -0400 Michael Boughn said: > >That's not exactly what I said, Henry. The question is whether >you see it as restricted to some strictly "literary" domain (in which >case it's all a question of arbitrary rules--hence the nit-picking >arguments about whether or not Paradise Lost or the Commedia are >REALLY epics--genre as jail), or whether it arises out of some other >relation to the world. To call that a "redefinition" is to assume the >literary/scholastic as the definition, which, I think, begs, as they >say, the question. That's been the argument all along, hasn't it? Are >the gestures and forms of poetry rules or specific ways of knowing? No doubt about it we get stuck in the hair-splitting of Roman law or whatever with these hoary words/genres. Makes sense to re-look (re- define, whatever) at the impulse of different approaches to poetry & see if "epic" is still a useful term for what anybody's writing now. I think that's how this thread got started? Anyway, my point was, no, I wouldn't call the genres "ways of knowing". I would call them ways of making poems. There are a lot of people writing poems containing oodles of history and knowledge but I wouldn't say "rethink the world & make an epic". That's only part of it. Epic somehow finds the common story - as STORY, as action, beginning middle end. Philosophy finds the central thought & circles around it. Poetry imitates the central action. Eric Blarnes tells me he's working on an 800 pound banter-weight class poem, 14 leagues long, centered on a tree farm in Knickerbocker, Wisconsin. To Eric, I say: Armes virumque canto! or some such thingum. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 11:22:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: gubbinal in Venezuela? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henrywrt epic finds STORY beginning middle and end but no, that's not epic finding that's drama? epic is come in whenever and find out later where? as for what henryrt re genres are not ways of knowing they're ways of writing poems ohhhhh yoooooo meeeean litttttttcchrachuuuuure which is written by the living dead viz the Living Dead Review of Books Thanks eric jack and Henry! when you get to four say hello to Fernando Jordan (eyes closed and looking up) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 11:32:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Letter 22 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Palinode (heat exchange) the difference that we're picking up here my old Proton, the cat chewed the antenna off the signal to noise ratio is that there is those what thinks you write what you know which is the Jove throws a thunderbolt view of things if you ask me and you didn't and then there is the finding out side of things a party prize and the generic brand has not quite enough glue on the flap global branding in a Japanese McDonald's ad how're your hormones doing? the charge apparently originates on the ground and in the air Queen Victoria as medium for poetry changes ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 10:31:34 -0500 Reply-To: balong@ipa.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Organization: Self Subject: New Small Press MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ridgerunner Press, a new small press, is now accepting submissions either by snail mail or by e-mail. The press runs a quarterly publication, with the first issue due out in July, featuring Miller Williams, Frank Stanford (previously published work, of course), and Jack Hambrik among others. They also publish two books/year. For snail-mail address, guidelines, or other information, e-mail Mike at bebop@ipa.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 12:08:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: epic and narrative MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The Brownian Effect "We still live upon the fruit of better times." --Novalis "That faces were once unique each one looked like itself, it was not Bell Telephone executives, all up from the ranks." --Charles Olson, "The Civil War" "If Sheldrake is right--the biologists are fighting him tooth and nail every inch of the way--the consequences would obviously be momentous. To begin with, we would have to recognize that our writers and artists are largely to blame for the chaotic state of society." --Colin Wilson Everyones's doing it, congratulations, poet, for noticing, does that mean you also know the history of the buying & selling circle of finishing the Circle, how the Venetians came across to English Blake, who felt the Surge go out of the Virgin's womb, bloated form to swallow evrything--pagan, Christian, animal, vegetable, nothing to escape the maw, the Dantean nuova lost to the Quern, memory itself knocked out and spun around like Dorothy's house, worse than any Promethean eagle could make us _all_ forget our dream of home in the land of OZ and where did all those lost recognitions go? why, into pockets of powerful men, sd Julie Anne. --John Clarke, _In the Analogy_ Book 2 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 12:12:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think different poems have different ratios or tensions: it's a kind of torque: between narrative and lyric: a very tight, gem-like poem: I think of much Hardy and much Creeley here: can be insistently narrative just as insistently lyric: as Wyatt's loss/memory tale or Pound's Erat Hora (or o western wind): On Thu, 8 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > Narrative I think does not mean linear, but story-telling. I've never > seen a Clark Coolidge poem I would describe as narrative, for instance. > Or take (say) Wyatt's anthology-piece "They flee from me"...While it > describes events and interactions, and how those interactions have changed > thru time, it does so with image, metaphor and dramtic/meditative > address, depending on sonorities and rhythms to shape an emotional > complex. It is too fixed on a specific moment of existence to be said to > tell a story. Pound's first Canto on the other hand tells a story, for > all that its astonishing mixture of sound and goosed-up archaism is doing > something very aural (and peculiar) to the reader's ear. > > Mark P. > Atlanta > > On Wed, 7 May 1997, E. Gottlieb wrote: > > > Would anyone mind providing a brief definition of "narrative" > > poetry, as opposed to "non-narrative" poetry? All poetry is linear, I > > think, in the strict sense, insofar as language moves forward in time ... > > must narrative poetry specifically "tell a story" to be considered > > narrative, then? And why should the lack of a story be considered > > subversive, as some people have intimated? > > Thanks, Evan > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 12:18:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm very drawn to what Mark is saying here: my own ambition is often towards narrative but I also find and am frequently surpsised when/that many think I mean something much more stable, unitary, fixed, comfortable, famaliar (you get the drill) than I mean when I say narrative: Stein is for example a non-stop lesson in narrative: much of Aaron Shurin's work rocks narrative like a truckload of bricks: I'm thinking also in the sense that Donald Revell has pointed to a new narrativity that comes after language poetry and learns from it: but to return to Mark's wonderful point: I think there is a very human story in the image for example: an image or a broken syntax squib can be a construct of thought, argument, sensuality, memory: a contigent subject breaking apart and reforming: and part of what I really honor in Mark's poems is the musical grace with which this urge/wave explodes: On Thu, 8 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > Henry's response below, and in a way the whole thread (or threads: the > epic one and the narrative/linear one) are valuble for suggesting how much > these things depend on **point of view** and **working priorities**. I > specifically brought up Wyatt because there are **narrative-like > elements** to that sonnet; but to me that don't a narrative make! On the > other hand, lots of folks have insisted that anything (even a single word) > can resonate outward into narrative; I move in the other direction > (because of the way I tend to see my own work: the way I think of music as > far more important than story-implying "content"); I'm more likely to see > (and value) elements that move away from story into sound, lyric weave > and langual/imagistic tension. Not linear so much as forces meeting > (clash). Thus my mention of Coolidge, the best shorthand I can think of > to suggest the imperatives and promises of the non-narrative. > > On Thu, 8 May 1997, henry gould wrote: > > > Coolidge's "At Egypt" is maybe a kind of story... Wyatt's "They flee from me" > > starts like many a good tale, in medias res. Is it possible that within the > > all-narrative which is language & speech, lyric poetry is a kind of pause? > > Dante puts the song-singer in Purgatory, at the beginning - who is it, > > Arnaut? anyway, he is almost held back by the power of the song - but > > then pushes on with his journey/story (to the bigger chorus-finale). > > - Henry G > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 12:20:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII forces do, as Mark puts it, clash: and that clash can be homeric at the level of syntax and poesis: it's playing, language is a music: and that involves the most epistemological reaches of what Coleridge (and Byron if you're Jerome McGann) would have called imagination: On Thu, 8 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > Henry's response below, and in a way the whole thread (or threads: the > epic one and the narrative/linear one) are valuble for suggesting how much > these things depend on **point of view** and **working priorities**. I > specifically brought up Wyatt because there are **narrative-like > elements** to that sonnet; but to me that don't a narrative make! On the > other hand, lots of folks have insisted that anything (even a single word) > can resonate outward into narrative; I move in the other direction > (because of the way I tend to see my own work: the way I think of music as > far more important than story-implying "content"); I'm more likely to see > (and value) elements that move away from story into sound, lyric weave > and langual/imagistic tension. Not linear so much as forces meeting > (clash). Thus my mention of Coolidge, the best shorthand I can think of > to suggest the imperatives and promises of the non-narrative. > > On Thu, 8 May 1997, henry gould wrote: > > > Coolidge's "At Egypt" is maybe a kind of story... Wyatt's "They flee from me" > > starts like many a good tale, in medias res. Is it possible that within the > > all-narrative which is language & speech, lyric poetry is a kind of pause? > > Dante puts the song-singer in Purgatory, at the beginning - who is it, > > Arnaut? anyway, he is almost held back by the power of the song - but > > then pushes on with his journey/story (to the bigger chorus-finale). > > - Henry G > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 12:59:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kristin Gallagher Subject: Re: Poetry Radio! In-Reply-To: <199705072035.QAA65088@dept.english.upenn.edu> from "Michael Magee" at May 7, 97 04:35:12 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit *Live at the Writer's House* has been aired on WXPN (philadelphia) monthly since february 1997. it is a one hour LIVE poetry reading - no commercials - with 4 3-minute slots for singer/songwriter action. The Writer's House is University of Pennsylvania's Communal Poetry scene. The U. gave us the recently evacuated chaplain's house (great acoustics!) and we have poetry and fiction activity ever minute of the day eve since. many incredible poets have visited/read/eaten/hungout/had drinks with us this year. it would be a too-long-post to name them all. This fall we begin also radio theatre and live music. we will have a one hour slot every week and will air what (of these three programs) we desire :). WXPN reaches most of southeatern PA, some of maryland and some of western & central PA. some of the shows may be syndicated and then you can all pester your local public radio station to get on board. anyone interested please backchannel. kg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 13:05:35 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henrywrt Subject: Re: gubbinal in Venezuela? In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 May 1997 11:22:48 -0400 from On Thu, 8 May 1997 11:22:48 -0400 Jordan Davis said: >Henrywrt >epic finds STORY beginning middle and end > >but no, that's not epic finding that's drama? epic is come in whenever and >find out later where? It's epic too. Eric told me. [Tractatus Blarnensis 411.23 page 12] Iliad is designed as a tragic action. If you're travelin to the north country fair, walk in a circle & you'll see me there. > >as for what henryrt re >genres are not ways of knowing they're ways of writing poems > >ohhhhh yoooooo meeeean litttttttcchrachuuuuure >which is written by the living dead >viz the Living Dead Review of Books o.k., don't write them down. Whisper them to your best friend. But a poem ain't a lecture. Jenny Littletree told me. Right, Jenny? Right Henry. Hello Fernando. - Jenny ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 13:16:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jethro Cadbury Subject: advert Mainstream and Anarcho Press announce the publication of Periodical Contests by Eric Mottram. This is the fourth book of Masks. It is distributed by Mainstream. Mainstream now has three books in print. All are available for sterling payments only, cheques payable to Lawrence Upton. OUR EDUCATION IS POLITICAL: Eric Mottram interviewed by Wolfgang Gortschacher Price including postage and packing UK £4.00 Price including postage and packing Europe £4.50 Price including postage and packing USA / Canada £5.50 HI COWBOY by Fiona Templeton Price including postage and packing UK £4.00 Price including postage and packing Europe £4.50 Price including postage and packing USA / Canada £6.00 PERIODICAL CONTESTS by Eric Mottram Price including postage and packing UK £3.50 Price including postage and packing Europe £4.00 Price including postage and packing USA / Canada 4.50 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 13:37:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII TT O 's '24 Hours' !!! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 13:54:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: <337177E3.EB9@cnsunix.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "I" just finished reading Dorn's /Gunslinger/--hope not to get punched in the mouth for this... but doesn't it twist narrative expectations a bit, in that the Slinger, at the end, forgets all about chasing Howard Hughes, and the company disperses, and the Slinger hops back on the timetrain? Pierre, that would be the bpNichol trans. of Basho, n'est-ce pas? does Nichol include the exclamation point? Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 11:32:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 8 May 1997, Gwyn McVay wrote: > "I" just finished reading Dorn's /Gunslinger/--hope not to get punched in > the mouth for this... but doesn't it twist narrative expectations a bit, > in that the Slinger, at the end, forgets all about chasing Howard Hughes, > and the company disperses, and the Slinger hops back on the timetrain? > I'd say, very much so, Gwyn -- not to mention that filling up a character named "I" with gallons of LSD is altogether a neater method of circumventing the perils of first-person address than, say, taking Foucault to heart: no (de)construction required. But about epic -- its usefulness as a term: I wonder about a feature common to many early poems thus named, the journey into hell and back. Classics scholars can correct me, but I think that particular journey is called "catabasis" -- and certainly then a movement from one (limited, narrow) state to another (broader, more all-encompassing) and then, maybe, back. Ulro to Jerusalem, Inferno to Paradiso, the Mahayana Buddhist coming down off the mountain until all sentient beings are enlightened . . . . . . is that kind of "movement" narrative? It's certainly not LINEAR. Is it naive to think a movement like that one could still exist, post-modern and post-structuralist as we are? Some of the poems mentioned as contemporary exemplars of epic seem to me just epic in scale, not encompassing this broader move. Wisdom literature, I hear some folks sneering -- we're beyond that. But for me, if epic means anything, it means going on that journey. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 14:28:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Jennifer-URL MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Because some people were having trouble configuring the Jennifer piece, I've set it up at: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/z.htm where it runs, a bit slower than it would on your machine (Jennifer's breathing is slightly behind the times...)..., but it DOES run. Alan ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ TEL 718-857-3671 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE CUSEEME 166.84.250.149 ADDRESS: 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY, 11217 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 14:38:20 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 May 1997 11:32:11 -0700 from I'm reading a book about the pervasiveness of an "orpheus" story in many variations in native american storytelling. The orpheus myth of Greece (coming maybe originally from eastward) makes the journeyer to the world of the dead a poet (in the stories or myths usually its "just" a man or woman going to try to fetch lover/kin back to the living). Does the greek version add a "reflexive" element - because this is THE epic tale? Yippie "I" A. Coyote ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 14:53:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic/narrative -Reply Henry (et alia et coyotea et toyotea) -- there are several poss. explanations why Orpheus was Orpheus-the-poet in the Greek version -- (not least of 'em being, because that's who it was!) just a thought, d.i. p.s.: also, this allowed Cocteau to do cooler things >>> henry gould 05/08/97 02:38pm >>> I'm reading a book about the pervasiveness of an "orpheus" story in many variations in native american storytelling. The orpheus myth of Greece (coming maybe originally from eastward) makes the journeyer to the world of the dead a poet (in the stories or myths usually its "just" a man or woman going to try to fetch lover/kin back to the living). Does the greek version add a "reflexive" element - because this is THE epic tale? Yippie "I" A. Coyote ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 15:02:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic/narrative / Orpheus p.s. Also -- I'd not thought abt. this much before, but your mention (Henry) about the Orpheus tale having poss. come from points east, reminds of the ancient Indian myth of Savitri (the Persephone of the tale) who is rescued from land of the dead by a certain Satyavan (the Orpheus) -- this story (of poss. interest to Mr. Blarnes) was re-told in -- hey, dig this -- EPIC form (a full, book-length poem, including cosmic idea-sweep, and as I recall in unrhymed iambic hexameter) by Aurobindo Ghose -- a British-educated Bengali who turned to matters of philosophy & spirituality after being jailed as an early 20th-century freedom fighter (pre-Gandhi days) . . . this is one of those books high on my hypothetical shelf of stuff to read -- whenever (every several years) I've run across a copy & read a half-page, have been much amazed by the language . . . old-school style, of course . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 15:06:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 8 May 1997, Gwyn McVay wrote: > "I" just finished reading Dorn's /Gunslinger/--hope not to get punched in > the mouth for this... but doesn't it twist narrative expectations a bit, > in that the Slinger, at the end, forgets all about chasing Howard Hughes, > and the company disperses, and the Slinger hops back on the timetrain? > > Pierre, that would be the bpNichol trans. of Basho, n'est-ce pas? does > Nichol include the exclamation point? > > Gwyn > Here is a translation, I found in Anne Carson's _Eros: The Bittersweet_> old pond frog jumps in plop No !. Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 15:20:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jethro Cadbury Subject: neg cap and epic NEG CAP On 6th May Henry Gould wrote <> thing is, if you look at the letter, he hardly says anything, no background context or anything - as I remember - i havent got it in front of me but i remember trying to use the quote to justify something or other in a paper and realising i could actually use it to justify anything... as long as you dont violate the dictionary meaning of the two words he uses - London. Keats mentions negative capability for the only time. No sign of V. EPIC On 7 May 1997 14:31:44 -0400 Evan Gottlieb wrote <> A lot of questions there - but re the statement _All poetry is linear_ What about the visual text especially because it adds a twist to the question where the visual text is performed by more than one performer who may start at different points - the performance is linear because the performance moves forward in time but the linearity of the text performed may have been heavily disrupted AND there are many visual texts which are anything but linear in the first place In the case of epics then and now there are a multitude of devices to send the auditor back in recollection and forwards in anticipation AND because of the epic size of epics they are not often read as a whole - the effect of reading a long poem more or less at a sitting can be rewarding and enjoyable BUT long poems are often experienced in stages and or with gaps What about _Much poetry is linear some of the time_? Re _Long poem_ there is a Long Poem Society over here. I think that's what it is called. Well, Bob Cobbing and I are engaged on a sequence of booklets called Domestic Ambient Noise - way over a hundred now one responding to another in an ever more complex pattern. Fundamentally visual on the page and meant for impro performance - but, you know, we have words there, lots of words, and when we don't we have letters - it's a series of poems. Well, Bob, as Writers Forum, has been sending them booklets so they can include DAN in their list of long poems and, as he tells it, there is a Long Correspondence, going on as to whether or not DAN is a poem! It's a pity Bob's not on email - but if you would like to buy the series I am sure he would quote you a good discount for quantity Lawrence Upton ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 15:58:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: R Johnson/epic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=unknown-8bit Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit << Is it useful to talk of _Ark_ as an epic? or _"A"_ for that matter? I'll bite, Charles (since I've been thinking and reading around Jack Clarke's _In the Analogy_ in similar terms). What do you think? O r is yours a rhetorical question? >> No, Mike, I wasn't just being a smartass. I’ve got more questions than anything else. Epic is a loaded term, with a lot frayed baggage. I balked at it, while recognizing reasons for its use. I honestly don't remember if Johnson used the term himself while talking (I suspect he did), or if it was introduced in Steve Carl's description. RJ doesn't use it in a note at the end of _Ark_, where, acknowledging Pound, Williams, Zukofsky & Olson as forbears he writes: "If my confreres wanted to write a work with history in its maw, I wished, from the beginning, to start all over again, attempting to know nothing but a will to create, and matter at hand. William Blake would be a guiding spirit: his advice to pay attention every moment: the very lightning, then thunder: a voice out of a cloud." (Begs question about a poem situated outside history, esp. given the charged, embedded 'historical' language, but that's another thread.) He goes on, after citing Simon Watts & Le Facteur Cheval as models of architectural bricolage, to say: "The idea of ARK came when I was able at last to conceive of it as a structure rather than a diatribe, artifact rather than argument, a veritable shell of the chambered nautilus, sliced and polished, bound for Ararat unknown." What does it mean to place one’s work in that tradition, offering a "long poem," while disavowing any need to grapple with history? Or does he gain clearer access into the realm of creative imagination & spirit by sidestepping the "deeds" of history? Any long poem is not an "epic," despite popular use of the phrases like "epic proportions." There’s lots of interesting contemporary work that clearly situates itself through varying strategies in relation to epic tradition: "Passages," "Song of the Andoumboulou," "Descent of Alette," "Iovis." I guess I’m more comfortable seeing "Ark" as making that kind of move than calling it an "epic." I wouldn’t call the Duncan or Mackey "epic" either, though the work engages that tradition, while I’d be more comfortable with that characterization of the Waldman & Notley. Against the sweeping totalizing gestures of Whitman, Pound, Olson, does "A" offer one alternative? where the "grand narrative" gives way to the individual poet’s attention & arrangements? _Ark_ seems to strive for LZ’s "totality at rest." The two poems foreground the creative imagination through their music & architectonics. all best, Charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 14:28:12 MDT Reply-To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: nonce MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT All-- just a brief message to let you know that n/formation is now back online, with a lovely, secure server, & snug as a bug in a rug. yesserreee. yup. oh, & it's still at http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce so no links need be changed. Chris .. Christopher Alexander, etc. nominative press collective 160S 1300E #16 / Salt Lake City UT 84102 calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 16:24:03 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: R Johnson/epic In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 May 1997 15:58:59 -0400 from On Thu, 8 May 1997 15:58:59 -0400 said: >What does it mean to place one s work in that tradition, offering a "long >poem," while disavowing any need to grapple with history? Or does he gain >clearer access into the realm of creative imagination & spirit by >sidestepping the "deeds" of history? Any long poem is not an "epic," despite By using an already-archaic form (epic), Milton in PL seems to find a narrow middle direction - he de-literalizes biblical prophecy on the one hand ("PL" is clearly a story, a masque) and emphasizes history's chaotic contingency (one damn thing after another) (especially toward the end of PL) on the other. But all the "famous" epics seem to take idiosyncratic approaches toward history. Sorry to keep harping on the oldies. - Old Hank ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 16:32:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Alice Notley In a message dated 97-05-08 10:44:12 EDT, Pierre Joris writes: << Re envisioning a contemporary epic possibility see also Alice Notley's _Homer's Art_ (in the "Curriculum of the Soul" series), as lovely & sharp corrective to allmale at-swords-point heroic epic. >> Absolutely! & also, "Descent of Alette." Would also remind of her piece "Epic & Women Poets" in Waldman/Schelling's _Disembodied Poetics_, where she discusses her sense of dream, narrative & search for measure. "The story is allegorical, & allegory is one way in for women. As well as for men who are tired of this century's lyric 'I,' or tired of fragmentation, disjunction, literary theory, & hipness." "The old twentieth century forms are now becoming too easy; continuity at length is now hard. Continuity at length implies measure; by which I mean a somewhat consistent unimpeded measure. A new content, a new consciousness, implies the need for a new sound; form & measure are often the same." "Stories, & measures, are dresses to slip into that give as you walk, at least as much as any poem bound by, say, restrictions of language & demeanor, whether the language of philosophical theory or some sort of plain speech, or by line length or prose-seemingness or marked surface variation." "A measure comes out of the individual& the culture at the same time: but you the poet will perceive it to come out of your body, your head, the sounds that play there; you will not be able to analyze it into being." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 16:12:08 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: epic/narrative As I'm reading posts about "epic" I find myself coming back to a schpeel Roland Barthes wrote somewhere (paraphrasing at work here) in _Critical Essays__ about how the seemingly most direct and unencumbered way to suggest compassion or grief to a friend who has suffered a loss is simply to write "regret," that words beyond it tend to distract from primacy of the message or even call the orginal intent of the message into question. Epics strike me, similarly, as a bunch of words about some great story that would be better written in less (or no) words. That the "epic" task of one who writes the "epic" is in the audacity of overproducing the story, or, better, the "truth" of the story. This makes epic writing more attractive to me-- seeing it as a way of ruining stories by writing way too much--suggesting that a given text has too many words to be narrative. Maybe this: epic (v.)--to be overeager about the way words look and sound in such a way as to ruin a story that everyone seemingly aught to know by writing too many. Elizabeth ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 20:52:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic/narrative Joseph Lease wrote: << . . . I also find and am frequently surpsised when/that many think I mean something much more stable, unitary, fixed, comfortable, famaliar (you get the drill) than I mean when I say narrative: Stein is for example a non-stop lesson in narrative: >> well, some of Stein, okay; but much -- I don't think so. The Stein of -- what's it called? -- *Three Lives* -- sure, that's narrative. As for the Stein of (I think it's) *The Making of An American* -- the part(s) I've heard &/or read (during one of those bi-annual Stein-a-thons at a Soho gallery, wherein the entire book is read thru) were (to my memory & thinking) abt. as far from narrative as one might generally get. Much more a kaleidoscope of language-fragments & repetitions -- reminiscent (I thought) of how Mahayana scriptures are sometimes structured -- but not geared toward the telling of a story (a.k.a. a narrative). << I'm thinking also in the sense that Donald Revell has pointed to a new narrativity that comes after language poetry and learns from it: >> An analogy: the ways in which the better story-telling films will oftentimes include some arresting passages that seem to be much more about light & frame & picture than about pulling forward the (mere) "story" -- though such a passage in such a film is different from an entire film given over to effects of that sort . . . this isn't the sort of example I was thinking, writing the above graph, but: consider the opening passage of *The Umbrellas of Cherborg* [if that's the correct city-name -- film by Jacque Demi, if that's the correct director; re-released a few years ago . . .; a highly stylized musical, a very narrative movie] -- the opening sequence shows nothing but an abstracted pattern of umbrellas crossing in the town square -- more "modern art" than narrative at that point, but it plays with visual elements that are soon to give way to the downpour of the tale . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 21:14:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am feeling like an old bocce player now as I exclaim "But sure that's narrative, _The Making of Americans_." There are characters, there is development, aggh. See, the thing is, there is no such thing as "Coolidge" or "Stein". To say "Coolidge" or "Stein" is to ignore that these people did more than repeat a dominant trope. Every time you think of them that way you're thinking of a Big Mac, and every time you think of a Big Mac, you salivate (and/or retch). The function of literature inasmuch as things people say write or type can have functions is to remind people that although autonomic response is an exciting option it is not one one is bound to. Omit your independence to your cost. Ah, see, you made me get soaked in romantic individualism again. Anyway before the quarter in this coin-op John Godfrey-imitation wears out, let me finish by reminding you that this is all closer to law than science, that it's only argument bullying clarity and detail that go over here. No work worth talking about is one thing, and no person can be spoken of with respect as a simple unified person, with respect to the wild ongoing cellular recordkeeping anyway. So, Jordan(s) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 21:35:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic/narrative Jordon -- << I am feeling like an old bocce player now as I exclaim "But sure that's narrative, _The Making of Americans_." There are characters, there is development, aggh. >> thx for the corrective -- I had some subliminal doubt. (My prob. w/ noting the narrativity in *Americans* stems from fact I wandered in *in medias res* and didn't really "get" what were the characters, what was the development; -- was more lost in the remarkable wash of the waves, rather than noting that, yes, there's actually a beach here and some surfers too.) Speaking of beaches, an interesting angle on narrative is Leslie Scalapino's *That They Were At The Beach* (for instance) . . . this reminds that I've been meaning to read Carole Maso since monkey's ears -- anyone care to recommend / critique particular volumes, in some manner? BTW, perhaps the "non-narrative" tag got some of its force from critical writing re: performance art & dance & suchlike (some of which is/was, some of which isn't/wasn't -- some very narrative; some avoiding "easy" story reading) . . . one can speak of a "simple" (or "single") narrative voice, vs. a multiple or complex or . . . (well, it can be single but complex, as in [much of] Scalapino) . . . The ur-narratives are, of course, the myths. And the appeal of narrative seems allied w/ the appeal of mythology, no? d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 22:19:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic/narrative / Basho / Carson Steven Marks wrote -- <<< . . . Gwyn McVay wrote: . . . > Pierre, that would be the bpNichol trans. of Basho, n'est-ce pas? does > Nichol include the exclamation point? Here is a translation, I found in Anne Carson's _Eros: The Bittersweet_> old pond frog jumps in plop No !. Steven >>> Yes, but that doesn't speak to the issue of whether or not bp's version has an exclamation point. Anne Carson's version was borrowed from: Basho, Matsuo, *The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches*, trans. by Nobayuki Yuasa, New York (1966) -- (that's the old Penguin classic). As for haiku, Robert Hass's recent trans. of 3 haiku poets (including Basho) is darn good. Regarding the Basho cited by Steven, that poem serves as epigraph to one of the final chapters in *Eros: The Bittersweet*. For poss. interest, here that section entire (beginning w/ chapter title): / / / / / What Is This Dialogue About? old pond frog jumps in plop Basho The *Phaedrus* is an exploration of the dynamics and dangers of controlled time that make themselves accessible to readers, writers, and lovers. In Sokrates' view, a true *logos* has this in common with a real love affair, that it must be lived out in time. It is not the same backwards as forwards, it cannot be entered at any point, or frozen at its acme, or dismissed when fascination falters. A reader, like a bad lover, may feel he can zoom into his text at any point and pluck the fruit of its wisdom. A writer, like Lysias, may feel he can rearrange the limbs of the fiction on which he dotes with no regard for its life as an organism in time. So readers and writers dabble in the glamor of *grammata* without submitting themselves to wholesale erotic takeover or the change of self entailed in it. Like Odysseus bound to the mast of his ship, a reader may titillate himself with the siren song of knowledge and sail past intact. It is a kind of voyeurism, as we see when we watch Phaedrus seduced by the written words of Lysias. In Plato's view, the Lysian text is as philosophic pornography when compared with the erotic *logos* of Sokrates. But Plato cannot demonstrate this merely by aligning Lysias and Sokrates as one dead text beside another. The demonstration requires something of a ruse if it is to be truly arresting. So Plato floats *logos* upon *logos*; they neither converge nor cancel out. We have seen other writers contrive such stereoscopic images. For example, Sappho in her fragment 31 superimposes one level of desire upon another, floats the actual upon the possible, in such a way that our perception jumps from one to the other without losing sight of the difference between them. Or again, the novelist Longus floats an apple upon a tree plucked bare of fruit, defying logic and captivating Daphnis. Or consider Zeno who, in his famous paradoxes, suspends moving objects upon the impossibility of motion, so that we see Achilles running as fast as he can, going nowhere. These are writers who share a strategy; they purpose to re-create in you a certain action of the mind and heart -- the action of reaching toward a meaning not yet known. It is a reach that never quite arrives, bittersweet. Plato's interplay of *logoi* in the *Phaedrus* imitates this reaching action. As Phaedrus reads what Lysias wrote, as Phaedrus listens to what Sokrates says, something begins to come into focus. You begin to understand what a *logos* is and what it is not and the difference. Like a face crossing a mirror at the back of the room, Eros moves. You reach. Eros is gone. The *Phaedrus* is a written dialogue that ends by discrediting written dialogues. This fact does not cease to charm its readers. Indeed, it is the fundamental erotic feature of this *erotikos logos*. Each time you read it, you are conducted to a place where something paradoxical happens: the knowledge of Eros that Sokrates and Phaedrus have been unfolding word by word through the written text simply steps into a blind point and vanishes, pulling the *logos* after it. Their conversation about love ... turns into a conversation about writing ... and Eros is not seen or heard from again. This act of dialectical interception has, since antiquity, perplexed those who wish to say concisely what the dialogue is about. But there is nothing inappropriate here. If you reach into the *Phaedrus* to get hold of Eros, you will be eluded, necessarily. He never looks at you from the place from which you see him. Something moves in the space between. That is the most erotic thing about Eros. - Anne Carson, *Eros: The Bittersweet* [pp. 165-167 -- pardon that this makes much reference to texts & terms already summarized, excerpted &/or discussed earlier in the book; but this shd. serve to give a taste of Carson's manner of thought & indeed something of her thesis . . . ] d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 22:25:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nuyopoman@AOL.COM Subject: Re: How Public is the Sphere < Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pam Brown Subject: Re: epic/narrative Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:37 PM 8/5/97 -0400, you wrote: > TT O 's '24 Hours' > > !!! > > That's II O as in Pi O, Melbourne poet,...a HUGE 600page book written in "ethnic" vernacular - It's amazing !! Published by Collective Works last year. Also ,Laurie Duggan's "experimental" poetic documentary epic about Gippsland, Victoria - "The Ash Range" published by Picador in 1987... Bye for now, Pam Brown ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 20:28:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: flood Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This may be cheating, as I still have my poetics set to "nomail" as I get through a bunch of 'other' stuff. So I'm not reading messages but am sending one. This one is forwarded, and is about helping the arts recover from the North Dakota floods. I apologize if someone has already posted this on poetics. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 6 May 1997 22:46:23 -0400 From: Julie Hornstein Arts Education Chair, North Dakota Arts Alliance To: FINKELSTEIN RICHARD S Subject: Help for Grand Forks Arts May 6, 1997 UPDATE ON FLOODED GRAND FORKS ARTS ORGANIZATIONS: Less than .05% of residents have been allowed to move back into their homes because of lack of water, sewer, gas & electric services.Most are 'camping in' with friends, relatives or shelters both in and out of state. We have confirmation that: ND Ballet was burned out. All Records, equipment, etc. are gone, but they were renters so can try to move to a new space, if/when one can be located. They had to cancel performances and spring fundraisng efforts and are short of current operating funds to use for the recovery period. Firehall Community Theatre sustained substantial water damage and some fear the building will be condemned...a determination to be made 'later' by the powers that be.As of May 5, the degree of damage to equipment, costumes, etc. could not be determined because the site could not be visited. They had to cancel performances and spring fundraisng efforts and are short of current operating funds to use for the recovery period. North Valley Arts Council was temporarily housed in a commercial building above water line and therefore still have their administrative hub, but they were in a crucial stage of grant-seeking for renovation of an old movie theatre as a mixed-purpose arts center. That building sustained substantial water damage and no one seems to be able to forecast the probable future of the project at this time. Most of the remaining arts organizations (Symphony, ND Art Gallery, Master Chorale, etc.) were housed above water-line (many on the UND Campus), but operations have been severely interrupted and we will have to wait until folks can move back home to find out how much damage has been done to season ticket sales, fundraising, planning for next season etc. ****** At the request of Governor Schafer, the ND Community Fund is taking donations for non-profit organizations for flood relief. Any donations can be designated to a specific cause (such as 'the arts') or for a specific organization. All donations are 100% tax deductible and 100% of the money goes for flood relief. Contact information: North Dakota Community Foundation, PO BOX 387, Bismarck, ND 58502-2191. Phone 1-800-605-5252. ****** The North Dakota Arts Alliance would like to publicly acknowledge contributions to flood relief for the arts in order to underscore the nationwide support for the belief that rebuilding the arts infrastructure is vital to rebuilding a real community. Such documentation will also provide moral support and generate tangible in-state support for the arts organizations as they undergo the protracted recovery period. Please send notification of flood-reief projects and/or contributions to: North Dakota Arts Alliance PO BOX 428, Minot, ND 58702 or email to nodaa@minot.ndak.net for publication. ******* Individuals and organizations wishing to offer in-kind or replacement-goods relief rather than money donations should contact North Dakota Arts Alliance PO BOX 428, Minot, ND 58702, 701-839-1439, or email to nodaa@minot.ndak.net so we can facilitate the matching of needs with offered assistance. Let's also give some deep thought to establishing an on-going national disaster-relief fund for arts organizations facing unexpected disasters - natural or un-natural. Julie Hornstein (Arts Education Chair, North Dakota Arts Alliance) (home email DHornstein@compuserve.com) . ------------ Forwarded Message ends here ------------ charles alexander / chax press / chax@theriver.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 00:25:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: OREN.IZENBERG@JHU.EDU Subject: Speaking of Stein In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Anyone interested in Stein ought to take a look at listmember Jennifer Ashton's essay in the most recent ELH (#64)-- "Gertrude Stein for Anyone." Besides being an incredibly interesting account of Stein's (changing) thinking about the problem of "identity"--what makes a whole thing whole and how do you represent it (problems thought through in a number of contexts: literary, political, psychological, and mathematical)-- it is also entirely relevant to the questions being raised here: is Stein interested in "narrative" or not, is there one "Stein project" or are there many. Check it out. Best, O. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 00:59:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: epic/narrative / Basho / Carson In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks for clearing up where the Basho translation came from in _Eros.._ I figured it wasn't hers. I love that first line: "old pond" I imagine water covered with duckweed, hence the plop instead of a splash. BTW, I would recommend _Ava_ by Carole Maso in which several narratives intertwine in the mind of a dying woman. On her last day of life, in fact. The novel consists of short "paragraphs," usually one sentence, sometimes more, sometimes fragments, often repetitive, so that the stories build slowly but inexorably. Actually, "build" is a bit misleading. It's more like they coalesce. I would also recommend her outstanding essay in the Mar/Apr 1995 issue of "American Poetry Review" in which she writes: "Woolf in _The Common Reader_: Forget that 'appalling narrative business of the realist: getting from lunch to dinner.'" TTFN, Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:32:48 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart Pat wrote: Yes, David, I think _ Flowchart_ cld indeed qualify as an epic whose epicness consists in its undermining of the trad. idea of the epic, though like you, I've not read it all yet. Patrick P. __________________________ How does undermining trad. ideas of a genre constitute that genre? I suppose if one means by epic "very very large in scale," then that statement would hold, Flowchart being large in the way we are not used to seeing large. But if by epic we are talking about such elements as narrative, characters, blah, blah, then how does undermining those things alone equal the same thing? Is L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry which "resists" or "disrupts" the trad. idea of the lyric, by the same token, also lyric? Dwayne ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 20:30:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: R Johnson/epic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry to beat this drum again: Milton and his contemporaries would have been mightily surprised to hear that epic was already archaic. Within his lifetime Davenant and Crowley wrote epics in English, and it was Dryden's greatest (explicit) ambition, best realized in his pre-All for Love tragedies and in his translation of Vergil. Nor were these guys alone. The continent was humming with epic-making activity. >By using an already-archaic form (epic), Milton in PL seems to find a >narrow middle direction - he de-literalizes biblical prophecy on the one hand >("PL" is clearly a story, a masque) and emphasizes history's chaotic >contingency (one damn thing after another) (especially toward the end of >PL) on the other. But all the "famous" epics seem to take idiosyncratic >approaches toward history. Sorry to keep harping on the oldies. - Old Hank > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 03:01:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: How Could You (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Go to MIRROR URL below; click on in the files section. Alan ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ TEL 718-857-3671 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE CUSEEME 166.84.250.149 ADDRESS: 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY, 11217 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 03:03:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: erratum to the erratum: Beat Women (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Kristin Prevallet asked me to forward this to the list. She is now subscribing to Poetics and will be testing her mic shortly... jk ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 20:31:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Kristin S Prevallet To: Charles Bernstein Subject: erratum to the erratum: Beat Women Erratum to the Erratum: Women of the Beat Generation The Conari Press is attempting to maintain credibility within a larger reading community by sending out an erratum stating that "an unfortunate combination of computer glitches and copy editor confusion" is the cause of Brenda Knight's re-copying of six paragraphs from my essay, "The Reluctant Pixie Poole: A Recovery of Helen Adam." If this is true, I think it is necessary to point to two paragraphs (not included in the six mentioned above) where Knight, in her attempt to disguise her reliance on my text, unfortunately got the facts wrong. I am citing the two examples below not necessarily as an attempt to demean the Conari Press's erratum, but to clarify some of the erroneous scholarship in the Helen Adam introduction to "Women of the Beat Generation"--scholarship to which my name has (perhaps unfortunately) now been linked. 1. Knight wrote: "In 1957, Helen started her own magical poetry and performance troop called the Maidens that included Jess, Madeline Gleason, Robert Duncan, Eve Triem, and James Broughton." It is important to clarify that The Maidens were not a "performance troop [troupe?]," and that it was not "started" by Helen Adam. The Maidens did not perform and they were not a troupe--they were an erudite group of artists who got together at each other's houses, dined and sipped coffee while talking about Poetry (capital "P"). In the same paragraph she continues: "That same year, several important events catapulted the Beats to fame, notably the publication of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" and the "Howl" obscenity trail. The Maidens were intrigued by these new literary radicals, welcoming them at readings and offering encouragement." There is no evidence that The Maidens as a group were intrigued by the Beats. The Maidens as a group were in fact antithetical to the Beats and did not offer the Beats any encouragement. Their hermetic, domestic group deliberately set themselves apart from the North Beach scene. However, although the Maidens were critical of the Beats, Helen Adam herself was not--and defended Allen Ginsberg's poetry in one of the workshops she took. "apex of the M" #6 (forthcoming, Fall 1997), will have a section of the Adam/Duncan correspondence in which Adam defends Ginsberg against "suburban protesters." Anyone interested in The Maidens should read Kevin Killian's excellent essay "Faggot Vomit: Jack Spicer and the Maidens" in the most recent Poetry Project Newsletter. 2. Knight wrote: "In 1964, Helen Adam received national attention when her play "San Francisco's Burning" was staged off-Broadway in New York. Sadly, a series of difficulties coincided with this success. Helen was fired from her filing job of ten years and suffered from stress and depression, leading to hospitalization and a series of shock treatments. Helen and her sister, Pat, never parted, eventually moved to New York City and lived in solitude until their deaths." Knight totally mis-read my essay in coming up with a totally confused paragraph, filled with factual and made-up errors: 1964 was the year that Helen and Pat moved to New York--"San Francisco's Burning" was staged off-off-(off) Broadway at the Judson Poet's Theater in 1968. (I had written a singular "off" in my original essay, but this is incorrect.) The play did not receive National attention, as Miss Knight inferred. Helen's depression was in 1962, when "San Francisco's Burning" was first staged--in San Francisco. Helen and Pat did not live in solitude until their deaths. Pat perhaps--but Helen was quite a star in New York and had lots of friends. I have recently received several letters from friends of hers in New York who are somewhat annoyed with Knight's fabricated statement! Had I known that Knight was going to rely so heavily on my essay, I might have warned her that I wrote the essay early in my work with the Adam archive, and that the facts in the essay were not necessarily set in stone. Unfortunately, as in the "off-Broadway" example, Knight repeated another of my errors. I wrote (and soon after corrected, but apparently not in the version I sent Knight) that ". . . Helen Adam became the pride of Scotland. The Elfin Pedlar was graced even by a note of praise from the Queen of Scotland herself." Ooops! There hasn't been a Queen of Scotland for centuries! Call it a mad-queen's revenge, but it is now published in Knight's introduction that "Upon its publication, Helen Adam became the pride of Scotland; The Elfin Pedlar even elicited a note of praise from the queen of Scotland herself." Helen Adam in fact received a note from an aristocratic acquaintance, who forwarded her a note of praise from the Queen...of England. The two clarifications are separate from my six paragraphs that were "accidentally" used in Knight's introduction. Referring to those, I do not necessarily think that a mass-market trade edition of a book should be bogged down with footnotes and sentences beginning "According to..." However, I do think a book with 30+ long introductions, that is being marketed as "well researched," should have a list of sources credited at the end. Most anthologies do this. Of course, I also think that Brenda Knight would be better off admitting that for the Helen Adam section she was in a bind: that the book was close to press-time, that she wanted to include Helen Adam but had no information, that she called me (a graduate student) for information, that I provided it, and that she unashamedly used it. Because she strategically is refusing to do this, I cannot help but think that other introductions in the book are plagued by the same thievery, although certainly not on as large a scale. This is not to say the "Women of the Beat Generation" was not researched. I do not dispute that Knight conducted hundreds of interviews to get her information for the other sections. Therefore, I think that the only way for The Conari Press to make amends with me (and maintain credibility with the larger reading community) would be to have Brenda Knight go out and do research herself for a new essay about Helen Adam for the second edition. This post reflects more than my own personal anger--the Conari Press is a small press, and this book will probably do quite well for them. (They are marketing it with an audio cassette with Debra Winger reading some of the poems!) Why couldn't it have been done right? It is an offense to the responsibility and respectability of small presses, that it was not. Those interested in Helen Adam can see my early essay at http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/prevallet/adam.html. Or see my essay "A Sketch for a Helen Adam Biography" in the most recent "First Intensity." I made an error in that essay however: Robert Duncan died in 1986 and not in 1988 as I wrote. Thanks again to Maria Damon for referring me to the National Writers Union, who helped settle this case out of court. Sincerely, Kristin Prevallet ERRATUM Due to an unfortunate combination of computer glitches and copy editor confusion, portions of the biographical sketch of Helen Adam in the Conari Press title "Women of the Beat Generation," that were drawn from the work of Kristin Prevallet, appeared without complete attribution. Ms. Prevallet generously provided us with her excellent research on Helen Adam and we apologize for any harm that might have occurred. Future printings will restore the original accurate acknowledgments. Thank You, Will Glennon Publisher, Conari Press Brenda Knight Author, "Women of the Beat Generation" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 05:17:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart Dwayne -- good question. I suspect the answer is (at least often, or sometimes) a (perhaps qualified) "YES, you bet!" -- but others might care to answer / discuss in more detail. These are tricky issues, eh? For instance: If one enters a dialogue w/ a tradition, by (say) breaking the expectations of that tradition, one's piece of the puzzle may still be a piece of the puzzle . . . -- (but your question could be addressed more specifically than I'll muster here at 5 a.m.) d.i. / / / / / >>> Daniel Tessitore 05/09/97 08:32am >>> Pat wrote: Yes, David, I think _ Flowchart_ cld indeed qualify as an epic whose epicness consists in its undermining of the trad. idea of the epic, though like you, I've not read it all yet. Patrick P. __________________________ How does undermining trad. ideas of a genre constitute that genre? I suppose if one means by epic "very very large in scale," then that statement would hold, Flowchart being large in the way we are not used to seeing large. But if by epic we are talking about such elements as narrative, characters, blah, blah, then how does undermining those things alone equal the same thing? Is L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry which "resists" or "disrupts" the trad. idea of the lyric, by the same token, also lyric? Dwayne ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 04:49:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: The Narr Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Narrative = the unfolding of meaning in (across) time As Grenier himself has demonstrated (in more ways than one), even a single vowel has a beginning, middle and end, events that can be modulated, expectations set up and either satisfied, turned aside or turned up on their heads (right side up) The idea of a non-narrative art exists as an idea but it never exists in the face of an actual text or sounded poem Story is a whole other ball o' wax Ron Ron Silliman When this you see 262 Orchard Road Remember me Paoli, PA 19301-1116 (610) 251-2214 (610) 293-6099 (o) (610) 293-5506 (fax) rsillima@ix.netcom.com rsillima@tssc.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 06:58:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic/narrative / Crow / Hass Daniel T. -- I've not read Hughes' *Crow* so can't comment -- but wasn't that, btw, made into an opera (or opera-like thing) by Pete Townsend? d.i. p.s.: By the way, who's Great Britain's poet-laureate these days? Relatedly, is that a job-for-life? (I'm presuming, you're perhaps British, ergo qualified to answer these obscure questions -- though the e-address suggested Japan I think.) Here in DC, Robert Hass gave his farewell reading last week, ending his 2-year stint as Po Laureate -- with some damn good new stuff, must say. I saw him read several times over that period, and my appreciation of the chap certainly grew. Hass was mentioned as having participated in that recent conference -- but I didn't see mention of what he might've had to say. Worth repeating? Robt. Pinsky's the next-in-line-laureate, as you'all perhaps know . . . (maybe Dante Studies will go up on the charts now?) >>> henry 05/08/97 08:25am >>> On Thu, 8 May 1997 21:04:56 +-900 Daniel Tessitore said: > >As to narrative--does Ted Hughes' CROW qualify? He originally had a more >unified narrative frame, complete with a prose bit I believe, and he cut it >out. Can the result be called story, narrative, linear? in my view, even a riddle has a story to tell. - Sherlock Holmes ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 20:08:07 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart David Israel wrote: Dwayne -- good question. I suspect the answer is (at least often, or sometimes) a (perhaps qualified) "YES, you bet!" -- but others might care to answer / discuss in more detail. These are tricky issues, eh? For instance: If one enters a dialogue w/ a tradition, by (say) breaking the expectations of that tradition, one's piece of the puzzle may still be a piece of the puzzle . . . -- (but your question could be addressed more specifically than I'll muster here at 5 a.m.) d.i. _____________________ David, Your assertion, "If one enters...puzzle," goes a long way to clarify (and perhaps even debunk) the rather too dichotomous genre/anti-genre approach. Thanks. To push this along though--here's a bit from Lazer: "Operating outside the universities and the official verse culture, Language Writing has developed a character that makes reviewing it problematic. Detailed readings of its devices and compositional modes might well subordinate LW to the very habits of reading and thought it means to resist." (Opposing Poetries, 1996) This assertion confuses me somewhat, I confess--"its devices...modes" implies that these things are known/knowable (reviewable?) quantities, but "subordinate LW to the very habits..." implies that said devices and modes are the same(?). Dwayne ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 20:12:32 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: epic/narrative / Crow / Hass Nope. American. From Maryland no less. In Japan now yes. I believe British Po Laureate is for life, but I'm not sure. Ad GOD I hope Pete Townshend has not attempted to rock-operize CROW. Dwayne ---------- From: David Israel[SMTP:DISRAEL@SKGF.COM] Sent: Friday, May 09, 1997 7:58 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: epic/narrative / Crow / Hass Daniel T. -- I've not read Hughes' *Crow* so can't comment -- but wasn't that, btw, made into an opera (or opera-like thing) by Pete Townsend? d.i. p.s.: By the way, who's Great Britain's poet-laureate these days? Relatedly, is that a job-for-life? (I'm presuming, you're perhaps British, ergo qualified to answer these obscure questions -- though the e-address suggested Japan I think.) Here in DC, Robert Hass gave his farewell reading last week, ending his 2-year stint as Po Laureate -- with some damn good new stuff, must say. I saw him read several times over that period, and my appreciation of the chap certainly grew. Hass was mentioned as having participated in that recent conference -- but I didn't see mention of what he might've had to say. Worth repeating? Robt. Pinsky's the next-in-line-laureate, as you'all perhaps know . . . (maybe Dante Studies will go up on the charts now?) >>> henry 05/08/97 08:25am >>> On Thu, 8 May 1997 21:04:56 +-900 Daniel Tessitore said: > >As to narrative--does Ted Hughes' CROW qualify? He originally had a more >unified narrative frame, complete with a prose bit I believe, and he cut it >out. Can the result be called story, narrative, linear? in my view, even a riddle has a story to tell. - Sherlock Holmes ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:04:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: The Narr In-Reply-To: <1997595501666334@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 9 May 1997 rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > Narrative = the unfolding of meaning in (across) time 'time based' cf 'narrative'. music may or may not be narrative. (may or may not be time based for that matter, but..) sculpture.. you get the idea. as to the unfolding of a vowel and the (please!) avoidance of hegel, i dare say your guess is as good as mine though what either knows of the other does not necessarily include narrative. that would require a change of mind. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:18:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: R Johnson/epic In-Reply-To: <970508150855_611000140@emout07.mail.aol.com> from "CharSSmith@AOL.COM" at May 8, 97 03:58:59 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > No, Mike, I wasn't just being a smartass. I certainly never thought that, Charles, only that your question perhaps answered itself. > What does it mean to place one's work in that tradition, offering a "long > poem," while disavowing any need to grapple with history? Doesn't it mean to step up to a different plate, to enter a different conversation, as far as the writing goes. And to locate poetry in a very sepcific relation to the world. I hear you on the question of creative imagination, but it seems to me the difference between, say, Ark and Maximus is not about creative imagination but literally and irreducibly about "history". > Against the sweeping totalizing gestures of Whitman, Pound, Olson, does "A" > offer one alternative? where the "grand narrative" gives way to the > individual poet's attention & arrangements? _Ark_ seems to strive for LZ's > "totality at rest." The two poems foreground the creative imagination through > their music & architectonics. I don't think I'd agree that any of these are "totalizing gestures" (a phrase that these days oozes with malediction). On the contrary, all of them are defenetrating gestures. The problem is in how they come to terms with history--Whitman overwhelmed by democratic possibility, Pound overwhelmed by reactionary nostaligia for heroic culture, Olson--I can't say about Olson right now, but the problem doesn't seem to be "totalizing grand narratives." Again, it's got to do with the specifics of the relation to history. So you're right in that avoiding an articulation of a relation to history would get you around that problem. And out of the conversation that preoccupies the telling/doing/seeing (Dave Chirot's "site/sight/cite") we are calling the epic. It seems to me that once again we get caught in Ulro with our simplistic dichotomy between "(totalizing) narrative = epic" vs. "non-ordering intervention = (non-totalizing) non-narrative", where, as those French guys teach, one side of this equation is good and the other ain't so good (like individual/social, I/other etc.) It must be handy to have it all laid out in such a neat, moral map, but isn't what we're looking for a story? An(other) telling of our story? Isn't part of our problem in finding a new relation to meaning as we encounter it in history? And having stepped right into the middle of that stinker, I'm going to go change the baby. Good to talk with you, Charles. Best, Mike ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:12:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: epic as poem of war Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >From: Pierre Joris >Re envisioning a contemporary epic possibility see also Alice Notley's >_Homer's Art_ (in the "Curriculum of the Soul" series), as lovely & >sharp corrective to allmale at-swords-point heroic epic. ...but also see Simone Weil's "The Iliad: Poem of War" (prob. a familiar citation to most on this list. Yes?) Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:22:42 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: The Narr In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 9 May 1997 04:49:07 -0500 from On Fri, 9 May 1997 04:49:07 -0500 said: >Narrative = the unfolding of meaning in (across) time > >The idea of a non-narrative art exists as an idea >but it never exists in the face of an actual text or sounded poem > >Story is a whole other ball o' wax > Is story then narrative made mimetic - that is an image (partial, distorted) of recognizable reality (i.e. reality as a combination, a whole, living, not an abstracted simple sound, etc. or discourse). - "Henry" illegitimate granddaughter of "Stein" "Coolidge" & "Fernando" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:36:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: categories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Imagine a world fully defined by the rules of geometry, in which all entities are geometric entities. Imagine within that world a space in the shape of a star. Imagine further that we possess a mechanism which allows us to enlarge or reduce this space, which may be a mental space (and the mechanism a mental mechanism), without changing its geometry (its proportions if you will). Now we take an object in hand. Using our mechanism we may compare the object in hand and the space-in-the-shape-of-a-star to determine whether the object will fit the space in such a way that all the vectors determining the space's shape touch at each point all the vectors determining the object's shape. If so we would be in a position to say: "this object is a star" or more modestly, "here is evidence that this object is a star -- it has the shape of a star." In so reduced a world it is possible categories of mind might work in the way I describe. And in this way does the discussion of epic and narrative on this list proceed. Probably not, however, as an unstated assumption of a typological narrative such as mine (above) is that there is an operator inside the world with access to at least one dimension beyond the world being operated (e.g. "take an object in hand", etc.). A good place to start learning how categories actually work is _Women, Fire, & Dangerous Things_ by George Lakoff. ...or as Alberto Caiero for F. Pessoa InterPersonal writes (more or less) "The wind sings I am wind" -- i.e. not "I am windiness." Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:41:45 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: epic as poem of war In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 9 May 1997 08:12:32 -0400 from On Fri, 9 May 1997 08:12:32 -0400 Tom Mandel said: > >...but also see Simone Weil's "The Iliad: Poem of War" (prob. a familiar >citation to most on this list. Yes?) I think that's "Iliad : Poem of Force" (just to pick lice) - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:45:52 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: categories In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 9 May 1997 08:36:46 -0400 from Tom, look out, there's a comet approaching your left category from the north. Don't let "it" slug you or bully you in any way. I think the discussion of narrative & epic & poetry started in from a scattered astronomical forte anomaly. The engendering trope master dictation squirrel envelope big bang involved the originary question: is the issue of storytellying/narrative/drama/"action" (in Arrydistortle's sense) interesting with respect to "poetry in the public sphere"? & it's opened a field theoretical blurb knockabout kookaburra in several directions. but if you're tired we can go back to discussion engineer fluid mechanisms in remote extracurricular control. - Star Vehicle 13 (Gould) also, Spandrift Squirt Elephant 4-wheeler has asked me to shut the trap for a spell. closing... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 09:01:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: feathers to iron Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm a few days/weeksd/months behind on the list ...(and always reading from most recent to oldest, which somehow doesn't improve one's sense of having conclusions to work from in moving toward valid premises)... Mike Boughn's mention of _From Feathers to Iron_ passes me by -- Mike, which "Clarke" is the author, and can you say more about the book? (by backchannel if it had been identified to the list and I mist). plop! (damn a piece of scone fell into my cocoa) Huh, I could have sworn I read a couple of references to "as far as I've read in" one poem and other indications of asking whether X is Y when you don't know X. Of course time is tight right now, epically tight. (actually, that tastes good. all soft and kind of having lost any reference to what intentions went into its making. it's as if the scone was a modifier of the cocoa or as if it's all really cocoa, some is just also scone or was) If I mispell mispelling as mipselling, and claim its high intelligence, only Ron Silliman on this list will read that as a joke and also see it as a key to an epic narrative of our lives (hint: "mip" is an acronym). (I bet I could market this? Not crisp enough? Hmmm, how to keep the scone bits crisp in the cocoa...) Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:33:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: erratum to the erratum: Beat Women (fwd) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" kristin prevallet writes: >Those interested in Helen Adam can see my early essay at >http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/prevallet/adam.html. >Or see my essay "A Sketch for a Helen Adam Biography" in the most recent >"First Intensity." I made an error in that essay however: Robert Duncan >died in 1986 and not in 1988 as I wrote. > it's my understandng that duncan died in 1988. i was on an mla panel on duncan at mla 1987, and there was some excitement abt whether duncan wd be able to come or not; he couldn't, as he was too ill. btw, thanks for the update on l'affaire conari! i hope the settlement is somewhat to your satisfaction. conari should, at least, in my opinion, be thoroughly embarrassed.--md ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 09:44:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Don't agree. Someone's work can be, taken as a whole, fairly representative of a given direction...I got ambushed because I know about 6 Coolidge books, a whole lot of writing, but not At Egypt, which everyone keeps mentioning. The principle still works, tho', as an abreviation of longer arguments I don't have the time to type in. Bocce is more than those balls down the court! MP On Thu, 8 May 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > See, the thing is, there is no such thing as "Coolidge" or "Stein". To say ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 10:04:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Re: Simone Weil Comments: To: Daniel Zimmerman In-Reply-To: <3373557D.10AF@tribeca.ios.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" No, I think I misquoted the title from memory. At 09:49 AM 5/9/97 -0700, you wrote: >Tom, > In the Pendle Hill pamphlet version of Weil's piece, it reads >"...Poem of Force." Does "force" work as a translation? Do you know the >French [I don't]; does it read "guerre"? > If "force" really does translate it [it seems to, the way she >talks about the numbing character of terror], that wd. put a different >spin on "epic," eh? >Dan Zimmerman > Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 07:43:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: epic as epic In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970509081232.006bcd50@cais.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII just curious -- has anyone out there ever read Paul Ricoeur's works on _Time and Narrative_? I only have Vol. I -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 08:56:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: narrative / non-narrative Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm a bit behind, but play with these terms has certainly been going on in Canadian criticism of various kinds of long poems up here. Actually, Charles Berstein would still recall coming on to speak at The Long-Liners conference back in 1984 right after Gary Geddes, a very trad poet, had held forth on the desirability of getting out from under the influence of such terrible poets s Pound (!) & back to storytelling. Charles's response, one I have come to expect & enjoy since meeting him later, was "I'm pleased to follow Gary Geddes because I can report to you that I disagreed with most of what he said." And most of the papers at the conference took up other modes of long poem than the 'simple' narrative. But I want to point to Canadian master of the long poem & its poetics, Robert Kroetsch, whose ongoing poem is called Field Notes (_Completed Field Notes_ Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989). In an essay, "For Play and Entrance: The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem" (in _The Lovely Treachery of Words_ Toronto: Oxford UP, 1989 [these can be tracked down if you try]), he says, specifically of bpNichol's _The Martyrology_: "In Nichol we have, supremely, against the grammar of inherited story, the foregrounding of language. But the limits of language are such (the spirit become flesh; The Word become words) that all should be written down." And: "A method, then, and then, and then, of composition; against the 'and then' of story. . . . The story as fragment _becomes_ the long poem: the story becomes its own narrative; i.e., our interest is in, not story, but the _act_ of telling the story." That's a beginning, of a way of looking at the reading of a lot of US long poems too, how they pull us into the ongoing process of writing/reading, or, perhaps, in response, reading/writing. And it has something to do with the onrushing catching of one's interest in a series of 'sonnets' in Jack Clarke's _In the Analogy_ (which I also recommend), as the accumulate the narrative of their own coming to be, in order... Works, in its way, too, for those parts of _Ark_ I have so far read. ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigary H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 11:08:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII agreed: though the continuity of Stein and Stein, from for example Melanctha to for example Tender Buttons teaches me a lot by the fact of continuity: On Thu, 8 May 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > I am feeling like an old bocce player now as I exclaim "But sure that's > narrative, _The Making of Americans_." There are characters, there is > development, aggh. > > See, the thing is, there is no such thing as "Coolidge" or "Stein". To say > "Coolidge" or "Stein" is to ignore that these people did more than repeat > a dominant trope. Every time you think of them that way you're thinking of > a Big Mac, and every time you think of a Big Mac, you salivate (and/or > retch). The function of literature inasmuch as things people say write or > type can have functions is to remind people that although autonomic > response is an exciting option it is not one one is bound to. Omit your > independence to your cost. > > Ah, see, you made me get soaked in romantic individualism again. Anyway > before the quarter in this coin-op John Godfrey-imitation wears out, let > me finish by reminding you that this is all closer to law than science, > that it's only argument bullying clarity and detail that go over here. No > work worth talking about is one thing, and no person can be spoken of with > respect as a simple unified person, with respect to the wild ongoing > cellular recordkeeping anyway. > > So, > Jordan(s) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 11:22:52 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: epic as epic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > > just curious -- has anyone out there ever read Paul Ricoeur's works on > _Time and Narrative_? I only have Vol. I -- Yeap, ages ago. Got stuck somwhere towards the end of vol II when Mrs Dalloway comes in. Have promised myself often to get back to it, but sofar no time, or else for taste for Ricoeur nas waned. Not sure which. -- Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 11:29:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Re: epic/lyric Aldon wrote: >>"narrative" and "lyric," while naming >>difference, are inextricably and definitionally >>bound up in one another's >>cloudy metahphrical arms thanks aldon. been thinking about sappho in this context: Most men take strategic knights, while others claim armymen; the rest hold up battleships as the greatest show on earth. But I declaim. It's who do you love. It's no trouble to cinch this once and for all. For she was Helena, beauty of the mortal elsewhere, who left the man, the aristocrat, behind. And went floating off to Troy, with no mind for offspring or beloved parents. Love walked her sideways, knowing straightway. For swayed lightly t one puts me in mind of Anaktoria, now out of sight. I would rather see her step the lovely and do the facial shine more than any continental chariot decked with soldiers under arms. sometimes i think epic was over when this poem got written. or virgil was a dope for not realizing it. BillL ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 12:06:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: epic/narrative In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 9 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > Don't agree. Someone's work can be, taken as a whole, fairly > representative of a given direction...I got ambushed because I know about > 6 Coolidge books, a whole lot of writing, but not At Egypt, which everyone > keeps mentioning. The principle still works, tho', as an abreviation of > longer arguments I don't have the time to type in. Bocce is more than > those balls down the court! Granted. I guess in my rush to defend the complications, I oversimplified. This is not to cede the right to describe the vector and the complications of that vector, though, which I see as really enmeshed (cough) with narrative, or with story anyway. Narrative I hear more and more as a code word for 'identity fiction'. A story, I sort of know what that is. Something happened. To know what happened, though, you have to know this other thing that happened before, and this longstanding idea the people involved have of what is going to happen someday, and then you have to know how all these people deal with each other. Coolidge goes through this in most of the post-Solution Passage books I've seen, especially Mine, Mesh, and During. True, it's harder to see how this kind of description of Coolidge's work would apply to stuff like Space or The So. And then there's the perpetual metanarrative of the poem talking to other poems? the poem's own identity politics? Blah blah but trying to say something anyway, fuzzy Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 09:06:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: A Berkeley reading this time! Comments: To: maz881@aol.com, CHRIS1929W@aol.com, Levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, daviesk@is4.NYU.EDU, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, drothschild@penguin.com, jdavis@panix.com, jms@acmenet.net, maj6916@u.cc.utah.edu, AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM, jarnot@pipeline.com, lgoodman@acsu.buffalo.edu, lppl@aol.com, poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, aburns@fnbank.com, normacole@aol.com, acornford@igc.org, olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbg.com, tlovell@sfsu.edu, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, peacock99@aol.com, murphym@earthlink.com, cburket@sfsu.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" John High and Thoreau Lovell did a real final farewell reading together on Wednesday, May 7th. After hurriedly paying our tab for dinner at Blake's (about which the less said the better) we hustled over to Cody's where _Poetry Flash_ dude Richard Silburg introduced Thoreau, Thoreau having won the coin toss. Thoreau read mostly newer work, concentrating on a sequence called "Amnesia's Diary", which he capped by forgetting the last line of the last poem, which was "fools in all our forgetting". The appropriateness of such forgetting enhanced the easy spirit of the occasion rather than making Thoreau look bad. Some other lines of Thoreau's included: ash to electronic exuberance a prayerwheel of indestructible magazine poses sound of water in the air one old chromosome watching over the city the clocks and the weather stopped talking to each other smoking mountains stolen from the eyes of grazing horses Thoreau also read "Pots and Pans", "Sharks", "Sex No Sex" and "Parts of It" There was a short break and Richard introduced John, who read from the Sasha Poems (mostly different than at his last two readings): the fog lifting over Dogen's head, the sitting master weeping specific ghosts are not real ghosts our life depended on a meaning obvious in the bird's posture o world, if you contain our silence, where will it grow? that which you do not bring forth will destroy you the chanting, like smoke, lifting from the Siberian wilderness [I erroneously reported this line last month as "Siberian landscape"--D'ohh!] Poppa, have all of these birds come to see me? All of our lives we evade the truth, Hermes said these days the sun feels almost too fantastic In the audience were Jandy Nelson, Julia Ward, Andrew Joron, Fanny Howe, Michelle Murphy, Sally Doyle, Anne and George, Cheryl Burket, Jack and Adelle Foley, Chris Daniels, Pat Reed, and John's friend Bob whom he met on the 'net and was just now pressing flesh with for the first time. A bunch of us went back to Blake's for more [i.e. drinks] afterwards. And then there was the ride back across the Bay, an adventure in its own write, but a bit beyond the purview of a reading report, sorry! Have a fabulous trip, John. {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{ }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}} }}}}waves woven on the loom of the sea{{{ {Steve Carll sjcarll@slip.net} }http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym{ {http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym} }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}} {{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 10:14:49 MDT Reply-To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: American Airlines Petition Comments: To: REALEX@aol.com, sansom@tiac.net, sueneric@gis.net, kathryn.stockton@m.cc.utah.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Please pass this on... ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- BACKGROUND: American Airlines is a major sponsor to and supporter of groupslike GLADD, the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the AIDS Action Foundation, DIFFA, AmFAR, and scores of community-based groups representing gays and lesbians. It is also the first airline to adopt a written non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation in its employment practices. In an unusual joint letter was released to the media on Friday, March 14th from the Family Research Council, Concerned Women of America, American Family Association and Coral Ridge Ministries. Radical right leader Beverly LaHaye also went on Christian "talk radio" on Friday to blast American Airlines because "American's sponsorship of homosexual 'pride' events constitutes an open endorsement of promiscuous homosexuality." She and the other groups have written Bob Crandall at American to complain that the airline has "gone beyond mere tolerance" of gays and lesbians. The full article appeares in Friday's Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and possibly picked up by other newspapers around the country. It has come to the attention of the gay and Lesbian community that American Airline's switchboard and e-mails are being bombarded now by homophobic and hateful callers who have been urged by LaHaye and others to DEMAND the company terminate its gay-friendly policies. ***if you are the 25th, 50th, 75th, 100th, etc. person to sign this petition then please forward this to American Airlines at: Webmaster@amrcorp.com *** > > To American Airlines: We, the undersigned, support your gay/lesbian rights polices and commend you for your efforts in ending discrimination. Thank you > for your dedication to such issues and please continue to remain active in the struggle to end discrimination. > > 1. Marybeth Kurtz, Philadelphia, PA > 2. Jen Faust, Goucher College, Balto. MD > 3. Heather Riley, UMBC, Balto., MD > 4. Katy Schuman, UMBC, Balto., MD > 5. Rebekka Gold, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. > 6. Danielle Hirsch, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. > 7. Jerrod Wendland, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. > 8. Jon Morgan, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH. > 9. Keri Rainsberger, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. > 10. Cheryl Lynn Bates, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. > 11. Court Singrey, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. > 12. Carol Fischer, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. > 13. Patrick Wojahn, University of Wisconsin--Madison. > 14. Dee Michel, University of Wisconsin--Madison > 15. Adam L. Schiff, University of Washington, Seattle, WA > 16. Tim Bratsos, San Francisco, CA > 17. Craig Hibbs, San Bruno, CA > 18. Edwin S. Blacker, Washington, DC > 19. R. Thomas Rodriguez, Washington, DC > 20. Rumi Matsuyama, Hyattsville, MD > 21. Bart Broome, San Francisco, CA > 22. John Cordaro, San Francisco, CA > 23. Bryan Hughes, San Francisco, CA > 24. Linh Pham, San Francisco, CA > 25. Will Sayo, San Jose, CA > 26. Wayne Sobon, San Francisco, CA. > 27. Marta Tanenhaus, Washington, D.C. > 28. Read Sherman, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA > 29. Beth Ward, Northampton, MA > 30. David Van Fossen, Brooklyn, NY > 31. Emily Barton, Brooklyn, NY > 32. Ruth Tobias, Boulder, CO 33. Cathy Wagner, Salt Lake City, UT 34. Christopher Alexander, Salt Lake City, UT .. Christopher Alexander, etc. nominative press collective 160S 1300E #16 / Salt Lake City UT 84102 calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 12:16:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: LINEbreak in RealAudio Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Now up at the EPC in RealAudio, LINEbreak programs with Susan Howe (two half-hour shows) Madeline Gins Barbara Guest Ben Friedlander http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak/programs/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 10:44:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: Orpehus (apologies, a little long) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 8 May 1997, henry gould wrote: > I'm reading a book about the pervasiveness of an "orpheus" story in many > variations in native american storytelling. The orpheus myth of Greece > (coming maybe originally from eastward) makes the journeyer to the > world of the dead a poet (in the stories or myths usually its "just" > a man or woman going to try to fetch lover/kin back to the living). > Does the greek version add a "reflexive" element - because this is > THE epic tale? > Henry, I'm not sure it's "THE" epic, but it does of course feature the trip to the dead I spoke of a few days back -- not, apparently, from the east of Greece, but from the north. Dodds' book _The Greeks and The Irrational_ (still a great read) has a section on Orpheus that says the myth came from Siberian shamanism -- the trip to Hades, then, was originally the shaman's ability to bridge the two worlds, be in contact with departed spirits. Orpheus was first a priest -- the lover and the poet came a little later. For you, and for anyone else still interested in the "old guys", a few sections from my work-in-progress _Orpheus Retold_. "a little too much in love with his own music" he'd gotten used to the women's eyes closing, their bodies swaying in trance, thought no one could resist those melodies, piercing the bloodsteam, swifter than any drug . . . so challenged the death gods, offered himself instead, "and the bloodless ghosts, too, were in tears." Triumphant, he started back up, but couldn't stop thinking about the audience he'd just left, command performance, and looked back to see if there were any more hangers-on . . . someone should have told him: you can't approach the dead by looking for them. Soon the critics got restless, dissing him like a pop star whose second album sells less than the first. They wondered if he'd lost it, that unique sound, that voice . . . he took to the hills, becoming "the first of Thrace to prefer young boys" they never looked back ORPHEUS SPEAKS I don't trust these animals, yellow eyes gleaming in the dark. They'd just as soon rip me apart. I don't know why I turned around -- I couldn't even see her face in the dark. The villagers say it was love, but Aphrodite is not my god. She knows I serve a different master: order, harmony. What would happen if I stopped playing? In the dark they'd rip me apart. The drunken sailors on the ship -- all they remembered were the birds. Did they ever find that fleece? I was watching the birds. Order, harmony. The dead liked it too, their shadows were dancing. Drunken sailors. Animals. Aphrodite is not my god. I couldn't even see her face. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 14:10:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: epic/narrative / Crow / Hass In-Reply-To: <01BC5CB5.54A70840@annex-1.tiu.ac.jp> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dipping into poetix after a blurry absence, and just want to add my approval of the Hass *Essential Haiku*--excellent translations and a lot of good intro and background material as well. steve Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 14:34:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MinkaCroy@AOL.COM Subject: Poets Theatre at New Langton Arts Hello all, I'm a literature curator at New Langton Arts in San Francisco and I am interested in having the organization put on some small productions of plays which could be considered "poets' theatre". If you have a script and might be interested in having me look at it, please send me an email with a brief description of the play and a brief bio. If anyone has Fiona Templeton's email address, I would appreciate back channel forwarding of same. thanks Camille Roy MinkaCroy@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 14:38:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: The Narr In-Reply-To: <1997595501666334@ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In response to/with Ron Silliman's noting Robert Grenier's work in re narrative--(glad this was raised)-- Grenier has an excellent book on narrative in the Curriculum of the Soul series which John Clarke edited. It's called ATTENTION: SEVEN NARRATIVES Grenier's work, like Larry Eigner's, presents the movement of attention. (And that movement opening out--from the page out in to the world--a poem for Eigner being "like taking a walk"--and finding it extend--: "serenditipty"--the movement of the poem being the narrative) In Grenier's work of the last ten years, the movement is in space as well as in time. (Note: recent work by Grenier, including a 45 pp. piece for Larry Eiger--is up at Light and Dust Books. Larry Eigner's Air the Trees is also there http://www.thing.net/~grist/homekarl.htm The "unfolding of meaning in (across) time" RS mentions is spatialized--and literalized. In Spring and All WCW wrote that he would "invite" the reader to "read and see"--hence the emphasis on visual design (from Demuth and Gris) in Williams' work--the verbal arrangment , the american idiom, often being "dictated" by the visual structure. (As a kind of eidetic after image--WCW noting to Edith Heal that he reworked "The Nightingales" for his first Collected--"see how much better it looks on the page".) Grenier, who works a good deal with the early modernism of WCW and Stein--notes that "langauge follows joyful seeing". Narrative in the work--"scrawl poems" as usually called--is literally the seeing and reading of the work--following the lines, making (or "making out" if one thinks of the activity as "deciphering")--making the shapes of the letters and these making words--seeing moves into "sounding"--sounding out the words--the work, the narrative that unfolds meaning through time as RS has it--is spatialized--time "takes Place"--in the horizontal overlays and overlaps, the moving in and out of each other, of the words, often written "on top of" each other--one is seeing the words in space as well as seeing and reading in time-- this connection with seeing in space and time works with an interrelationship like that of light--light is simultaneously particle and wave--the "exact" position can not be "measured"--when moving among a page of Grenier's writing--or "across" many of them--as they are meant to be laid out in groupings--so one may read "across" or up and down--with the lines and forms of each letter, each word, each page--being able to be seen and read as particles--and as participating in a wave-- "Narrative" then is not "only" movement "towards" a "meaning"--it is literally the activity of the attention in the seeing and reading of the letters/words "between shapes and sounds" (RG)-- The movement of/with/in attention is the narrative. In seeing and reading--I think Grenier is opening possibilites in a simulateneity of Williams' "only the imagination is real" and "no ideas but in things". (The work does not "answer" this so much as, with all Grenier's work--ask questions about "the actual as the gift of the possible". "That which exits through itself is what is called meaning" Olson wrote--Grenier's work here as well opens many questions-- --dave baptiste chirot On Fri, 9 May 1997 rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > Narrative = the unfolding of meaning in (across) time > > As Grenier himself has demonstrated (in more ways than one), even a single > vowel has a beginning, middle and end, events that can be modulated, > expectations set up and either satisfied, turned aside or turned up on their > heads (right side up) > > The idea of a non-narrative art exists as an idea > but it never exists in the face of an actual text or sounded poem > > Story is a whole other ball o' wax > > > Ron > > Ron Silliman When this you see > 262 Orchard Road Remember me > Paoli, PA 19301-1116 > (610) 251-2214 > (610) 293-6099 (o) > (610) 293-5506 (fax) > rsillima@ix.netcom.com > rsillima@tssc.com > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 12:57:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: poetry collections/information please Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A plea to the list for information! To the best of my knowledge there's no list available of all poetry secial collections like the Archive at UCSD or Poet's House at U. of Arizona. Obviously such a list would be useful to publishers like me and the poets they publish. Please help me compile one (or inform me if one exists) by front- or backchannelling info. If I get responses I will assemble and send to the list. Thanks Mark of the Junction ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 16:06:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Poets Theatre at New Langton Arts Camille Roy writes -- << I'm a literature curator at New Langton Arts in San Francisco and I am interested in having the organization put on some small productions of plays which could be considered "poets' theatre". . . >> sounds like a fruitful idea -- I've memory of seeing something along those lines one evening at New Langton abt. 10 years ago -- a work-in-progress (I think it was) from Lyn Hejinian & Carla Harriman [pardon re: spelling], w/ walk-thru cameos by members of the Rova quartet ... that program also featured Leslie Scalapino's reading (w/ work of somewhat theatrical nature) . . . & other good things . . . << If anyone has Fiona Templeton's email address, I would appreciate back channel forwarding of same. >> I've just now sent you that address backchannel ... d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 16:19:03 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Orpehus (apologies, a little long) In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 9 May 1997 10:44:50 -0700 from merciphoulos, Joel. this question of leaving "obvious" narrative & "obvious" history (we're all arty geniuses here!) for mod-postmod emphasis of the "alnguage orfgrounded" - this is whut i was intersticed in re the Orph story frum Greece - seemeth liketh iteth iseth an urly examp of doubling doubling-back, that is, the guy gal who goes surfing in Hades for Your idiocee is not just some ordinary Injun but a POET la la ... is this an urly examp of Greek self-conshushness in gen i.e. concept of urthly actual "Man" as upposed to eastern abstraxct muthology... Olsun din' like th greeks mut they wuz doon thugh same thinguh... - Chuckie Cheez who hateth poetwy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 16:29:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: poetry collections/information please Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" There must be one--I'd like it too if/when you find it. Probably a search engine could do it, with some thrashing around. sp >A plea to the list for information! >To the best of my knowledge there's no list available of all poetry secial >collections like the Archive at UCSD or Poet's House at U. of Arizona. >Obviously such a list would be useful to publishers like me and the poets >they publish. Please help me compile one (or inform me if one exists) by >front- or backchannelling info. If I get responses I will assemble and send >to the list. >Thanks > >Mark of the Junction ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 15:47:29 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: poetry collections/information please Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this wd obviously be a service to many of us on the list, so if anyone answers, please do so front-channel thanks!--md At 12:57 PM 5/9/97, Mark Weiss wrote: >A plea to the list for information! >To the best of my knowledge there's no list available of all poetry secial >collections like the Archive at UCSD or Poet's House at U. of Arizona. >Obviously such a list would be useful to publishers like me and the poets >they publish. Please help me compile one (or inform me if one exists) by >front- or backchannelling info. If I get responses I will assemble and send >to the list. >Thanks > >Mark of the Junction ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 16:31:01 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: The Narr In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 9 May 1997 14:38:04 -0500 from I thunk it wuz that "which EXISTS" not exits thru itsulf, Dave, tho you throw an inturrsting insect purrcatspucturf on whut i thogught I wuz quotin frum muh dream about a black cat santhemum - ANYHO, people, less clean up the litterbox & open the mailbox sez OZ - - Chas/ hey anybody read NIGHT STUDIO by Musa Mayer? talk about sighs & clops plop !! bug-eyed slowmotion narratolgist allergists... hu earful E suds talk to me, the poem goes into the lungs, give me not this glue to the Eigner/Grenier acronym...eyeball one eyeball huh? take a look at it thru Phil Guston's layabout... it blows smoke thru the scented dimney...uri y :) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 10:41:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: epic redux Comments: To: Daniel Tessitore MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Dwayne, Undermining traditional ideas of a genre re-constitutes that genre through resistance to the assumptions implicit in the genre, through resistance to the ideas which govern or define the genre's identity, and this is done by borrowing the terms of the genre and playfully (as in Ashbery's case) standing them on their head even while acknowledging to some extent a degree of fidelity to the original model - in _Flowchart's_ case, _The Prelude_. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Daniel Tessitore To: POETICS Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart Date: Friday, May 09, 1997 3:06AM How does undermining trad. ideas of a genre constitute that genre? I suppose if one means by epic "very very large in scale," then that statement would hold, Flowchart being large in the way we are not used to seeing large. But if by epic we are talking about such elements as narrative, characters, blah, blah, then how does undermining those things alone equal the same thing? Is L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry which "resists" or "disrupts" the trad. idea of the lyric, by the same token, also lyric? Dwayne ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 09:18:59 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: readings... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry for this pedestrian question... any interesting readings in NYC 16-21 May - or the few days before the 16th in San Francisco? Dan Salmon ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 14:46:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hold everything--is someone claiming that The Prelude is an epic? At 10:41 AM 5/9/97 -0500, you wrote: >Dwayne, > >Undermining traditional ideas of a genre re-constitutes that genre through >resistance to the assumptions implicit in the genre, through resistance to >the ideas which govern or define the genre's identity, and this is done by >borrowing the terms of the genre and playfully (as in Ashbery's case) >standing them on their head even while acknowledging to some extent a degree >of fidelity to the original model - in _Flowchart's_ case, _The Prelude_. > >Patrick Pritchett > ---------- >From: Daniel Tessitore >To: POETICS >Subject: Re: epic/narrative - Flowchart >Date: Friday, May 09, 1997 3:06AM > >How does undermining trad. ideas of a genre constitute that genre? I >suppose if one means by epic "very very large in scale," then that >statement would hold, Flowchart being large in the way we are not used to >seeing large. But if by epic we are talking about such elements as >narrative, characters, blah, blah, then how does undermining those things >alone equal the same thing? Is L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry which "resists" or >"disrupts" the trad. idea of the lyric, by the same token, also lyric? > >Dwayne > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 14:44:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: poetry collections/information please Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sylvester--I've tried same but make no claims to search proficiency. A good start would be if anyone on the list whose institution (barred or otherwise) has such a collection would send the list the details. At 04:29 PM 5/9/97 -0400, you wrote: >There must be one--I'd like it too if/when you find it. Probably a search >engine could do it, with some thrashing around. sp > > >>A plea to the list for information! >>To the best of my knowledge there's no list available of all poetry secial >>collections like the Archive at UCSD or Poet's House at U. of Arizona. >>Obviously such a list would be useful to publishers like me and the poets >>they publish. Please help me compile one (or inform me if one exists) by >>front- or backchannelling info. If I get responses I will assemble and send >>to the list. >>Thanks >> >>Mark of the Junction > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 18:39:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic redux Mark Weiss implores: >hold everything--is someone claiming that The Prelude is an epic? that's easier said than done! Also interesting might be this question: is the epic a prelude? d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 15:53:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pre-lude as in "before the game?" "Girls-in-short-skirts-jumping-up-and-down?" At 06:39 PM 5/9/97 -0400, you wrote: >Mark Weiss implores: > >>hold everything--is someone claiming that The Prelude is an epic? > >that's easier said than done! > >Also interesting might be this question: is the epic a prelude? > >d.i. > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 19:00:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: epic redux MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Weiss wrote: > > Pre-lude as in "before the game?" "Girls-in-short-skirts-jumping-up-and-down?" > > At 06:39 PM 5/9/97 -0400, you wrote: > >Mark Weiss implores: > > > >>hold everything--is someone claiming that The Prelude is an epic? > > > >that's easier said than done! > > > >Also interesting might be this question: is the epic a prelude? > > > >d.i. > > > >Pray, lewd! "Hey, man: I never touched her." --Achilles on Briseis. Sure. & I thought Odysseus had a corner on the epithet "smooth-tongued"... --Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 19:21:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic redux -Reply Mark Weiss: >hold everything--is someone claiming that The Prelude is an epic? d.i.: >that's easier said than done! [i.e., to hold everything] > >Also interesting might be this question: is the epic a prelude? M.W.: >Pre-lude as in "before the game?" >"Girls-in-short-skirts-jumping-up-and-down?" poss. along those lines -- though (much) more generally: that which precedes something else. Presumably, the age of the epic is precursor to other ages. For since one cannot so easily hold everything, things must continue to tumble forth bit by bit, life by life, age by age; and thereby, the era of the epic seems distant & dim -- hence its hold of (perhaps) a nostalgic interest? Further in re: (notions of) "prelude" -- here?s some lines fished from my unpublished paraphernalia / / / / Caffe Reggio He in a new confusion of his understanding; I in a new understanding of my confusion. Robert Graves How many thought the hopeless hope would find itself as a voice moving across the occluded distances? Was language prelude? Did we (as claimed) engage in such rich pantomime only to disclose piecemeal how words might yet relinquish words? And at the end -- at the end of everything, was the silent laughter waiting? a jocular subtlety? a punchline so *diffuse* it hits you in the gut not *ex cathedra*: trilling (rather) in stray reports of bird & car: oblique persistences that arise pell-mell, though you've deposited no quarter? . . . [above is 1st of 7 stanzas] (New York City, Nov. 1992) cheerio, d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 20:36:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: new L=A=N=G Bk, Waldrop, Watten &&& @ Bridge Street Lots new. Ordering instructions at the end of the list. 1. _The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_, Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein ed., Southern Illonois, $18.95. It's back, it's blue red & pink. "A chip of uninfected substance; or else, a 'glimpse', a crack into what otherwise might . . ." 2. _Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization_, Arjun Appadurai, Minnesota, $18.95. 3. _Geopoetics: The Politics of Mimesis in Poststructuralist French Poetry and Theory_, Joan Brandt, Stanford, $17.95. 4. _Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative_, Judith Butler, $16.95, Routledge. "Can repetition be both the way that trauma is repeated but also the way in which it breaks with the historicity to which it is in thrall? What makes for a reverse citation in the scene of trauma, how can hate speech be cited against itself?" 5. _In the Analogy_, John Clarke, shuffaloff, $18. "Somebody snickered and we got Newton,/ so things have been falling ever since" 6. _Corporations are Gonna Get Your Mama_, ed. Kevin Danaher, foreword by Noam Chomsky, Common Courage, $15.95. Contributors include Richard Barnet, Kirkpatrick Sale, & Jerry Mander. 7. _perhaps this is a rescue fantasy_, Heather Fuller, Edge, $10. "I don't know this femme but she's dreamed me in peignoir." "For Heather Fuller enjamb north-south-street-lettres smarts in narralyrical riff space full of humor & attention & rage." -- Joan Retallack. 8. _Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation_, Gerard Genette, Cambridge, $22.95. 9. _No. 111 2.7.93--10.20.96_, Kenneth Goldsmith, The Figures, $17.50. "The Borscht belt meets concept art in this delirious digest of obsessive gaiety, this useless collection of perishable information, this wily catalog of everyday life, this alphabetic bestiary of the ribs, joints, sinews, and bones of language's alluring lure." --Charles Bernstein. "A man a plan a canoe pasta herons rajahs a coloratura a rut a Rolo a jar a sore hats a peon a canal Panama!" 10. _Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life_, Jon Lee Anderson, Grove, $35. 11. _The XUL Reader: An Anthology of Argentine Poetry 1980-1996_, ed. Ernesto Livon Grosman, Roof, $15.95. "Bawlings propagate, undulate in all linguages n many others possible. N these letterswarms, n glyftangles, n disfonetix n copluracents, like a a bunch of lovesmokes, separate or join, countermove or subside, in order or not, form n reform meaning n argu, always neo." 12. _Jacques Lacan_, Elizabeth Roudinesco, Columbia, $36.95. 13. _Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis_, Cary Nelson ed., foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich, U Minnesota, $19.95. In part 1 participants describe the Yale graduate student strike and examine what workers on other campuses can learn from this action. I part 2, activists and scholars place the challenge to academic workers in the context of US labor history and assess the impact of university corporatization on the communities that surround them and on higher education as a whole. Contributors include Stanley Aronowitz, Michale Berube, Duncan Kennedy, Linda Pratt, Andrew Ross, and Michelle Stepehens. 14. _Manifesto of a Tenured Radical_, Cary Nelson, NYU of all places, $17.95. Includes the hits "Progressive Pedagogy Without Apologies: The Cultural Work of Teaching Noncanonical Poetry,""Dichotomy is Where the Money Is: Anti-Intellectualism Inside and Outside the University," "What is to be Done?: A Twelve Step Program for Academia," and "Reaction and Resistance at Yale and the MLA: Union Organizing and the Job Market." 15. _Proliferation 3_, Burger, Schwartz, & Vitiello eds., $8. Albon, Andrews, A. Berrigan, Brooker, Byrum, Cole, Conant, Davidson, Day, Hunt, Husar, Merilene Murphy, Sheila Murphy, Nakell, Notley, Scalapino, Schultz, R. Waldrop, Wallace, Waugh, Wingate. 16. _Mason & Dixon_, Thomas Pynchon, Holt, $27.50. 17. _Stepping Razor_, A.L. Nielsen, Edge/Upper Limit, $10. "The catalogue of volunteered abrasions" "What Bogart was to crime-flicks, Nielsen is to postmodern poetry." --David Bromige 18. _Raddle Moon 15_, Susan Clark & Lisa Robertson ed., $8. Templeton, Riley, Freidlander, Mutton, Scalapino, A. Davies, Rosenfeld, N. Fischer, Ward, Fanny Howe, Sher, Moure, Foyle, & Edgar Allen Poe. 19. _Another Language: Selected Poems_, Rosmarie Waldrop, Talisman House, $10.50. Selections from 11 books, ya gotta have it. "and without decay/ opaque vibrations from old immobility/ amplify/ the constant small change/ in our cells" 20. _Frame (1971-1990)_, Barrett Watten, Sun & Moon, $13.95. Collects six books, _Opera--Works_, _Decay_, _1-10_, _Plasma/Paralleles/"X"_, _Complete Thought_, and _Conduit_, ya gotta have it. "A telephone pole is an edited tree." 21. _Peasants Wake for Fellini's Casanova and Other Poems_, Andrea Zanzotto, drawings by Frederico Fellini, edited and translated by John P. Welle and Ruth Feldman, U Illonois, $18.95. "Andrea Zanzotto is one of the great poets of the last fifty years, an audacious innovator whose work evokes the imaginative range and depth of Holderlin and Leopardi. His social vision, his formal and tonal variety, are all well represented here." --Michael Palmer Poetics folks receive free shipping on orders of more than $20. Free shipping + 10% discount on orders of more than $30. There are two ways to order. 1. E-mail your order to aerialedge@aol.com with your address & we will bill you with the books. or 2. via credit card-- you may call us at 202 965 5200 or e-mail aerialedge@aol.com w/ yr add, order, & card # & we will send a receipt with the books. We must charge some shipping for orders out of the US. Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Wahsington, DC 20007. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 00:59:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Collocation of Stars (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There is a third javascript text at: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/tt.htm All three can easily be accessed from the mirror URL below, as well as the Internet_txt itself. Go to the URL, click on either Jennifer, how could you, or Collocation of Stars. Alan - please use recent graphics browser ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ TEL 718-857-3671 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE CUSEEME 166.84.250.149 ADDRESS: 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY, 11217 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 13:01:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: epic redux Comments: To: Mark Weiss MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Mark Weiss wrote: >hold everything--is someone claiming that The Prelude is an epic? Er, well no, not exactly, Mark. I guess you caught me in flagrante conflatio. But - having said that in an attempt to extricate myself from the hole I've dug - I think a claim cld be put forward for _The Prelude_ as an epic in autobiography, in which "the action," "the story," is the development of the poet's consciousness. Which is also what I see happening in _Flowchart_. This is admittedly a loose interp of "epic." Having been absorbed lately in David Jones' _The Anathemata_, I'll toss out a few peripheral scraps from my reading that may have some bearing here: "I have made a heap of all that I could find." - Nennius (from DJ's intro) "It was a dark and stormy night, we sat by the calcined wall; it was said to the tale teller, tell us a tale, and the tale ran thus: it was a dark and stormy night..." (epigraph). Now this little diddy to my mind sums up what epic is all about - not just that stuff about the "tale of the tribe" - but the rescuing of potentially rejuvenating or at least still powerful psychic material from the rimefrost of cliche. Its circularity and self-referentialty are "the story" - i.e. the history of the growth of consciousness, though maybe not too many here will agree with that. _The Prelude_ cld be shoehorned into this model, and mebbe, just mebbe, _Flowchart_? All this begs the questions: is epic still possible, or even desirable, and if so, what do we expect it to do? Certainly not the affirmation of national/tribal identity as _The Iliad_ did for the Greeks? Fuzzier than Jordan, Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 11:23:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: readings... In-Reply-To: <199705092118.JAA28753@ihug.co.nz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Bob Holman/Douglas Rothschild- 5/16-Teachers & Writers- 5 Union Square West- Free-7-8:30 Lewis Warsh/Garrett Kallenberg- 5/17- Segue Performance Space-7:30-303 E 8th St Between B & C-$3.50 Pam Rehm/Jeffrey Harrison-5/18-Mazer Theater,Ed Alliance- 107 E. Bway-free-4 p.m. Ed Friedman/Gary Lenhart-5/21- The Poetry Project-St Mark's Church-2cd Ave & E.10th Street-$7On Sat, 10 May 1997, DS wrote: > Sorry for this pedestrian question... > > any interesting readings in NYC 16-21 May - or the few days before the 16th > in San Francisco? > > Dan Salmon > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 11:49:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: readings... In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Other events you may wish to check out on those dates: Shomyo & Bugaku Ho-e-Buddhist Ritual Chant- May 15 & 16- Japan Society- 333 East 47th Street- 8:00 p.m.- $25- (212) 752-3015 Abigail Child- films at Millennium- May 17- showing B/Side and 8 Million- 66 East 4th Street- 8 p.m. Book Party for Michael Heller, Joel Lewis, Leonard Schwartz, Rosemarie Waldrop- new books from Talisman House- May 18- 5-7 p.m.- at Z Gallery 70 Greene Street (Soho) (201)938-0698 for info ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 13:45:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kristin S Prevallet Subject: Re: poetry collections/information please In-Reply-To: <199705092144.OAA08484@norway.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 9 May 1997, Mark Weiss wrote: > Sylvester--I've tried same but make no claims to search proficiency. A good > start would be if anyone on the list whose institution (barred or otherwise) > has such a collection would send the list the details. > The Poetry /Rare Books Collection University Libraries 420 Capen Hall Buffalo, NY 14260 e-mail basinski@acsu.buffalo.edu web site: http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/ "Devoted to 20TH CENTURY POETRY IN ENGLISH AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION, the Poetry Collection contains 90,000 volumes by every major and many minor poets writing in English. Recordings of poets reading from their own works, poets' notebooks, letters and manuscripts, and a wide variety of literary magazines are also included in this collection. Approximately 3,500 little magazine titles, 1,200 current subscriptions, and a number of portraits, sculptures, and photographs round out the collection." Our CD-ROM history "of poetry in Buffalo" is in its final phases of production, and includes some interesting facts about most of our acquisitions. Send your name to smichel@acsu.buffalo.edu if you want to be on the list to receive one. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 14:10:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nuyopoman@AOL.COM Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 7 May 1997 to 8 May 1997 Whoops. Somehow May7-8 did not download here . Could you resend? Sorry for the broadcast. Thanks, Bob Holman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 12:06:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Steinberg Subject: Re: epic/narrative / Basho / Carson Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Steven Marks Wrote: >BTW, I would recommend _Ava_ by Carole Maso in which several narratives >intertwine in the mind of a dying woman. On her last day of life, in fact. >The novel consists of short "paragraphs," usually one sentence, sometimes >more, sometimes fragments, often repetitive, so that the stories build >slowly but inexorably. Actually, "build" is a bit misleading. It's more >like they coalesce. In a similar vein, I'd like to recommend Max Frisch's _Man in the Holocence_, a short novel which is written from the point of view of a man undergoing a stroke. As his memory fails, he tapes up encyclopedia cuttings, which appear in the book as gray texts. Towards the end of the book the gray texts completely wipe out everything else. Very moving. Hugh steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 18:07:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: Mudlark No. 5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics Never in and never out of print... ISSN 1081-3500 | Copyright (c) Mudlark 1997 Editor: William Slaughter | E-mail: mudlark@unf.edu URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark ____________________ ANNOUNCING MUDLARK NO. 5: _Five Fictions_ by Joe Ahearn Joe Ahearn is co-editor of Rancho Loco Press, which will release BEST TEXAS WRITING 1996 in the spring of 1997. His criticism, translations, and poetry have appeared in a large number of periodicals, including THE QUARTERLY, FIVE AM, DALLAS REVIEW, SULPHUR RIVER LITERARY REVIEW, and others. Ahearn has been nominated for the 1996 Pushcart Prize. Poems are forthcoming in BOUILLABAISSE, RECURSIVE ANGEL, and SULPHUR RIVER LITERARY REVIEW. His work has also been collected in the limited-edition chapbook, KYOKO AT PLAY (Harvest Publications, 1994), and is forthcoming in the anthologies, CROSSCONNECT: WRITERS OF THE INFORMATION AGE (CrossConnect, 1997) and ANTI-BIBLE (Incarnate Muse Press, 1997). Ahearn lives in Dallas with his family, where he writes poetry, essays, and books about advanced software development. Ahearn can be reached on the Internet at joeah@mail.airmail.net. ____________________ COMING ATTRACTIONS IN MUDLARK: _Island Road_ by Henry Gould A sequence that is not exactly a sequence of sonnets that are not exactly sonnets... _Only A Friend Can Know_ by Mike O'Connor Poems and Translations (from the Chinese) on the Theme of _Chih-yin_ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 16:49:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux -Reply Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" precursor--computer term for "what I wrote last?" ProtoJeremiah? or, "Gee, I've got original sin. I must be precursed." At 07:21 PM 5/9/97 -0400, you wrote: >Mark Weiss: >>hold everything--is someone claiming that The Prelude is an epic? > >d.i.: >>that's easier said than done! [i.e., to hold everything] >> >>Also interesting might be this question: is the epic a prelude? > >M.W.: >>Pre-lude as in "before the game?" >>"Girls-in-short-skirts-jumping-up-and-down?" > >poss. along those lines -- though (much) more generally: that which >precedes something else. Presumably, the age of the epic is precursor to >other ages. For since one cannot so easily hold everything, things must >continue to tumble forth bit by bit, life by life, age by age; and thereby, >the era of the epic seems distant & dim -- hence its hold of (perhaps) a >nostalgic interest? > >Further in re: (notions of) "prelude" -- >here?s some lines fished from my unpublished paraphernalia > >/ / / / > > Caffe Reggio > > He in a new confusion of his understanding; > I in a new understanding of my confusion. > > Robert Graves > > How many thought the hopeless hope would find itself > as a voice moving across the occluded distances? > Was language prelude? Did we (as claimed) engage > in such rich pantomime only to disclose piecemeal > how words might yet relinquish words? And at the end -- > at the end of everything, was the silent laughter waiting? > a jocular subtlety? a punchline so *diffuse* > it hits you in the gut not *ex cathedra*: trilling (rather) > in stray reports of bird & car: oblique persistences > that arise pell-mell, though you've deposited no quarter? . . . > >[above is 1st of 7 stanzas] >(New York City, Nov. 1992) > >cheerio, >d.i. > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 23:20:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Diane Marie Ward Subject: Re: poetry collections/information please In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Electronic Poetry Center should be of assistance to you - http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/connects/mss.html and http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/connects/orgs.html both feature lists of websites of manuscript/special collections and poetry organizations respectively. Hope this helps... Diane-Marie Ward SUNY Buffalo On Fri, 9 May 1997, Sylvester Pollet wrote: > There must be one--I'd like it too if/when you find it. Probably a search > engine could do it, with some thrashing around. sp > > > >A plea to the list for information! > >To the best of my knowledge there's no list available of all poetry secial > >collections like the Archive at UCSD or Poet's House at U. of Arizona. > >Obviously such a list would be useful to publishers like me and the poets > >they publish. Please help me compile one (or inform me if one exists) by > >front- or backchannelling info. If I get responses I will assemble and send > >to the list. > >Thanks > > > >Mark of the Junction > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Diane-Marie Ward --------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 18:26:55 +0000 Reply-To: dmachlin@flotsam.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Dan Machlin Subject: Kalleberg/Warsh reading at Segue One of the last readings of the season at Segue, don't miss Garrett Kalleberg and Lewis Warsh Saturday, May 17th, 7:30 PM at The Segue Foundation Performance Space 303 East 8th Street, NY, NY (between Aves B&C) (212) 674-0199 Admission $3-5 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 00:05:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Manhattan Readings In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII May 18 Zinc Bar Anselm Berrigan/Mary Burger 90 West Houston 6:30-8:30 (212)477-8337 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 00:01:38 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: poetry collections/information please In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 10 May 1997 13:45:17 -0400 from John Hay Library at Brown University collects US & Canadian poetry published any which way - broadsides, pamphlets, chapbks, books, & I think also magazines. Send pub/ordering info or queries to: Harris Collection John Hay Library Brown University Providence, RI 02912 - HG p.s. it is a HUGE collection. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 01:30:31 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Lewis Subject: walter lowenfels Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'm putting together a selected poems & prose of walter lowenfels (1897-1976), modernist running buddy of henry miller & later communist party poet who proclaimed himself a "proletarian surrealist" in middle of zhadanov social realism. anyone out there on list with any material relating to wlater--especially poems in little mags that may not have been collecetd -- his papers are at beineke, but have never been cataloged. especially looking for '74 issue of small press review which was a special lowenfels issue . please back channel if you have info joel ************************************ JOEL LEWIS penwaves@mindspring.com >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SLEEP FASTER! WE NEED THE PILLOWS! --- Yiddish aphorism <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 09:10:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: walter lowenfels In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" joel: good folks to contact are walter kalaidjian and cary nelson, at emory and illinois respectively--md At 1:30 AM +0100 5/12/97, Joel Lewis wrote: >i'm putting together a selected poems & prose of walter lowenfels >(1897-1976), modernist running buddy of henry miller & later communist >party poet who proclaimed himself a "proletarian surrealist" in middle of >zhadanov social realism. anyone out there on list with any material >relating to wlater--especially poems in little mags that may not have been >collecetd -- his papers are at beineke, but have never been cataloged. >especially looking for '74 issue of small press review which was a special >lowenfels issue . please back channel if you have info > >joel > >************************************ >JOEL LEWIS >penwaves@mindspring.com >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >SLEEP FASTER! WE NEED THE PILLOWS! > --- Yiddish aphorism ><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 14:00:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS Subject: Re: poetry collections/information please In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Temple University's Paley Library has something called the CCC, Contemporary Culture Collection. One of their focusses is small literary journals of sixties and seventies and other rare pubs. When i was doing a paper on Blackburn, i went their and paged through their copy of _The Omitted Journals_, a very limited edition publication (Perishable Press?) of roughly twenty journal pieces that didn't make it into his _The Journals_. it was an attractive chapbook on fine paper, 6"x12", something like that. i like the fact that they forbid pens in the small room. you are allowed only to use a pencil if you want to take notes. something about the sacredness of paper. don't have the address offhand, but Temple does have a website. -kyle ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 14:12:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Heller Subject: Talisman House Book Party Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Annoucement: TALISMAN HOUSE BOOK PARTY MAY 18 1997 5-7 PM Z GALLERY 70 GREENE STREET NYC to celebrate the publication of the following books: Ted Berrigan, ON THE LEVEL EVERYDAY: SELECTED TALKS ON POETRY AND THE ART OF LIVING, edited by Joel Lewis with a preface by Alice Notley. William Bronk, VECTORS AND SMOOTHABLE CURVES: COLLECTED ESSAYS: NEW EDITION. Michael Heller, WORDFLOW, NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. Leonard Schwartz, WORDS BEFORE THE ARTICULATE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS. Rosemarie Waldrop, ANOTHER LANGUAGE: SELECTED POEMS Ivan Zhdanov, THE INCOVERTIBLE SKY, translated by John High and Patrick Henry with an introduction by Mark Shatunsky. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 14:24:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph@AOL.COM Subject: WORDS BEFORE THE ARTICULATE As a follow-on to the Michael's announcement of the Talisman House book release celebration, I'd like to mention that Words Before the Articulate: New and Selected Poems by Leonard Schwartz is a superb book not to be missed. Highly recommended! Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 15:28:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: A Quiet Talk in Kyoto MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A Quiet Talk in Kyoto ---- No world ---- ---- World hokusai ---- Welcome to Kyoto-MOO! A moment of stillness just before the invention of radio. you are entering a world of speaking bodies; everyone is close at hand. If you reach out, you touch us with your bright thinking. Welcome to Kyoto! Kyoto an intense clearing, city-basin, distant humans, everywhere visible... You see snow, Luminous Sign, and the City of Wind here. ---- World sotatsu ---- Yurt hovel where Wizards hang, bones in front, skins behind You see basin, human, lump, and stuff here. You join Hokusai. Kyoto an intense clearing, city-basin, distant humans, everywhere visible... You see snow, Luminous Sign, and the City of Wind here. Hokusai is here. You say, "Time when we are noticably weary, friend..." ---- World hokusai ---- Sotatsu teleports in. Sotatsu says, "Time when we are noticably weary, friend..." You say, "That is true, my friend; we are far gone, now, among these dark and dismal times..." ---- World sotatsu ---- Hokusai says, "That is true, my friend; we are far gone, now, among these dark and dismal times..." You say, "And what can be done about these dreary nightmares in this empty space, friend Hokusai?" ---- World hokusai ---- Sotatsu says, "And what can be done about these dreary nightmares in this empty space, friend Hokusai?" You say, "I do not know; to persevere among the scattered texts, broken dreams, lost avatars... O, Sotatsu, what will become of us?" ---- World sotatsu ---- Hokusai says, "I do not know; to persevere among the scattered texts, broken dreams, lost avatars... O, Sotatsu, what will become of us?" You say, "We shall dwell here, in the houses of the Lords, forever, friend Hokusai, and we shall live, and learn..." ---- World hokusai ---- Sotatsu says, "We shall dwell here, in the houses of the Lords, forever, friend Hokusai, and we shall live, and learn..." You say, "And, Sotatsu, what will that be, in this place of plum wine and Noh? For shall we ever live further..." ---- World sotatsu ---- Hokusai says, "And, Sotatsu, what will that be, in this place of plum wine and Noh? For shall we ever live further..." You say, "Hush, Hokusai, there are things it is better not to know..." ---- World hokusai ---- Sotatsu says, "Hush, Hokusai, there are things it is better not to know..." You say, "Ah, that is so true, my friend... let us sleep now, we are tired..." ---- World sotatsu ---- Hokusai says, "Ah, that is so true, my friend... let us sleep now, we are tired..." You say, "True enough, friend Hokusai, we shall sleep, now and forever..." ---- World hokusai ---- Sotatsu says, "True enough, friend Hokusai, we shall sleep, now and forever..." *** Disconnected *** % Connection to hokusai closed by foreign host. ---- World sotatsu ---- You hear a quiet popping sound; Hokusai has disconnected. *** Disconnected *** % Connection to sotatsu closed by foreign host. ---- No world ---- __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 13:35:20 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *** apologies for cross-postings *** I was *very* impressed by the video issue of this sparky, irreverent, eclectic, London-based and superbly designed magazine (watch for the rising star of the titles (and overall) designer, David Rainbird). Here is some info recently sent out by the editor. Subscribe! > Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 21:11:52 +0100 From: rachel@engaged.demon.co.uk (Rachel Steward) Subject: ENGAGED Issue 5 Dear Subscriber/Contributor, I am writing to you with information about Issue 5 (now available), and to illicit some feedback regarding the future of the magazine. 1. Issue 5 (published on video) This is one of the most exciting issues yet, with eleven short films from a talented group of film-makers and animators, some of whom are known talents such as Jamie Thraves and Thomas Q Napper, recognised for their work on pop promos for Radiohead,The Lightning Seeds, and Dodgy. The Big Issue commented on Issue 5 - "a stylishly presented, 90-minute programme, it features live action and animated films by 10 up-and-coming young film-makers... In keeping with its informative, magazine-style brief, you also get entertaining asides and interviews with the artists" (Big Issue March 24-30). Time Out thought it was "an exemplary issue" featuring "a diversity of ambition and resources... but it's all provocative and engaging" and " all wrapped up with highly professional graphics" (Time Out March 26-April 2). Featured Films Thomas Q Napper - Pineal Mouse Seonaid Mackay & Vivienne Cherry - Book Susannah Gent - Black Bag Andrew Kotting - Jaunt Sally Ann Arthur & Sean Topham- Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Peg Bar Run Wrake - Juke box Jamie Thraves - The Hackney Downs Vito Rocco - Ciao Mamma... + Buona Fortuna David Hopkinson - Taking Off Francesca Iannaccone - Scrapbook Guest Editor: Philip Ilson (Halloween Society) Titles: David Rainbird Sponsored and funded by: London Arts Board, London Film and Video Development Agency and Halloween Society. Price: ten pounds (UK), thirteen pounds (Europe), fifteen pounds (World) Available: on subscription from the ENGAGED address (subscription form attached) or from selected Arts bookshops. Format: PAL, SECAM and NTSC The video issue is packaged in a clear airbag. 2. The Future Before planning the next two years of ENGAGED, I am eager to get some feed-back as to the direction the magazine should be moving, both in terms of form and content. QUESTIONS DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS FOR FUTURE ISSUES? WHAT DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF ENGAGED TAKING ON ADVERTISING? WOULD YOU LIKE THE MAGAZINE TO HAVE MORE EDITORIAL AND/OR ARTISTS' CONTENT? DO YOU HAVE A LOCAL OUTLET THAT YOU FEEL SHOULD STOCK ENGAGED? If you have any answers then please phone or e-mail me 0171 7363123 - . FUTURE ISSUES ALREADY UNDERWAY: ISSUE 6 - the radio issue - planned for early summer This will be a flexible package of poetry, story-telling, music, and sound-art. I aim to get it broadcast on as many stations as possible from the main-stream to the smallest pirate stations both in the UK, Europe, Australia, USA, Canada... It will also be available on the internet with real audio. For those of you who have already submitted work, many thanks, sorry about the delay, but I will be in touch as soon as the issue takes shape. Submissions are still being accepted, SAE for return. ISSUE 7 - the comic/cartoon issue. Please send photocopies at this stage. ISSUE 8 - an internet issue. I hope to have a web page up in the near future so as to start getting ideas as to how this particular issue could work. Any suggestion welcomed, and keep your eyes open for the web page in the next month. VACANCIES - A Guest Editor is required for the Radio Issue. Ideally, someone with a good knowledge of the medium. A Part-time Volunteer to help with the magazine in general. Some experience of publicity and fundraising would be useful. I look forward to hearing from you with regard to any of the above, and if you choose to sample the delights of ENGAGED # 5, then I hope you enjoy the experience. Yours sincerely, Rachel Steward Editor PS Sorry about the length of this missive. rachel@engaged.demon.co.uk ENGAGED 334a Kennington Road London SE11 4LD 0171 735 3123 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 08:59:07 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Pam Brown Subject: lunch to dinner Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello everyone - "Woolf in _The Common Reader_: Forget that 'appalling narrative business of the realist: getting from lunch to dinner.'" says Woolf says Carole Maso Not so appalling in "A Nest of Ninnies" and "What's For Dinner" Oldies but goodies by John Ashbery and James Schuyler... Best wishes, Pam Brown ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 01:59:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nicole Markotic Subject: Language Machines... In-Reply-To: <970509203411_484062642@emout16.mail.aol.com> from "AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM" at May 9, 97 08:36:33 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Last week, Peter Stallybrass gave a talk entitled "Hands & Books: a materialist phenomenology of reading and writing" as part of his "The History of the Book" lecture series at UPenn. His focus on the materiality of the book is one that I believe speaks to the interest of many this listserv subscribers. So: He began by speaking of the history of the codex - as opposed to the scroll - as being that of the history of bookmarks. Within this technological history is also the history of the hand in relation to the book, especially the relationship of the index in all its multiple senses. Stallybrass said that the transition from scroll to codex was a technological one that begat a _discontinuous_ reading strategy, rather than a _continuous_ one. For example, scrolls need to be held by both hands, whereas a lectern allows a reader to perform other activities (such as taking notes, etc.) while reading. Scrolls, requiring both hands, also require a very full physical participation. Scrolls also, for the most part, require continuous reading from beginning to end whereas a book (at least once read) can be marked and returned to. The physical proximity of reading event in a scroll is challenged by the ease with which one can move back and forth within a codex. Stallybrass says that "Christianity _cut up_ the Judaic scroll by means of the codex." (In the Christian Bible vs the Judaic Scroll, for example: "The story of the sacrifice of Isaac would thus be read less in terms of its proximate narratives in Genesis than as a prefiguration of the "son's" crucifixion." The Old Testament is thus "fulfilled" in the New Testament.) One of the most persistent uses of the book as a _machine_, says Stallybrass, is the emphasis on discontinuous historical and theological moments that the codex encourages. His talk centred around various religious paintings from Caravaggio to Rembrandt. In these, Stallybrass showed (through photocopies and slides) how paintings before the Cartesian moment displayed various versions of scholar/scribe painted with various lecterns, weights, fingers or ribbons marking pages, and using other "tools" to read/write. The materiality of the text was ever present in these depictions as the subject (St. Jerome, St. John, the Virgin Mary, etc.) holds scrolls, books, ink, and pens, listens to God or the Holy Spirit (often in the form of either a dove or a scroll from above), and is always shown marking _at least_ one other page than the one to which the book is opened. One of the modern myths of reading, says Stallybrass, is that of teleological narrative; that is, that "the book" is to be read from page 1 to page 2, and so on. Indeed, this strategy of reading was encouraged by the development of narrative fiction in the 18th Century. Interestingly, Stallybrass suggests that after the Cartesian moment, images of the materiality of writing in the paintings, are effaced. There is no longer evidence of discontinuous reading; the finger as index drops away. The materiality become less important as emphasis in writing shifts to the _mind_ rather than the body. Nicole Markotic ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 23:16:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Language Machines... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Interesting. So Christians, by cutting up the old scroll and binding it in a book changed the reading habits of the one or two percent of the population that knew how to read pre-Gutenberg. Those masters at discontinuous reading, the Talmudic rabbis, must have had a miraculous dispensation. What does he make of clay tablets or inscriptions on walls? Maybe in the case of the latter the invention of the two-way street created a paradigm shift. God, I love ingenious hypotheses, especially if they're undemonstrable. At 01:59 AM 5/12/97 -0400, you wrote: > Last week, Peter Stallybrass gave a talk entitled "Hands & >Books: a materialist phenomenology of reading and writing" as part of >his "The History of the Book" lecture series at UPenn. His focus on >the materiality of the book is one that I believe speaks to the interest >of many this listserv subscribers. So: > He began by speaking of the history of the codex - as opposed >to the scroll - as being that of the history of bookmarks. Within this >technological history is also the history of the hand in relation to the >book, especially the relationship of the index in all its multiple senses. >Stallybrass said that the transition from scroll to codex was a >technological one that begat a _discontinuous_ reading strategy, rather >than a _continuous_ one. For example, scrolls need to be held by both >hands, whereas a lectern allows a reader to perform other activities >(such as taking notes, etc.) while reading. Scrolls, requiring both >hands, also require a very full physical participation. Scrolls also, for >the most part, require continuous reading from beginning to end >whereas a book (at least once read) can be marked and returned to. >The physical proximity of reading event in a scroll is challenged by >the ease with which one can move back and forth within a codex. > Stallybrass says that "Christianity _cut up_ the Judaic scroll >by means of the codex." (In the Christian Bible vs the Judaic Scroll, >for example: "The story of the sacrifice of Isaac would thus be read >less in terms of its proximate narratives in Genesis than as a >prefiguration of the "son's" crucifixion." The Old Testament is thus >"fulfilled" in the New Testament.) One of the most persistent uses of >the book as a _machine_, says Stallybrass, is the emphasis on >discontinuous historical and theological moments that the codex >encourages. > His talk centred around various religious paintings from >Caravaggio to Rembrandt. In these, Stallybrass showed (through >photocopies and slides) how paintings before the Cartesian moment >displayed various versions of scholar/scribe painted with various >lecterns, weights, fingers or ribbons marking pages, and using other >"tools" to read/write. The materiality of the text was ever present in >these depictions as the subject (St. Jerome, St. John, the Virgin Mary, >etc.) holds scrolls, books, ink, and pens, listens to God or the Holy >Spirit (often in the form of either a dove or a scroll from above), and is >always shown marking _at least_ one other page than the one to which >the book is opened. > One of the modern myths of reading, says Stallybrass, is that >of teleological narrative; that is, that "the book" is to be read from >page 1 to page 2, and so on. Indeed, this strategy of reading was >encouraged by the development of narrative fiction in the 18th >Century. Interestingly, Stallybrass suggests that after the Cartesian >moment, images of the materiality of writing in the paintings, are >effaced. There is no longer evidence of discontinuous reading; the >finger as index drops away. The materiality become less important as >emphasis in writing shifts to the _mind_ rather than the body. > >Nicole Markotic > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 00:18:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christine Palma Subject: Poetics Listserv Birthdate In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Can anyone tell me when this list began? -Christine ______________ christine palma christine@DRUMandBASS.com samples: high-bandwidth, communications, bpm, asia in the yr 2000, fractal structures, cu-seeme fuzzy, memory encapsulated, radio, a sculpture in every living room, a sculpture in every park, a sculpture in every body, cyborgs, e-mail, letterpress, return to drawing, kitchensink genetics, mindoro, coincidence, encaustic, pedestrian's rights, sleep depriviation high, the moon . . . ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 07:35:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: feathers to iron In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970509090142.006d0458@cais.com> from "Tom Mandel" at May 9, 97 09:01:42 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Mike Boughn's mention of _From Feathers to Iron_ passes me by -- Mike, > which "Clarke" is the author, and can you say more about the book? (by > backchannel if it had been identified to the list and I mist). > _From Feathers to Iron, A Concourse of World Poetics_ is the "transcription" of a series of four lectures John Clarke presented at New College in 1980, augmented with opious notes, including Jack's sonnets. The book was published by Tomboctou/Convivio in 1986. It's a wild, undescribable, brilliant trek through an historical grammar of poetic myth. Like nothing you've read before. John Clarke was a friend and student of Charles Olson in Buffalo. Co-founder of the Institute of Further Studies, general editor of the Curriculum of the Soul, and editor during the last years of his life of _intent.: letter of talk, thinking and document_. I think Steve Dickison may still have some Feathers. Shuffaloff books definitely does if anyone is interested ($14.00US). Clarke's last poems, _In the Anlogy, Books 1-7_, which move to realize the complex poetics of Feathers, were published by shuffaloff in February. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 07:59:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathleen Crown Subject: PPS panels In-Reply-To: Automatic digest processor "POETICS Digest - 10 May 1997 to 11 May 1997" (May 12, 12:00am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Did anyone attending PPS make it to the panels "Community and the Place of Poetry" (Ted Pearson, Ross Talarico, and ML Liebler), "Feminist Avant-Garde" (Cynthia Hogue, Elisabeth Frost, and Brian McHale), or "Close Encounters: Thinking About Distribution" (Loss Glazier, Natalie Gerber, Patricia Willis)? I would appreciate hearing about the discussions in those panels, if anyone has the time and energy to report. I did get away from the registration desk on Sunday morning, for Burton Hatlen's talk on "Neo-Objectivism." He outlined what seemed to me a very ambitious project--a new rubric for a group of poets in dialogue with Language poets but engaged (as an ethical demand) with particulars of experience, with a "real," sensual, & apprehensible world. The three poets he spoke of as exemplars of Neo-Objectivism were (all present at the conference) Michael Heller, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, and Armand Schwerner. Schwerner, by the way, gave a terrific reading Saturday night (as did Irena Klepfisz) that delighted the large, diverse audience, especially the hard-to-please New Jersey bar-poet crowd. This "After Hours" event was one of the highlights of the conference for me, although most of the professors had gone to bed by then. When the building closed down hours later, the poets (many students) took their work out on the street & performed impressive, politically engaged work. I would also like to hear news of the "Diversity in Avant-Garde Publishing Panel" ... KC -- ********************************************************** Kathleen Crown Rutgers English and Women's Studies Conference Co-Coordinator, "Poetry and the Public Sphere" P.O. Box 5054 New Brunswick, NJ 08903-5054 H: 908/572-1128 W: 908/932-8537 Dept. Fax: 908/932-1150 kcrown@rci.rutgers.edu *********************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 08:09:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Federman CD In-Reply-To: <199705121135.HAA07673@chass.utoronto.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i just got my first installment of the 2/cd subscription to VOYS audiojournal, which is Raymond Federman's The Voice in the Closet, about having been shut up in a closet by parents in occupied france when Nazis came for family. very very powerful, highly recommended. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 09:38:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: <01IIPELJ67QA99E7NT@iix.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The quote below's elequent and interesting and makes the point I've tried hesitently to make before (tho' it doesn't intend to)--a point no one else on the list agrees with...To wit, use of the academic term, epic, is inappropriate and useless and boring, for us, writing this many decades after so many stultified molds got swept to one side...I mean, the rescuing of potentially rejuvinating psychic material from the rimefrost of cliche, is the most worthy task I can think of,,,,,And what the hell has it got to do with epic specifically...Sounds to me like a definition of the poet's task, period.. Mark P Atlanta > > Now this little diddy to my mind sums up what epic is all about - not just > that stuff about the "tale of the tribe" - but the rescuing of potentially > rejuvenating or at least still powerful psychic material from the rimefrost > of cliche. Its circularity and self-referentialty are "the story" - i.e. the ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 11:41:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: WANTED: FORMATTER/PROOFREADER Hello--figured I'd use this list for something PRACTICAL.... I am looking for a proofreader/formatter fluent and/or familiar with Macintosh Computer and MLA FORMAT (will teach latter if not known) formatting devices to work specifically on "cleaning up" a draft of a dissertation (especially ENDNOTES, BIBLIOGRAPHY, CENTERING MARGINS OF "Set-off" texts, etc.--basic stuff, but not to a komputer klutz). ------ WILL PAY(!!!!) Amount is negotiable. It is not, however, a LOT of work (i.e. don't expect to LIVE off of it). I expect it tobe 15 hours of work MAX (to someone who KNOWS their stuff). Please backchannel if interested. Do so, please, before end of May (since I will probably no longer be on email by then). The work will take place in several small installments spread out over the summer. Project should end by early August. Email enquiries to CHRIS1929@aol.com or phone me at 201-459-9245 before may 31st..... thank you, chris stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 12:04:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: New book by Steve Malmude MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I GOT TO KNOW poems by Steve Malmude 48 pp., $10 Goodbye Books THE SURPRISE BRONZE If you open my book there has been a mistake it would be better if you read the newspaper the blind mother the welder father paying for the lessons the surprise bronze I picked up The Web And The Rock again the other day and it held up very well I have a question for you what the hell happened I see you around what's your story. --Steve Malmude Malmude's poems have appeared in Sun, Lingo, O-blek, The World, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. This is his third collection. To order, send email to jdavis@panix.com. Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 12:27:48 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU Subject: . Alan Golding Prof. of English, Univ. of Louisville 502-852-6801; acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu set poetics nomail ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 15:54:13 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU Subject: Nomail Alan Golding Prof. of English, Univ. of Louisville 502-852-6801; acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Grovelling apologies. I'm sure that all 500+ of you were just desperate to know that I was setting poetics to nomail. But as my old pal Aldon kindly pointed out, one doesn't accomplish that (the setting) by sending the message to the Poetics list. So having taken up your e-space with one "empty" message, I thought I'd just duplicate the gesture here . . . Alan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 17:57:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: the Prelude MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII The question of the Prelude-as-epic might also need to take up WW's various uses of Paradise Lose. WW al-ludes to it all over the place, and at times seems to want to think of himself as Satan. Perhaps for WW, epic = sublime desire for an irrevocable position from which to claim the legitimacy of self-creation = failure and free-falling. WW outdoes Satan by dispensing with plotting (of narratives of compensation) and instead playing with the fleeting but always renewable feeling of illegitimacy. (Different time as a result.) The autobiographical epic is a giant serpentine water-slide which one can descend over and over again in order to make a splash in the pool of bathos. Gary R ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 12:02:43 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: what have I subscribed to? These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I did not solicit. If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. DT ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 22:44:55 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: poetry ads MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I sympathize with Daniel Tessitore about the ads though I like them myself. To make them less intrusive, would it be possible to keep them aside, then put into one posting once a week for the listing? I'm still a novice at internetting so have no idea how much work this would be. Or maybe someone could volunteer (not me, alas) to collect all the ads for a month backchannel, and put them together weekly (or daily, or whatever) for the rest of us. Eventually perhaps an ad-mail-off option might be possible? That is, those not wishing to see the ads would not be sent them. Seems to me something could be done. --Bob G > > These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen > conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded > and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what > I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I > did not solicit. > > If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. > > DT ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 22:54:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: Birthdate // what have I subscribed to? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii" >Can anyone tell me when this list began? This was the first Poetics Message: Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1993 14:55:05 -0400 From: Charles Bernstein To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS < Subject: first flight 0000,0000,ffffAbove the world-weary horizons New obstacles for exchange arise Or unfold, O ye postmasters! ****** However, in the fall of 1993 we were still testing the list mostly locally in Buffalo and it became a national list in December 1993, with Peter Quatermain's announcement of the book launch for the Holy Forest. ##################################################### >>These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen >conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded >and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what >I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I >did not solicit. ffff,0000,ffffAs our Welcome message makes clear (section 9) subscribing to the Poetics List 0000,0000,8080isffff,0000,ffff soliciting information on the poetry-related books, magazines, performances, reading series, conferences, and talks that participants are editing, coordinating, curating, or advocating. This is one of the fundamental purposes of the Poetics List and fully as important to our mutual exchanges as conversation about poetry. After a while, I hope you will see this as integral to the activity. From the first, it has seemed to those of us coordinating Poetics that the Intenet and this list in particular were ideally situated for exchange of often difficult-to-obtain poetry listings. There is no "other" space for this activity, and beyond that I actually find the listings posted here of great interest. ffff,0000,0000In fact, this reminds me to make my (periodical) request to hear about publications in which list members are involved. Please be sure to include full information on how to order any items mentioned. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 19:59:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: poetry announcements MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Would hate to see the announcements (as I think of them) discouraged in any way--it's great to know what people are up to and as Bill Luoma once said or implied (correct me if I'm wrong, Bill) they are refreshingly straightforward public relations, unlike the more prevalent and more tortured sort. Rachel Loden Bob Grumman wrote: > > I sympathize with Daniel Tessitore about the ads though I like them > myself. To make them less intrusive, would it be possible to keep them > aside, then put into one posting once a week for the listing? I'm still > a novice at internetting so have no idea how much work this would be. > Or maybe someone could volunteer (not me, alas) to collect all the ads > for a month backchannel, and put them together weekly (or daily, or > whatever) for the rest of us. Eventually perhaps an ad-mail-off option > might be possible? That is, those not wishing to see the ads would not > be sent them. Seems to me something could be done. --Bob G > > > > These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen > > conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded > > and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what > > I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I > > did not solicit. > > > > If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. > > > > DT ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 22:13:20 -0500 Reply-To: balong@ipa.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Organization: Self Subject: Re: poetry announcements MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I know that when I came to the East Coast, the announcements here were very helpful in allowing me to plan what I wanted to do in New York...I am glad to see them here. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 23:13:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: what have I subscribed to? Comments: To: Daniel Tessitore In-Reply-To: <01BC5ECC.6CFB9E60@annex-3.tiu.ac.jp> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Very interesting conversation you've started here, and I entirely disagree with you. What else did you not want to talk about?On Mon, 12 May 1997, Daniel Tessitore wrote: > These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen > conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded > and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what > I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I > did not solicit. > > If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. > > DT > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 23:21:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Nomail In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A former list member has the opposite problem--went nomail, now wants to resubscribe. Can some kind soul forward me the instructions & I'll pass them on? Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 23:40:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: poetry announcements MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rachel Loden wrote: > > Would hate to see the announcements (as I think of them) discouraged in > any way--it's great to know what people are up to and as Bill Luoma once > said or implied (correct me if I'm wrong, Bill) they are refreshingly > straightforward public relations, unlike the more prevalent and more > tortured sort. > > Rachel Loden > > Bob Grumman wrote: > > > > I sympathize with Daniel Tessitore about the ads though I like them > > myself. To make them less intrusive, would it be possible to keep them > > aside, then put into one posting once a week for the listing? I'm still > > a novice at internetting so have no idea how much work this would be. > > Or maybe someone could volunteer (not me, alas) to collect all the ads > > for a month backchannel, and put them together weekly (or daily, or > > whatever) for the rest of us. Eventually perhaps an ad-mail-off option > > might be possible? That is, those not wishing to see the ads would not > > be sent them. Seems to me something could be done. --Bob G > > > > > > These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen > > > conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded > > > and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what > > > I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I > > > did not solicit. > > > > > > If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. > > > > > > DT I agree with Rachel and Nick on this: one can hardly consider these announcements spamming! If anything, we should rejoice that what the community which keeps this list vital discusses bears some fruit beyond the (sorry) occasionally abstruse but (honest) usually fascinating and incisive perorations anent form/content, the social(?) construction of the 'individual,' etc. If anything deserves reconsideration, I'd exempt announcements of production and raise an eyebrow at the incrowd needling palaver between chums--but hey, I enjoy that, too! Remember Allen? More announcements! More angelic chatter! More dustclouds of poetic arcana a la the recent gossip session celebrations at St. Mark's 30th anniversary celebration! More Martian Spiceresque graffiti! Sarabands of sarcasm! Plethoras of product promotions profiting whom? Inky Charles at Chax? Billionaire Boughn at shuffaloff? Kick ass! Take names! Expose the imperialist warmongers! Jesus! (What was that address? What price postage? Can I get a discount if I send a poem? No blame. Aloha. Shantih. Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 20:54:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: Publications Received Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Here are some recent publications from the Witz mailbox: House Organ (Number 18, Spring 1997. Edited by Kenneth Warren. 1250 Belle Avenue, Lakewood, OH 44107. No price listed.) Work by William Sylvester, Skip Fox, Kenneth Irby, Clayton Eshleman, Jack Hirshman, Charlie Mehrhoff, Barbara Drake, Robert Buckeye, Cid Corman, Paul Pines, Martha King, Steve Lewandowski, Frank Sherlock, Robert Yagley, Stephen Ellis, Sean Casey, Joe Napora, Brian Richards, Kenneth Warren, Diane Der Hovanessian. Ribot (No. 4, 1996. Edited by Paul Vangelisti. Available from Consortium Book Distribution, 1045 Westgate Drive, St. Paul, MN 55114-1065. No price listed, but I think it's around $10.) 144 pages of work by 57 writers. Shadows: New & Selected Dialogues on Poetics (by Mark Wallace and Jefferson Hansen. A special issue of Poetic Briefs. Editors: Elizabeth Burns & Jefferson Hansen, 4055 Yosemite Avenue S, St. Louis Park, MN 55416.) I'm proud to say that one of these dialogues first appeared in Witz. No. 111 2.7.93 - 10.20.96 (By Kenneth Goldsmith. The Figures, 5 Castle Hill, Great Barrington, MA 01230 or Small Press Distribution, 1814 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702. $17.50.) "In Kenneth Goldsmith's 'useless encyclopedic reference book,' *Oulipo* brilliantly meets the Millenium. The text adheres strictly to its chosen rules: all the phrases collected between February 7, 1993 and October 20, 1996 end in sounds related to the sound "R" and they are organized alphabetically by syllable-count beginning with one syllable entries for Chapter 1...and ending with a 7,228 syllable tour de force of astonishing proportions..." --Marjorie Perloff Sculpture (By Stephen Ratcliffe. Littoral Books, 1996. Distributed by Sun & Moon Press, 6026 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90036.) "In its four evenly measured sections, the meaningsof Sculpture accumulate like the verdigris of weather on sculptural work, leaving the piece itself altered by the very matter of which it is made." --Martha Ronk Blue Horitals (By John Clarke and Daniel Zimmerman. Oasii: Amman, Jordan. No address for publisher. No price listed. No distributor listed.) Misc. Proj. (Edited by Mark Prejsnar, 641 N. Highland Ave. NE, #11, Atlanta GA 30306. 4 issues for $3.50) Work by Pedro Corte, Ell Perlmutter, Cal Taubman, Mark Prejsnar. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 00:00:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: Publications Received MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Christopher Reiner wrote: > > Here are some recent publications from the Witz mailbox: > > House Organ (Number 18, Spring 1997. Edited by Kenneth Warren. 1250 > Belle Avenue, Lakewood, OH 44107. No price listed.) Work by William > Sylvester, Skip Fox, Kenneth Irby, Clayton Eshleman, Jack Hirshman, > Charlie Mehrhoff, Barbara Drake, Robert Buckeye, Cid Corman, Paul Pines, > Martha King, Steve Lewandowski, Frank Sherlock, Robert Yagley, Stephen > Ellis, Sean Casey, Joe Napora, Brian Richards, Kenneth Warren, Diane Der > Hovanessian. > > Ribot (No. 4, 1996. Edited by Paul Vangelisti. Available from > Consortium Book Distribution, 1045 Westgate Drive, St. Paul, MN > 55114-1065. No price listed, but I think it's around $10.) 144 pages of > work by 57 writers. > > Shadows: New & Selected Dialogues on Poetics (by Mark Wallace and > Jefferson Hansen. A special issue of Poetic Briefs. Editors: Elizabeth > Burns & Jefferson Hansen, 4055 Yosemite Avenue S, St. Louis Park, MN > 55416.) I'm proud to say that one of these dialogues first appeared in > Witz. > > No. 111 2.7.93 - 10.20.96 (By Kenneth Goldsmith. The Figures, 5 Castle > Hill, Great Barrington, MA 01230 or Small Press Distribution, 1814 San > Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702. $17.50.) "In Kenneth Goldsmith's > 'useless encyclopedic reference book,' *Oulipo* brilliantly meets the > Millenium. The text adheres strictly to its chosen rules: all the > phrases collected between February 7, 1993 and October 20, 1996 end in > sounds related to the sound "R" and they are organized alphabetically by > syllable-count beginning with one syllable entries for Chapter 1...and > ending with a 7,228 syllable tour de force of astonishing proportions..." > --Marjorie Perloff > > Sculpture (By Stephen Ratcliffe. Littoral Books, 1996. Distributed by > Sun & Moon Press, 6026 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90036.) "In its > four evenly measured sections, the meaningsof Sculpture accumulate like > the verdigris of weather on sculptural work, leaving the piece itself > altered by the very matter of which it is made." --Martha Ronk > > Blue Horitals (By John Clarke and Daniel Zimmerman. Oasii: Amman, > Jordan. No address for publisher. No price listed. No distributor > listed.) > > Misc. Proj. (Edited by Mark Prejsnar, 641 N. Highland Ave. NE, #11, > Atlanta GA 30306. 4 issues for $3.50) Work by Pedro Corte, Ell > Perlmutter, Cal Taubman, Mark Prejsnar. RE: Blue Horitals John Clarke and Daniel Zimmerman's Blue Horitals (Amman, Jordan: Oasii, 1997): No distributor yet. For now, $6.00 from Daniel Zimmerman, 485 Parsonage Road, Edison, NJ 08837. Make check out to Daniel Zimmerman. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 00:12:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: Publications Received MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Christopher Reiner wrote: > > Here are some recent publications from the Witz mailbox: > > House Organ (Number 18, Spring 1997. Edited by Kenneth Warren. 1250 > Belle Avenue, Lakewood, OH 44107. No price listed.) Work by William > Sylvester, Skip Fox, Kenneth Irby, Clayton Eshleman, Jack Hirshman, > Charlie Mehrhoff, Barbara Drake, Robert Buckeye, Cid Corman, Paul Pines, > Martha King, Steve Lewandowski, Frank Sherlock, Robert Yagley, Stephen > Ellis, Sean Casey, Joe Napora, Brian Richards, Kenneth Warren, Diane Der > Hovanessian. > > Ribot (No. 4, 1996. Edited by Paul Vangelisti. Available from > Consortium Book Distribution, 1045 Westgate Drive, St. Paul, MN > 55114-1065. No price listed, but I think it's around $10.) 144 pages of > work by 57 writers. > > Shadows: New & Selected Dialogues on Poetics (by Mark Wallace and > Jefferson Hansen. A special issue of Poetic Briefs. Editors: Elizabeth > Burns & Jefferson Hansen, 4055 Yosemite Avenue S, St. Louis Park, MN > 55416.) I'm proud to say that one of these dialogues first appeared in > Witz. > > No. 111 2.7.93 - 10.20.96 (By Kenneth Goldsmith. The Figures, 5 Castle > Hill, Great Barrington, MA 01230 or Small Press Distribution, 1814 San > Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702. $17.50.) "In Kenneth Goldsmith's > 'useless encyclopedic reference book,' *Oulipo* brilliantly meets the > Millenium. The text adheres strictly to its chosen rules: all the > phrases collected between February 7, 1993 and October 20, 1996 end in > sounds related to the sound "R" and they are organized alphabetically by > syllable-count beginning with one syllable entries for Chapter 1...and > ending with a 7,228 syllable tour de force of astonishing proportions..." > --Marjorie Perloff > > Sculpture (By Stephen Ratcliffe. Littoral Books, 1996. Distributed by > Sun & Moon Press, 6026 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90036.) "In its > four evenly measured sections, the meaningsof Sculpture accumulate like > the verdigris of weather on sculptural work, leaving the piece itself > altered by the very matter of which it is made." --Martha Ronk > > Blue Horitals (By John Clarke and Daniel Zimmerman. Oasii: Amman, > Jordan. No address for publisher. No price listed. No distributor > listed.) > > Misc. Proj. (Edited by Mark Prejsnar, 641 N. Highland Ave. NE, #11, > Atlanta GA 30306. 4 issues for $3.50) Work by Pedro Corte, Ell > Perlmutter, Cal Taubman, Mark Prejsnar. Thanks, Chris. Re: John Clarke and Daniel Zimmerman's BLUE HORITALS (Amman, Jordan: Oasii, 1997). No distributor yet; for now, available for $6.00 from Dan Zimmerman, 485 Parsonage Road, Edison, NJ 08837. Make check out to Dan Zimmerman. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 00:38:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth W Sherwood Subject: Scrolling toward bookmark.html In-Reply-To: <199705130406.AAA27680@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just to add that the 'cutting-up' of the scrolls, if indeed a shift to discontinuous reading (and most folk were hearing their scrolls and early books) pertains only to a particular European tradition. Mayans, for example, would appear to have went right from stone material to a form of so-called CODEX (though it folds outwards, is not bound along one edge). Keith Smith's _Text in Book Format_ gives a good run-down on codex, oriental fold, venetian blind, and fan format books. As with work like Jack Goody's--which contends that the 'list' marks a shift towards literacy and consequent development of the analytic mind--such culturally global theories are usually pretty dicey, if also fascinating. Recall, also, that early European manuscripts didn't divide language into sentences andactuallyranallthewordstogetherwithoutobservingboundariestalk aboutcontinuityanddiscontinuityWherewasthewordassuchthen? Ken Sherwood ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 00:38:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Subject: Re: Publications Received MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > > Christopher Reiner wrote: > > > > Here are some recent publications from the Witz mailbox: > > > > House Organ (Number 18, Spring 1997. Edited by Kenneth Warren. 1250 > > Belle Avenue, Lakewood, OH 44107. No price listed.) Work by William > > Sylvester, Skip Fox, Kenneth Irby, Clayton Eshleman, Jack Hirshman, > > Charlie Mehrhoff, Barbara Drake, Robert Buckeye, Cid Corman, Paul Pines, > > Martha King, Steve Lewandowski, Frank Sherlock, Robert Yagley, Stephen > > Ellis, Sean Casey, Joe Napora, Brian Richards, Kenneth Warren, Diane Der > > Hovanessian. > > > > Ribot (No. 4, 1996. Edited by Paul Vangelisti. Available from > > Consortium Book Distribution, 1045 Westgate Drive, St. Paul, MN > > 55114-1065. No price listed, but I think it's around $10.) 144 pages of > > work by 57 writers. > > > > Shadows: New & Selected Dialogues on Poetics (by Mark Wallace and > > Jefferson Hansen. A special issue of Poetic Briefs. Editors: Elizabeth > > Burns & Jefferson Hansen, 4055 Yosemite Avenue S, St. Louis Park, MN > > 55416.) I'm proud to say that one of these dialogues first appeared in > > Witz. > > > > No. 111 2.7.93 - 10.20.96 (By Kenneth Goldsmith. The Figures, 5 Castle > > Hill, Great Barrington, MA 01230 or Small Press Distribution, 1814 San > > Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702. $17.50.) "In Kenneth Goldsmith's > > 'useless encyclopedic reference book,' *Oulipo* brilliantly meets the > > Millenium. The text adheres strictly to its chosen rules: all the > > phrases collected between February 7, 1993 and October 20, 1996 end in > > sounds related to the sound "R" and they are organized alphabetically by > > syllable-count beginning with one syllable entries for Chapter 1...and > > ending with a 7,228 syllable tour de force of astonishing proportions..." > > --Marjorie Perloff > > > > Sculpture (By Stephen Ratcliffe. Littoral Books, 1996. Distributed by > > Sun & Moon Press, 6026 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90036.) "In its > > four evenly measured sections, the meaningsof Sculpture accumulate like > > the verdigris of weather on sculptural work, leaving the piece itself > > altered by the very matter of which it is made." --Martha Ronk > > > > Blue Horitals (By John Clarke and Daniel Zimmerman. Oasii: Amman, > > Jordan. No address for publisher. No price listed. No distributor > > listed.) > > > > Misc. Proj. (Edited by Mark Prejsnar, 641 N. Highland Ave. NE, #11, > > Atlanta GA 30306. 4 issues for $3.50) Work by Pedro Corte, Ell > > Perlmutter, Cal Taubman, Mark Prejsnar. > > Thanks, Chris. > > Re: John Clarke and Daniel Zimmerman's BLUE HORITALS (Amman, Jordan: > Oasii, 1997). No distributor yet; for now, available for $6.00 from > Dan Zimmerman, 485 Parsonage Road, Edison, NJ 08837. Make check out > to Dan Zimmerman. Ah! I seem to have sent theis message twice--sorry! Just before I clicked onj Send, I got a Divide by Zero message cascade & had to log off, so I thought the message killed. [A caveat, I guess, to wait a while if this happens, to see whether the message comes back--but I wanted to get to bed...]. DZ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 00:56:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Scrolling toward bookmark.html quoth Ken Sherwood: << . . .Recall, also, that early European manuscripts didn't divide language into sentences andactuallyranallthewordstogetherwithoutobservingboundariestalk aboutcontinuityanddiscontinuityWherewasthewordassuchthen? >> (as perhaps I've remarked in other context), such was the case w/ Chinese poetry (& scripture) -- though the words are distinct, but no line breaks or punctuation, just starting from word A down thru word Z (running top to bottom of line, right to left of page) -- but most books of poetry seem to give the individual poem it's own start-line (i.e., starting afresh at the top of the page), and also tend to set off a poem-title, and sometimes some fore-notes or after-notes, too . . . -- late-night on that curious cable TV channel that's given over to classical music (usually -- typically music videos of Beethovan, et alia), and occasionally some dance or other art stuff, -- day or two ago, I caught a program of David Hockney expounding on some Chinese handscroll paintings -- alas, the exposition was too brief, but what scrolls they were! -- one depicting the visit of the Emperor to a certain region, sailing his barge down the River -- & the length of the scroll showed all the little houses (etc.), w/ folk preparing for the august event . . . Hockney gave some nice sense of the handscroll form & it's special modes of continuity . . . the email msg. scroll follows that in some ways as you all have no doubt known for quite a go od ly w h i l e tho the vertality of the medium and the scrolling aspect can no doubt be develop ed in varied man ners more than is sometimes s e e n the lack of separating pages & the openened continuation being peculaiar "spacial" features how very spacial d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 01:30:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Boy-Command (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - {k:15} random -r 100 < js > zz {k:16} pico zz Boy was the holy purity of death, Anne's picture by my bedside; what I desired then I would have died with her, I would have saved her; my life: You see basin, human, lump, and stuff here. Jennifer9 = new Jennifer("fallen", "inhale", "spurt", "exhale ", "portend "); if (J == 2): mother he would be a lot kinder!! ) the scoured removes inscriptions, efface. or that it never was. there is: My Bones! _____________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 18:08:39 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: what have I subscribed to? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On the other side of the world my life would be the poorer without this heralding of what is available. Sometimes these advertisements can spark of discussions of their advertised texts. Keepem coming At 12:02 PM 5/12/97 +-900, you wrote: >These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen >conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded >and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what >I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I >did not solicit. > >If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. > >DT > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 16:35:34 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Pam Brown Subject: ads Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dan Salmon said - " On the other side of the world my life would be the poorer without this heralding of what is available. Sometimes these advertisements can spark of discussions of their advertised texts." On the same side of the world I can only agree - and add that I've bought books advertised on the Poetics list and tapes listed via Laura Moriarty as well.... I doubt that I'd have found some of these things had I never subscribed to Poetics...and I was relieved to see Charles Bernstein's post reminding listees of the purpose... Bye for now Pam Brown Sydneysider ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 02:38:51 -0400 Reply-To: CHRIS MANN Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: Scrolling toward bookmark.html In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII punctuations derived in part from music notation. something like the mirror/twin of zero which went from sanscrit into maths. hence exegesis, whence criticism, this being my argument for ads and their maintenance ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 19:25:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: IMBURGIA Subject: Re: what have I subscribed to? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Daniel, and folks, i look fwd to the 'messages' about books etc. and = would like them to continue, it keeps me somewhat informed about whats = available, new, etc.. (by the way this is my first post to the list = after yrs of lurking) best, dan ---------- From: Daniel Tessitore[SMTP:daniel@TIU.AC.JP] Sent: Monday, May 12, 1997 5:02 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: what have I subscribed to? These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially = under-funded and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not = what I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail = that I did not solicit. If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. DT ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 01:01:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Whyte Subject: 1967 the summer of love/the summer of hate 1997 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 1997 the summer of hate/the summer of love 1967 time itself is the opportunity clatter creeps poison alongside the internal violation which require enthrallment part of the agreement time itself is after the fact which would die for itself alongside antidote answering to magnetic striations upsurge phylogenetic suspect waves SHOW ME 1997 IS THE SUMMER OF THE EXHAUSTION OF THE MOST ANCIENT GLACIER BECOMING THE PUREST RIVER OF THE WATER OF ALL IMAGES CLEAR AS CRYSTAL PROCEEDING OUT OF THE THRONE OF GOD AND OF THE LAMB time itself issues from her pores left alone to masturbate not infrequently for this summer engaging the blockbuster surplus repression heat trembles time itself then breaks for this summer which spring promises the social contract under aegis hair blanket bought with blood unseen in waves ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 07:02:51 -0400 Reply-To: orpheus Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: Une Tristesse de Joie pour Allen Ginsberg MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The matrical fissure of schizophrenia, as opposed to paranoiac castration; and the line of escape as opposed to the "blue line," the blues. O mother farewell with a long black shoe farewell with Communist party and a broken stocking.... with your sagging belly with your fear of Hitler with your mouth of bad short stories.... with your belly of strikes and smokestacks with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish war with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers.... with your eyes with your eyes of Russia with your eyes of no money.... with your eyes of starving India.... with your eyes of Czechoslovakia attacked by robots.... with your eyes being led away by policemen to an ambulance with your eyes with the pancreas removed with your eyes of appendix operation with your eyes of abortion with your eyes of ovaries removed with your eyes of shock with your eyes of lobotomy with your eyes of divorce.... Why these words, paranoia and schizophrenia, which are like talking birds and girls' first names? Why do social investments follow this dividing line that gives them a specifically delirous content (recreating history in delirium)? When I write about an author... think of the author you are writing about. Think of her so hard that she can no longer be an object, and equally so that you cannot identify with her....Give back to the author a little of the joy, the energy, the life of love and politics that she knew how to give and invent. SO many dead writers must have wept over what has been written about them. I hope that Ginsberg will be pleased over the book that we did on him, and its for the reason the book pleased nobody...Avoid the double shame of the scholar and the familiar.... The superiority of Anglo American Literature To leave, to escape, is to trace a line.... To leave to escape to leave.... to cross the horizon, enter into another life....It is thus that Ginsberg really finds himself in the middle of the Indian continent. He has really crossed the meridian, crossed the line of the horizon.... One only discovers worlds though a long, broken flight. It is the opposite of the imaginary Anglo American literature constantly shows these ruptures,these characters who create their line of flight, whoc reate through a line of flight.... HArdy, Melville, Stevenson , Woolf, Thomas Woolf, LAwrence, Fitzgerald, Kerouac. In them everything is a departure, becoming, passage, Leap daemon, a relationship with the outside (I repeat G.[insberg] is a man of the real. By which I mean a man of the future real....No more mirage of the imaginary burdened with identifications, phantasies or anything of the kind). This fixed point for him was, for him, perhaps named love.... They create a new Earth... American literature operates according to geographical lines: the flight towards the West,the discovery that the true East is in the West, the sense of frontiers as something to cross, to push back, to go beyond. The author creates a world, but there is no world which awaits us to be created....One must on the contrary speak with, write with. O mother what have I left out O mother what have I forgotten with your Death full of Flowers No More to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream, trapped in its disappearance Love's multitudinous boneyard of decay, The spilled milk of heroes Becoming is loving without alcohol, drugs and madness, becoming sober for a life which is richer and richer. This is sympathy, assembling. Making one's bed, the opposite of making a career.... Destruction of silk kerchiefs by dust storm, Caress of heroes blindfolded to posts We know of no book of love more important, more insinuating than Kerouac's Subterraneans.... The void that's highly embraceable during sleep Has no location and no fret; Yet I keep restless mental searching And geographical meandering To find the Holy Inside Milk Demema gave to all. In reality writing does not have an end in itself, precisely because life is not something personal.... The line of flight in these creative beings is creative of these becomings... The wheel of the quivering meat conception Turns in the void expelling human beings, Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits, Mice, lice, lizards, rats, roan RAcing horses, poxy bucolic pigtics, Horrible unnameable lice of vultures, Muderous attacking dog armies Of Africa, Rhinos roaming in the jungle, VAst boars and huge gigantic bull Elephants, rams, eagles, condors, Pones and Porcupines and Pills - All the endless conception of living beings Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness throughout the ten directions of space occupying all the quarters in & out, From supermicroscopic no-bug To huge Galaxy Lightyear Bowell Illuminating the sky of one Mind - Poor! I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven dead Kerouac's phrases are as sober as a Japanese drawing, a pure line traced by an unsupported hand, which passes across ages and reigns. It would take a true alcoholic to attain that degree of sobriety.... Strange Anglo-American literature: from Thomas Hardy,from D.H. LAwrence to Malcolm Lowry, from Henry Miller to Allen Ginsberg and JAck Kerouac, men who know how to leave, to scramble the codes, to cause flows to circulate, to traverse the desert of the body without organs....How an author is great because he cannot prevent himself from tracing flows and causing them to circulate.... a syntatical, agrammatical; less by what makes it a signifying thing, but by what causes it to move, to flow, to explode - desire. For literature is like schizophrenia: a process and not a goal, a production and not an expression. Where are we going Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which ways does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odysse in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out inthe houses, we'll both be lonely. Wil we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of the Lethe? Yes Dada would have loved a day like this with its sweet street carnival and its too real funeral just passing through it with its real dead dancer so beautiful and dumb in her shroud and her last lover lost Alors, la, Il me[nous] faudra errer tout seul. *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 09:02:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: poetry announcements In-Reply-To: <3377D8FE.55DB@concentric.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I agree with Rachel 10,000%.....I would be hard-pressed to name all the great recent publications I heard about thru the list....I have some sympathy with folks feeling flooded by stuff that isn't their number one priority. Sometimes I feel overburdened by others' personal chat and repartee....But I think a hair-trigger delete button is the main answer. Many of us, and myself first among 'em, feel that keeping in touch thru each others' poetry publications is one of the most difficult aspects of the poetry world right now...The worst are filled with grants and u.p. book contracts, while the best are scuffling around D.I.Y....(that was an atrocious attempt at a yeats travesty--but you get the idea)...I would feel cut off from a VITAL resource if there was less announcement of publications on the list!!! I feel that characterizing 'em as advertisements is a little weird too, given the personal financial sacrifice many of these folks go thru to get this stuff out..(I mean, the word is technically correct, but the overtones are wrong). Mark P. Atlanta On Mon, 12 May 1997, Rachel Loden wrote: > Would hate to see the announcements (as I think of them) discouraged in > any way--it's great to know what people are up to and as Bill Luoma once > said or implied (correct me if I'm wrong, Bill) they are refreshingly > straightforward public relations, unlike the more prevalent and more > tortured sort. > > Rachel Loden > > Bob Grumman wrote: > > > > I sympathize with Daniel Tessitore about the ads though I like them > > myself. To make them less intrusive, would it be possible to keep them > > aside, then put into one posting once a week for the listing? I'm still > > a novice at internetting so have no idea how much work this would be. > > Or maybe someone could volunteer (not me, alas) to collect all the ads > > for a month backchannel, and put them together weekly (or daily, or > > whatever) for the rest of us. Eventually perhaps an ad-mail-off option > > might be possible? That is, those not wishing to see the ads would not > > be sent them. Seems to me something could be done. --Bob G > > > > > > These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen > > > conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded > > > and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what > > > I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I > > > did not solicit. > > > > > > If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. > > > > > > DT > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 09:31:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Re: poetry announcements Rachel, Yes I think i said that. and by "the more prevalent and tortured sort", i think you mean all poetics things are ads and pr puff pieces anyway. . . . so why not include the more obvious sort? BillL >>Would hate to see the announcements (as I think of them) discouraged in >>any way--it's great to know what people are up to and as Bill Luoma once >>said or implied (correct me if I'm wrong, Bill) they are refreshingly >>straightforward public relations, unlike the more prevalent and more >>tortured sort. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 09:35:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nuyopoman@AOL.COM Subject: Public Sphere -- Boland-Rich This week at Mining Co: Commentary on Poetry and the Public Sphere and a get down re: last Friday's Boland-Rich DIA reading. http://poetry.miningco.com Bob Holman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 09:19:15 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: the Prelude MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Best not to forget that The Prelude wasn't meant as a self-contained work. It was to be set alongside The Excursion and the other poems of the uncompleted series The Recluse. In fact, Wordsworth intimates that he wanted all his work to be taken as a single poetic opus (making for some interesting parallels with Whitman, and with a number of poets influenced by Black Mountain. From the Preface to the Excursion: . . . the two Works [Prelude and Excursion] have the same relation to each other . . . as the ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic church. Continuing this allusion . . . minor Pieces, which have been long before the Public, when they shall be properly arranged, will be found by the attentive Reader to have such a connection with the main Work as may give them claim to be likened to little cells, oratories, and sepulchral recesses, ordinarily included in those edifices. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:21:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: Scrolling toward bookmark.html In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 13 May 1997, David Israel wrote: > > late-night on that curious cable TV channel that's given over to classical > music (usually -- typically music videos of Beethovan, et alia), and > occasionally some dance or other art stuff, -- day or two ago, I caught a > What cable TV channel is this? Is it available nationally? Or is it just local to where you are? Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:24:51 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: poetry announcements In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 13 May 1997 09:31:02 -0400 from On Tue, 13 May 1997 09:31:02 -0400 said: >Rachel, Yes I think i said that. and by "the more prevalent and tortured >sort", i think you mean all poetics things are ads and pr puff pieces anyway. >. . . > >so why not include the more obvious sort? > >BillL I vote with Rachel & the gang, I like the notices, they're a big help - but this ain't a good argument for keeping them. If our talk is just pr & puff, why not ONLY do the ads? Sorry, Bill, but I intend to keep huffing and puffing with all four of my pseudonyms. Stay tuned for the latest aesthetic advances. "Aesthetics is to painters like ornithology is for the birds." - Barnett Newman - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 07:53:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: the Prelude to "Pieces," by Wordsworth Comments: To: Robert Archambeau In-Reply-To: <33783213.5ACE@LFC.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII My plan is these little cells make sequences . . . ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 08:12:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: advertisements for myself In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For a limited time only, I am available as an individual or a group. Void where prohibited. Slightly higher in Canada. Some natural shifting of the contents may occur in shipment. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:26:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: what have I subscribed to? In-Reply-To: <199705130608.SAA21564@ihug.co.nz> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've been meaning to mention for a while now a fact that seems to me to be quite significant--I've arrived at a point where my reading Wish List is made up in large part not just of books mentioned by people on this list--the various recommendations and passing mentions that are often so interesting--but of books actually written by list members--there seems to have been an especially compelling flurry of appearances of late. I also like to read the announcements of events even when I know I won't possibly be able to attend--they often arouse in me a stimulating mix of curiosity, envy, regret, and vicarious thrill, as well as generating a buzzing awareness of the Dispersed & Thriving Life of Poetry--like listening to "the news" the way i'd like it to be reported. Also, as someone else mentioned, there's always the chance of a trip leading to a salutary co/incidence. steve ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:15:32 -0400 Reply-To: potepoet@home.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Ganick Organization: @Home Network Subject: address change for potes & poets.... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit hello.... i have become aware that several people have tried recently to send potes & poets press e-mail unsuccessfully....that's because the address has changed....the new address is: potepoet@home.com....this will also route mail to peter ganick....an additional address is: pganick@hotmail.com....though that address is not regularly checked.... out.... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 09:04:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Jenny's First Poetry Reading Comments: To: maz881@aol.com, CHRIS1929W@aol.com, Levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, daviesk@is4.NYU.EDU, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, drothschild@penguin.com, jdavis@panix.com, jms@acmenet.net, maj6916@u.cc.utah.edu, AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM, jarnot@pipeline.com, lgoodman@acsu.buffalo.edu, lppl@aol.com, poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, aburns@fnbank.com, normacole@aol.com, acornford@igc.org, olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbg.com, tlovell@sfsu.edu, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, peacock99@aol.com, murphym@earthlink.com, cburket@sfsu.edu, selby@slip.net, cah@sonic.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On Friday, May 9, 1996, San Francisco's (and the world's) Small Press Traffic ended its schedule (at least until August) with a reading by Douglas Powell and Jessica Grim. I brought my friend Jenny Osgood, whom I've known since high school and who was visiting from San Diego. It was her first poetry reading. She said she enjoyed it, so perhaps it won't be the last. We did arrive after Douglas had started due to a late dinner, unfortunately. Having to stand prevented me from writing down any of the fine lines he read, many from his MS that is scheduled to be published by Wesleyan Press if memory serves. I can tell you that Doug read each word very carefully and that his work is clever, funny, touching and occasionally heart-rending. At the break we grabbed seats in the back and read the new Mirage. The Jessica Grim's turn came. She announced her intention to read work so new none of the titles were final yet, and plunged right in: it belates us what thinking predicts it is a tunnel to the home in their head it rose up and fanned the sorry cows hoarding the betweenness tapered to the finest presence, albeit steeply stone calamity abbreviates the face cultivation accretes below the waterline fecund pundit moon prone dervishes' edict and then she read a funny found piece made of words entered by students doing searches of a library database, words that turned up zero records. Jessica started her reading by informing Doug that her skirt was blue, evidently referring to something that happened before I made it. Maybe one of the following people who were in the audience that night can explain: Ed Mycue, Spencer Selby, Lyn Hejinian, Lauren Hudath, Pam Lu, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Leslie Scalapino, Jean Day, Laura Moriarty, David Bromige, Carol Ciavonne, Travis Ortiz, Cydney Chadwick, Giovanni Singleton, Renee Gladman, Brian Lucas, Hung Tu, Steve Dickison, Tina Rotenberg, Pat Reed, Margie Sloan, Nick Karavatos, Sam, anyone? The "Santa Rosa contingent" (loosely composed of David, Doug, Sam, Carol, Cyd, and Margie) invited us to Timo's for _tapas_ afterward, and though it was hard to calm down in a place with such a buzz, the _flan de naranja_ was sweet and tasty. Everyone congratulated Jenny on NOT being a writer. Be that as it may, tonight at Intersection for the Arts on Valencia between 15th and 16th sees the return of former San Franciscan and current Brooklynite Drew Gardner. 8:00! ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:22:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: poetry announcements MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit hen wrote: > Sorry, Bill, but I intend to keep > huffing and puffing with all four of my pseudonyms. Stay tuned for > the latest aesthetic advances. Hey, Hen, work it. As RuPaul says, "It's all just clothes, makeup, and hair." Move those pixels, Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 10:47:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Birthdate // what have I subscribed to? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>Can anyone tell me when this list began? > >This was the first Poetics Message: > >Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1993 14:55:05 -0400 >From: Charles Bernstein >To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS >Subject: first flight > >Above the world-weary horizons >New obstacles for exchange arise >Or unfold, O ye postmasters! > >****** >However, in the fall of 1993 we were still testing the list mostly locally >in Buffalo and it became a national list >in December 1993, with Peter >Quatermain's announcement of the book launch for the Holy Forest. So how come the Poetics archive at the EPC now starts in April 1994? One used to be able to go back at least to Peter's post. Did these early "national" posts get lost in the move to a new server or what? Happy to be part of this community of shoppers, Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:02:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Jenny's First Poetry Reading In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970513090442.006998ac@pop.slip.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable At 9:04 AM -0700 5/13/97, Steve Carll wrote: >On Friday, May 9, 1996, San Francisco's (and the world's) Small Press >Traffic ended its schedule (at least until August) with a reading by >Douglas Powell and Jessica Grim. Thanks for the review, Steve--BUT--Small Press Traffic has one more event in May--a book party/ reading for the second issue of Clamour. =46riday, May 16, 7:30 p.m. Clamour a reading by contributors Tisa Bryant Aja Couchois Duncan Terry A. Miller Elissa Perry According to editor Renee Gladman, =B3---------=B2 _Clamour_ #1 exploded al= l our preconceptions of what modern experimental poetry can be and do, can mean and say and perform ... within sexuality, a longing, an absence ... within racial identity a deconstruction of the self, of the =B3other=B2 ... within critical inquiry an activism that soars and shouts ... the garment of ethnicity rent, torn and repatched. An essential magazine. _Clamour_ #2 will be released at this event. New College Cultural Center 766 Valencia Street $5 Re: the "------------" above, I'm at home and only have the first draft of the flyer copy at my disposal. On the flyer Renee is quoted as saying something about how Clamour is a place where "dykes" can experiment and communicate with one another. Though, of course, she's more elegant than my paraphrase. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 14:38:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: the notion of voice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There is an idea often floated around that the rise of the contemporary "workshop" poem is related to a particular concept of poetic "voice"--in general, that "voice" is an individual matter that a writer finds with practice and time. To a greater or lesser extent, this "voice" is the natural property of the writer in the language--it is his or her "own" voice, albeit one discovered rather than given. Whether anyone actually believes this, or has said so in so many words, is something I'm trying to find out. Is anyone aware of published articles or books that articulate/elaborate/defend this notion of voice, or something similar to it--obviously, my description above is meant to be very general. I would appreciate backchannels with any specific information. I suppose as a list matter it might also be a subject for discussion, but someone could be of most help to me if they have specific information about sources. Thanks in advance for any help. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 12:51:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: Jenny's First Poetry Reading In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970513090442.006998ac@pop.slip.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I too appreciate the announcements and reports of readings, but (and I apologize, Steve Carll, because this is going to sound churlish) I find myself frustrated with your otherwise voluminous SF "reviews" by your practice of quoting individual lines out of context. Narrative, meta-narrative, and IBM Deep Blue aside, I find myself totally bewildered about what even one individual poem could actually have said, or sounded like: perhaps you could ASK the poet in question for a copy of his or her poem that you liked a lot and then post that to the list? If this is just my envy at no longer living in the Bay Area and so not having a chance to actually attend these events myself, I apologize. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 16:12:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Jenny's First Poetry Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joe -- I dunno. I think Steve's practice of reporting the lines that he thinks were exemplary is a fair representation of one kind of poetry audience experience. That is, you don't get a holograph of a poem at a reading. If he were to give you the whole poem in his report, it'd get to be a bit too much like Borges' map of the country at a one-to-one scale. Maybe I'm just going through tv sports news withdrawal, but the 'highlights' version of the event doesn't bug me. Incidentally, I think Steve's set to nomail. Flippin' my shades like Lee Mazilli, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 16:18:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: the notion of voice In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually, I'd very much like to see some discussion of this subject. I've been sympathetic to the Langpo-and-after critique of the fetishizing of such a voice, a critique which correlates pretty closely, i guess w/ the post-structuralist attack on the notion of the "unified subject." At the same time, tho, i've always felt that this issue is complex. Lots of poets I admire *do* seem to have a particular and identifiable "voice." This is true of poets, like Oppen, still devoted to "lyric valuables." But it cld it also be true even of a poet like Bernstein who wants to deconstruct the traditional lyric, often violently collaging disparate materials to this end? One still hears, at least sometimes, something like a "voice" emerging from the pile-up. Or at least discovers, and learns to recognize, characteristic patternings and maneuvers. Is there any reason to think of such patterning as a "voice," or is this just a holdover from older modes, a readerly bad habit? Certainly, if one hears Charles B. read his poetry he *does* have a "voice," and a quite unmistakble one at that. When I interviewed Carl Rakosi he called himself a "poet of voice, of voices." That little stutter has always intrigued me--acknowledging multiplicity but keeping, in some form, the concept of poetic voice. Heck, I've been told I have one myself, but if so i didn't pick it up in a workshop. steve On Tue, 13 May 1997, Mark Wallace wrote: > There is an idea often floated around that the rise of the > contemporary "workshop" poem is related to a particular concept of poetic > "voice"--in general, that "voice" is an individual matter that a writer > finds with practice and time. To a greater or lesser extent, this "voice" > is the natural property of the writer in the language--it is his or her > "own" voice, albeit one discovered rather than given. Whether anyone > actually believes this, or has said so in so many words, is something I'm > trying to find out. > > Is anyone aware of published articles or books that > articulate/elaborate/defend this notion of voice, or something similar to > it--obviously, my description above is meant to be very general. I would > appreciate backchannels with any specific information. I suppose as a list > matter it might also be a subject for discussion, but someone could be of > most help to me if they have specific information about sources. > > Thanks in advance for any help. > > Mark Wallace > > /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > | | > | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | > | GWU: | > | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | > | EPC: | > | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | > |____________________________________________________________________________| > Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 16:15:07 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Jenny's First Poetry Reading In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 13 May 1997 12:51:57 -0700 from Steve Carll's not responsible for the "quotable-line" genre which is prevalent in these reading reports from various reporters. Quotable-Line Poetry is an offshoot of the New Joke School which stems from Wordsworth's NW Rear Cathedral Dispensary Chapel Exit poem, titled "Hyper Burbling Brook". [Brook II] I too envy this style, myself. You have to be invited to read in a Major American Metropolis to infuse this particular stream into your work. - IBM Deep Greenish-Gould "how do you like dem pixie-pecs, Rache?" - Falstaffdrift ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 15:19:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Hale Subject: Re: the notion of voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark: Regarding your post on the origin of "voice" as American poetry episteme or belief system. I seem to recall an article in Poets and Writers from two years back that touched on this idea. I can't remember the author, but it was a polemic against the workshop/MFA factory. His most damning evidence was random quotations from "best poetry" anthologies of that year, pieces that all more-or-less began with a childhood reminiscence or the death of a family member -- ergo workshop/MFA poets are programmed to cover only certain topics, also (and this is where his argument was hopelessly flawed) that they lack the experience to write about anything else because all they do is sponge off the workshop/MFA circuit (too adroit, really). He should have questioned it at the level you are contemplating. Regardless of his agenda, I think the notion of "voice" you are examining is linked to what he's talking about. Also, I would think that the definition of "experience" is key here, as well. I'll try to dig up the piece and I'll let you know if I find it. At 02:38 PM 5/13/97 -0400, you wrote: > There is an idea often floated around that the rise of the >contemporary "workshop" poem is related to a particular concept of poetic >"voice"--in general, that "voice" is an individual matter that a writer >finds with practice and time. To a greater or lesser extent, this "voice" >is the natural property of the writer in the language--it is his or her >"own" voice, albeit one discovered rather than given. Whether anyone >actually believes this, or has said so in so many words, is something I'm >trying to find out. > > Is anyone aware of published articles or books that >articulate/elaborate/defend this notion of voice, or something similar to >it--obviously, my description above is meant to be very general. I would >appreciate backchannels with any specific information. I suppose as a list >matter it might also be a subject for discussion, but someone could be of >most help to me if they have specific information about sources. > > Thanks in advance for any help. > > Mark Wallace > >/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ >| | >| mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | >| GWU: | >| http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | >| EPC: | >| http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | >|____________________________________________________________________________| > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 15:39:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: main Subject: tucson reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII for those way out west: talk and poetry reading by david bromige talk: "Building Up the Poem" friday, may 16, 7:00 p.m. poetry center annex, 1232 n. cherry tucson, az admission $5 at door poetry reading: saturday, may 17, 5:00 p.m. dinnerware gallery, 135 e. congress tucson, az donations appreciated dan featherston ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 18:46:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: the notion of voice footnote: don't know (this evening) where one wd locate the manner of locus classicus [or anyway, good exampli] of the "unique voice" idea that Mark W. seeks, surely many such cites (at least in secondaryish sources) must be floating around far & wide & rampant -- but I've a suggestion abt. this: if one limits the voice idea to poetry per se (rather than, more broadly, looking at the notion as applied to "writing"), one circumscribes it somewhat unnaturally, meseems -- one particularly runs across phrases like "then he found his voice" in biographies of prose writers of, say, early 20th century American fiction -- doesn't one? Such is integral to widespread mythologies of "the modern [fiction] writer," seems -- I'd hazard a guess the idea may've developed some of its force in such environments rather than strictly within metes & bounds of the line-brreak crowd -- d.i. p.s.: of course, speaking of "voice" as a term suggesting a consistent or discernable (sometimes evolving) personal style, arguably this goes back far in many poetry traditions -- even though the relation between the individual voice & the collective voice seems (as usual) hard to scrutinize & dissect -- rather ebb-&-flow-ish -- but in (for instance) Chinese poetry, the idea is typically considered present & evident as far back as Chu Yuan (circa 2nd century BC?), who's generally considered the 1st now-known Chinese poet to have demonstrated an individual voice (quite different -- in some of his work -- from the corpus of "Book of Songs" poems, which are awash in what one could certainly call "the collective voice" -- as is folk utterance generally) -- & the notion of voice (or closely-kindred ideas, admittedly not using that specific term) seem esp. strong in Tao Yuan-ming [4th century or so AD?] and then, in basically the whole growing tradition thereafter -- esp. the Tang & Song dynasty poets (taking us thru 13th century a.d. . . .) -- it's a long story in many a land -- this pervasive fiction of the self . . . ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 18:52:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: the notion of voice p.s.: in American poetry, isn't Whitman a prime source for "voice" notions? -- seems as if he cultivated those ideas -- or ideas that seem like those ideas ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 16:08:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: CATALOG ON-LINE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The catalog of the videotape collection here at the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives has just gone on-line! This on-line version of our catalog is now the most complete listing available of our videotape holdings. It can be accessed from our web page: http://www.sfsu.edu./~newlit/welcome.htm The transition from the original, extremely vexed, dbase document to Filemaker Pro and then onto our web page (thanks to the help of Academic Computing here at SFSU) has been somewhat difficult. The field which lists every poem read by the each reader is the problematic one. Rather than waiting to fix the mistakes remaining in this version, we have chosen to put it up and invite feedback. We will attempt to correct errors as quickly as possible. Someone else may have posted the information about Robert Duncan, but I didn't see it. He actually read here in October of 1987. It was a moving performance - his last public appearance. He died on February 3, 1988. http://www.sfsu.edu./~newlit/welcome.htm ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:08:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: the notion of voice p.p.s.: I wrote, << in American poetry, isn't Whitman a prime source for "voice" notions? -- seems as if he cultivated those ideas -- or ideas that seem like those ideas >> but really shd. withdraw the comment (w/ yer permish), as, on 2nd thought, it (on the whole) so far misses the point as to be a tad stupid (i.e., self of W was far cry from ego-meisterism here properly in question, ergo prithee pardon such implication if so it seemed) [end of series] d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 19:50:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: CATALOG ON-LINE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" laura-- best of luck with this all, a huge project & valuable service... i just tried it, tho, and all of my searches came up empty... tried duncan, silliman, ginsberg, poetry, reading, and "African American"... so there's probably some bugs... tho it seems to be receiving my request, for example returning: >SFSU Search Results > > >Sorry, I didn't find any documents that matched your search for "Robert >Duncan"! > >This search was performed by wwwwais 2.5. i spend all day tryin to fix stuff like this at my dayjob, so my sympathies to yrself or yr tech staff... as a suggestion, tho: praps you could provide a browsable listing of all th holdings? would give folks who arent familiar w/ th collection an idea of whatall you have... just a thot. good luck! yrs luigi >The catalog of the videotape collection here at the Poetry Center and >American Poetry Archives has just gone on-line! This on-line version of our >catalog is now the most complete listing available of our videotape >holdings. It can be accessed from our web page: > >http://www.sfsu.edu./~newlit/welcome.htm >..... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 21:27:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: poetry collections/information please Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" just came across this, tho it doesnt look to be a very selective listing: http://members.aol.com/laughingbr/library.txt lbd >A plea to the list for information! >To the best of my knowledge there's no list available of all poetry secial >collections like the Archive at UCSD or Poet's House at U. of Arizona. >Obviously such a list would be useful to publishers like me and the poets >they publish. Please help me compile one (or inform me if one exists) by >front- or backchannelling info. If I get responses I will assemble and send >to the list. >Thanks > >Mark of the Junction ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 21:46:31 -0400 Reply-To: Piombino/Simon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: the notion of voice Comments: To: Robert Hale In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970513152050.42a751ae@pop1> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I agree with Robert Hale that the requirement that some family experience be touched upon is at the heart of what some might call the "non-innovative" or non-experimental poem (expectably,many poets are skeptical about creating hard and fast technical names for non- conformist kind of poetry) I was recently asked to judge manuscripts for a poetry award and this to me is the essence of the narrowness of much of the current poetry I was asked to read. I found myself saying, "mother, father, sister, brother" aloud like a mantra as I went through the manuscripts.The issue isn't only that"voice" is created by reciting these words. It's that foregrounding- almost in a kind of forced self-therapetic mode of expression-documents of one's conflictual official "arrival" in the world of adult living seems to be the ritualistic expectation. I did find one or two manuscripts that broke out of this. The main quality in these was awareness and factoring in of other modes of living and thinking besides ones own, and even more importantly, within ones own, not in a didactic or preachy way but with a credible involvement with some of life's chaos and unpredictability. By the way, the judging is still going on-though manuscripts are no longer being accepted- so I can't yet supply more details.Perhaps I'll I'll mention more about it here when I've heard about the outcome. I would appreciate hearing more about this piece in Poets and Writers that you mentioned. I never found that much in that mag to read in depth- interesting to hear about this. By the way, I remember that you edited and published a poetry magazine awhile back, though I can't at this moment remember its name. Best wishes, Nick Piombino On Tue, 13 May 1997, Robert Hale wrote: > Mark: > > Regarding your post on the origin of "voice" as American poetry episteme or > belief system. I seem to recall an article in Poets and Writers from two > years back that touched on this idea. I can't remember the author, but it > was a polemic against the workshop/MFA factory. > > His most damning evidence was random quotations from "best poetry" > anthologies of that year, pieces that all more-or-less began with a > childhood reminiscence or the death of a family member -- ergo workshop/MFA > poets are programmed to cover only certain topics, also (and this is where > his argument was hopelessly flawed) that they lack the experience to write > about anything else because all they do is sponge off the workshop/MFA > circuit (too adroit, really). He should have questioned it at the level you > are contemplating. Regardless of his agenda, I think the notion of "voice" > you are examining is linked to what he's talking about. Also, I would think > that the definition of "experience" is key here, as well. I'll try to dig up > the piece and I'll let you know if I find it. > > At 02:38 PM 5/13/97 -0400, you wrote: > > There is an idea often floated around that the rise of the > >contemporary "workshop" poem is related to a particular concept of poetic > >"voice"--in general, that "voice" is an individual matter that a writer > >finds with practice and time. To a greater or lesser extent, this "voice" > >is the natural property of the writer in the language--it is his or her > >"own" voice, albeit one discovered rather than given. Whether anyone > >actually believes this, or has said so in so many words, is something I'm > >trying to find out. > > > > Is anyone aware of published articles or books that > >articulate/elaborate/defend this notion of voice, or something similar to > >it--obviously, my description above is meant to be very general. I would > >appreciate backchannels with any specific information. I suppose as a list > >matter it might also be a subject for discussion, but someone could be of > >most help to me if they have specific information about sources. > > > > Thanks in advance for any help. > > > > Mark Wallace > > > >/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > >| | > >| mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | > >| GWU: | > >| http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | > >| EPC: | > >| http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | > >|____________________________________________________________________________| > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 22:05:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: Une Tristesse de Joie pour Allen Ginsberg 1. In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 13 May 1997, orpheus wrote: > The matrical fissure of schizophrenia, as opposed to paranoiac > castration; and the line of escape as opposed to the "blue line," the > blues. > > O mother > farewell > with a long black shoe > farewell > with Communist party and a broken stocking.... > with your sagging belly > with your fear of Hitler > with your mouth of bad short stories.... > with your belly of strikes and smokestacks > with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish war > with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers.... > > with your eyes > with your eyes of Russia > with your eyes of no money.... > with your eyes of starving India.... > with your eyes of Czechoslovakia attacked by robots.... > with your eyes being led away by policemen to an ambulance > with your eyes with the pancreas removed > with your eyes of appendix operation > with your eyes of abortion > with your eyes of ovaries removed > with your eyes of shock > with your eyes of lobotomy > with your eyes of divorce.... > > Why these words, paranoia and schizophrenia, which are like > talking birds and girls' first names? Why do social investments follow > this dividing line that gives them a specifically delirous content > (recreating history in delirium)? > > When I write about an author... think of the author you > are writing about. Think of her so hard that she can no longer be an > object, and equally so that you cannot identify with her....Give back to > the author a little of the joy, the energy, the life of love and politics > that she knew how to give and invent. SO many dead writers must have wept > over what has been written about them. I hope that Ginsberg will be > pleased over the book that we did on him, and its for the reason the book > pleased nobody...Avoid the double shame of the scholar and the > familiar.... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 22:12:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: Une Tristesse de Joie pour Allen Ginsberg 2. In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > The superiority of Anglo American Literature > To leave, to escape, is to trace a line.... To leave to escape to > leave.... to cross the horizon, enter into another life....It is thus that > Ginsberg really finds himself in the middle of the Indian continent. He > has really crossed the meridian, crossed the line of the horizon.... One > only discovers worlds though a long, broken flight. It is the opposite of > the imaginary Anglo American literature constantly shows these > ruptures,these characters who create their line of flight, whoc reate > through a line of flight.... HArdy, Melville, Stevenson , Woolf, Thomas > Woolf, LAwrence, Fitzgerald, Kerouac. In them everything is a departure, > becoming, > passage, > > Leap > daemon, > a relationship with the outside (I repeat G.[insberg] > is a man of the real. By which I mean a man of the future real....No more > mirage of the imaginary burdened with identifications, phantasies or > anything of the kind). This fixed point for him was, for him, perhaps > named > love.... They create a new Earth... American literature operates according > to geographical lines: the flight towards the West,the discovery that the > true East is in the West, the sense of frontiers as something to cross, to > push back, to go beyond. > The author creates a world, but there is no world which awaits us > to be created....One must on the contrary speak with, write with. > > > O mother what have I left out > O mother what have I forgotten > > with your Death full of Flowers ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 22:16:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: Une Tristesse de Joie pour Allen Ginsberg3 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > with your Death full of Flowers > > No More to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the > Dream, trapped in its disappearance > > > Love's multitudinous boneyard > of decay, > The spilled milk of heroes > > Becoming is loving without alcohol, drugs and madness, becoming sober for > a life which is richer and richer. This is sympathy, assembling. Making > one's bed, the opposite of making a career.... > > Destruction of silk kerchiefs > by dust storm, > Caress of heroes blindfolded to posts > > We know of no book of love more important, more insinuating than Kerouac's > Subterraneans.... > > The void that's highly embraceable > during sleep > Has no location and no fret; > Yet I keep restless mental searching > And geographical meandering > To find the Holy Inside Milk > Demema gave to all. > > > In reality writing does not have an end in itself, precisely > because life is not something personal.... > > The line of flight in these creative beings is creative of these > becomings... > > The wheel of the quivering meat conception > Turns in the void expelling human beings, > Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits, > Mice, lice, lizards, rats, roan > RAcing horses, poxy bucolic pigtics, > Horrible unnameable lice of vultures, > Muderous attacking dog armies > Of Africa, Rhinos roaming in the jungle, > VAst boars and huge gigantic bull > Elephants, rams, eagles, condors, > Pones and Porcupines and Pills - > All the endless conception of living beings > Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness > throughout the ten directions of space > occupying all the quarters in & out, > From supermicroscopic no-bug > To huge Galaxy Lightyear Bowell > Illuminating the sky of one Mind - > Poor! I wish I was free > of that slaving meat wheel > and safe in heaven dead > > > Kerouac's phrases are as sober as a Japanese drawing, a pure line > traced by an unsupported hand, which passes across ages and reigns. It > would take a true alcoholic to attain that degree of sobriety.... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 22:22:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: Une Tristesse de Joie pour Allen Ginsberg4 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > Kerouac's phrases are as sober as a Japanese drawing, a pure line > traced by an unsupported hand, which passes across ages and reigns. It > would take a true alcoholic to attain that degree of sobriety.... > > Strange Anglo-American literature: from Thomas Hardy,from D.H. LAwrence > to Malcolm Lowry, from Henry Miller to Allen Ginsberg and JAck Kerouac, > men who know how to leave, to scramble the codes, to cause flows to > circulate, to traverse the desert of the body without organs....How an > author is great because he cannot prevent himself from tracing flows and > causing them to circulate.... a syntatical, agrammatical; less by what > makes it a signifying thing, but by what causes it to move, to flow, to > explode - desire. For literature is like schizophrenia: a process and not > a goal, a production and not an expression. > > Where are we going Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which > ways does your beard point tonight? > (I touch your book and dream of our odysse in the supermarket and > feel absurd.) > Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add > shade to shade, lights out inthe houses, we'll both be lonely. > Wil we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue > automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? > Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage teacher, what > America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on > a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters > of the Lethe? > > Yes Dada would have loved a day like this > with its sweet street carnival > and its too real funeral > just passing through it > > with its real dead dancer > so beautiful and dumb > in her shroud > and her last lover lost > > > Alors, > > la, > > > Il me[nous] faudra errer tout seul. > > > *********************** > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 23:01:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Course offering on Net Community, etc. at Naropa - (Alan) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - (This is the nearest I come to a book or reading announcement at the mom- ent. I will be talking about Net community, poetics, software-motivated writing and the performative, avatars, etc.) Course Offering: Neural Neighbors: Life in the Next Millennium I am offering a course at the Naropa Institute's School of Continuing Ed- ucation, concerned with the present and future development of the Net and Net communities. The description reads as follows; please contact Naropa if you are interested (phone number is below): Neural Neighbors: Life in the Third Millennium Over the past 25 years, a revolution in human communication has been spurred on by rapid advances in computer technology. The Internet, now connecting over 50 million people, is radically changing the nature of human relations. No longer separated by physical distanc,e people are meeting, connecting, and creating lasting relationships electronically. Within this medium, the Internet user can create a 'virtual' persona, choosing his or her age, sex, race, history. This 'virtual' reality may in some cases become more 'real' than life away from the machine. Communica- tion in the next millennium may well be among such 'constructed' subjects - people creating their own identities online. Using texts from the Net, as well as theory, this class examines the nature of these new commun- ities, expanded relationships, and the future of the 'self.' [Note: We shall look at a number of applications, ranging from MOOs to IRC to email lists - covering the various modalities of on-line communities and their development. We will also be concerned with the political econo- my of the Net, including the divisions between information-rich and -poor demographics. The participant will receive an overall view of the Net, from its history to current and future developments, with an emphasis on Net culture and its potential. In particular, we shall look at the way Net literature is shaped by the Net, and the potential for alternative styles/ distributions/demographics, and so forth.] The Naropa Institute is in Boulder, Colorado; the course is offered in The Dairy building, at 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder. Friday, Saturday, Sunday June 13 - 15 Friday 7:00 - 9:00 pm; Saturday, Sunday 10:00 am - 5:00 pm ENV028, non-credit $150 Friday night only: $10 / $5 (tickets sold at door only) Register by calling 303 - 546 - 3578 (Also check out www.naropa.edu.) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 00:00:54 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "linda v. russo" Organization: University of Utah Subject: (Fwd) FYI Boston Area Folks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Be Warned: this is a long msg. probably of interest only to Boston folks & Media Watchdogs in general: ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 15:00:21 -0400 From: Stacey Cordeiro 432-1839 Subject: FW: Boston Media Collective? To: act-ma@igc.apc.org Hello, all! My name is Jay -- some of you know me, and some of you don't. I'm a Boston-dweller and occasional freelance writer who has recently become involved in a lot of independent media organizing. Specifically, I'm working on organizing the Direct Action News Center, a virtual media collective that will provide in-the-field coverage of progressive actions, marches, protests and campaigns and distribute the coverage worldwide through the web. As part of our DANC organizing we have been talking a good deal about local media collectives and why there aren't more of them. There are some cities that have very active media collectives that work in different ways to increase communication (and ultimately action) among the people who are involved in the progressive media community. The Toronto Media Collective meets the last Sunday of every month, and from what I hear have contributed to an incredible cross-pollenization of organizations and individuals that in turn has led to an increase of direct actions there. The Los Angeles Alternative Media Network meets monthly and attracts more than 50 people to each meeting. Seattle has an Independent Media Coalition, Philly and New York are holding meetings to form their own media collective, and after a successful romp through the Democratic National Convention and a subsequent burnout, Chicago's Countermedia is revitalizing into a working media collective of its own. So, what are we doing with ourselves in Boston? Well, there are lots of independent media people out there. Though I've only lived here a couple years and am not around much due to my various occupations, I have crossed paths with more than enough people who are intereted in real independent media to make me hopeful about the things that we could do if we really put our minds to it. We all do great things on our own, that's for sure, but we all know that working on own has limited possibilities. I believe that our work is important and necessary enough that we should make every effort to take it to a more productive level. What I'm proposing is that we all come together, at least once, to talk about the possibility of forming a Boston Media Collective in order to regularly cross wires with one another so that we may create a greater spark. What?? *Another project??* In my already triply overbooked life? Well, not necessarily. A Boston Media Collective could be anything that we want it to be. In fact, we don't have to actually *do* anything as a group, and perhaps we shouldn't. The Toronto Media Collective does not take action together on any issue, as far as I understand, nor do they deal with developing formal decision-making processes and actually agreeing on any one thing. They get together once a month, though, discuss their individual projects, and then brainstorm about ways that they can help each other. The basic act of their meeting has inspired many of them to act together in ways they wouldn't have if they hadn't become involved with the Collective. I believe that coming together once a month as the Boston Media Collective could and should enhance and improve the effectiveness of our current activities (rather than be an activity in and of itself), and could therefore be very beneficial to the Boston activist community. I propose that we meet on Sunday night, June 8, at 8pm, at my apartment in Brighton (I'll give directions later) to tell each other about our own projects and begin to envision how we can complement each other. (That is just a proposed date and time and place -- if there are any problems or suggestions let me know a.s.a.p.) We can see what happens there and judge whether or not a regular monthly meeting of the minds would make sense. So, what do you think? Please contact me at this e-mail address (jay@user1.channel1.com) or at (617) 783-4328 to give feedback. Also, please spread the word. I am passing this message to people I know who are connected with Radio Free Allston, the Lucy Parsons Center, Homes Not Jails, Food Not Bombs, the Boston Commune, STEP, the Center for Campus Organizing, the Thistle, the National Writers' Union, a variety of public TV and video people and other individuals. Still, not everyone involved with each of these groups will get the message that I send, so spread the message far and wide. That is all for now. I look forward to meeting those of you whom I don't know already, Jay P.S. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control (my girlfriend got into a phd program in a different city) I'm going to be moving out of Boston in a couple months. Before I go, at the very least I'd love to pull together at least one meeting to talk about the things that a Boston Media Collective could accomplish and to plant the idea of holding future meetings in people's heads. I hate to organize and run, but I figure that it's better to give it one shot and see if anyone wants to run with it. Who knows? -- linda v. russo linda.russo@m.cc.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 23:26:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: the notion of voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It seems that the best place to look for defintions and/or assertions of "voice" and its importance in workshop poems is in workshop texts themselves - i.e. the kind of guidebooks/handbooks etc. that market themselves as such. (I can't unfortunately, name any off hand, but am sure you could get some info. from any number of workshop teachers at any number of universities, community colleges, etc.) Otherwise, Donald Wesling and Tadeusz Slawek's recent _Literary Voice: The Calling of Jonah_ provides some interesting takes on the concept and what they contend is its ongoing value. They argue, in short, that voice mediates the two "minimal" poles of body and text - pure orality and pure textuality - becoming "maximal", however, not in the individual, but in the "bardic voice" - that which speaks for the collectivity, the nation, etc. Theirs is interesting in that they attmept to come to terms with the notion of "voice" through/against recent critiques thereof (Grammatology etc.), using the term both literally (orality, speech, etc) and figuratively (subject, identity, etc). They rely heavily on Henri Meschonnic, a theorist who has done much w/ rhythm/voice/subjectivity, and who has had little if anything translated into English that I know of (btw: if anyone does know of any such translations, I'd love to hear of them backchannel). In any case, their bibiliography should be helpful, as they breifly touch on both popular and academic studies of voice from various disciplines... Best, Stephen Cope ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 02:56:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: Re: duplicates of Montage In-Reply-To: <199705060402.AAA16142@alcor.concordia.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Apologies from Orpheus to All. CD. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 08:03:28 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: the notion of voice In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 13 May 1997 23:26:03 -0700 from The Wesling/Slawek bk sounds interesting - another, simpler, place to start might be Eliots short talk, "Three Voices of Poetry". The "bardic" that W/S value might be compared to the "impersonal" voice of communal wisdom that Eliot finds in the greatest dramatists - the poetic voice which is not exactly Shakespeare (or Oxford that is), nor one of his characters exactly, but the voice that says "ripeness is all", etc. Eliot gets into this toward the end of his essay. Eliot's essay is interesting in part because it's a "talk" - not a tract or a dissertation - the voice of a real, substantial person talking to some other people is the rhetorical ground - He distinguishes between three voices & then suggests they are not firmly divided, but the "first" voice infuses the rest, etc. The first voice is the poet writing/talking to her/himself, not immediately or directly concerned with an audience. He thinks "lyric" is a confusing term for this - calls it meditative verse. The 2nd voice is poet speaking to an audience - rhetorical, narrative, satirical, didactic, teaching, entertaining, communicating. 3rd is the voice of the poet/dramatist - hidden in the objective form of the play and differentiated speakers. Anyway, I don't want to run on rehashing this essay - but N. Piombino's point that a lot of "workshop" "voice" poetry is a working out of family dilemmas & "personal maturing" could be usefully related to Eliot's notion that the 1st voice is a working out of an unknown impulse, an impulse to comprehend or bring to form "psychic material" whose ONLY meaning (for the poet) is it's expression, its bringing-to-form, in the poem. And one could take a socio- logical approach and compare the setting for "meditative verse" in previous eras - the function of prayer & psalm for unburdening the heart or dealing with trouble or expressing love in a "personal" way which is yet social - compare this to the academic setting in which "voice" is taught for a living and composed for assignments & graded, etc. - and you begin to see problems with a separate "discipline" of creative writing which in my opinion are not resolved by taking a theoretical approach which designates "voice", or "self" or logos or speech simply as the illusory ideological framework to be jettisoned. I think voice, self, logos, can be taken as GIVEN! Ha ha!! But the impulse for form-creation and where it comes from & what the poet does with it - these are the deep issues for the POET at least. I recommend Eliot's talk. Also Paul Celan's talk - I forget where, title, etc. - in which in a roundabout way he says that the voice in poetry is what suffuses & then transcends/overcomes the artifice & alienation inherent in all art & representation. I think he does this sort of in terms of a parable, ... maybe Pierre or somebody can fill in here... poetry the culmination or sanction for art... the simple human voice coming full circle... Sandra & Elmo, I'd like you to write papers on this for next semester... - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 09:12:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: the notion of voice Comments: To: Robert Hale In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 13 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > I agree with Robert Hale that the requirement that some family > experience be touched upon is at the heart of what some might call the > "non-innovative" or non-experimental poem (expectably,many poets are > skeptical about > creating hard and fast technical names for non- conformist kind of > poetry) I was recently asked to judge manuscripts for a poetry award and > this to me is the essence of the narrowness of much of the current > poetry I was asked to read. I > found myself saying, "mother, father, sister, brother" aloud like a mantra > as > I went through the manuscripts.The issue isn't only that"voice" is > created by reciting these words. It's that foregrounding- almost in a > kind of forced self-therapetic mode of expression-documents of one's > conflictual official > "arrival" in > the world of adult living seems to be the ritualistic expectation. I did > find one or two manuscripts that broke out of this. The main quality in > these was awareness and factoring in of other modes of living and thinking > besides ones > own, and even more importantly, within ones own, not in a didactic or > preachy way but with a credible involvement with some of life's chaos > and unpredictability. > By the way, the judging is still going on-though manuscripts are no > longer being accepted- so I can't yet supply more details.Perhaps I'll > I'll mention more about it here when I've heard about the outcome. > I would appreciate hearing more about this piece in Poets and Writers > that you mentioned. > I never found that much in that mag to read in depth- interesting to hear > about this. By the way, I remember that you edited and published a poetry > magazine awhile back, though I can't at this moment remember its name. > > Best wishes, > > Nick Piombino > > On Tue, 13 May 1997, Robert Hale wrote: > > > Mark: > > > > Regarding your post on the origin of "voice" as American poetry episteme or > > belief system. I seem to recall an article in Poets and > Writers from two > > years back that touched on this idea. I can't remember the author, but it > > was a polemic against the workshop/MFA factory. > > > > His most damning evidence was random quotations from "best poetry" > > anthologies of that year, pieces that all more-or-less began with a > > childhood reminiscence or the death of a family member -- ergo workshop/MFA > > poets are programmed to cover only certain topics, also (and this is where > > his argument was hopelessly flawed) that they lack the experience to write > > about anything else because all they do is sponge off the workshop/MFA > > circuit (too adroit, really). He should have questioned it at the level you > > are contemplating. Regardless of his agenda, I think the notion of "voice" > > you are examining is linked to what he's talking about. Also, I would think > > that the definition of "experience" is key here, as well. I'll try to dig up > > the piece and I'll let you know if I find it. > > > > At 02:38 PM 5/13/97 -0400, you wrote: > > > There is an idea often floated around that the rise of the > > >contemporary "workshop" poem is related to a particular concept of poetic > > >"voice"--in general, that "voice" is an individual matter that a writer > > >finds with practice and time. To a greater or lesser extent, this "voice" > > >is the natural property of the writer in the language--it is his or her > > >"own" voice, albeit one discovered rather than given. Whether anyone > > >actually believes this, or has said so in so many words, is something I'm > > >trying to find out. > > > > > > Is anyone aware of published articles or books that > > >articulate/elaborate/defend this notion of voice, or something similar to > > >it--obviously, my description above is meant to be very general. I would > > >appreciate backchannels with any specific information. I suppose as a list > > >matter it might also be a subject for discussion, but someone could be of > > >most help to me if they have specific information about sources. > > > > > > Thanks in advance for any help. > > > > > > Mark Wallace > > > > > >/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > > >| | > > >| mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | > > >| GWU: | > > >| http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | > > >| EPC: | > > >| http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | > > >|____________________________________________________________________________| > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 09:17:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Re: Birthdate // what have I subscribed to? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >So how come the Poetics archive at the EPC now starts in April 1994? One >used to be able to go back at least to Peter's post. Did these early >"national" posts get lost in the move to a new server or what? >Herb Levy The "early" archives remain available via the Poetics page of the EPC: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/poetics/early_archive/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 05:26:31 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: what have I subscribed to? Comments: To: Piombino/Simon With due respect to all listmembers, and with kudos for the writer of the post below, I hereby rescind any statements of mine concerning ads posted to the list. I also rescind any and all negative attitudes which attended such statements. I was wrong, and you were quite right, all of you, many times over. All best, DT ---------- From: Piombino/Simon[SMTP:ts20@columbia.edu] Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 1997 8:13 AM To: Daniel Tessitore Cc: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: what have I subscribed to? Very interesting conversation you've started here, and I entirely disagree with you. What else did you not want to talk about?On Mon, 12 May 1997, Daniel Tessitore wrote: > These past few days I've seen more 'ads' for books, etc. than I've seen > conversation. I'm not against people and presses, especially under-funded > and under-read ones, attempting to gain some exposure, but that is not what > I joined this list for; and even though it's poetry, it's still mail that I > did not solicit. > > If I am the only one who feels this way I'll shut up about it. > > DT > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 08:26:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: the notion of voice Comments: To: Piombino/Simon In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:46 PM -0400 5/13/97, Piombino/Simon wrote: >I agree with Robert Hale that the requirement that some family >experience be touched upon is at the heart of what some might call the >"non-innovative" or non-experimental poem (expectably,many poets are >skeptical about >creating hard and fast technical names for non- conformist kind of >poetry) i've found eve sedgwick's "a poem is being written" to be a nice meditation on the link between nuclear family, with its private humiliations and scrutiny, and the lyric. robert lowell's poetry i believe bears this out, as i tried to write about in my lowell section in my book. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 11:12:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: OREN.IZENBERG@JHU.EDU Subject: Celan In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Henry, You may be combining two recollections of Celan's prose: the first, the "parable," is probably "Conversation in the Mountains" (1959)-- certainly "about" voice and poetry, but from an oblique angle: "'He says, he says...Do you hear me, he says...And Do-you-hear-me, of course, Do-you-hear-me does not say anything, does not answer, because Do-you-hear-me is one with the glaciers, is three in one, and not for men..." The second, which _is_ a speech: "The Meridian" (1960)--delivered "on the occasion of receiving the Georg Buchner Prize"-- is probably what you mainly had in mind: "It is true, the poem, the poem today, shows-- and this has only indirectly to do with the difficulties of vocabulary, the faster flow of syntax or a more awakened sense of ellipsis, none of which we should underrate-- the poem clearly shows a strong tendency towards silence. The poem holds its ground, if you will permit me yet another extremem formulation, the poem holds its ground on its own margin. In order to endure, it constantly calls and pulls itself back from an 'already-no-more' [Schon-nicht-mehr] into a 'still-here' [Immer-noch]. This 'still-here' can only mean speaking. Not language as such, but responding and--not just verbally-- 'corresponding' to something. In other words: language actualized, set free under the sign of a radical individuation which, however, remains as aware of the limits drawn by language as of the possibilities it opens. This 'still-here' of the poem can only be found in the work of poets who do not forget that they speak from an angle of reflection which is their own existence, their own physical nature. This shows the poem yet more clearly as one person's language become shape and, essentially, a presence in the present." Best, O. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 11:19:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Jenny's First Poetry Reading Dodie, it's billl. i think you're right about renee gladman being elegant, but more than you...? hmm. i like her idiom chapbook called arlem. here's a slice of one prosoid from it: someone said convention was the avenue to expression, that is, if you are thrown by your disposition. A confusion, I think, of one's story and what it takes of history to hear it. We are not out to be linear but are linear just the same so I kind of let my beard grow. . . . xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Dodie wrote: Re: the "------------" above, I'm at home and only have the first draft of the flyer copy at my disposal. On the flyer Renee is quoted as saying something about how Clamour is a place where "dykes" can experiment and communicate with one another. Though, of course, she's more elegant than my paraphrase. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 06:05:47 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: the notion of voice )ne such guidebook is THE PRACTICE OF POETRY (Behn, Twichell 1992) which contains several exercises contributed by writers who teach workshops. There's one I find particularly telling--Jim Simmerman's "Twenty Little Poetry Projects," which to my mind is perhaps the clearest 'map' to a lot of contemporary poetic practice. DT ---------- From: Stephen Cope[SMTP:scope@SDCC3.UCSD.EDU] Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 1997 3:26 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: the notion of voice It seems that the best place to look for defintions and/or assertions of "voice" and its importance in workshop poems is in workshop texts themselves - i.e. the kind of guidebooks/handbooks etc. that market themselves as such. (I can't unfortunately, name any off hand, but am sure you could get some info. from any number of workshop teachers at any number of universities, community colleges, etc.) Otherwise, Donald Wesling and Tadeusz Slawek's recent _Literary Voice: The Calling of Jonah_ provides some interesting takes on the concept and what they contend is its ongoing value. They argue, in short, that voice mediates the two "minimal" poles of body and text - pure orality and pure textuality - becoming "maximal", however, not in the individual, but in the "bardic voice" - that which speaks for the collectivity, the nation, etc. Theirs is interesting in that they attmept to come to terms with the notion of "voice" through/against recent critiques thereof (Grammatology etc.), using the term both literally (orality, speech, etc) and figuratively (subject, identity, etc). They rely heavily on Henri Meschonnic, a theorist who has done much w/ rhythm/voice/subjectivity, and who has had little if anything translated into English that I know of (btw: if anyone does know of any such translations, I'd love to hear of them backchannel). In any case, their bibiliography should be helpful, as they breifly touch on both popular and academic studies of voice from various disciplines... Best, Stephen Cope ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 08:29:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: No prizes In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello everyone, it's Kevin Killian. Can any of you brains out there back channel me with answers to 3 questions? 1. What was the date of the conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? Were there 2 separate trials or just one? And also, the date of the execution(s)? Now that's cheerful, eh? 2. Does anyone know the address of the poet Mark Doty? 3. Or of the novelist Ishmael Reed? No prizes, only thanks from a California air head . . . Kevin K. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 09:26:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Gladman's Clamour In-Reply-To: <970514111917_1390924473@emout01.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:19 AM -0400 5/14/97, Maz881@AOL.COM wrote: >Dodie, > >it's billl. i think you're right about renee gladman being elegant, but more >than you...? hmm. Actually, Bill, I found a copy of the flyer (I'm vacationing this week, doing my own elegant or non-elegant writing). Here's what Renee really wrote: "Clamour's primary focus is to present and encourage experimentation and discourse among dykes." I was pretty close, don't you think? And I do hope some of you non-dykes out there come to the reading. This is very interesting work here. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 07:15:41 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: voice I mentioned the Practice of Poetry in an earlier post. Thinking about it, I would also have to contend that, while not a guidebook, Poulin's Contemporary American Poetry (4th ed.--the big red one) is as much responsible for the way a lot of young writers write as anything. Being an "MFA factory" graduate myself, I can tell you that there is hardly a young poet out there who was not issued that book as an undergraduate. DT ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 09:55:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On the subject of familiar voice -- these two items appeared in the first issue of _lower limit speech_ -- They are by Laurie Schneider, and I think they sum it up pretty neatly: ______ Workshop Poems I. Female SCENE: Grandmother's Kitchen Grandmother's Hands REMEMBRANCE Bread, Birth _Epiphany_ II. Male SCENE: Grandfather's Plough Grandfather's Gun REMEMBRANCE Digging, Death _Epiphany_ _________ so, that's the formula -- endless possibilities for variation ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 11:52:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: the not so Roseycrution MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Kevin, Ethel & Julius Rosenberg were both executed at Sing Sing (by electrocution) on June 19, 1953. The trial occured in 1951 - I am fairly certain they were tried together. Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 13:17:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: vernachronism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII does anyone know when the White House began popularly to be known as "the White House?" I thought it was called "the Executive Mansion" until the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. But I just heard Thoreau referring to it in CAPE COD as the White House. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 13:01:59 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: No prizes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" when u find out abt the rosenbergs, let me know... At 8:29 AM 5/14/97, dbkk@sirius.com wrote: >Hello everyone, it's Kevin Killian. Can any of you brains out there back >channel me with answers to 3 questions? > >1. What was the date of the conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? >Were there 2 separate trials or just one? And also, the date of the >execution(s)? Now that's cheerful, eh? > >2. Does anyone know the address of the poet Mark Doty? > >3. Or of the novelist Ishmael Reed? > > >No prizes, only thanks from a California air head . . . > >Kevin K. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 13:51:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: rosenbergs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII This will not help Kevin in his research (sorry, Kevin) but I thought it would be a good opportunity to post a very fine poem. - db Rex Morti Tyranus I. Finally something the man said has come true. We don't have Tricky Dick to push around anymore. II. Julius & Ethel Rosenberg were not convicted of spying. They were electrocuted by the State Authority. III. from Li Po (7th Century) It is troubling when people feign shock as I express pleasure at the death of my enemy; "when I am not even responsible for his demise. & he so remorse- lessly sought to destroy that which he did not understand; for reasons which are not quite clear." -- Douglas Rothschild ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 08:41:54 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten NAME THAT FAMOUS POET! Here is the first half of a poem from POET X followed by the book's blurbs. What is curious to me is that if there is such a thing as emphasis on 'voice,' it certainly is a generic one. My daughter comes to me with her sorrow. She is not yet ten, not yet insistent for her father. As if waiting out a sentence she sits at the round table, her long black shawl of hair framing high cheek bones. She thinks she is ugly, thinks she has no friends... The blurbs which grace the back cover of the book from which this poem was taken call X's work "rich with lyric observation," "eloquent and deeply provocative," "technically impeccable," "tantalizing, supremely crafted, sublime." X is "one of the most important poets writing today." ---------- From: Aldon L. Nielsen[SMTP:anielsen@EMAIL.SJSU.EDU] Sent: Thursday, May 15, 1997 1:55 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten On the subject of familiar voice -- these two items appeared in the first issue of _lower limit speech_ -- They are by Laurie Schneider, and I think they sum it up pretty neatly: ______ Workshop Poems I. Female SCENE: Grandmother's Kitchen Grandmother's Hands REMEMBRANCE Bread, Birth _Epiphany_ II. Male SCENE: Grandfather's Plough Grandfather's Gun REMEMBRANCE Digging, Death _Epiphany_ _________ so, that's the formula -- endless possibilities for variation ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 14:16:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: media collective huh? i couldn't parse out the exact point of a media collective from the message. at one point, message writer described something he/she was working on, a "Direct ACtion News Center" which sounded like a social activism group for journalists. then he/she said they thought a media collective would be a good idea... is a media collective a "direct action news center," or some variation on the description of same/ or is it just a place for people working in various media (paint, print, video, etc) to get together and talk about what they do in the hopes of cross fertilization and projects mixing media? anyone better able to read this message than me? anyone with a better sense of what a media collective IS? e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 13:32:33 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: vernachronism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:17 PM 5/14/97, Daniel Bouchard wrote: >does anyone know when the White House began popularly to be known as "the >White House?" I thought it was called "the Executive Mansion" until the >administration of Theodore Roosevelt. But I just heard Thoreau referring to >it in CAPE COD as the White House. > >daniel_bouchard@hmco.com wow, howdya get to hear thoreau? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 14:17:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: vernachronism you heard thoreau refer to it as the white house? -- where ARE you on cape cod! you are violating the space-time continuum! e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 11:31:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Re: CATALOG ON-LINE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" luigi and others - As luck would have it, you may have tried to access the catalog during its weekly reindexing, which apparently takes about five minutes - It is working now, at least from SFSU - My contact at Academic Computing here responds with lightning swiftness to any complaints, so please continue to contact me if you have any problems getting into the collection - Thanks for the various good lucks - I'm sure we will need it to overcome the glitches - Laura Moriarty >laura-- > >best of luck with this all, a huge project & valuable service... > >i just tried it, tho, and all of my searches came up empty... >tried duncan, silliman, ginsberg, poetry, reading, and "African >American"... so there's probably some bugs... tho it seems to >be receiving my request, for example returning: > >>SFSU Search Results >> >> >>Sorry, I didn't find any documents that matched your search for "Robert >>Duncan"! >> >>This search was performed by wwwwais 2.5. > >i spend all day tryin to fix stuff like this at my dayjob, so my sympathies >to yrself or yr tech staff... > >as a suggestion, tho: praps you could provide a browsable listing of >all th holdings? would give folks who arent familiar w/ th collection >an idea of whatall you have... just a thot. good luck! > >yrs >luigi > > > > >>The catalog of the videotape collection here at the Poetry Center and >>American Poetry Archives has just gone on-line! This on-line version of our >>catalog is now the most complete listing available of our videotape >>holdings. It can be accessed from our web page: >> >>http://www.sfsu.edu./~newlit/welcome.htm >>..... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 13:32:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: vernachronism Comments: To: Daniel Bouchard MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I think the usage dates from the re-building of the "White House" after it was burned down by the British in the War of 1812. Not sure, though. I recall a story about Jackons' first inaugural party in 1820 (?). The man of the people invited the people to the mansion and was subsequently mobbed. "The guests" ripped up curtains for souvenirs and in general stole anything unattached. It got so bad Jackson was pressed against the wall, about to be crushed - his aides then formed a wedge, pushed through the crowd, busted out a window, and lowered the Prez to the ground. He spent the night in his usual place - a tavern (which per custom had rooms to let upstairs). Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Daniel Bouchard To: POETICS Subject: vernachronism Date: Wednesday, May 14, 1997 1:11PM does anyone know when the White House began popularly to be known as "the White House?" I thought it was called "the Executive Mansion" until the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. But I just heard Thoreau referring to it in CAPE COD as the White House. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 11:38:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: No prizes In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:01 PM +1000 5/14/97, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: >when u find out abt the rosenbergs, let me know... From a review I found on the web, of _The Rosenberg Letters_: "The Rosenberg case coincides almost exactly with the Korean War. In July 1950, three weeks after the war began, Julius Rosenberg was arrested on charges of conspiracy to transmit atomic secrets to the Soviet Union; his wife Ethel was arrested on the same charges in August. Unable to raise bail, the couple spent the last three years of their lives in prison. "The trial itself took place in March 1951, and ended in a guilty verdict. Although Judge Irving Kaufman handed down the death penalty in April, the sentence was delayed for the next twenty-six months, pending various legal appeals and two separate appeals for clemency to then-President Eisenhower. The Rosenbergs died in the electric chair on June 19, 1953, the only persons in American history executed for spying after trial in a civil court. Fighting in Korea ended in the month following their deaths." Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 14:50:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: vernachronism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Maria & Elliza: Do you make such a distinction between "hearing" and "reading?" Engaged in either activity, I am always listening. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 15:21:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: body-html MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (This may be of interest to anyone who has looked at the Jennifer and other materials I have been working with - delete otherwise. Originally sent to Cybermind/FOP-l lists.) BODY-HTML I wish to return to issues of body-html, in light of the experiments I've been running in Javascript. A webpage currently has four levels epistemo- logically (ignoring, for the moment, the distinction between sound/sight/ text): semantic markup (content-control negotiated between client and ser- ver); the texts/graphics themselves; style-sheets and other design-orien- ted content; and scripting/programming, which active the page. There are exceptions: REFRESH and BLINK, for example, are active elements in HTML; links themselves are a call for action on the part of the reader; forms are almost entirely designed within HTML, javascript can modify sem- antic markup according to browser, and so forth. Beneath the surface appearance (which, like any superstructure, tends to- wards an imaginary autonomy), there are interactions among HTML, Perl and CGI, Java, Javascript, ActiveX, and so forth. The body of the page splits uneasily into appearance and marrow; the body- html is the inversion of html-elements, or the appearance of the webpage as organism. If the page appears to "have a life of its own," nothing is changed ontologically or epistemologically, but the implications are that one is in _negotiation_ with something close to the dream of a bot or ava- tar. The page _is_ that bot/avatar for the moment; diachronically, there may be a history of such, and synchronically, the appearance of the organ- ic may be "smeared" across a number of pages, programs, or other aspects of the Net. Call them aspects; avatars connect, reference no essential or background node, continue as _uneasy_ text which foregrounds them. This may also be taken as a model of communications in which superstructural elements, such as the sitcom, appear to reference actors and situations - but the refer- ence may already be broken epistemologically or ontologically (re: Baud- rillard, etc.). The avatar such as Jennifer references a different epistemology altogether - clearly, she is not an actor, nor is she in a _situation._ Instead, she may well be part of a cultivated psychosis on the part of the author/ess, one which treats html-body as signal or flag of a _condition,_ organic or otherwise. Or rather, a condition which develops its own superstructural coherence, the html-body as mirror-stage refracting, not reflecting, the author, ac- cording to _its_ whims. These sites: page, code, script, author, reader, writer, viewer, partici- pant, text/image/audio, become increasingly difficult to disentangle - which is precisely the point; this is also the condition of the lived body which cannot separate its _I_ from its _eye,_ and its _I_ from that of others or the language within which it was born/graded. The _history_ is different, as are the traumas, but - and I'm _not_ talking on the level of the symptom - the superstructure, _from wherever,_ becomes someone/some- thing else. Thus the superstructure/avatar, like the other, is unaccountable and unac- counted-for. It is unaccountable because it is smeared across sites (pa- ges, codes, scripts, authors, readers, writers...), and it is unaccounted- for, because it has the appearance of Venus or Athena emergent, not-there but a psychotopogpraphy - in truth psychotropology. Personhood as well is never _there,_ and Jennifer in fact is Jennifer(), function or potential bracketing, loose collocation of signifiers and leakages which appear to be foreclosed (the _super_ of the structure) just as psychosis is all too neat a package. ii The seething and seduction of the webpage: the page _seethes_ as it is ac- tivated, leads out of itself, churns around an attractor; and the page is the locus of a _seduction_ towards itself, the proffering of part-objects for consumption by the participant. These objects may be _repetitive_ and/ or _mirroring_; they operate through introjections/projections, through hysteric embodiments (see Internet Text), through the collusion of the dream and the imaginary. Text/image/sound fall to the level of the ground, (re)construct it. This combination of seething and seduction, I call (con- tinuous) _rewrite,_ the re-presencing of the self/avatar as obsessive-com- pulsive construct. Above all, Jennifer and body-html say, _return_: my body depends on it. The _minimal interaction_ in Flaubert expands into a/his crystalline world of Salammbo, Bovary, Bouvard and Pecuchet. Seething is internalized, fore- closed; one jumps the text-as-hypertext, and (Vygotsky) inner-speech stresses the seduction. There are no leaks, except for the fleeting pre- sence of _that woman in the hat turning the corner_ ... The interaction in html-body leaks, just as personhood leaks; the speech appears not always as "inner," as one's own, but instead emanates from dispersion (what I call elsewhere "emission"). So that it becomes, for example, _the name Jennifer_ which recuperates the seething/opening of the pages, returns them to a somewhat fractured unary disposition. It is the insertion into language (icon, symbolic) that pre- cisely allows (her) escaping towards the leakiness inherent in html-body, as if the blood were produced by "blood" which is close to the case . And it is _the name Jennifer_ which is itself semantic markup: text image sound or the Jennifer-function in the Jennifer-link at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ that tend towards these ir- ruptions, presaged and accompanied by bots, morphs, players, and all vari- ous others, organic and other/wise. sound/sight/text text/image/audio text image sound text/image/sound ____________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 12:38:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I may find this and its like objectionable for different reasons than many on the list. The problem is not, as I see it, the quotidian drama, but that it's neither particularized nor contextualized, which facilitates its anonymous sleekness. When Donne writes "The Ecstasie" he goes beyond the conventional lyric with its tacit assumption of the universality of the sentiment (love being, amazingly, among the more common of miraculous events) to a close analysis of the minutiae of the experience, using the best tools available to him for his investigation. The mind probing is made visible. A possible and particular mind in a given context is made visible. This thing, on the other hand, draws what little it has to offer from the assumption of universality--its lack of particularity and context place it in the ideal, clean world of straightforward emotional responses and very green lawns. It's the world of the terminal suburb, where all of our problems are little ones, in which the poet flatters us that he and we belong. At 08:41 AM 5/13/97 +-900, you wrote: >NAME THAT FAMOUS POET! > >Here is the first half of a poem from POET X followed by the book's blurbs. >What is curious to me is that if there is such a thing as emphasis on >'voice,' it certainly is a generic one. > > My daughter comes to me > with her sorrow. She is > not yet ten, not yet > insistent for her father. > As if waiting out a sentence > she sits at the round table, > her long black shawl of hair > framing high cheek bones. > She thinks she is ugly, > thinks she has no friends... > > >The blurbs which grace the back cover of the book from which this poem was >taken call X's work "rich with lyric observation," "eloquent and deeply >provocative," "technically impeccable," "tantalizing, supremely crafted, >sublime." X is "one of the most important poets writing today." > > >---------- >From: Aldon L. Nielsen[SMTP:anielsen@EMAIL.SJSU.EDU] >Sent: Thursday, May 15, 1997 1:55 AM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten > >On the subject of familiar voice -- these two items appeared in the first >issue of _lower limit speech_ -- They are by Laurie Schneider, and I >think they sum it up pretty neatly: > > >______ >Workshop Poems > >I. Female > >SCENE: > Grandmother's Kitchen > Grandmother's Hands > >REMEMBRANCE > Bread, Birth > >_Epiphany_ > > >II. Male > >SCENE: > Grandfather's Plough > Grandfather's Gun > >REMEMBRANCE > Digging, Death > >_Epiphany_ > > >_________ > >so, that's the formula -- endless possibilities for variation > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 01:12:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: tucson reading In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Anyone who will be going to Bromige's reading/talk. Ask him whether there's any truth to the rumour that he has committed a racy novel called something like __Pickled Old Moondog_ > >talk and poetry reading by david bromige > >talk: "Building Up the Poem" >friday, may 16, 7:00 p.m. >poetry center annex, 1232 n. cherry >tucson, az >admission $5 at door > >poetry reading: >saturday, may 17, 5:00 p.m. >dinnerware gallery, 135 e. congress >tucson, az >donations appreciated > >dan featherston George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 15:55:59 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 14 May 1997 12:38:26 -0700 from that poem by Famous Poet X was really written by IBM-clone Dirty Zinc, a computer in Prague, Hungary. Don't ask me how Prague became part of Hungary. It won an award in a poem tournament in Florida last year, beating out 340 human poets and a poetry-writing german shepherd named Orf. - Blarnes ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 15:54:20 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: yo, jonathan monroe Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" if you're out there, send me your snail mail address so i can send u my bk ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 17:14:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: some threads Afternoon I took my voice for a stroll some blocks to Lafayette Park & there across the stretch of green & asphalt stands what's still called the White House that Henry David early had some occasion to mention it it a crow that so crass caws? & are these sparrows or finches or what that so terse chatter? names of birds names of trees who kens what kinda ambulance makes that strange mocking? my voice wasn't saying much & I was meanwhile doing all the talking not a disfunc tional relationship we just like trading chores (*chirp chirp* or *twerp twerp* is all it's chittering & twittering) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 14:29:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: bowering's lies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" LAwrence Upton: I've been offline a couple weeks getting computer fixed. It is bowering who stretches the truth, not I. it is true that my son was thoughtful enough to bring gin to the soccer match in vancouver, but it is not true that i reassured GB this was common practice in GB. I know better. But i doubt george does, because he drank the lions share & his loudness became unbelievable. Seeing this was making me uneasy, he shouted out 'THE MAN SITTING ON MY LEFT IS TOTALLY EMBARRASSED BY MY SHOUTING.' That had to be me. It is not for nothing that friends of GB--the few remaining--wear badges saying "I survived GB . . so far." Ask Rachel loden. Ask maria Damon. Its alot to put up with, just to get a few glimpses of his underwear (if thats what it was). Now i must read the other 646 messages that accrued. Best, db ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 17:47:57 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit henry wrote: > ... a poetry-writing german shepherd named Orf. Carl? -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 15:24:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" he was a shepherd? At 05:47 PM 5/14/97 +0000, you wrote: >henry wrote: >> >... a poetry-writing german shepherd named Orf. > >Carl? > >-- >========================================= >pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 >tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu >http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Everything that allows men to become rooted, through >values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in >_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which >constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, >[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality >and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose >it as a conquering assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot >========================================== > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 18:30:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dave Zauhar Subject: Re: the notion of voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Here's my favorite quote, by a writer whose reviewing practices I would in general hesitate to champion, but he pretty much nails it here: "When, in praising a poet, it is said that he has `found his voice own voice' what is usually meant is that he has developed a manner of self-dramatization sufficiently consistent that a single persona seems to be the source of all his poems. `Voice' in this sense equates with a manner of delivery, a stance, a style that the audience may not share but that it can at least recognize from a distance, like a traffic sign." --Thomas Disch, from _The Castle of Indolence_ (New York: Picador,1995) p.152 The context, BTW, is a review of volumes by Raymond Carver and Brad Leithauser, originally published in the nation. Dave Zauhar PS: Is Joe Amato still off-list? I seem to remember him saying that he is working on this issue. >> There is an idea often floated around that the rise of the >>contemporary "workshop" poem is related to a particular concept of poetic >>"voice"--in general, that "voice" is an individual matter that a writer >>finds with practice and time. To a greater or lesser extent, this "voice" >>is the natural property of the writer in the language--it is his or her >>"own" voice, albeit one discovered rather than given. Whether anyone >>actually believes this, or has said so in so many words, is something I'm >>trying to find out. >> >> Is anyone aware of published articles or books that >>articulate/elaborate/defend this notion of voice, or something similar to >>it--obviously, my description above is meant to be very general. I would >>appreciate backchannels with any specific information. I suppose as a list >>matter it might also be a subject for discussion, but someone could be of >>most help to me if they have specific information about sources. >> >> Thanks in advance for any help. >> >> Mark Wallace >> >>/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ >>| | >>| mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | >>| GWU: | >>| http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | >>| EPC: | >>| http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | >>|____________________________________________________________________________| >> >> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 18:30:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: vernachronism In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII What--you never went to a Dead show?--g. On Wed, 14 May 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > At 1:17 PM 5/14/97, Daniel Bouchard wrote: > >does anyone know when the White House began popularly to be known as "the > >White House?" I thought it was called "the Executive Mansion" until the > >administration of Theodore Roosevelt. But I just heard Thoreau referring to > >it in CAPE COD as the White House. > > > >daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > > wow, howdya get to hear thoreau? > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 18:32:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten Footnote for E.B.: there is, you know, a Prague, Oklahoma. It's said the township is snap dab in the center of the continent (east/west-wise; vide the erstwhile *Awakener Magazine*, circa '71 or so, article by P.Lutgendorf). The natives pronounce the name to rhyme with "vague" (rather than w/ clog). d.i. >>> henry 05/14/97 03:55pm >>> that poem by Famous Poet X was really written by IBM-clone Dirty Zinc, a computer in Prague, Hungary. Don't ask me how Prague became part of Hungary. It won an award in a poem tournament in Florida last year, beating out 340 human poets and a poetry-writing german shepherd named Orf. - Blarnes ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 17:11:25 MDT Reply-To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: the notion of voice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT David wroth: > PS: Is Joe Amato still off-list? I seem to remember him saying that he is > working on this issue. Joe gave a great paper on this at the Denver conference, which I unfortunately I can't really do justice to, or not at this distance. mebbe he'll come back on-line & etc., or if not I might be induced to post some excerpts from my copy. Chris .. Christopher Alexander, etc. nominative press collective 160S 1300E #16 / Salt Lake City UT 84102 calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 19:06:37 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 14 May 1997 17:47:57 +0000 from On Wed, 14 May 1997 17:47:57 +0000 Pierre Joris said: >henry wrote: >> >... a poetry-writing german shepherd named Orf. > >Carl? > Boris Carl. He was trained in a Transylvanian Creative Writing Program to bark familial rustic woof-odes at the twist of a neck bolt. Gates of the Nether Regions is interested. So is Espresso Coffin World. Could be the next surfer Cerberus. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 19:17:38 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 14 May 1997 15:24:56 -0700 from On Wed, 14 May 1997 15:24:56 -0700 Mark Weiss said: >he was a shepherd? He was, until he twitched his mantle Deep Blue and faxed his pasturized pantoum to square one. - Kaspar the friendly Orf ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 19:23:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 14 May 1997 18:32:48 -0400 from On Wed, 14 May 1997 18:32:48 -0400 David Israel said: >Footnote for E.B.: > >there is, you know, a Prague, Oklahoma. It's said the township is snap >dab in the center of the continent (east/west-wise; vide the erstwhile >*Awakener Magazine*, circa '71 or so, article by P.Lutgendorf). The >natives pronounce the name to rhyme with "vague" (rather than w/ clog). And if there ain't a Prague in the state of Maine, why, I'll be a bounced Czech! - Havelong Passeport ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 19:38:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: the notion of voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" yes, i'm here... sorta... sorta boondoggled in end-of-semester happenins, so my mind feels like it's over ther e somplace... moment i saw his post, i posted mark w. backchannel (hi again mark!) to mention some leads, in my fractured e stststate... anywho, thanx to dave and chris for mentioning my recent tiny effort in the direction of voice/craft, which i'm happy to report will be appearing in _denver quarterly_ sometime in the (near i hope!) future... my general sense of it is that the two (voice/craft), the way they're played out in general in creative writing classrooms, are intimately connected with each other, and just not useful pedagogically... or creatively, what the heck (not in the u, anyway)... and i say this in part b/c i see this couple in terms of the larger contours of the [gulp] late 20th century workplace... anyway, my mmmmind will return shortly to these environs... more anent, i hope, anon///besttoall, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 21:01:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Frank Davey Subject: Re: vernachronism The `White House' was first painted white in 1814 to hide the scorch marks on the stone walls after we British had burned the rest of it. Alas, there was nothing left to paint at York (Toronto). Frank Davey ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 19:05:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: bromige's truth In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think that story that Bromige told about my being loud at the soccer game is not true. But I remember the time we were in the bookstore. I told him to cause a distraction at another part of the store while I stuck a bunch of Robert Frost books under my jacket. So away I went, and he jumped up and down in his part of the store, shouting "My friend's stealing books!" A little slow, David. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 22:42:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dean Taciuch Subject: Re: the notion of voice In-Reply-To: <199705150038.TAA29541@charlie.cns.iit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'd like to look at voice in context of Mark Wallace's statement several weeks ago about "the individual"--Mark's posts have gotten both of these threads going--but there's not been much discussion of the individual in the posts on voice. Voice being an aspect of "craft," suppose, doesn't hit quite so close to center as questioning individuality (I dunno, maybe it does). But by questioning voice I think we are questioning individuality. Why is a voice in a poem different from one's voice in conversation? Because the literary voice is a construct? And the conversational voice isn't? I found a quote quite by accident as I was reading through the Oxford Guide to 20th C Poetry (a desk copy turned up in my Departmental box just as I was off to give an exam). Anyway, the Robert Kelly entry contains this quote: "my work is not _my_ work. . .my personality is its enemy." Slightly different terms ("personality" rather than "individuality," but a similar concern I think). One textbook I've used for beginning Creative Writing courses (I couldn't find it today, though) spent part of chapter at least debunking the idea of "voice"--but only for emerging/beginning writers. Voice was not something to be discovered but something to be developed. I wish I could find the exact reference (I don't think it was _The Practice of Poetry_, though Daniel Tessatore's post makes me think it may have been). I had the peculiar sense that the author was engaging in a kind of territorial protection--"voice" was a concern of established writers, you young'uns best get back to the woodshed. That is, "voice" was to be developed through careful practice--the "craft" aspect, I think, that Joe Amato mentioned. And yes, this does relate to the individual, to personality even. The individual is a story we tell (often to ourselves) to trace the trajectory of the changes we go through. But this of course assumes there is an unchaging core (the "indivudual") to which (to whom) these changes occur. But the core is change, a shifting field of relations between memories, responses, predictions. Think of yourself when you were 15, or 8? Who _was_ that? What voice did they have? Dean ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 23:00:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: the notion of voice Comments: To: Maria Damon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This sounds very intriguing, Maria. I'm as yet unfamiliar, embarassed to admit, with the sedgwick poem, or- - your book(uh...what were those titles, again?) including the work on Lowell, whose line "The monument sticks like a fishbone/ in the city's throat" speaking of Washington D.C., has always haunted me.Could you further explain the connection? Best, NickOn Wed, 14 May 1997, Maria Damon wrote: > At 9:46 PM -0400 5/13/97, Piombino/Simon wrote: > >I agree with Robert Hale that the requirement that some family > >experience be touched upon is at the heart of what some might call the > >"non-innovative" or non-experimental poem (expectably,many poets are > >skeptical about > >creating hard and fast technical names for non- conformist kind of > >poetry) > > i've found eve sedgwick's "a poem is being written" to be a nice meditation > on the link between nuclear family, with its private humiliations and > scrutiny, and the lyric. robert lowell's poetry i believe bears this out, > as i tried to write about in my lowell section in my book. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 23:53:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: the notion of voice:advertisements for myslefs Comments: To: Dean Taciuch In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've been interested in this issue for a long time, and in an article orginally published in The Difficulties in 1982 and republished in my essay book The Boundary of Blur I suggested a distinction connected with the issues you explore at the end of the post below. I used the analogy of a tree, comparing the self with the bark of the tree and the identity with the xylem of the tree, vulnerable and within. This was part of a discussion on Charles Bernstein's poem Poetic Justice called THE TASTE IS WHAT COUNTS. Mark Wallace discusses this issue with relation to contemporary poetics in WITZ Summer 1996 in his Towards A Multiplicity of Form: "A free multiplicity of form is not the same as a multiplicity of individuals speaking in their own individual "voices" without awareness of form or any possibility of cultural impact, each equally unable to have any ground other than other than their own subjectivity from which to speak" He also talks about Taproot Reviews, the book Core: A Symposium on Contemporary Visual Poetry, An Ear to The Ground:An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, the magazine Phoebe, his own Situation and his dialogues with Jefferson Hansen, recently out from Poetic Briefs. Nick P. :On Wed, 14 May 1997, Dean Taciuch wrote: > I'd like to look at voice in context of Mark Wallace's statement several > weeks ago about "the individual"--Mark's posts have gotten both of these > threads going--but there's not been much discussion of the individual in > the posts on voice. Voice being an aspect of "craft," suppose, doesn't hit > quite so close to center as questioning individuality (I dunno, maybe it > does). But by questioning voice I think we are questioning individuality. > Why is a voice in a poem different from one's voice in conversation? > Because the literary voice is a construct? And the conversational voice > isn't? > > I found a quote quite by accident as I was reading through the Oxford Guide > to 20th C Poetry (a desk copy turned up in my Departmental box just as I > was off to give an exam). Anyway, the Robert Kelly entry contains this > quote: "my work is not _my_ work. . .my personality is its enemy." > Slightly different terms ("personality" rather than "individuality," but a > similar concern I think). > > One textbook I've used for beginning Creative Writing courses (I couldn't > find it today, though) spent part of chapter at least debunking the idea of > "voice"--but only for emerging/beginning writers. Voice was not something > to be discovered but something to be developed. I wish I could find the > exact reference (I don't think it was _The Practice of Poetry_, though > Daniel Tessatore's post makes me think it may have been). I had the > peculiar sense that the author was engaging in a kind of territorial > protection--"voice" was a concern of established writers, you young'uns > best get back to the woodshed. That is, "voice" was to be developed through > careful practice--the "craft" aspect, I think, that Joe Amato mentioned. > > And yes, this does relate to the individual, to personality even. > > The individual is a story we tell (often to ourselves) to trace the > trajectory of the changes we go through. But this of course assumes there > is an unchaging core (the "indivudual") to which (to whom) these changes > occur. But the core is change, a shifting field of relations between > memories, responses, predictions. Think of yourself when you were 15, or > 8? Who _was_ that? What voice did they have? > > Dean > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 23:50:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: the notion of voice Dean -- good remarks re: the vox conundrum -- yes "personality" is (among what's) perhaps at issue -- sure much is involved in & wheels around such discussions (in these parallel threads: voce & individuality), & it's scarcely to be presumed that a sprawl of poets will be always speaking same lingo -- particularly where some analysis may sharpen focus on what tacks of metaphysics, psychology, philosophy (et alia) may (tend to) underpin our (respective) pin-cushions -- I hap (fr instance) to favor a Jungianish model, where outer layers of personality are (onion-like) felt to obscure more archaic (subconscious) strata of an overall (arcane, multi-tiered, elusive, spheroid) "self" -- problematics of the self (& its mapping) are no doubt opening (shifting?) in curious ways in present poetics -- while unquestioning acceptance of "the voice notion" wd seem startling for its blithe simplifications -- yet definitive rejection of the existence of an individual "voice" can seem puzzling for its knotty & knotted implications -- between campsites, what median, misty, or tentative trails curl? d.i. >>> Dean Taciuch 05/14/97 11:42pm >>> I'd like to look at voice in context of Mark Wallace's statement several weeks ago about "the individual"--Mark's posts have gotten both of these threads going--but there's not been much discussion of the individual in the posts on voice . . . ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 21:18:15 -0700 Reply-To: ttheatre@sirius.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen and Trevor Organization: Tea Theatre Subject: No prizes (for this one either) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello everyone. I'm new to the conversation and enjoying. I'm also looking for an address (or info) for _The Village Voice_. I understand they used to do poetry reviews, but I've heard their editorial department changed. Does anyone know if they still do poetry reviews and does anyone have an address? (I called New York info and they give me the number to the Lincoln Center.) Karen McKevitt ttheatre@sirius.com (Publicist. Kelsey St. Press) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 20:17:40 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: AND THE WINNER IS There was only one entry (henry) so he wins for having come closest. Poet X's true identity is: Ellen Bryant Voigt ---------- From: henry[SMTP:AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU] Sent: Thursday, May 15, 1997 4:55 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten that poem by Famous Poet X was really written by IBM-clone Dirty Zinc, a computer in Prague, Hungary. Don't ask me how Prague became part of Hungary. It won an award in a poem tournament in Florida last year, beating out 340 human poets and a poetry-writing german shepherd named Orf. - Blarnes ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 22:20:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Re: vernachronism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Frank Davey wrote: > > The `White House' was first painted white in 1814 to hide the scorch > marks on the stone walls after we British had burned the rest of it. > Alas, there was nothing left to paint at York (Toronto). After *we* British? Wrong thread here--looks more like an argument against "voice," from one of the Canadians on the List bound to answer the question correctly. Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 01:53:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm puzzled that so many here cede the idea of "voice" to a particular and isolated realm. This seems to give up a lot. Can only "MFA", lyric, "family", etc. poets have "voice"? tom bell At 07:15 AM 5/13/97 +-900, Daniel Tessitore wrote: >I mentioned the Practice of Poetry in an earlier post. Thinking about it, I >would also have to contend that, while not a guidebook, Poulin's >Contemporary American Poetry (4th ed.--the big red one) is as much >responsible for the way a lot of young writers write as anything. Being an >"MFA factory" graduate myself, I can tell you that there is hardly a young >poet out there who was not issued that book as an undergraduate. > >DT > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 01:58:40 -0400 Reply-To: orpheus Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: Celan's "Voice" In-Reply-To: <199705150420.AAA28067@alcor.concordia.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Celan's essays can be found in translation in Collected Prose. trans. Rosemarie Waldrop. Sheep Meadow Press, Riverdale on Hudson, N.Y. 1986. The essays are the "major" statements he has made about poetry. The letters to Nelly Sachs, also available in English trans. (publisher etc. I cannot recall at the moment). In those letters there are remarks, moments, sentences, phrases, and even at times, paragraphs when he is more explicit in his stance[s] towards his own poetry, and toward poetry in general. Felstiner's book also gathers many loose threads of Celan, and is a marvelous machine for garnering Celan's thoughts about the work he was doing. - Paul Celan, Poet, Survivor, Jew. Yale University Press, New Haven and London. 1995. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 21:17:40 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten ---------- From: Mark Weiss[SMTP:junction@EARTHLINK.NET] Sent: Thursday, May 15, 1997 4:38 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten I may find this and its like objectionable for different reasons than many on the list. The problem is not, as I see it, the quotidian drama, but that it's neither particularized nor contextualized, which facilitates its anonymous sleekness. When Donne writes "The Ecstasie" he goes beyond the conventional lyric with its tacit assumption of the universality of the sentiment (love being, amazingly, among the more common of miraculous events) to a close analysis of the minutiae of the experience, using the best tools available to him for his investigation. The mind probing is made visible. A possible and particular mind in a given context is made visible. This thing, on the other hand, draws what little it has to offer from the assumption of universality--its lack of particularity and context place it in the ideal, clean world of straightforward emotional responses and very green lawns. It's the world of the terminal suburb, where all of our problems are little ones, in which the poet flatters us that he and we belong. _________________ Thank you--you nailed it perfectly. The 'assumption of universality' is what engenders the felt need for 'accessibility' I think. I've been thinking more about the Poulin anthology since mentioning it yesterday, and think I've articulated to myself exactly what it is I think is so permeating(?) about it (perhaps other popular anths?): It's a karaoke menu. In a lot of lit-mags (karaoke bars) one sees the golden oldies of this menu reperformed over and over. The 'voice' is the same, at best. The music is the same too, though more like muzak. Praise is awarded in accordance with the degree of similarity between the original and its new performer. "I did it my way" (applause). DT ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 21:17:43 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: the notion of voice ---------- From: Dean Taciuch[SMTP:dtaciuch@OSF1.GMU.EDU] Sent: Thursday, May 15, 1997 12:42 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: the notion of voice I'd like to look at voice in context of Mark Wallace's statement several weeks ago about "the individual"--Mark's posts have gotten both of these threads going--but there's not been much discussion of the individual in the posts on voice. Voice being an aspect of "craft," suppose, doesn't hit quite so close to center as questioning individuality (I dunno, maybe it does). But by questioning voice I think we are questioning individuality. Why is a voice in a poem different from one's voice in conversation? Because the literary voice is a construct? And the conversational voice isn't? ________________ I think an argument can be made (perhaps it has) that all voices are constructs--literary, conversational. The conversational voice(s) we use may be constructs even if they are learned rather than developed ones. ________________ I found a quote quite by accident as I was reading through the Oxford Guide to 20th C Poetry (a desk copy turned up in my Departmental box just as I was off to give an exam). Anyway, the Robert Kelly entry contains this quote: "my work is not _my_ work. . .my personality is its enemy." Slightly different terms ("personality" rather than "individuality," but a similar concern I think). ________________ Eliot put forth this same notion, though perhaps more roundaboutly in Tradition and..., which I think about every time I read any kind of guidebooks or reviews or blurbs that praise the notion of voice in some way. I think his idea of the writer's obligation to leave personality behind was one of his primary cautions to the would-be writer, and it's amazing to me how it seems to go totally ignored in contemporary mainstream work. ________________ One textbook I've used for beginning Creative Writing courses (I couldn't find it today, though) spent part of chapter at least debunking the idea of "voice"--but only for emerging/beginning writers. Voice was not something to be discovered but something to be developed. I wish I could find the exact reference (I don't think it was _The Practice of Poetry_, though Daniel Tessatore's post makes me think it may have been). I had the peculiar sense that the author was engaging in a kind of territorial protection--"voice" was a concern of established writers, you young'uns best get back to the woodshed. That is, "voice" was to be developed through careful practice--the "craft" aspect, I think, that Joe Amato mentioned. ___________________ The Practice of Poetry does contain a chapter called 'The Self and Its Subjects: A. Aspects of Voice, and B. What's It About?' I'll take a retour through this soon and see what I can find. ___________________ And yes, this does relate to the individual, to personality even. The individual is a story we tell (often to ourselves) to trace the trajectory of the changes we go through. But this of course assumes there is an unchaging core (the "indivudual") to which (to whom) these changes occur. But the core is change, a shifting field of relations between memories, responses, predictions. Think of yourself when you were 15, or 8? Who _was_ that? What voice did they have? Dean __________________ DT ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 01:44:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Steinberg Subject: Re: voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" tom bell wrote: >I'm puzzled that so many here cede the idea of "voice" to a particular >and isolated realm. This seems to give up a lot. Can only "MFA", lyric, >"family", etc. poets have "voice"? Of course not. But the idea of "voice," or getting one at least (as opposed to a job) is critical in the world of MFA programs because of the nature of the beast. The "voice" in poetry workshops is like fashion sense: those with the best will get noticed, the rest will fade into the woodwork. When everyone is writing the same kind of poem, these surface distinctions become very important (if my voice/poem/shirt is interesting, then the professor will spend more than five minutes talking about my work, and maybe I'll get one of those prizes they hand out every semester). But I also think there's something more interesting about "voice" than that. The phrase "finding your voice" is shorthand for describing the transitions writers go through, particularly the first one where things start to click, where craft and intention and subject matter come together a lot more successfully than in previous attempts. MFA programs love to take credit for this event (upon completion of my MFA I found my voice and my skin cleared up too!) That is one of their problems. The workshop is intended to foster these transitions, but the what and how of making this transition is ultimately personal, mysterious, even random. The shop can do as much harm as good. And the writer might not "find their voice" until years after leaving the workshop. So why go get an MFA if you might just as easily "find your voice" while doing your dishes or during your coffee break? Ideally the workshop will accelerate the process, but often it won't. And often writers emerge from their programs thinking they have made that first leap when in truth all they've done is written more polished versions of their entrance manuscripts. I just spent the weekend talking with one of the people who went through the MFA program at Arizona with me, and we figured out that in just four years, less than a quarter of our graduating class were still writing (let alone writing better than when they graduated). Perhaps that's where MFA programs get it wrong: the goal isn't to find your voice, but to find a way to keep speaking. Hugh Steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 04:56:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: a poem is being beaten / karaoke Daniel Tessitore notes, << . . . I've been thinking more about the Poulin anthology . . . and think I've articulated to myself exactly what it is I think is so permeating(?) about it (perhaps other popular anths?): It's a karaoke menu. In a lot of lit-mags (karaoke bars) one sees the golden oldies of this menu reperformed over and over. The 'voice' is the same, at best. The music is the same too, though more like muzak. Praise is awarded in accordance with the degree of similarity between the original and its new performer. "I did it my way" (applause). DT >> interestingly put -- (having never been in a karaoke bar, I can merely imagine. Well, guess I wandered in one by Charing Cross in London, to use the loo -- but didn't get a proper observation.) Here's withal a few (obvious) corollaries: *to speak critically abt. (say) Sinatra ain't the same as speaking of some version (or bevy of versions) of his karaoke-ers * in his own (original) terms, Sinatra can be impressive (a confession, & a dubioius one maybe) -- though folks who've spent too much time in karaoke bars will end up w/ warped notions of (say) Frank's repertoire (among several other things) . . . * this anthology-as-karaoke-bar similitude seems an interesting (& maybe more to the point?) variant on the anthology-as-zoo observation of David Antin's (mentioned on the list some months ago) * for a pop singer who sings (on demand / by expectation) "favorite standards" of their OWN work, one wonders how -- after decades -- they could avoid dilusions of self-karaoke-ing . . . (dilutions of grandeur) * more broadly construed, to what degree might any / every literary tradition be susceptible to aspects of a karaoke simile? * where does Sid Vicious's rendition of "My Way" fit in? (is his the LangPo sendup, or what?) history note: circa '89, Penny Arcade did a Nancy riff (re-enacted that persona -- in a small performance series at The Chelsea, NYC -- said Sid having suicided, seems, at that hotel) -- memory drummed up by memory of film *Sid & Nancy* (said Sex Pistol's rendition of *My Way* having played in voiceover while the credits roll) . . . it's a long way to karaoke / it's a long way, I know ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 07:01:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Sedgwick/VVoice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Nick, the Sedgwick's an essay in her book Tendencies, and yes, I'd second -- a great read. The Village Voice's VLS went through a bad spell but it is back on track under editor Kerry Fried, and doing some poetry again (although since it went free I don't get to it like I used to). Address: 36 Cooper Square, NY 10003 & phone: 212-475-3300. Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 07:45:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: the notion of voice In-Reply-To: <199705150038.TAA29541@charlie.cns.iit.edu> from "amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU" at May 14, 97 07:38:52 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark: There was, in the early 70's, I think, an anthology called _The Voice that Is Great within Us_. You might check that out for prologial theorizing. Early on, around that time, there may have have been some connection between the voice theorists and Walter Ong's work on orality and the ontology of voice (Ong is very interesting, by the way). The concept quickly deteriorated, in any case, into a proposal about the sound of the "authentic self" with attendent therapeutic possibilities and "identity" related developments. There's probably a connection there, as well, with the then widely popularized work of post-Freudians like Perleman and Erikson and their theories of the development of psychic authenticity. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 08:04:29 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: voice In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 15 May 1997 01:44:05 -0600 from On Thu, 15 May 1997 01:44:05 -0600 Hugh Steinberg said: > >But I also think there's something more interesting about "voice" than >that. The phrase "finding your voice" is shorthand for describing the >transitions writers go through, particularly the first one where things >start to click, where craft and intention and subject matter come together >a lot more successfully than in previous attempts. MFA programs love to >take credit for this event (upon completion of my MFA I found my voice and >my skin cleared up too!) That is one of their problems. The workshop is >intended to foster these transitions, but the what and how of making this >transition is ultimately personal, mysterious, even random. The shop can >do as much harm as good. And the writer might not "find their voice" until >years after leaving the workshop. So why go get an MFA if you might just >as easily "find your voice" while doing your dishes or during your coffee I like the way Hugh described it all in this post. The complex thing though about "finding your voice" is that it's as much social/impersonal as it is personal/mysterious. It can be likened maybe to the way painters get in a groove, find a means, find confidence to go in a new direction. It's based on milieu, training (education), background, character, reading - but also on inspiration or "occasion". I think poets "find their voice" by rising to the occasion. It's a cognitive/social/inspirational occasion. That's why the poem or work often seems to have pre-existed - the poet found it. & that's why MFA programs don't have a recipe for this. The milieu is too narrow & the occasion stays away; the outcome is - academic. But that doesn't mean MFA programs are all bad - at least they provide people with the "occasion" to allow themselves to write. Some people need it. But the great milieu is where poetry is just "out there" - in the working free groups - and alone, AGAINST the groups & their mechanical robot critics (the critical reception, say, of Philip Guston's late work is paradigmatic). Guston is illustrative of the personal/ social dynamics of this. He withdraws from art scene where he was already a mighty force - he starts painting these strange cartoon-like pictures of KKK men among piles of trash, etc. (this is late 60s early 70s I think) - his father was a garbage collector who had killed himself - the work is totally dumped on by the critics - prefigures so much painting of later decades - this is an example of painter "finding his voice" - also perhaps an example of how the group, the society, allows certain figures to play out the personal in a conflicted way - Henry G. >break? Ideally the workshop will accelerate the process, but often it >won't. And often writers emerge from their programs thinking they have >made that first leap when in truth all they've done is written more >polished versions of their entrance manuscripts. > >I just spent the weekend talking with one of the people who went through >the MFA program at Arizona with me, and we figured out that in just four >years, less than a quarter of our graduating class were still writing (let >alone writing better than when they graduated). > >Perhaps that's where MFA programs get it wrong: the goal isn't to find your >voice, but to find a way to keep speaking. > >Hugh Steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 08:56:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: voice In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The critique of "voice" predates language poetry: VOICE I have always laughed when someone spoke of a young writer "finding his voice." I took it literally: had he lost his voice? Had he thrown it and had it not returned? Or perhaps they were referring to his newspaper _The Village Voice_? He's trying to find his _Voice_. What isn't funny is that so many young writers seem to have found this notion credible: they set off in search of their voice, as if it were a single thing, a treasure difficult to find but worth the effort. I never thought such a thing existed. Until recently. Now I know it does. I hope I never find mine. I wish to remain a phony the rest of my life. --Ron Padgett (from _Toujours L'Amour_, NY, 1976) ___ Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 08:24:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: the notion of voice Comments: To: Piombino/Simon In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:00 PM -0400 5/14/97, Piombino/Simon wrote: >This sounds very intriguing, Maria. I'm as yet unfamiliar, embarassed to >admit, >with >the sedgwick poem, the sedgwick is actually an article in Representations from the mid-late-ish eighties. or- - your book(uh...what were those titles, again?) >including the work on Lowell, whose >line "The monument sticks like a fishbone/ in the city's throat" >speaking of Washington D.C., has always haunted me.Could you further >explain the connection? better yet, i'll send u a copy of my book, if u send me yr snail address--md > >Best, > >NickOn Wed, 14 May 1997, Maria Damon >wrote: > >> At 9:46 PM -0400 5/13/97, Piombino/Simon wrote: >> >I agree with Robert Hale that the requirement that some family >> >experience be touched upon is at the heart of what some might call the >> >"non-innovative" or non-experimental poem (expectably,many poets are >> >skeptical about >> >creating hard and fast technical names for non- conformist kind of >> >poetry) >> >> i've found eve sedgwick's "a poem is being written" to be a nice meditation >> on the link between nuclear family, with its private humiliations and >> scrutiny, and the lyric. robert lowell's poetry i believe bears this out, >> as i tried to write about in my lowell section in my book. >> >> >> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 08:33:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: the notion of voice In-Reply-To: <199705151145.HAA25311@chass.utoronto.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 7:45 AM -0400 5/15/97, Michael Boughn wrote: >Mark: > >There was, in the early 70's, I think, an anthology called _The Voice >that Is Great within Us_. You might check that out for prologial >theorizing. Early on, around that time, there may have have been some >connection between the voice theorists and Walter Ong's work on >orality and the ontology of voice (Ong is very interesting, by the >way). The concept quickly deteriorated, in any case, into a proposal >about the sound of the "authentic self" with attendent therapeutic >possibilities and "identity" related developments. There's probably a >connection there, as well, with the then widely popularized work of >post-Freudians like Perleman and Erikson and their theories of >the development of psychic authenticity. > >Mike >mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca that book, edited by hayden carruth, was my bible in high school. it introduced me to bob kaufman, james merrill, robert creeley and others. i still have that beat up copy. i felt that it *was* the great voice within me, coming from somewhere else, esp when i read creeley (it turned out that my poetry teacher had studied w/ creeley so that must have been why). like, later, reading bruno schultz, that feeling of having one's dream-voices ventriloquized by someone you hadn't known existed... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 07:33:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Aldon L. Nielsen' advertisement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On Tuesday May 13 Aldon L. Nielsen said: "For a limited time only, I am available as an individual or a group. Void where prohibited. Slightly higher in Canada. Some natural shifting of the contents may occur in shipment." I'd take you up on this in a minute, but for that 3rd line: Because Aldon, the canadian dollar is only about $0.71US, & anyway we dont have as much as many US universities do. Alas, alas, that ever that should be! But I rally appreciate the offer... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigary H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 07:33:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: workshopped 'voice'? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re: Robert Hale's response to Mark Wallace: our own Marjorie Perloff has written eloquently around this topic in various places, some essays in _The Dance of the Intellect_ & _Poetic License_, for example. Not always 'about' voice as such, but definitely about aspects of trad modern lyric in which 'voice' and the solid subject come together, & the poetry in which they are diffused in a variety of ways... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigary H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 09:49:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: like a fishbone In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hey Nick, the "fishbone" line is wonderfully appropriate to DC and the Big White Dick, but it's actually from "For the Union Dead" and refers to Colonel Shaw and his "colored" Civil War regiment. Gwyn, always looking for brownie points from the profs... :) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 09:00:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: voice In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:04 AM -0400 5/15/97, henry wrote: >On Thu, 15 May 1997 01:44:05 -0600 Hugh Steinberg said: >> So why go get an MFA if you might just >>as easily "find your voice" while doing your dishes or during your coffee > there's a very simple reason why people do ma, mfa, phd programs, etc. to stay out of the grueling, dispiriting job market/unemployment treadmill for a few years in relatively comfortable, respectable, and stimulating circumstances. i went to grad school to hide out the reagan years. if there were any degree that could have lasted longer than a phd program (which can be parlayed into 7 or 8 years) i would have done that. i enjoyed it, got a lot out of it, etc., but basically i was helping keep down the unemployment and the chronically- marginally-employed rate. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 05:21:20 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: padgett/voice Ah there's the rub. One finds his/her voice and then what? You're stuck with it! DT ---------- From: Jordan Davis[SMTP:jdavis@PANIX.COM] Sent: Thursday, May 15, 1997 9:56 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: voice The critique of "voice" predates language poetry: VOICE I have always laughed when someone spoke of a young writer "finding his voice." I took it literally: had he lost his voice? Had he thrown it and had it not returned? Or perhaps they were referring to his newspaper _The Village Voice_? He's trying to find his _Voice_. What isn't funny is that so many young writers seem to have found this notion credible: they set off in search of their voice, as if it were a single thing, a treasure difficult to find but worth the effort. I never thought such a thing existed. Until recently. Now I know it does. I hope I never find mine. I wish to remain a phony the rest of my life. --Ron Padgett (from _Toujours L'Amour_, NY, 1976) ___ Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 08:50:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Joe Amato's paper at the Denver conference Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joe Amato's paper, "We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming," which is fascinating, will be published in an upcoming issue of _The Denver Quarterly_. It made me want to read more of his own kind of 'poessays'. ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigary H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 11:09:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dean Taciuch Subject: Re: voice In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hugh Steinberg wrote: >I just spent the weekend talking with one of the people who went through >the MFA program at Arizona with me, and we figured out that in just four >years, less than a quarter of our graduating class were still writing (let >alone writing better than when they graduated). > >Perhaps that's where MFA programs get it wrong: the goal isn't to find your >voice, but to find a way to keep speaking. I found one of the graduates from the Creative Writing program I was in (a PhD program, not an MFA) on the National Empowerment Network (I don't know how many of you have that--it's far right politcal programming). He was (may still be) the editor of Campus Watch, the folks who expose all the liberals undermining this great nation of ours, etc, etc. Anyway, this fiction writer bills himself as an expert in education, proudly displaying his degree (Dr. Mark Draper, PhD) in the masthead of Campus Watch. I called up (it was a call in show) and asked him how he felt about Creative Writing PhDs, since he was on a tirade against liberal arts programs undermining traditional education values. He got a bit flustered, I guess, and handed the question over the Phyllis Schlafly, who was also on the panel. I didn't get to say anything after that. He found a way to keep speaking, using "fictionalizing" skills he picked up in a Creative Writing program. Dean ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 11:12:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dean Taciuch Subject: Re: voice In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In one workshop I participated in, we were doing an exercise which involved "listening to the voices in our heads," with emphasis on the plurality of said voices. One student in the class asked to be excused: "I'm taking medication so I don't have to listen to those voices." Dean ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 11:42:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Field of Roses Subject: Re: voice (trilafon) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >In one workshop I participated in, we were doing an exercise which involved >"listening to the voices in our heads," with emphasis on the plurality of >said voices. One student in the class asked to be excused: "I'm taking >medication so I don't have to listen to those voices." > >Dean Maybe now's a good time to discuss the silences... Linda Charyk Rosenfeld ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 22:37:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Drew Gardner Comes Back Comments: To: maz881@aol.com, CHRIS1929W@aol.com, Levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, daviesk@is4.NYU.EDU, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, drothschild@penguin.com, jdavis@panix.com, jms@acmenet.net, maj6916@u.cc.utah.edu, AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM, jarnot@pipeline.com, lgoodman@acsu.buffalo.edu, lppl@aol.com, poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, aburns@fnbank.com, normacole@aol.com, acornford@igc.org, olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbg.com, tlovell@sfsu.edu, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, peacock99@aol.com, murphym@earthlink.com, cburket@sfsu.edu, selby@slip.net, cah@sonic.net, cyanosis@slip.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tuesday May 13th at Intersection for the Arts in S.F., Drew Gardner and Joel Deane read in Drew's first S.F. reading since leaving for New York City last year. Joel Deane, who recently moved here from Melbourne, Australia, read his brooding, serious poems, dialogues, and stories first. Although many in the audience had apparently come to see Joel, he only read two lines that really grabbed me: my father is a model discontinued a face is ubiquitous, he thinks Drew followed after a short break. Those of us who had come to see him (Elizabeth Robinson, Tina Rotenberg, Avery Burns, Garrett, Brian Lucas, Andrew Joron, Steve Dickison, Pat Reed and Chris Daniels) had fun listening to the contrast between his last S.F. poems and the newer N.Y. poems: the crescent moon holds the liquid mind like a cup mean furnitures of light threaten learning to change the lobster into a valuable helper beachcombing machines to crawl with wings above the hemoglobin flags one emptiness shifting as a bathtub on the sea only sound will never change the necessary running where spring is a language of direct experience vanishing houses leaned against the mental tree the numbered nothings go an unseen bowl has come hidden from the yes o internal mosh pit! to eat away the sun is not a question of being mean the inside of a severed thought is not a question don't freak. become a reverse suicide. refuse nothing to god. ...and then it was tapas again (love those tapas desserts--this time I got the chocalte mousse. If only someone had killed me after the first bite I wouldn't have to live with this yearning for more!) We went to Picaro's and reminisced about its days as a dingy cafe. Drew's headed for Seattle til next Monday, and then Saturday the 24th he's playing a jazz gig at Radio Valencia, which I strongly recommend catching if you're around as Drew's jazz noises are fantastic. ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 10:45:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: voice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Israel wrote: > The 'voice' is the same, at > best. The music is the same too, though more like muzak. Praise is > awarded in accordance with the degree of similarity between the original > and its new performer. Music. Singing. Alongside the spectral, soul-ful 'notion' of voice 'within' or 'without' is the concrete, and not unrelated, vibrations, movements of throat, larynx, the forced air through the resonators of the facial musculature (the 'mask' of trained singing jargon), the minutia of glottis, the aural possibilities of opera-house, tavern, head-phones, closet. Wayne Koestenbaum's _The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality and the Mystery of Desire_ intones beautifully on the social construction of 'voice' as it is heard and as it comes to mean more than its singularity and/or simulations of reproducibility-- either as repertoire (neither is Karaoke *merely* about a pure lip-sync vetriloquy but rather, importantly, about repetition *and* difference), in voice 'training'(Koestenbaum writes hilariously and insightfully of voice training manuals, and what it would mean to have a 'trained' voice) or compared to 'other' voices, other divas. "This ideology of 'voice' as original and identity-bestowing took root in . . . a time when sexuality evolved as the darkness we yearn to illuminate, a constituative hiddeness . . . Like the arts of asceticism that, according to Foucault, constituted early modern sexuality, voice is a set of rules for withholding and dispensing a natural, numinous and dangerously volatile substance . . . What if voice were, finally, a more useful rubric than 'sexuality'? Dispense with our sex rhetorics, and think of desire as articulated air, a shaped column of breath passing through a box on its way to a resonator. Are we experiencing 'voice' or 'sexuality' when we greet or hold a controlled shaft of air moving from a dark place out into the world?" mc ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 10:50:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: the notion of no voice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > . . . > In fact, days before NPR put out a press release to announce > the RFK Journalism Award, "All Things Considered" censored a two- > minute poem making a strong statement about some current > manifestations of power and racism. > > In the past, "All Things Considered" has aired a number of > poems by Martin Espada. Three years ago, the program commissioned > what became the title poem of his book "Imagine the Angels of > Bread." Soon after it won the American Book Award this spring, > "All Things Considered" asked him to write a poem for broadcast > in connection with National Poetry Month. > > Espada wrote a poem about Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist and > black activist who is on death row after being convicted of the > murder of a Philadelphia police officer. While alluding to > evidence of an unfair trial, the poem lyrically evokes "fugitive > slaves" and a history of racial oppression spanning to the > present time. > > NPR refused to air the poem. Evidently, the last thing NPR's > management wanted to do was rile the formidable police lobby, > which went ballistic in 1994 when "All Things Considered" > scheduled a series of commentaries by Abu-Jamal about crime and > prison life. NPR quickly canceled the commentaries. > > Now, NPR has also banned poems about Abu-Jamal. > > In an interview Wednesday, NPR's director of communications, > Kathy Scott, said that the poem has been blocked for the same > reason that Abu-Jamal's original commentaries were axed: pending > litigation. > > Using a rationale without legal basis, Scott asserted that > the problem with the poem is a lawsuit filed by Abu-Jamal against > NPR for canceling his commentaries. And, she claimed, the problem > with those commentaries was Abu-Jamal's appeal of his death > sentence: NPR's intention was to "not influence the case so that > the legal system can take its course." > > So, once Abu-Jamal's case is settled, perhaps by execution, > NPR's ban on his voice might be lifted. > > On the phone from the University of Massachusetts in > Amherst, where he's an associate professor, Espada sounded calm - > - and disgusted. He recalled his question to an NPR producer: > "NPR is refusing to air this poem because of its political > content. Do you agree?" The answer was yes. > > James Baldwin once wrote that many people who live with > complicity in the destruction of other human beings "do not know > it and do not want to know it." He added: "But it is not > permissible that the authors of devastation should also be > innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime." > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 10:28:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One of the most depressing moments during my years in arts adminstration was serving on the selection panel for a large multi-disciplinary fellowship program from a state agency. I was there as a music specialist, but got to/had to read/see/smell the work samples in every discipline. It was a very long process. I had a helluva time trying to make clear what I felt was wrong with a short story writer who had the personal voice thing DOWN, it was like reading a transcript of a stand-up comic who works a lot with catch phrases. This writer had even published two stories in different collections that were Mad-Lib versions of each other. Only some of the words were changed; the entire structure, down to sentence order & phrases within the sentences, was EXACTLY the same. (If this was some kind of formal experiment, it was the only one this writer has ever tried.) Of course, I was the only one to vote against it & the writer recieved a big chunk of cash. Oh, well. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 14:22:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: a weird and fast and interesting golf poem (yes, GOLF!) by a friend of mine... Par Once I saw my fade slip by the dogleg from both my cheeks. The feathery white pine was all air and I found the sprinkler line a bump and run. For seven shooting darts both sides are fat, and snakes will bite the cup. As I recall this happened only once. I often foul with my bat. The fowl fall easily in fall before my gun and dog. Legged legs old golfers yip off their fowl air with no free relief in sight. WeAd rather have a fried egg than one foot: down in three the order when we stab. If only once I happened to recall my putter I know I could putter par. Copyright 1997, John M. Leighton ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 11:27:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: the notion of voice In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 15 May 1997, Maria Damon wrote: Michael Boughn wrote: > >There was, in the early 70's, I think, an anthology called _The Voice > >that Is Great within Us_. You might check that out for prologial > >theorizing. > and Maria responded: > that book, edited by hayden carruth, was my bible in high school. it > introduced me to bob kaufman, james merrill, robert creeley and others. i > still have that beat up copy. And I'd like to say that my dog-eared copy of same is still held in such esteem that it has an honored place in the bathroom, right next to the old _New Yorkers_ and _Nations_. No theorizing though, just poems, but by an unlikely gathering, one that pre-dated the exclusionary groupings we've seen since. Is everyone ready for "The Odyssey" on TV this Sunday? I'm getting warmed up by watching _Xena, Warrior Princess_ . . . ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 13:43:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: voice In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII always thought this gives a good deal to think on/with re voice/s --from Robert Grenier's A Day at the Beach: VOICE SAYS v o i c e s (each letter of the second line is underlined in the original) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 14:58:52 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@tribeca.ios.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: Drew Gardner Comes Back MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Steve Carll wrote: > > Tuesday May 13th at Intersection for the Arts in S.F., Drew Gardner and > Joel Deane read in Drew's first S.F. reading since leaving for New York > City last year. Joel Deane, who recently moved here from Melbourne, > Australia, read his brooding, serious poems, dialogues, and stories first. > Although many in the audience had apparently come to see Joel, he only read > two lines that really grabbed me: > > my father is a model discontinued > a face is ubiquitous, he thinks > > Drew followed after a short break. Those of us who had come to see him > (Elizabeth Robinson, Tina Rotenberg, Avery Burns, Garrett, Brian Lucas, > Andrew Joron, Steve Dickison, Pat Reed and Chris Daniels) had fun listening > to the contrast between his last S.F. poems and the newer N.Y. poems: > > the crescent moon holds the liquid mind like a cup > mean furnitures of light threaten > learning to change the lobster into a valuable helper > beachcombing machines > to crawl with wings above the hemoglobin flags > one emptiness shifting as a bathtub on the sea > only sound will never change the necessary running > where spring is a language of direct experience > vanishing houses leaned against the mental tree > the numbered nothings go > an unseen bowl has come hidden from the yes > o internal mosh pit! > to eat away the sun is not a question of being mean > the inside of a severed thought is not a question > don't freak. become a reverse suicide. refuse nothing to god. > > ...and then it was tapas again (love those tapas desserts--this time I got > the chocalte mousse. If only someone had killed me after the first bite I > wouldn't have to live with this yearning for more!) We went to Picaro's > and reminisced about its days as a dingy cafe. Drew's headed for Seattle > til next Monday, and then Saturday the 24th he's playing a jazz gig at > Radio Valencia, which I strongly recommend catching if you're around as > Drew's jazz noises are fantastic. > > ********************************** > sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll > http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym > http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym > > In seed- > sense > the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. > > --Paul Celan > ********************************** Steve, I want to thank you for your reportage on SF readings, and to ask how your selection of lines might relate to the current "voice" discussion, i.e., does your selection reflect a "voice" you "hear" more than others--a transpersonal voice incarnating itself occasionally in various poets who happen to have listened to the same channel on Cocteau's radio? Do those lines resonate with your own "voice"? Do they contrast with or reply to it? Do they exemplify exactly what you would, after hearing them, strive never to imitate or reproduce in any even paraphrasable rendition/karaoke? You seem in a good position to contribute something to this "voice" discussion. Wouldja, wouldja? Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 15:47:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: whose voice? Michael Corbin -- you wrote, <<< David Israel wrote: > The 'voice' is the same, at > best. The music is the same too, though more like muzak. Praise is > awarded in accordance with the degree of similarity between the original > and its new performer. >>> a techno-(authorship) footnote: true, I mouthed the words -- but so happens, I was quoting another -- i.e., senor Daniel Tessitore. Also: thx for excerpt from Wayne Koestenbaum -- << . . . What if voice were, finally, a more useful rubric than 'sexuality'? Dispense with our sex rhetorics, and think of desire as articulated air ... >> speaking of opera, one of the curiouser settings for an Italian aria is to be in theatres near you, when Bruce Willis spens a 22nd Century evening at the theatre (*The Fifth Element*) -- also interesting how, in the film, explore the notion of the UR-language, root of all languages, is explored -- which (as some manner of joke?) turns out to sound a darn lot like Italian (? you thought Sanskrit? think again) -- not to mention topicality of God incarnating in form of a (as could be said) cute babe . . . (for want of a more precise lexicon) . . . anyway, uncle david says, you cd perchance check it out . . . whole lotta camp, satire & dumb stuff, but this seemed withal a film enjoyable (for reasons I'll not try to dissect this afternoon . . .) . . . but as said, the aria-scene found a curious contextualizing (or de-) ... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 18:37:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: the "World Wide Free Press" Comments: cc: kunkin@cinenet.net poetas, speakin' of the Voice [publication], many w/ 60s memories will recall its once-upon-a-time leftcoast kin, the Freep (a.k.a. Los Angeles Free Press), -- long since deceased BUT lately resurrected by indefatigable publisher Art Kunkin as a webzine. I've not paid close attn to the consequent World Wide Free Press, but I happen to be on Kunkin's roster for occasional circulars. One such arrived today, which I'll excerpt in part for poss. interest of current company. Will spare you'all much of the roster of new-age speakers -- the elipses are mine (the attached forwards an advert for a new age trade fair). Sending this mainly for sake of the URL . . . cheer, d.i. p.s.: I've not seen major signs of literary life (or, more particularly, the P word) at the new web-Freep (but then, I've not quite fully looked). Kunkin's incentive, anyway, seems to be toward spurring growth of new local free presses based in various metropoli, -- somehow in cahoots w/ the central WWW Freep . . . (?) -- & anyone interested in jumping aboard & seeing abt. doing some poetry hotrodding or hoe-work (or whatnot) could likely (or maybe) get some manner of mileage (or acreage) . . . / / / / / >>> Art Kunkin 05/15/97 02:51pm >>> Dear Friends, The Los Angeles Free Press and The World Wide Free Press has BOOTH #110 at the Whole Life Expo in Pasadena this weekend and you are invited to stop by. Besides a big display of front covers of the old printed L.A. Free Press and blow-ups of some great Ron Cobb cartoons from the Freep, we will also be distributing literature for the Los Angeles Alternative Media Network. There's nothing for sale, just great information and great visuals. Below is some information about the Expo itself. Come and visit. I will be at the Expo all three days so this will also be a good time to connect with me personally. Cordially, Art Kunkin >WHOLE LIFE EXPO >MAY 16-18, 1997 >PASADENA CONVENTION CENTER >300 E. GREEN ST., PASADENA > >"INTO THE NEW MILLENIUM" > >FEATURING: > >Neal Donald Walsch; "Conversations With God" >Whitley Streiber; "The Secret School" . . . [etc., etc.] >Re. Nirvana Gayle; "Sacred Arts Extravaganza" >Thomas Banyacya; "Koyaanisqatsi: Hopi Prophecy..." > >Plus 185 More of the best speakers in the Consciousness movement!! >Over 300 Exhibitors INCLUDING THE FREE PRESS AT BOOTH 110. . . . [etc.] >Call 800-332-0099 to pre-register or for information. . . . PLEASE FORWARD THIS ON YOUR E-MAIL LISTS-PLEASE! Art Kunkin Publisher and Editor, The World Wide Free Press http://www.wwfreepress.com (& see our hot-links!) Senior Editor: Los Angeles Free Press http://lafreepress.callme.net Contributing Editor: Alaska Free Press, Haight Ashbury Free Press, etc. 310-455-2451 email: kunkin@cinenet.net 115 South Topanga Canyon Blvd, #166, Topanga CA 90290 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 20:25:31 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: ALA conference For those of you going to the upcoming ALA conference (next week in Baltimore?), please drop by the University of Alabama Press's booth and meet Curtis Clark, a senior editor with the Press. Curtis is quite interested in contemporary poetry and poetics, and he has been very supportive of a number of book projects of interest to Poetics List persons. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:38:01 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Pam Brown Subject: "voice"? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello Poetics Listees, In Sydney in November 1995 a poetry conference called "The Whole Voice" was held. Laurie Duggan presented a "paper" sceptical of the notion of "voice"...it's published in the latest issue of "Southerly" - Vol.57 No 1 Autumn 1997 - ("Southerly" can be found on the EPC website small magazine list). Laurie's piece is called "What Whole Voice ? Notes For A Reading" and I'll quote from the section "Metaphysics" "What is this thing called "the voice"? I take it to be a metaphysical concept which represents "authority". It is a humanist concept of "authorisation"; of power over "lesser breeds without the law." It is logocentric. When "voice" is used in the context of this conference it is actually the "mind of the poet" (or "poetic" voice) which is the privileged item: an integrated mind; a mind with "integrity". Someone I know once prefaced a remark on poetics with the inclusive/exclusive "we poets..." - as though there were some poetic way of seeing things and that "we poets" were the privileged viewers (or "seers"). The "humanism" of "the voice" is, in this light, merely the backwash of romanticism. If "the voice" is "whole" in this sense, it is the "organic" (and "coherent" voice); the product of a constituted and authenticated "body of poetry". he continues with reflections on "voice" in "Performance" and so on...and a quote from the concluding section "Silence"... "The poem of "the voice" is too wrapped up in its own importance to leave any breathing space. It's a dead letter...." I post this because I agree with it. Best wishes, Pam Brown ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 19:48:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: "voice"? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:38 AM +1100 5/16/97, Pam Brown wrote: >"The poem of "the voice" is too wrapped up in its own importance to leave >any breathing space. It's a dead letter...." > >I post this because I agree with it. While I agree that this is a marvelous quote, and I agree with all the critiques of the notion of voice that have been expressed here lately (the ones I read, I'm sure I missed a few), I would like to add one tiny sour note to all of this--namely in the works of poets who oppose the notion of voice, many a time I've seen their non-voice just as wrapped up in its own importance as the voice mentioned above. I appreciate this discussion. It has clarified the panic I feel on the rare occasions I hear "workshop" poetry, when I drive Kevin crazy trailing him around, asking for assurance, "I don't do that, right, Kevin, I don't, right?" This discussion have given me some distance from that gut-level revulsion, the space to meditate upon exactly what I'm finding problematic--and how that relates to my own interest in narrative and "self." Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 23:19:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: like a fishbone Comments: To: Gwyn McVay In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII How 'bout that! And all this time I thought...Could you elaborate on this a bit? What's the monument and how does regiment come into it? I don't have a copy of the poem, and even if I did I might not have deciphered this. Thanks, Gwyn Nick On Thu, 15 May 1997, Gwyn McVay wrote: > Hey Nick, the "fishbone" line is wonderfully appropriate to DC and the Big > White Dick, but it's actually from "For the Union Dead" and refers to > Colonel Shaw and his "colored" Civil War regiment. > > Gwyn, always looking for brownie points from the profs... :) > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 09:13:47 GMT0BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Larkin Subject: Another New Pub Before this info is banned or side-slotted somewhere, could I mention a new book of mine from Prest Roots Press: Three Forest Conformities 41 pp (includes a 3pp essay). Available now direct from me at stlg4.50 plus stlg1.00 towards P&P for non-UK sales, or soon to be available with a dollar price through Paul Green's distribution catalogue. Nice to see The Prelude turning up in the conversations. It must have been an announcement once itself, though a posthumous one. Is that the sort this list now prefers? Peter Peter Larkin Philosophy & Literature Librarian University of Warwick Library Coventry CV4 7AL UK Tel: 01203 528151 Fax: 01203 524211 Email: Peter.Larkin@warwick.ac.uk Peter Larkin Philosophy & Literature Librarian University of Warwick Library Coventry CV4 7AL UK Tel: 01203 528151 Fax: 01203 524211 Email: Peter.Larkin@warwick.ac.uk Peter Larkin Philosophy & Literature Librarian University of Warwick Library Coventry CV4 7AL UK Tel: 01203 528151 Fax: 01203 524211 Email: Peter.Larkin@warwick.ac.uk ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 01:18:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Travis Andrew Ortiz Subject: Reading in San Francisco Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I haven't seen this announced yet, so I though I'd forward what information I do have about the marathon reading at New Langton on Saturday: New Langton Arts Presents: "A Night in the Life of San Francisco Writing" Saturday, May 17 beginning at 4:00 PM "A Night in the Life of San Francisco Writing is a marathon evening of literary readings that last through the wee hours of Sunday morning. Over 50 writers/readers will participate. The San Francisco writing community presents itself to revel in the breadth of local, contemporary writing and to celebrate our lateral spraul. Invite friends to town for the occasion, gather a group, or come solo. Brace your attention span, get your hand stamped, and wander in and out freely. Latecomers welcome." Featured writers/readers include: Pam Lu Dodie Bellamy Robert Gluck Jay Schwartz Kit Robinson Lyn Hejinian Jean Day David Larson Faith Barrett Linda Voris Lytle Shaw Barbara Guest Lauren Gudath Norma Cole Travis Ortiz Craig Dworkin Aaron Shurin Kevin Killian Stephen Ratcliffe Carolyn Lau Edmund Berrigan Gloria Frym Ann Simon Hung Tu Katherine Lederer Renee Gladman Leslie Scalapino and many, many more Tickets are $5 general and $3 for students, seniors, and Langton members. Ticket holders may come and go as they please. Tickets will be available for purchase throughout the night. ***New Langton is located at 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco. phone: 415 626 5416 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 05:10:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Comments: cc: dbkk@sirius.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Dodie, I would love to hear you go more into this idea of "non-voice" as "voice." It sounds fascinating (and, NO, you don't do that!) Ron Ron Silliman When this you see 262 Orchard Road Remember me Paoli, PA 19301-1116 (610) 251-2214 (610) 293-6099 (o) (610) 293-5506 (fax) rsillima@ix.netcom.com rsillima@tssc.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 20:52:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Mark Weiss wrote [a long time ago]: > >>hold everything--is someone claiming that The Prelude is an epic? > >Er, well no, not exactly, Mark. I guess you caught me in flagrante >conflatio. But - having said that in an attempt to extricate myself from the >hole I've dug - I think a claim cld be put forward for _The Prelude_ as an >epic in autobiography, in which "the action," "the story," is the >development of the poet's consciousness. Which is also what I see happening >in _Flowchart_. This is admittedly a loose interp of "epic." > >Having been absorbed lately in David Jones' _The Anathemata_, I'll toss out >a few peripheral scraps from my reading that may have some bearing here: > >"I have made a heap of all that I could find." - Nennius (from DJ's intro) > >"It was a dark and stormy night, we sat by the calcined wall; it was said to >the tale teller, tell us a tale, and the tale ran thus: it was a dark and >stormy night..." (epigraph). > >Now this little diddy to my mind sums up what epic is all about - not just >that stuff about the "tale of the tribe" - but the rescuing of potentially >rejuvenating or at least still powerful psychic material from the rimefrost >of cliche. Its circularity and self-referentialty are "the story" - i.e. the >history of the growth of consciousness, though maybe not too many here will >agree with that. _The Prelude_ cld be shoehorned into this model, and mebbe, >just mebbe, _Flowchart_? All this begs the questions: is epic still >possible, or even desirable, and if so, what do we expect it to do? >Certainly not the affirmation of national/tribal identity as _The Iliad_ >did for the Greeks? > >Fuzzier than Jordan, >Patrick Pritchett Excuse me, poets, but I would like to break in with a few questions, since there is a lot of implicit knowledge circulating re this thread, which it would help me, at least [an outsider], to make explicit. You all know, I assume, that "Homer" is just a traditional name for a figure who, in any case, cannot have been the "author" of the Iliad or the Odyssey. "Homer" was just a voice who was able to pull together the best lines of his generation.... Is this common knowledge among you? "Homer"'s style was formulaic, *very* formulaic, which is to say that it operated largely, and successfully, with cliches. Is this common knowledge among you? As far as epic goes, in its Ur-sense, the Iliad and the Odyssey are not "epic" *because* they are long, or war-like, or national or tribal, etc., etc. No, they are epic rather *because* they were a collective, and an oral, endeavor [rather like gossip]. Epic has nothing inherent to do with length, or with war, or with heroic virtue, or men. Epic is what people talk about. Today's *epic*, in the USA at least, is the O.J. Simpson thing. The fact that this thing may be about sex and hollywood and money and race, and the spilling of white blood apparently by some black hand, is merely a reflection of what we talk about: it is epic. Is this common knowledge among you? Where I come from it is traditional to distinguish between oral, or folk, epic, on the one hand, and literary epic on the other. In the strict sense Virgil or Dante or Milton have merely produced literary *imitations* of epic, rather than epic itself, at least in its ur-sense.... Where this puts Ashbery, et al., I don't know, but I see no profit in confusing all of these things into one category.... Are my questions of any use to you? Apologies for being so late and irrelevant, but I've been busy reading earnest student papers. Best wishes, George Thompson p.s. on individuality: individuum est ineffabile [Goethe]. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 03:58:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Of course, the Iliad's audience until quite recently assumed that Homer was an actual person who wrote the text that we have based on historical occurrences predating him by a generation or two. That audience derived its notion of what constituted epic accordingly. The formulaic phrases in Homer appear to be mnemonic devices, remnants of oral sources, not cliches. Your definition of epic is certainly novel; I assume it's exclusive to you. Or perhaps it's common knowledge where you come from. >Excuse me, poets, but I would like to break in with a few questions, since >there is a lot of implicit knowledge circulating re this thread, which it >would help me, at least [an outsider], to make explicit. You all know, I >assume, that "Homer" is just a traditional name for a figure who, in any >case, cannot have been the "author" of the Iliad or the Odyssey. "Homer" >was just a voice who was able to pull together the best lines of his >generation.... Is this common knowledge among you? > >"Homer"'s style was formulaic, *very* formulaic, which is to say that it >operated largely, and successfully, with cliches. Is this common knowledge >among you? > >As far as epic goes, in its Ur-sense, the Iliad and the Odyssey are not >"epic" *because* they are long, or war-like, or national or tribal, etc., >etc. No, they are epic rather *because* they were a collective, and an >oral, endeavor [rather like gossip]. Epic has nothing inherent to do with >length, or with war, or with heroic virtue, or men. Epic is what people >talk about. Today's *epic*, in the USA at least, is the O.J. Simpson >thing. The fact that this thing may be about sex and hollywood and money >and race, and the spilling of white blood apparently by some black hand, is >merely a reflection of what we talk about: it is epic. Is this common >knowledge among you? > >Where I come from it is traditional to distinguish between oral, or folk, >epic, on the one hand, and literary epic on the other. In the strict sense >Virgil or Dante or Milton have merely produced literary *imitations* of >epic, rather than epic itself, at least in its ur-sense.... Where this puts >Ashbery, et al., I don't know, but I see no profit in confusing all of >these things into one category.... Are my questions of any use to you? > >Apologies for being so late and irrelevant, but I've been busy reading >earnest student papers. > >Best wishes, >George Thompson > >p.s. on individuality: individuum est ineffabile [Goethe]. > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:00:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Of course, the Iliad's audience until quite recently assumed that Homer was >an actual person who wrote the text that we have based on historical >occurrences predating him by a generation or two. That audience derived its >notion of what constituted epic accordingly. The formulaic phrases in Homer >appear to be mnemonic devices, remnants of oral sources, not cliches. >Your definition of epic is certainly novel; I assume it's exclusive to you. >Or perhaps it's common knowledge where you come from. > The formulaic phrases in Homer *are* mnemonic devices; they are also cliches [what is a cliche, after all?]. My definition of epic is shared with the Greeks themselves. The word "epos" itself simply means "word" [as in the winged kind]. Consider the so-called "Homeric" hymns, or Hesiod. Same meter, same genre. Not always about "arms and the man".... The very fact that these "Homeric" hymns are attributed to *Homer* shows that "epic" for the Greeks was rather different than it is for you. Look at the hymns to Demeter, to Aphrodite, to Athena, etc. These are, in the Greek sense, just as "epic" as the Iliad.... And then there is the Vedic word, where I come from. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:21:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: like a fishbone Comments: To: Piombino/Simon In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The monument is in Boston and depicts Colonel Shaw, the guy played by Matthew Broderick or Tom Cruise or I forget who in the movie /Glory/, opposite Denzel Washington. The others depicted, whom Lowell calls "bell-cheeked Negroes" in the poem, are soldiers in the first black Union regiment to serve in the Civil War. If I understand it correctly, the regiment was subsequently wiped out in a huge battle. Anyway, if you look at the statue, you notice immediately that Col. Shaw is depicted in /much/ higher relief and detail than the men under his command. I always took it to mean that the monument "stuck in the city's throat" because, no matter how effaced they were individually, it still memorialized black men. (I have to fess up: I just finished taking a class that went into Lowell in some detail--!) Bests, Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:16:45 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 15 May 1997 20:52:55 -0400 from George Thompson, thanks for the Goethe quote. As far as epic, I think what I said about what distinguishes epic is that it is by/for/about the group agrees with what you wrote. But I think epic has also been a literary, written genre, BEGINNING with Homer (in the "west" at least). The Homer we start from - in written epics, I mean - is a real composition (both Iliad & Odyssey). I'm not a classicist & let's not start an argument about "Homer" as individual! But they're written poems. & I'm 3 ineffable individuals. The idea that Virgil & Milton are imitation epics is interesting (since they don't have the same direct roots in oral epic). But Homer - Ill & Odd - as we know them - are poems! Or I'll be a blue-nosed gopher. - HG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:29:57 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 16 May 1997 08:00:47 -0400 from Can you tell us more about the Vedic word? So you're saying the West lives in the shadow of an academicization of an imitation (Virgil). & among the Greeks "the word" (epos) permeated culture in a way that "the word" does today (the media, the news). Classicism is revolution. (Mandelstam) - HG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 07:40:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: "voice"? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this is all well and good, and i agree with it to a large degree, but it also sounds like poststructuralism 101, formulaic and not too inspired --or is that latter adjective itself taboo? At 10:38 AM +1100 5/16/97, Pam Brown wrote: > >Laurie's piece is called "What Whole Voice ? Notes For A Reading" and I'll >quote from the section "Metaphysics" >"What is this thing called "the voice"? I take it to be a metaphysical >concept which represents "authority". It is a humanist concept of >"authorisation"; of power over "lesser breeds without the law." It is >logocentric. When "voice" is used in the context of this conference it is >actually the "mind of the poet" (or "poetic" voice) which is the privileged >item: an integrated mind; a mind with "integrity". Someone I know once >prefaced a remark on poetics with the inclusive/exclusive "we poets..." - as >though there were some poetic way of seeing things and that "we poets" were >the privileged viewers (or "seers"). The "humanism" of "the voice" is, in >this light, merely the backwash of romanticism. If "the voice" is "whole" in >this sense, it is the "organic" (and "coherent" voice); the product of a >constituted and authenticated "body of poetry". > >he continues with reflections on "voice" in "Performance" and so on...and a >quote from the concluding section "Silence"... > >"The poem of "the voice" is too wrapped up in its own importance to leave >any breathing space. It's a dead letter...." > >I post this because I agree with it. >Best wishes, >Pam Brown ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 06:04:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: non-voice not-speaking (importantly) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dodie B. wrote (in part): > While I agree that this is a marvelous quote, and I agree with all the > critiques of the notion of voice that have been expressed here lately (the > ones I read, I'm sure I missed a few), I would like to add one tiny sour > note to all of this--namely in the works of poets who oppose the notion of > voice, many a time I've seen their non-voice just as wrapped up in its own > importance as the voice mentioned above. Thank you, Dodie. RL "Things are more like they are now than they ever were before." --Dwight D. Eisenhower ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:02:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: like a fishbone In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" what might have happened had lowell gone for madonna in one of his manic episodes? like a fishbone stuck for the very first time with your heartbeat next to mine... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 09:11:34 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: like a fishbone In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 16 May 1997 08:21:09 -0400 from Col. Robert Gould Shaw also died in the battle. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 09:17:34 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: "voice"? In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 16 May 1997 10:38:01 +1100 from I think poetry is the voice of a human person expressing some integrated (or dis/integrated, same thing) meaning. You can't escape meaning, and voice is the means of making it vivid, poetic, creating wonder. There is a critical/philosophical debate here that poets can get into & (I) shouldn't oversimplify, but it also seems to get awfully abstruse. Speaking as a pre-Socratic, wholeness includes partiality and non- identity. Wholeness is inescapable even if it's divided. Whole wheat, especially. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 20:13:28 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: ALA conference Being a native of Bmore-city (where you can always B more) I would also recommend the Mt. Royal Tavern. Take Charles St. North from the harbor and turn left at Mt. Royal Ave. and proceed around past the Lyric Opera House--the MRT is on the left across the light-rail tracks. DT ---------- From: Hank Lazer[SMTP:HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU] Sent: Friday, May 16, 1997 5:25 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: ALA conference For those of you going to the upcoming ALA conference (next week in Baltimore?), please drop by the University of Alabama Press's booth and meet Curtis Clark, a senior editor with the Press. Curtis is quite interested in contemporary poetry and poetics, and he has been very supportive of a number of book projects of interest to Poetics List persons. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:04:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: "voice"? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yeah, but Henry, aren't some people allergic to wheat? I don't see what all the fuss is about myself. Dodie hit it for me. Another way to think of "voice" is as a synonym for "chops," as in jazz, not lamb. Which doesn't mean every solo you blow will be the same, but it will have the years behind it. sp >I think poetry is the voice of a human person expressing some integrated >(or dis/integrated, same thing) meaning. You can't escape meaning, and >voice is the means of making it vivid, poetic, creating wonder. There >is a critical/philosophical debate here that poets can get into & (I) >shouldn't oversimplify, but it also seems to get awfully abstruse. >Speaking as a pre-Socratic, wholeness includes partiality and non- >identity. Wholeness is inescapable even if it's divided. Whole wheat, >especially. >- Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:13:36 MDT Reply-To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: affirmative action/where I'm calling from MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I'm sure these stats are all over the place by now, but...ran across an article in a (dreadful) local newspaper this morning, with the ironic headline "affirmative action". I'll just give you the end & the beginning--the rest, as you might imagine, is the usual journalistic tripe, giving "fair representation" to "experts" on both sides without actually discussing the central issue, except to negate it. anyway, it begins: "The number of blacks admitted to the University of California's Boalt Hall law school tumbled 81% in the first year without affirmative action, and Hispanic admissions fell 50%." & ends: "The Boalt dean said that instead of race, the law school took into account any obstacles the applicants had to overcome." doesn't have much, I guess, to do with poetry-- but then again it probably has a hell of a lot to do with it, too. Chris .. Christopher Alexander, etc. nominative press collective 160S 1300E #16 / Salt Lake City UT 84102 calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:20:11 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: "voice"? In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 16 May 1997 10:04:34 -0400 from agreed. Time silvers the plow and the poet's voice. - Mandlestam here's my brief definition of poetry: who can best it? Poetry is a harmony of thought brought to equivalent expression in language. - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:18:13 EST Reply-To: rreynold@rci.rutgers.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Rebecca Reynolds Organization: Rutgers University Subject: Re: voice >" Are we experiencing 'voice' or > 'sexuality' when we greet or hold a controlled shaft of air moving from > a dark place out into the world?" > > Yes--if we speak about THIS sort of voice, the auto-erotic, self-stimulating, bodily frequency -- we do bypass the self--that sticken, socially beset, inauthentic (possibly and depending) multi-tiered and ego-driven creation (lichened to the bark of a tree) also rather appealing in its complexity, a brocade. There is always artifice--I think, after reading a number of posts, this is how I'll think about"voice"--as artifice. One's voice in a poem (if one has only one voice) is equally self-serving and self-defeating IF one's goal is "authenticity." I believe! (And doesn't an exclamation point do WONDERS for the voice?) Poet X, or the so-called workshop poem, the "McPoem," as Donald Hall calls it in Poetry and Ambition, is a great target--but everybody is hurling stuff at it as if it were truly monolithic. Is it? I mean if you avoid certain journals and national publications, you can pretty much refuse to engage . . . though I don't know if that is politically or emotionally healthy. Was just reading difficult passage of Rilke about submission being better than resistance because you still get to partake in Power. On the other hand, as a young poet trying to get stuff published in journals, I resent the prevalence of a certain sort of taste exhibited by many journal editors for those flat "lyrics," though so often the song is missing. (There's nothing like rejection--that is, if you're looking to refine your ars poetica.) thanks, rebecca reynolds "I must find a way out or I die in this diseased mainframe." --Lawnmower Man ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:36:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: OREN.IZENBERG@JHU.EDU Subject: Re: like a fishbone In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Are you saying that this (the monument's capacity to gall the throat) is indicative of _Lowell's_ attitude? I will assume not--despite your lumping this interpretation together with the "damning" "bell-cheeked Negro infantry", or the "suspect" monument-- because this would be a serious misreading of the poem. Even if it was true that Shaw was represented in higher relief than his regiment in the Shaw memorial, putting it in quite this way is deeply polemical. If the difference IS an expression of racism (rather than an expression of the fact that Shaw is sitting on a horse that is also rendered in relief and so, if you will pardon the technical jargon, sticks out further; or an expression of the fact that he commanded the regiment-- both of which facts certainly have to DO with racism, but then so did the Civil War, and on the whole perhaps we can agree that the Union side was more progressive in these matters) , it would much more likely be that of Augustus Saint-Gaudens who designed the monument-- dedicated in 1897. _Lowell_, who was, by the way, related to Shaw, took for his epigraph the inscription on the monument (Relinquit Omnia Servare Publicam), changing, however, "relinquit" to "relinquunt"-- "He leaves all things to serve the Republic" became "They leave all things to serve the Republic"-- an act of commemoration that would have been particularly pointed in 1960. This is a poem AGAINST the city and its "attitudes"(parts of the city in any case-- the parts responsible for undermining the Boston Commons to build a parking garage, for replacing civic values with commercial ones-- in Lowell's Brahmmin lexicon this meant the Irish). And, by the way, this is a poem rather sophisticated in its understaning of the connections between the commercial appropriation of significant images and the prosecution of modern wars (in which Lowell refused to serve): There are no statues for the lst war here; on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph shows Hiroshima boiling over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages" that survived the blast. The point of all of this is not special pleading on Lowell's behalf. It simply irks me that it is possible to slang whatever "mainstream" poet-- because he uses "I", I suppose, because he is invested in "voice"-- with whatever other objectionable attitude seems most objectionable, and no one will particularly CARE if it is right or not-- as though there was nothing to learn from Lowell because he is well-- Lowell. There is no shortage of complexity in attitudes and beliefs-- and granting a bit of nuance to Lowell will not reduce the stockpile for the rest of us. Best, O. On Fri, 16 May 1997, Gwyn McVay wrote: > The monument is in Boston and depicts Colonel Shaw, the guy played by > Matthew Broderick or Tom Cruise or I forget who in the movie /Glory/, > opposite Denzel Washington. The others depicted, whom Lowell calls > "bell-cheeked Negroes" in the poem, are soldiers in the first black Union > regiment to serve in the Civil War. If I understand it correctly, the > regiment was subsequently wiped out in a huge battle. Anyway, if you look > at the statue, you notice immediately that Col. Shaw is depicted in /much/ > higher relief and detail than the men under his command. I always took it > to mean that the monument "stuck in the city's throat" because, no matter > how effaced they were individually, it still memorialized black men. > > (I have to fess up: I just finished taking a class that went into Lowell > in some detail--!) Bests, Gwyn > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 11:03:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: "voice"? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 16 May 1997, henry wrote: > I think poetry is the voice of a human person expressing some integrated > (or dis/integrated, same thing) meaning. You can't escape meaning, and meaning is rather a compulsive act of charity bestowed by an audient (not the same thing (and it is probably this not-sameness that is poetry (voice is just another way of saying oops))) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 11:02:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: like a fishbone Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII As someone who has spent much time observing and appreciating this monument I must say that as much as I don't care for Lowell's poetry in general, this particular poem is quite an exception. The relief of the sculpture is very high. You can reach deeply into it, past the Colonel on his horse and behind him, several inches past the marching reginment (three men deep). Shaw's sword once protruded out independently from the sculpture, a very real blade, pointing to the ground. It has been gone for many years (turned to a ploughshare?). It is remarkable that the soldiers are depicted at all--that the monument is dedicated to the regiment, and not just to the commander. That Shaw is so prominent speaks to many things: he was the commander, he was white, he was symbolic of "progressive" Bostonians' attitude toward the war. i.e., white folks leading blacks out of slavery. Fishbone or no, it is not nearly as bad and embarrassing as another Boston monument a half mile away toward the South End, in which a seven or eight foot tall Lincoln stands above kneeling and cowering newly-freed slaves, Lincoln's right hand over them, Christ-like. I pass by the Shaw monument quite a bit. Usually, in all seasons, it is strewn with flowers daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 09:00:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: Interims Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" I've been asked to post this, and it's my pleasure: -------------------------------------------------- Cydney Chadwick, _Interims_. 3300 Press, 1997 Publisher's address: 300 Vicksburg #5, San Francisco, CA 94114. E-Mail:jacobus@hooked.net. 26 pp. $5.00. ISBN: 0-9646017-4-5. "Cydney Chadwick's latest collection of short fictions mark a change in her work, and a radical deepening of her critique of our edge-of-a-new-millennium culture. Always dark-edged, her stories now have an intense chiaroscuro effect. Her characters are trapped in a ritualized interplay between the empowered and the powerless. And yet, this is not the fiction of fragmentation or divided selves. Instead, it is the fiction of identity held like a closely-guarded secret, barricaded against the assaults of the world. "In Interims, Chadwick's fictions are brave, incisive, and often disturbing. Her landscapes are rendered in deep focus, are unrelenting, and force the reader to take stock of the subtle and insidious changes in a world that repeatedly isolates and dehumanizes." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 12:06:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: affirmative action/where I'm calling from MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Christopher -- > Subject: affirmative action/where I'm calling from besides the 1st term (a.action), am interested in the 2nd term ("where I'm calling from") -- title of Raymond Carver's collected stories (& of a story therein) -- the dude had an arresting voice (at least in prose) & I dare say used it well -- [the site where the caller was calling from, in context, was a rehab clinic -- but the "where" of that particular where (also) seems to open up, in the prhase's abstracting] -- an intentional allusion? d.i. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 12:17:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: "voice" as long division In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mr Mann's account of this jibes with an Adorno-bit I saw last night: that art is the remainder (the residue? which would tie it in with something Carolyn Forche said about the trace?) after the problem in the work has been solved. I know the meaning of certain writers' work became clearer after I heard them read -- Bruce Andrews, David Shapiro and Juliana Spahr are three I can think of right away. This is heading away from "voice" perhaps and towards "biography" "personality" "social (con)text" etc. That is, to what extent does "the meaning became clearer" in that sentence really mean "I became persuaded of the necessity of several tiny personal misunderstandings for my continued reception of the work of these people." Actually I have no idea what Adorno means by solving problems in artwork. I like encryption as much as the next decaying system, but the problem much more often seems to do with my own capabilities not as a decoder ring but as a sympathizer. This, Henry, is why I balk at your Mandelstam motto. First of all, to say that 'classicism is revolution' in the context of a revolutionary society is maybe too much of the pathos? That for that context, Isaac Babel teaching his daughter to answer the phone "Daddy's not here now" is maybe more to the point? Second, to appeal to "classicism" is maybe only to say "the only code which is acceptable is a preordained one" which never appeals to me when I think of writing as _not only_ making new forms but as making _new meanings_. It's only from a surveillance tower that it looks like nothing's new or it's all the same. Maybe being a reader of this work ("this work") is being in the position of learning how to manage the surplus? Arf! arf! J On Fri, 16 May 1997, CHRIS MANN wrote: > On Fri, 16 May 1997, henry wrote: > > > I think poetry is the voice of a human person expressing some integrated > > (or dis/integrated, same thing) meaning. You can't escape meaning, and > > > meaning is rather a compulsive act of charity bestowed by an audient (not > the same thing (and it is probably this not-sameness that is poetry > (voice is just another way of saying oops))) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 12:29:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: SUBPOFEST @ THE EAR 5/17 2:30 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII At the Ear Inn this Saturday at 2:30 (Spring St, New York City) Larry Price, founder and chief executive officer of Subpoetics reads with board members: Rob Fitterman, Douglas Rothschild, Chris Stroffolino, Lisa Jarnot, Sherry Brennan, Jordan Davis, Bill Luoma, Juliana Spahr, and Rod Smith. You've tried UBPoetics, now try SUBPoetics! We love you, J ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:35:22 MDT Reply-To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: like a fishbone MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Daniel rtttttttttt: > I pass by the Shaw monument quite a bit. Usually, in all seasons, it is > strewn with flowers I always wondered at those flowers--frequently roses, & often yellow, as I recall, in 12-stem bunches or singly, among the mixed arrangmements. The last year I was in Boston (last year), the monument was for awhile again "propped by a plank splint", during the construction of the new parking garage under the Common-- or the refurbishment of the old, I'm not sure now. The de-/segregation issue of the day was whether queer advocacy groups could march in the St. Patrick's Day parade--we ended up with one, the traditional one, in South Boston, & separate one in Cambridge. "Reliquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam". I wonder if Shaw is still thus propped up? Chris .. Christopher Alexander, etc. nominative press collective 160S 1300E #16 / Salt Lake City UT 84102 calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 11:06:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: like a fishbone Comments: To: "OREN.IZENBERG" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Recall this only too vaguely, but Michelle Cliff deals with the arguments over Saint-Gauden's various designs for the monument in _Free Enterprise_. I _think_ it ran along these lines: that originally he "hired" unemployed black Civil War vets to pose for the statue, thereby insuring a higher degree of authenticity -- they were also featured in a more prominent way in the design - but the statue's backers nixed this idea and the final design relied on generic blacks - i.e. not taken from actual models. Cliff's book is fascinating for the way it deals with the relationship between the past and the designs used to commemorate the past, esp., as they bear on racism and the fate of the disenfranchised. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: OREN.IZENBERG To: POETICS Subject: Re: like a fishbone Date: Friday, May 16, 1997 10:32AM Even if it was true that Shaw was represented in higher relief than his regiment in the Shaw memorial, putting it in quite this way is deeply polemical. If the difference IS an expression of racism (rather than an expression of the fact that Shaw is sitting on a horse that is also rendered in relief and so, if you will pardon the technical jargon, sticks out further; or an expression of the fact that he commanded the regiment-- both of which facts certainly have to DO with racism, but then so did the Civil War, and on the whole perhaps we can agree that the Union side was more progressive in these matters) , it would much more likely be that of Augustus Saint-Gaudens who designed the monument-- dedicated in 1897. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 09:59:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: like a fishbone Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The monument, by St. Gaudens, is the subject of the first movement of Charles Ives' Three Places in New England. At 08:21 AM 5/16/97 -0400, you wrote: >The monument is in Boston and depicts Colonel Shaw, the guy played by >Matthew Broderick or Tom Cruise or I forget who in the movie /Glory/, >opposite Denzel Washington. The others depicted, whom Lowell calls >"bell-cheeked Negroes" in the poem, are soldiers in the first black Union >regiment to serve in the Civil War. If I understand it correctly, the >regiment was subsequently wiped out in a huge battle. Anyway, if you look >at the statue, you notice immediately that Col. Shaw is depicted in /much/ >higher relief and detail than the men under his command. I always took it >to mean that the monument "stuck in the city's throat" because, no matter >how effaced they were individually, it still memorialized black men. > >(I have to fess up: I just finished taking a class that went into Lowell >in some detail--!) Bests, Gwyn > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 13:27:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: epic redux MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit While George Thompson's summary of Milman Parry's theories regarding epic is accurate, it's a bit dated. In any case, certainly not, as presented, "fact". Norman Austin, I think, pretty much dealt with it in _Archery at the Dark of the Moon_. Best, Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 10:28:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM In-Reply-To: <199751661051619169@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 5:10 AM -0500 5/16/97, rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: >I would love to hear you go more into this idea of "non-voice" as "voice." It >sounds fascinating (and, NO, you don't do that!) Ron, I don't think my ideas around this are complex enough to be "fascinating." My point was simply that to challenge the notion that writers of non-voice or language-centered (though I don't like that term) work, through their moral superiority, somehow evade various issues in the reader/writer relationship. This is vague, so allow me to meander into specifics. Actually, I try to keep things vague for myself to allow an intuitive reforming in my writing, I find that a mushy mind is much more useful to me than a sharp mind, as far as my writing goes. However, I've been teaching, and you have to come up with *something* to say to them, so I have been formulating some stuff that I've avoided formulating in the past. This last semester I took over the 2nd 8 weeks of a Comp A course for art students. Most of these students had turned to art in the first place because of a deep distrust and dislike of language. Three out of 14 were dysflexic, and many of the others wrote at what seemed to me a junior high school level (though they were all quite bright and articulate). They were there because they were forced to be there, most of them (thank god for me) were juniors and seniors, even though this was supposed to be a freshman course, because they'd avoided the course as long as possible. I sat in on a few classes the first 8 weeks, where the instructor lead them through listless discussions about things like "does journalism tell the truth," and presented writing in terms of logos, ethos, and pathos--the Greek, I supppose, communicating that Comp A was serious business. Anyway, walking into this dreadful situation I felt brave as Michelle Pfieffer in Dangerous Minds. And then there were the moral issues of teaching comp when I'd spent years trying to transcend linearity . . . So, I decided that the first thing I would teach them is that "whether or not writing tells the truth" is an inappropriate way to look at things. We spent lots of time examining how all writing is artiface, a construct--even looked as interviews as a literary form rather than transcribed speech. I particularly wanted them to get out of the rut of believing they were writing the truth of their lives/feelings. I used the metaphor of seduction as a way to measure the success of any given piece, that the writer is involved in a seduction of the reader, and the success of a given piece is simply how well it succeeds in that seduction--NOT WHETHER IT TELLS THE TRUTH. I brought in a Christie's catalogue and had them each look through it and rip out the first picture that appealed to them--they enjoyed this ripping up of the book a lot. Then their assignment was to write "what about this piece seduced you." I was trying to get them to interact with the image, to give opinions other than "I liked this because" or "this sucks because." We made a field trip to the Kara Walker exhibit at SF MOMA (Walker's art, for those of you not familiar with it, deals with racism through the use of violent sexual imagery--the class very much liked that and many of them used it as an opportunity to put the word "fucking" into their essays)--I had them write about the exhibit and going to it, and the fact that it was hung in a museum, in terms of the specificity of viewing the work on that day, in that context, and how that impinged upon their take on the work. Obviously, this was about getting them beyond this once and for all time, godlike, disembodied perception of the work. John Yau's essay in _The Poetics of Criticism_ was a big hit, by the way. John is able to make accessible some very basic, important things. The rebellious tone of the piece appealed to the students. We also spent some time reading essays by Diane Arbus. One passage that we read has stuck with me: "Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw. It's just extraordinary that we should have been given these peculiarities. And, not content with what we were given, we create a whole other set. Our whole guise is like giving a sign to the world to think of us in a certain way but there's a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can't help people knowing about you. And that has to do with what I've always called the gap between intention and effect." So, back to the notion of writing as a seduction. One of my pleasures of reading is allowing myself to be seduced, to be thrilled, to abandon my will to Edith Wharton, for instance. I think the discomfort comes in when I feel, not seduced, but manipulated--this is a fine line--when that gap between intention and effect becomes too apparent and I feel ripped off. Many of the criticisms of voice poetry "voiced" here were about how the point of it is to make the "I" sound deep. We're not really supposed to share the epiphany, we're supposed to marvel at the epihaner. But, I think the non-I in many "language-centered" works is just as manipulative and transparent. Instead of an emotional epiphany we're lead to an intellectual epiphany--and in the worst scenerio what we're really supposed to marvel at is the smarts of the non-I who's generating this text. The non-I best seduces me when I don't see this massive frail ego behind it begging for approval. Not that begging for approval is a bad thing, it can be done to great effect if you're upfront about it--in the work of the artist Candy Ass, for instance. So, you see, Ron, what I was saying is quite simple. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 13:09:13 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: "voice" as long division In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 16 May 1997 12:17:01 -0400 from On Fri, 16 May 1997 12:17:01 -0400 Jordan Davis said: I know the meaning of certain writers' work became clearer >after I heard them read -- Bruce Andrews, David Shapiro and Juliana Spahr >are three I can think of right away. This is heading away from "voice" >perhaps and towards "biography" "personality" "social (con)text" etc. That >is, to what extent does "the meaning became clearer" in that sentence >really mean "I became persuaded of the necessity of several tiny personal >misunderstandings for my continued reception of the work of these people." I'm glad Fernando invented us as antagonist/heteronyms. This above connects with what I've been reading about that ol revolutionary Aristotle's theory of tragedy (via Michael Davis's fine book I mentioned before once). It's always "mixed" - as an imitation of the action of a rational/animal, the poem/tragedy means what it says/means something else; is real/artificial; goes double, two-footed; tragedy is the piling up of "several tiny personal misunderstandings"; so that the meaning is never final but always alive to new discoveries. This, Henry, is why I balk at your Mandelstam motto. >First of all, to say that 'classicism is revolution' in the context of a >revolutionary society is maybe too much of the pathos? That for that >context, Isaac Babel teaching his daughter to answer the phone "Daddy's >not here now" is maybe more to the point? Second, to appeal to that's true! >"classicism" is maybe only to say "the only code which is acceptable is a >preordained one" which never appeals to me when I think of writing as _not >only_ making new forms but as making _new meanings_. It's only from a >surveillance tower that it looks like nothing's new or it's all the same. I know what you're saying, I think. It's just that the things George Thompson was mentioning opened up the idea that what we always thought was "old", classic, done, finished - has actually been misunderstood, misrepresented, unheard - & actually has something new to offer, if we look. - Henry p.s. regarding Chris Mann's idea - I never thought of the reader creating meaning as an act of charity. (though some might feel that way about reading my innumerable postings.) I give the writer credit for organizing a prior meaning which is presented, though I may not "get" it the same way. But that's a different boring discussion. Now about those potatoes... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 13:06:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: <199705161727.NAA15052@chass.utoronto.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm getting a kick out of George Thompson's linking of cliche and epic. There's ever a bizarre humor at work in "poetic justice" . . . Baudelaire wrote that he aspired to the writing of cliches. (Unfortunately for him, the only cliche to emerge from his work is "Benjamin's Baudelaire". Appropriation & all, you know--) Flaubert as well had a fascination with cliches: Bouvard et Pecuchet bear witness. And isn't Don Quixote about the "epic struggle" WITH cliches? "Tilting at windmills" and all-- In Jim Thompson's books The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280 you'll find the cliche used as a means for trying to cope with killing. " Boring people to death" with cliches seems almost as fun to Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (in The Killer) as out right killing them--almost, but not quite. Jack Kerouac wrote in "The Vanishing American Hobo" that the Law operates with one line of justice and nine of boredom . . . Is that an "epic" "measure" for "poetic justice"? (BTW re OJ--he's not the only former Heisman Trophy winner in trouble with the Man--look at what happened to Charlie Ward the other night in the Heat-Knicks game . . .") "I can feel the heat closing in . . . " Wm. S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch --dave chirot ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 11:11:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: affirmative action/where I'm calling from Comments: To: Christopher Alexander In-Reply-To: <1EC1BCE1FD6@alexandria.lib.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There's a realtively new, slender book by Amy Gutman and Kwame Anthony Appiah (sorry I don't have the title -- the book and I are in different states) in which Gutman provides a straightforward and commonsensical critique of the logic that denies the relevance of race in admissions etc but allows "other" disabilities such as income -- Her questions are so clear that you can't help imagining Ward Connerly and Pete Wilson trying to answer them -- We've already seen editorials in California in response to these statistics claiming that they constitute "proof" that unqualified blacks and Hispanics were bsing admitted previously -- however, none of these editorials cites the actual admission standards employed (that is, at most law schools of this quality, huge numbers of "qualified" applicants are turned away each year -- the argument is really about who aming those meeting the entry-level requirements will actually enter) "aming" equals "among" etc -- you can tell from the errors in my posts that I am back at that uncorrectable system in Boulder ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 12:27:31 MDT Reply-To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: affirmative action/where I'm calling from MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT David writ: > an intentional allusion? "allusion" is strong. not to be enigmatic, but--perhaps they mean something. I dunno. I just meant to say--or rather I was thinking at the time that the rhetoric of the article was reflective of a racist subtext in american culture that's all too evident, really. what you see is what came out, but those words they probably mean something--maybe something else entirely. if I had the Carver in front of me--or, that is, if I had time to go get it--I work in a library ferchrissake-- I'd try for a cogent read. is that any help? probably not. I do like Carver, though. Chris .. Christopher Alexander, etc. nominative press collective 160S 1300E #16 / Salt Lake City UT 84102 calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 14:27:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: affirmative action/where I'm calling from Aldon L. Nelsen saith: >"aming" equals "among" etc . . . i aming what i aming & that's all that i aming - Popeye The Sailor-Man in a gerunding epoch of epic poeticsing (paraphrasing Jah) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 14:38:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: er pardon moi >Aldon L. Nelsen saith: or rather, Nielsen (buffalo or no) p.s.: re: epic in "Vedic" sense, per George Thompson [an Indologist who surely knows a lot more than he's letting on in that regard, so far] -- the two grand "epics" [under what equivalent-ish rubirc, I'm not sure] of India [but not Vedic, in the sense not part of the Vedas, though chronicling events that prob. were concurrent w/ Vedic epoch more or less] are, of course, the Mahabharata (attributed to a chap named Vyasa) and the Ramayana (attributed to a bloke called Valmiki) -- the "Valmiki" and the "Vyasa" of these 2 epics sure seem to be presented as individual writers much in the way that Homer is so (re)presented . . . I'm sure there's been critique of that traditional assumption along lines akin to the critique(s) of "Homer" as being Homer -- I tend to like the idea of a "real" Valmiki & a "real" Vyasa, though lord knows those vast oral epics must've rolled along for many many generations, so there are some arguments in favor of the other side o' the teeter-totter . . . the issue of authorship of the Sanskrit "Valmiki" Ramayana anyway contrasts w/ the more recent vernacular versions in India -- the 2 main ones (so far as I know) being the medieval Hindi version written (very creatigely) by Tuilsidas (certainly a biographical individual, far as I've ever heard) and a So. Indian version (Tamil, I think) by someone called Kamban (my info more or less comes from C. Rajagopalachari's popular paperback translations of the 2 epics, & his discussion of same,) that's a very quick sketch of "epic" field anent India, tho I'd love to hear more from George T. as to what he had in mind (not to mention, where he's calling from) . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 12:10:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: cliches and murder In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 16 May 1997, Christina Fairbank Chirot wrote: Baudelaire wrote that he aspired to the writing of cliches. > (Unfortunately for him, the only cliche to emerge from his work is > "Benjamin's Baudelaire". Appropriation & all, you know--) > As a lover of this particular essay by Benjamin, I plead guilty to using the term as shorthand every so often -- but is it really a cliche? > In Jim Thompson's books The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280 you'll > find the cliche used as a means for trying to cope with killing. " Boring > people to death" with cliches seems almost as fun to Deputy Sheriff Lou > Ford (in The Killer) as out right killing them--almost, but not quite. > This reminds me of one of my favorite short stories, Flannery O'Connor's _A Good Man Is Hard To Find_, where she kills off an entire family because of their cliche-ridden lives; my class last quarter found it boring, though -- I guess random violence has become too normal to shock anymore. In fact, isn't "random violence" a cliche? Was it Blake, in one of the _Proverbs of Hell_, who said that if you weren't capable of the (something, something) striking of a character, you weren't practicing art? Or as Ed Dorn said once in an essay, "People talk a lot about abortion, but I see people who should have been aborted EVERY DAY." > Jack Kerouac wrote in "The Vanishing American Hobo" that the Law operates with one line of justice and nine of boredom . . . > The usual reaction to cliches is of course boredom, but I've started putting quotation marks around them when I find them in student papers. Presto! Sophisticated, self-conscious literary essays, aware of the ambiguities and problems of "voice." > (BTW re OJ--he's not the only former Heisman Trophy winner in >t trouble with the Man--look at what happened to Charlie Ward the other > night in the Heat-Knicks game . . .") > I was wondering if we were ever going to get back to sports. I just heard that the NBA is threatening to suspend Shawn Kemp for tomorrow's game as well. One of the pleasures of the NBA Playoffs so far (as I think George Bowering noted in an earlier post) is that the remaining teams are so old! Malone, Stockton -- Perkins, Cummings -- Barkley, Drexler -- Ewing, the Williamses -- the Bulls even have Robert Parish on their roster, the only player in the league as old as I am. The Playoff game most embedded in my memory (and, thus, a minor cliche) is the deciding game of the Knicks/ Lakers final (1972?) when the crippled Willis Reed hit two jump shots at the beginning of the game and "inspired" (the spirit of the god came into him) his team to victory, thus breaking my emerging West Coast heart. I don't see anyone around -- least of all Jordan -- who could have a similar effect today. Apologies for the long post: Dodie's just before this one was terrific! What ARE people talking about, anyway? Would it be possible to write an epic about the NBA Playoffs? About "The Odyssey"? Thanks, Dave . . . ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 15:19:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: what we're talking about In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm talking about a friendly theory of reading work written in response to/under the influence of theory (i.e. the conscious use of non-conforming ideas/practices/subjects). When I am comfortable enough with this theory I will be able to use it to explain in a non-passionate way not only why I like what I like but how others who don't like it might look favorably upon it. Of course if you piss me off, I'll just go the ordinary passionate route. Against the need for cris de coeur, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 12:52:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Hale Subject: examples of manipulative language-centered writing? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dodie, you wrote: My point was simply that to challenge the notion that >writers of non-voice or language-centered (though I don't like that term) >work, through their moral superiority, somehow evade various issues in the >reader/writer relationship. This is vague, so allow me to meander into >specifics. But, I think >the non-I in many "language-centered" works is just as manipulative and >transparent. Instead of an emotional epiphany we're lead to an >intellectual epiphany--and in the worst scenerio what we're really supposed >to marvel at is the smarts of the non-I who's generating this text. The >non-I best seduces me when I don't see this massive frail ego behind it >begging for approval. Your examples and specifics regarding how you dealt with these problems as a teacher and in your own writing were excellent. Teaching language as artifice and seduction is an interesting way to get young students involved in thinking about writing as something other than the search for truth. Do you or anybody out there have specific examples of what you mention above -- manipulative, evading, language-centered writing or intellectual epiphany, non-voice, smarts of the non-I works, etc.? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 15:14:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: 3 scents In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" So many good posts in the last week I keep wishing I had time to do more than glance It seem to me (at least) 3 ideas of voice are being talked about: voice as vibrations in air emitted by individuals, esp. when reading their own writing to audiences (this one often used some what ironically, played off the second meaing voice as something that was, in an early post, defined as a commonly held (in certain, Highly Suspect quarters) definition without much substance: voice as the thing writers are told by other writers to "look for" and "look forward to"; it is supposed to be a individual's creation, either the conglomeration of many little peculiarities of her or his Style (word choice, averaged over time?) or possibly something more mystical: a click of some psycic combination which once found enables the writer to be consistently better than they were, a confidence some of the discussion about voice has been tempered (temper added?) by another "definition" of voice that I think has gone mostly unrecognized but, like an unseen planet, still exerts its pull: that is voice as viewed from "outside" the author's attention or disregard; voice as seen from elsewhere: voiceless as anyone might try to be--making very real attempts in their writing to avoid habitual peculiarities, to avoid assuming themselves in their work--to the very extent that they are social beings their social constructed worlds will always be different from all other socially constructed worlds (each person the center of their own net of occurences) and so there is still that unavoidable voice, a peculiarity of social environment Instead of cliches, epics might better be said to contain commonplaces. Cliches come with more ironic quotation marks than commonplaces. Cliches tend to sound like the first thing off the tongue, commonplaces like something gotten to through careful work--I'm not making a value judgement here--fast & flippant is good to, and the first thing off the tongue (when not a cliche) is also wit (Tristin Tzara being perhaps a consummate practicioner of witty cliche) To read Lowell's attitude to that frieze as racist in a direct, individual way is a mistake; if there is racism in that poem it is very guarded and examined at once Boston's continued "undermining" of that part of the common is I'm sure a sort of grand Happening (reminiscent of fluxus) by which they pretend to forever bring Cal's poem to life; walking past that monument, at least, I'd always look down at the construction and say I *AM* Robert Lowell ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 16:22:01 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: 3 scents In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 16 May 1997 15:14:05 -0500 from On Fri, 16 May 1997 15:14:05 -0500 Matthias Regan said: >always look down at the construction and say I *AM* Robert Lowell that's a good one-liner! you're finding your vice! - Bob Gould Pshaw ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 13:40:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: 3 scents Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Several responses to several points: >some of the discussion about voice has been tempered (temper added?) by >another "definition" of voice that I think has gone mostly unrecognized >but, like an unseen planet, still exerts its pull: that is voice as viewed >from "outside" the author's attention or disregard; voice as seen from >elsewhere: voiceless as anyone might try to be--making very real attempts >in their writing to avoid habitual peculiarities, to avoid assuming >themselves in their work--to the very extent that they are social beings >their social constructed worlds will always be different from all other >socially constructed worlds (each person the center of their own net of >occurences) and so there is still that unavoidable voice, a peculiarity of >social environment Substitute "individually and socially" for "socially" and the construct is more inclusive and no less accurate. Idiosycracies do exist, and it's harder to know where the groove comes from than to construct a theory about the source. > >Instead of cliches, epics might better be said to contain commonplaces. >Cliches come with more ironic quotation marks than commonplaces. Cliches >tend to sound like the first thing off the tongue, commonplaces like >something gotten to through careful work--I'm not making a value judgement >here--fast & flippant is good to, and the first thing off the tongue (when >not a cliche) is also wit (Tristin Tzara being perhaps a consummate >practicioner of witty cliche) Homer's repeated phrases are neither commonplaces nor cliches, they are chosen (or prescribed by custom) mnemonic formulas. If differences of this kind in the meaning of words are not recognized language loses much of its value as a communicative tool. >Boston's continued "undermining" of that part of the common is I'm sure a >sort of grand Happening (reminiscent of fluxus) by which they pretend to >forever bring Cal's poem to life; walking past that monument, at least, I'd >always look down at the construction and say I *AM* Robert Lowell Boston, which has long had one of North America's more uncomfortable driving and parking environments, made matters more difficult for drivers by closing off large parts of downtown to daytime traffic. This was a terrific idea, but not terribly useful if all those cars had no alternative but to overburden nearby areas. The city had a few choices: ban cars altogether from downtown, to the extraordinary benefit of suburban mall owners; level even larger areas of historic downtown than have already felt the ax to make room for parking lots and garages, or go underground. Boston picked this last choice; they did it well enough on the first go-round so that for those not in the know it's hard to find the sub-commons garage entrance the first time around. Nor do I remember anything being undermined, despite the mining going on under it. And the commons has remained intact. I can't see how this insults Shaw, the soldiers he commanded, or St.-Gaudens. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 13:16:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Re: examples of manipulative language-centered writing? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Robert Hale wrote: > Do you or anybody out there have specific examples of what you mention above > -- manipulative, evading, language-centered writing or intellectual > epiphany, non-voice, smarts of the non-I works, etc.? _Tender Buttons_ Or is this language-centered that metamorphosed into "voice"? And won't this happen to all surface denial of voice? Time will say nothing but I told you so. Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 15:50:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: 3 scents In-Reply-To: <199705162040.NAA21257@italy.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I can't see how this >insults Shaw, the soldiers he commanded, or St.-Gaudens. In this we are in complete agreement, although I like your comment about epics, too. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 17:52:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Lowell perfectly OK In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970516151405.0069cfd0@chem.nwu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To clarify--I didn't mean, by citing Lowell's description of the black soldiers, to mean that HE was racist. I think I was trying, in a rather fumbling way, to say something about the lack of individuation of the soldier figures on the monument. I can't forget the fellow prisoner in another Lowell poem who had "curlicues of marijuana in his hair"--it's one of the CO poems and it describes Lowell hanging out with proto-Rastas in jail. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 15:44:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: main Subject: film on rwanda MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: IN%"ir236@sdcc3.ucsd.edu" 16-MAY-1997 08:42 To: IN%"H-AFRLITCINE@H-NET.MSU.EDU" "Multiple recipients of list H-AFRLITCINE" CC: Subj: FYI: New Film On Rwanda @ Return-path: Received: from listserv.Arizona.EDU (listserv.Arizona.EDU) by CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (PMDF V5.0-6 #2381) id <01IIXJD45LYO95P60T@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU>; Fri, 16 May 1997 08:42:26 -0700 (MST) Received: from LISTSERV (listserv.Arizona.EDU [128.196.137.14]) by listserv.arizona.edu (AIX4.2/UCB 8.7/8.7) with ESMTP id IAA35158; Fri, 16 May 1997 08:42:03 -0700 (MST) Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 08:40:09 -0700 From: bob Subject: FYI: New Film On Rwanda @ Sender: H-NET List for African Literature and Cinema To: Multiple recipients of list H-AFRLITCINE Reply-to: ir236@sdcc3.ucsd.edu Message-id: <199705161542.IAA35158@listserv.arizona.edu> X-Envelope-to: dalmeida, sharrow Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT ----- Forwarded message from H-AFRICA---Mel Page ----- From: Kenneth W. Harrow, Michigan State University I am pleased to announce that Amnesty International has now produced a film on the genocide in Rwanda, "Forsaken Cries: The Story of Rwanda." The film was made by Kathy Austin, Andrea Torrice and a team of others, is narrated by Danny Glover, and provides an excellent overview of the conditions that gave rise to the genocide, the reality of the genocide in 1994, and its aftermath. It was made by a humanrights organization, and so is concerned with how we address the problem of genocide from a human rights point of view. There are interviews with Alison des Forges, Richard Goldstone of the International Criminal Court, and AI's Adotei Akwei. It is a good film. It runs 30 minutes. I was involved in getting this project off the ground--it was long and difficult, and we have to thank Mort Winston, chair of the Board of Directors of AIUSA, for his support that made the film possible. The film comes with a notebook of educational materials, providing historical background on Rwanda, on the genocide, on the tribunal, on women's human rights violations, on the failures of the international community, etc. To obtain a copy of the film and the educational packet send $25 plus $5 for handling and shipping to AIUSA Publications, 322 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10001. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 19:28:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: OREN.IZENBERG@JHU.EDU Subject: Lowell and parking In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I imagine (although I actually have no idea) that Lowell was not opposed to parking *per se*. He was, however, opposed to graft-- especially when he could point a finger at Irish politicians. (Of course, one can't really accuse Lowell of letting his own sort-- "Mayflower screwballs"-- off the hook entirely). I am sort of amused, though, by the idea that the "problem" with "For the Union Dead" might be that Lowell is seeking injury where there is none; that what he needs to realize is that there was a *real* parking problem and that (come on Cal, everyone's tired of your turmoil) the garage is really pretty hard to see. Perhaps corruption downtown is preferable to the corruption borne by the vector of the suburban mall. Or perhaps the interest of the poem (should one decide that is has any) is not precisely the extent to which it can be treated as a retrospective op-ed. Best, O. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 02:05:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >While George Thompson's summary of Milman Parry's theories regarding >epic is accurate, it's a bit dated. In any case, certainly not, as >presented, "fact". Norman Austin, I think, pretty much dealt with it >in _Archery at the Dark of the Moon_. > >Best, >Mike >mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca Sorry, I've been away from my computer and there are many things that I would like to respond to, but first things first. My observations re Homer are not based on a summary of Milman Parry, but on my own reading of Homer, and Hesiod, and the Homeric hymns, etc., and not in some nice English translation like Fagle's. If anything is "a bit dated" it is Austin's demurrals against Parry's hardcore thesis, that "Homer" was not attempting anything like what, say, Virgil was. Parry's work has been *far* more productive than Austin's. Never mind cliches. What are "mnemonic devices"? In what sense are the phrases "long-suffering Odysseus" or "swift-footed Achilles" or "rosy-fingered Dawn" mnemonic? In this sense: they are formulaic, *predictable*, and therefore *easier to memorize* than Virgil's carefully-thought-out alternatives [in Latin]. Homer's sense of "a memorable phrase" is different from ours. Never mind Milman Parry. Greek "epos" means "word." More specifically "the traditional word." If you don't believe me, check out Gregory Nagy [whom Austin has not "pretty much dealt with"]. Does anyone deny that the Homeric hymns to Aphrodite, Demeter, Athena, are just as "epic" as the Iliad? I did not need Milman Parry to see that these too are epic in the Greek sense. I just took the trouble to look for myself. As for the Vedic word, let me take my breath, and get back to you. Best wishes [formulaic], GT ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 02:27:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: "voice"? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:48 PM 5/15/97 -0700, dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: >the space to meditate upon exactly what I'm finding >problematic--and how that relates to my own interest in narrative and >"self." > >Dodie > The concern about "voice' on the list recently is really a concern about writing to meet expectations, get good grades, get approval, etc., vs. writing to write or writing to find the self (the ancient sixties self- expression or authenticity). Unfortunately, "voice" can pin the tail on either end - indicating either the futility of using language to find reality or reality to find a language. It's all in the effort, I think, Dodie? tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 01:32:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Franklin Bruno Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris Mann wrote: >meaning is rather a compulsive act of charity bestowed by an audient (not >the same thing (and it is probably this not-sameness that is poetry >(voice is just another way of saying oops))) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 23:31:53 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Steinberg Subject: Re: "voice"? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sylvester Pollet wrote: >Yeah, but Henry, aren't some people allergic to wheat? I don't see what all >the fuss is about myself. Dodie hit it for me. Another way to think of >"voice" is as a synonym for "chops," as in jazz, not lamb. Which doesn't >mean every solo you blow will be the same, but it will have the years >behind it. I think chops is a great way of looking at this voice thing. A lot of problems with the term "voice" is that it's too broad: everyone's got a voice. What's at stake is the nervous desire to make each voice (your voice) unique. This may be a foolish desire, up there with wanting to be a famous poet, but, like Dodie, I don't want my poems to look/sound like anyone else's (especially all those hordes of other MFAs out there). That's why I work on my chops. Hugh Steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 07:30:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Kara Walker's "voice" Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii "So, you see, Ron, what I was saying is quite simple." Well, Dodie, that sentence certainly wins the Calculated Innocence of the Week award. But, more seriously, yes I know Kara Walker's work and saw the show at SF MOMA (tho I was more moved, frankly, by the Arneson chemo sculptures in the next room, probably because I've been involved intellectually/emotionally with Arneson's work for decades). I also had a chance to hear Arthur Danto give a talk partly about her silhouettes in the Whitney Biennial (which I've not seen) here at the Philadelphia Art Alliance (a toney East Coast institution with a very expensive restaurant "Opus 251" on its main floor, more akin to the Mechanics Institute Library, say, than New Langton Arts) maybe 3 weeks ago. A lot of what makes Walker's works, especially the ones that involve disembowlment, lynching, rape, coprophilia, etc., so intense is that they're presented in these very sentimental pseudo-folk art forms (in that sense, not all that removed in spirit from the Jeff Koons Michael Jackson & Bubbles sculpture that SFMOMA owns). Is that combination of sentiment/shock what you mean by "seduction"? In some sense, they seem to reverse exactly the value system of an Anselm Kiefer, who sentimentalizes the monumentality of Museum Art and makes that the basis for his work. " We made a field trip to the Kara Walker exhibit at SF MOMA (Walker's art, for those of you not familiar with it, deals with racism through the use of violent sexual imagery--the class very much liked that and many of them used it as an opportunity to put the word "fucking" into their essays)--I had them write about the exhibit and going to it, and the fact that it was hung in a museum, in terms of the specificity of viewing the work on that day, in that context, and how that impinged upon their take on the work. Obviously, this was about getting them beyond this once and for all time, godlike, disembodied perception of the work." "So, back to the notion of writing as a seduction. One of my pleasures of reading is allowing myself to be seduced, to be thrilled, to abandon my will to Edith Wharton, for instance. I think the discomfort comes in when I feel, not seduced, but manipulated--this is a fine line--when that gap between intention and effect becomes too apparent and I feel ripped off. Many of the criticisms of voice poetry "voiced" here were about how the point of it is to make the "I" sound deep. We're not really supposed to share the epiphany, we're supposed to marvel at the epihaner. But, I think the non-I in many "language-centered" works is just as manipulative and transparent. Instead of an emotional epiphany we're lead to an intellectual epiphany--and in the worst scenerio what we're really supposed to marvel at is the smarts of the non-I who's generating this text. The non-I best seduces me when I don't see this massive frail ego behind it begging for approval. Not that begging for approval is a bad thing, it can be done to great effect if you're upfront about it--in the work of the artist Candy Ass, for instance." I'm intrigued at what seems to be a test of Sincerity you're proposing here. Not that your description of some langpo isn't accurate enough, but rather the position from which you're making this description. If "abandonment" is what you want (this sounds like the Swinburnean equivalent of Artaud or something), rather than something more Brechtian, the "presence" of the author (I or non-I) would seem to get in the way. As for myself, I've begun reading Mason & Dixon and am probably lost to the real world for the next 4 months.... Ron Ron Silliman When this you see 262 Orchard Road Remember me Paoli, PA 19301-1116 (610) 251-2214 (610) 293-6099 (o) (610) 293-5506 (fax) rsillima@ix.netcom.com rsillima@tssc.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 09:30:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >George Thompson, >thanks for the Goethe quote. As far as epic, I think what I said about >what distinguishes epic is that it is by/for/about the group agrees with >what you wrote. But I think epic has also been a literary, written >genre, BEGINNING with Homer (in the "west" at least). The Homer we >start from - in written epics, I mean - is a real composition (both >Iliad & Odyssey). I'm not a classicist & let's not start an argument >about "Homer" as individual! But they're written poems. & I'm 3 >ineffable individuals. The idea that Virgil & Milton are imitation >epics is interesting (since they don't have the same direct roots in >oral epic). But Homer - Ill & Odd - as we know them - are poems! >Or I'll be a blue-nosed gopher. >- HG Yes, I think that our conceptions of epic do match, more or less [and I should add that I have enjoyed your postings about this]. I'm not so mean-spirited or presumptuous as to deny the term "epic" to Milton or Virgil, or to Ashbery for that matter if that becomes the consensus, say, on this list. It might be useful to talk of different types of epic: oral [or folk],literary [or individual], private maybe [or "individual"]. When we slide toward the private, idiosyncratic end of the scale this thing "epic" turns into something else: I don't mind calling it lyric. When we slide toward the other end we verge on something else again: we could call it rumor, gossip [Homer calls it "imperishable fame"] -- I myself find that matters at this end of the scale are just as worthy of attention as the stuff at the other end [maybe more so]. I don't mean to suggest that the difference betwen oral and literary epic is a matter of formless flow of speech [strings of cliches, say], on the one hand [i.e., oral], and "real composition" [literary, "poems"] on the other. The Ill and the Odd are "real compositions", no doubt [as are also *any* folk epics from anywhere]. But they don't operate by the same rules of composition as the Aeneid does. One of the interesting things about current Homeric studies is the work that is being done on figuring out what "Homer"'s rules of composition were. In my own work I'm trying to do the same for Vedic, whose rules are far more deeply hidden from us than "Homer"'s are. Sorry, got to go now. GT ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 12:49:32 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: Kara Walker's "voice" rsilliman wrote: Many of the criticisms of voice poetry "voiced" here were about how the point of it is to make the "I" sound deep. We're not really supposed to share the epiphany, we're supposed to marvel at the epihaner. But, I think the non-I in many "language-centered" works is just as manipulative and transparent. Instead of an emotional epiphany we're lead to an intellectual epiphany--and in the worst scenerio what we're really supposed to marvel at is the smarts of the non-I who's generating this text. ______________ Thanks for crystallizing this so well. I would add that in the case of the 'epiphaner' it is also his/her smarts we are to marvel at, in so far as how successfully the tried and true epiphanic maneuver is executed, which strikes me as a kind of ironic concession to the fact we've seen it before. Very young children also like others to marvel at their successfully doo-dooing in prescribed locations. The difference is that, with children, this achievement eventually becomes less and less interesting. DT ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 10:57:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Lowell perfectly OK In-Reply-To: from "Gwyn McVay" at May 16, 97 05:52:49 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "I can't forget the fellow prisoner in another Lowell poem who had "curlicues of marijuana in his hair"--it's one of the CO poems and it describes Lowell hanging out with proto-Rastas in jail. Gwyn" Yes, that's "Memories of West Street and Lepke," one of my favorites. Lowell, it seems to me, never quite stands still for the caricature we often want to draw of him, big, famous and "traditional/formal" New England poet. There are certainly better straw men to place in that role than Lowell and I think he takes the fall most often primarily as backlash for all the attention he got. Certainly from the '57 or so on he's paying pretty close attention to Ginsberg's work, O'Hara's too I think. The one time I met Ginsberg we got into a conversation about Lowell and he pretty much praised Lowell as a guy and the late work. Duncan too is fairly complementary of Lowell's poetry in his book of essays *Fictive Certainties*. I see Lowell as a kind of Norman Mailer-style in-between figure (in his own way of course) with all of the problems that go along with that stance, but quite different than, say, Richard Wilbur, and not at all a precursor to New Formalism and such. He's not my favorite by any means but I still get alot out of reading selected things from *Life Studies* to the end. -Mike. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 08:33:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Kara Walker's "voice" In-Reply-To: <199751783111719169@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"So, you see, Ron, what I was saying is quite simple." > >A lot of what makes Walker's works, especially the ones that involve >disembowlment, lynching, rape, coprophilia, etc., so intense is that they're >presented in these very sentimental pseudo-folk art forms (in that sense, >not all that removed in spirit from the Jeff Koons Michael Jackson & Bubbles >sculpture that SFMOMA owns). Is that combination of sentiment/shock what you >mean by "seduction"? In some sense, they seem to reverse exactly the value >system of an Anselm Kiefer, who sentimentalizes the monumentality of Museum >Art and makes that the basis for his work. I wasn't suggesting by seduction that you enter into a sentimentalized relationship with The Work. More basically that you buy into what The Work is supposed to be doing (and what is the work Supposed to Be Doing, many a theory book covers that, like Susan Steward's *On Longing* which I'm (re)reading now, her discussion of the different relationships between reader and text in allegory vs. realist fiction, that kind of thing). Actually, Walker's work didn't seduce *all* my students. I enjoyed the one paper by the guy who ragged on how she couldn't draw and how it was obvious the reason she turned to silhouettes was they didn't involve detail. The guy who wrote this is very good at detail himself--I went to a one-night show of his where he did these American flag/female genital drawings that were awesome in their detail, even though I wasn't very comfortable with them. >I'm intrigued at what seems to be a test of Sincerity you're proposing here. >Not that your description of some langpo isn't accurate enough, but rather >the position from which you're making this description. If "abandonment" is >what you want (this sounds like the Swinburnean equivalent of Artaud or >something), rather than something more Brechtian, the "presence" of the >author (I or non-I) would seem to get in the way. No, Ron, you've got me wrong there. I'm not proposing Sincerity here. Sincerity is always a tone, not a state of being for me. That's one of the first things I told those kids, who at first would be so Sincere in their writing that they wouldn't want anybody else to read it, I'd say, "Sincerity is not about exposing the writer's soul, sincerity is a tone, an effect." The presence of the author, to me, would only make the experience of "abandonment" more sexy. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 09:06:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Kara Walker's "voice" In-Reply-To: <199751783111719169@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 7:30 AM -0500 5/17/97, rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > >I'm intrigued at what seems to be a test of Sincerity you're proposing here. >Not that your description of some langpo isn't accurate enough, but rather >the position from which you're making this description. If "abandonment" is >what you want (this sounds like the Swinburnean equivalent of Artaud or >something), rather than something more Brechtian, the "presence" of the >author (I or non-I) would seem to get in the way. Ron, I thought of an example. A while back I bought this Routledge book by two women, I can't remember their names, about Modernist women artists and writers. It sounded interesting, especially since I hadn't read/thought about Nathalie Barney, Romaine Brooks, Renee Vivien since like the 70s, and I was wondering what my reactions to them would be as an Adult. It was obvious that the writers were very sincere feminists and sincere intellectuals but their book was a total flop, in my opinion, in its seduction value. As I'm sure, you'll agree, Ron, a well-constructed theory book can be most thrilling. The problem with the book (aside from the fact that the writers didn't seem to have any ideas) was the clumsy use they made of theory buzz words. For instance, when they were talking about Brook's and Barney's tendency to adopt the clothing of male dandies, the writers would consistently refer to this as their "sartorial strategies." After a while the point of the chapter seemed really to be how many different ways they could work in their buzz-baby "sartorial strategies." Not that one should never write "sartorial strategies," but in some cases, "cross dressing," a term which seemed to scare them, would have been less awkward. The writers, to me, seemed pretentious, but more than that to be terribly insecure, lacking confidence in what they were saying. If they were less sincere, more into creating effects, I think the book might have worked better. As I read the above chapter, I was thinking of Terry Castle, who's so much fun to read, and whose playfulness is quite sexy, I was thinking Terry Castle, if she were writing about this, and it does sound like something she'd write about, Terry Castle would know when to use "cross dressing," when to use "sartorial strategies." One of the pleasures of reading Castle is that she gives the impression that she knows exactly what she's going for and how to get it. Her sincerity isn't something that comes up for me. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 13:01:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: m&d In-Reply-To: <199751783111719169@ix.netcom.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I too have begun the slow Ascent of Mt. Mason & Dixon, and am so far intoxicated by its Style, which Incites in me a Strong Desire to render my Least Thoughts in Tall Capitals. In the Bonds of Fascination, Steve ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 15:28:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I write from an (extremely) partial sense of the thread so far, but: 1. I can't think of a poet whose work I did not begin to understand (to 'hear') much better once I heard that poet read. Once I heard that poet's voice. That's not a point of theory, of course. It's not even really a fact, and certainly not a piece of data; but, it's a true report of experience. "Voice" is just a metonym for identity, and no matter how we work athwart or push off from that concept, all action and certainly all language depends on identity. That doesn't mean we can't read Dante, only that it would be neat to hear him read. If you're interested in Spicer and I tell you I have a tape of him reading "Language" -- do you want to hear it? I think so! It's only worked the other way that a problem occurs. That is, when we begin with the concept of voice, as if it really did have a theoretical existence. 2. We also use the word to mean "effective expression" -- as in "to give voice to an idea." Here too it's a metonymic turn of language; it derives from the physical voice, from singing, the production of tone. But metaphorical too. Tho the term "voice" was anathema to poets of my generation in our early years, we used and learned from other terms with the same metaphorical basis -- "sound" for example as in "sounding the world." The intellectual content on the other hand is very different. The idea that a poem "sounds" the world the way a mallet sounds a gong, this is a way to give objectivity, status in the world, to the poem, and remove it from being a simple expression of a person. So, it rhymes poem and world rather than poem and person. Reasons for doing this had nothing to do with the word "voice," as if poets were logicians and making points about the validity of terms and usage. They had to do with the poets we felt opposed to and *their use of* the term voice, i.e. with the fact that they *owned* the term. Anyway time passes and you learn to think about things differently. I well remember a short poem by Ron Padgett whose point was the complete lack of connection between love and death (it's in Great Balls of Fire, his first book, the book of a poet in his twenties). I understood and understand the effectiveness of his poem. It was a useful poem for me to read in the time of my life that I read it, useful in the sense that this word is the highest praise you can give a poem sometimes. The poem does something in your life. But you can't live a life without seeing the connection between love and death, not now for sure and not ever. Voice. Poem sounds and resounds. But poems are fragile too, and can be silenced, as sometimes one voice silences another voice. A loud voice, certain of what it is saying, speaking a truth, may silence another voice more tentative less certain speaking a different truth. But a silenced voice may also go on speaking, and in the end it may be the voice we want to hear. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 14:34:59 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jocelyn Emerson Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Never mind cliches. What are "mnemonic devices"? In what sense are the >phrases "long-suffering Odysseus" or "swift-footed Achilles" or >"rosy-fingered Dawn" mnemonic? In this sense: they are formulaic, >*predictable*, and therefore *easier to memorize* than Virgil's >carefully-thought-out alternatives [in Latin]. Homer's sense of "a >memorable phrase" is different from ours. > I want to chime in here to note that, as far as I know, cliche is a typesetter's term--i.e. having to do with certain clusters of words which occurred often enough together that a piece of type could be made to cover the group of words instead of using the individual plates separately (requiring fewer physical gestures on the part of the typesetter to rach for type--important given that many were in fact illiterate). Thus, our *ideolgical* notion of cliche is very much determined by a technology that's part of the early modern period and after. The formulaic phrases (as above) may not be mnemonic, but formulaic in terms of the meter itself--memorable in the sense of predetermined phomemic spaces employed to help propel the narrative, but not, I think, in terms of "cliche" or prepackaged ideas at least in the way we understand that signifying process of the cliche. JE ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 15:42:10 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 17 May 1997 09:30:05 -0400 from Awhile back Mike Boughn offered the idea that epic was a distinctive way of thinking, & I said no, wanting to keep thought out of it & just look at the "aesthetic" boundaries (narrative, group vs. individual, all that). But have had 2nd thoughts all along - what maybe links Olson, LZ, Pound most closely to the ancient epics is the thinking-scope of them - the Ill & the Odd are really about the place, character, fate of "man" in world of Gods & chance - these 20th cent poems aim for the "whole thing" - thinking through the whole thing in one "poetic action" - not meditative or lyric chips off the block - but what you're starting to get at, George, is "compositional methods" - a closer look at which might address the purpose of them, the end-meaning - or goal of composition, if there is "one" - - there are a few buffalos in Providence, I should point out - HG ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 16:48:08 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Janet S. Gray" Subject: Press for Persian epic? In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 17 May 1997 00:05:38 -0400 from A friend, Deborah Meadows, has written a contemporary verse adaptation of a section of the Shahnama, a 10th/11th century Persian epic by Firdausi. The section is called "Zahak the Dragon King" & her adaptation is about 40 pp long. She's taught it in college classes & finds it specially appealing as an ancient tale of political resistance. She asked me what presses might be interested in such a piece. At a loss, & at the risk of chafing this list's ever-chafed boundaries, I pose the question here: any suggestions appreciated. I've read the piece - a wondrous tale w/ crisp philosophic asides, rendered clear & at moments funny in Debbi's verse. Janet Gray jsgray@pucc.princeton.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 15:48:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" cliche certainly derives from a printing term, but I don't think it was ever used in Jocelyn's sense. What the French called a cliche was called a stereotype plate in English. My understanding is that it was a mold--usually of a whole page of type or an engraving--that was used to print from instead of the original. At 02:34 PM 5/17/97 -0600, you wrote: >> >>Never mind cliches. What are "mnemonic devices"? In what sense are the >>phrases "long-suffering Odysseus" or "swift-footed Achilles" or >>"rosy-fingered Dawn" mnemonic? In this sense: they are formulaic, >>*predictable*, and therefore *easier to memorize* than Virgil's >>carefully-thought-out alternatives [in Latin]. Homer's sense of "a >>memorable phrase" is different from ours. >> > > >I want to chime in here to note that, as far as I know, cliche is a >typesetter's term--i.e. having to do with certain clusters of words which >occurred often enough together that a piece of type could be made to cover >the group of words instead of using the individual plates separately >(requiring fewer physical gestures on the part of the typesetter to rach >for type--important given that many were in fact illiterate). Thus, our >*ideolgical* notion of cliche is very much determined by a technology >that's part of the early modern period and after. The formulaic phrases >(as above) may not be mnemonic, but formulaic in terms of the meter >itself--memorable in the sense of predetermined phomemic spaces employed to >help propel the narrative, but not, I think, in terms of "cliche" or >prepackaged ideas at least in the way we understand that signifying process >of the cliche. > >JE > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 18:23:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jocelyn Emerson Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: <199705172248.PAA00104@denmark.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This may be correct--I don't have my appropriate reference stuff with me; however, the point I am making at the moment is that we cannot apply to oral or scribal epic the anachronistic term of cliche in either its (literal) or ideological sense as it is used in our current critical currency; as I am not a classicist, I am not familiar with whether or not there is an analogous term which is more apporpriate to discussing Greek epic in its context(s). But my point is that the very term cliche--as a mold let's say from which one makes the multiple copies instead of the original--is a technology, like all technologies, that contours cultural notions of "original" "reproduction" etc. how each is valued, etc. Since, in our post Romantic ethos, "we" value "originality" (i.e the true sentiment and all that "voice" stuff) and decry the copy, cliche as the technology which facilitated the making of the copies has, over time, become a term which now exceeds its technical or instrumental origin and is used almost completely in an ideological, critical, discoursive manner etc. and perhaps more relvent for this discussion, as if its contemporary meaning as a prepackaged phrase, idea, set of relationships has always existed as such--as a kind of transhistorical phenomenon--which gets us into trouble when we're applying to contexts in which, so far as I know, it didn't exist either as a term or ideology. >cliche certainly derives from a printing term, but I don't think it was ever >used in Jocelyn's sense. What the French called a cliche was called a >stereotype plate in English. My understanding is that it was a mold--usually >of a whole page of type or an engraving--that was used to print from instead >of the original. > >At 02:34 PM 5/17/97 -0600, you wrote: >>> >>>Never mind cliches. What are "mnemonic devices"? In what sense are the >>>phrases "long-suffering Odysseus" or "swift-footed Achilles" or >>>"rosy-fingered Dawn" mnemonic? In this sense: they are formulaic, >>>*predictable*, and therefore *easier to memorize* than Virgil's >>>carefully-thought-out alternatives [in Latin]. Homer's sense of "a >>>memorable phrase" is different from ours. >>> >> >> >>I want to chime in here to note that, as far as I know, cliche is a >>typesetter's term--i.e. having to do with certain clusters of words which >>occurred often enough together that a piece of type could be made to cover >>the group of words instead of using the individual plates separately >>(requiring fewer physical gestures on the part of the typesetter to rach >>for type--important given that many were in fact illiterate). Thus, our >>*ideolgical* notion of cliche is very much determined by a technology >>that's part of the early modern period and after. The formulaic phrases >>(as above) may not be mnemonic, but formulaic in terms of the meter >>itself--memorable in the sense of predetermined phomemic spaces employed to >>help propel the narrative, but not, I think, in terms of "cliche" or >>prepackaged ideas at least in the way we understand that signifying process >>of the cliche. >> >>JE >> >> ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 16:48:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Agreed (I was riding my precision-in-language hobbyhorse, which just won the Preakness) Small caveat--the valuing of originality of expression goes back far beyond the romantics (tho not as far as Homer). At 06:23 PM 5/17/97 -0600, you wrote: >This may be correct--I don't have my appropriate reference stuff with me; >however, the point I am making at the moment is that we cannot apply to >oral or scribal epic the anachronistic term of cliche in either its >(literal) or ideological sense as it is used in our current critical >currency; as I am not a classicist, I am not familiar with whether or not >there is an analogous term which is more apporpriate to discussing Greek >epic in its context(s). But my point is that the very term cliche--as a >mold let's say from which one makes the multiple copies instead of the >original--is a technology, like all technologies, that contours cultural >notions of "original" "reproduction" etc. how each is valued, etc. Since, >in our post Romantic ethos, "we" value "originality" (i.e the true >sentiment and all that "voice" stuff) and decry the copy, cliche as the >technology which facilitated the making of the copies has, over time, >become a term which now exceeds its technical or instrumental origin and is >used almost completely in an ideological, critical, discoursive manner etc. >and perhaps more relvent for this discussion, as if its contemporary >meaning as a prepackaged phrase, idea, set of relationships has always >existed as such--as a kind of transhistorical phenomenon--which gets us >into trouble when we're applying to contexts in which, so far as I know, it >didn't exist either as a term or ideology. > > >>cliche certainly derives from a printing term, but I don't think it was ever >>used in Jocelyn's sense. What the French called a cliche was called a >>stereotype plate in English. My understanding is that it was a mold--usually >>of a whole page of type or an engraving--that was used to print from instead >>of the original. >> >>At 02:34 PM 5/17/97 -0600, you wrote: >>>> >>>>Never mind cliches. What are "mnemonic devices"? In what sense are the >>>>phrases "long-suffering Odysseus" or "swift-footed Achilles" or >>>>"rosy-fingered Dawn" mnemonic? In this sense: they are formulaic, >>>>*predictable*, and therefore *easier to memorize* than Virgil's >>>>carefully-thought-out alternatives [in Latin]. Homer's sense of "a >>>>memorable phrase" is different from ours. >>>> >>> >>> >>>I want to chime in here to note that, as far as I know, cliche is a >>>typesetter's term--i.e. having to do with certain clusters of words which >>>occurred often enough together that a piece of type could be made to cover >>>the group of words instead of using the individual plates separately >>>(requiring fewer physical gestures on the part of the typesetter to rach >>>for type--important given that many were in fact illiterate). Thus, our >>>*ideolgical* notion of cliche is very much determined by a technology >>>that's part of the early modern period and after. The formulaic phrases >>>(as above) may not be mnemonic, but formulaic in terms of the meter >>>itself--memorable in the sense of predetermined phomemic spaces employed to >>>help propel the narrative, but not, I think, in terms of "cliche" or >>>prepackaged ideas at least in the way we understand that signifying process >>>of the cliche. >>> >>>JE >>> >>> > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 19:34:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jocelyn Emerson Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: <199705172348.QAA14305@germany.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, of course "originality" was a desirable commodity--economically, discoursively, aesthetically--prior to the Romantics--inscribed and imbued by various fantasies of social cohesion, mobility, blah, blah; i.e. Old Ben's construction of his ms after the publishing syndicte's First Folio and all that--and even farther back into coterie and court culture, etc. It just seems to me that after all the interiorizing subjectivitzing of the (canonical male) Romantics and the ensuing discoursive codification of that as "natural" (via the New Critics and the like)--, it's important to specify the historical and constructed nature of "originality" as well as to understand it in its plurity of historical, economical, genered, racial contexts (standard New Historical line, I know)... Agreed (I was riding my precision-in-language hobbyhorse, which just won the >Preakness) >Small caveat--the valuing of originality of expression goes back far beyond >the romantics (tho not as far as Homer). > >At 06:23 PM 5/17/97 -0600, you wrote: >>This may be correct--I don't have my appropriate reference stuff with me; >>however, the point I am making at the moment is that we cannot apply to >>oral or scribal epic the anachronistic term of cliche in either its >>(literal) or ideological sense as it is used in our current critical >>currency; as I am not a classicist, I am not familiar with whether or not >>there is an analogous term which is more apporpriate to discussing Greek >>epic in its context(s). But my point is that the very term cliche--as a >>mold let's say from which one makes the multiple copies instead of the >>original--is a technology, like all technologies, that contours cultural >>notions of "original" "reproduction" etc. how each is valued, etc. Since, >>in our post Romantic ethos, "we" value "originality" (i.e the true >>sentiment and all that "voice" stuff) and decry the copy, cliche as the >>technology which facilitated the making of the copies has, over time, >>become a term which now exceeds its technical or instrumental origin and is >>used almost completely in an ideological, critical, discoursive manner etc. >>and perhaps more relvent for this discussion, as if its contemporary >>meaning as a prepackaged phrase, idea, set of relationships has always >>existed as such--as a kind of transhistorical phenomenon--which gets us >>into trouble when we're applying to contexts in which, so far as I know, it >>didn't exist either as a term or ideology. >> >> >>>cliche certainly derives from a printing term, but I don't think it was ever >>>used in Jocelyn's sense. What the French called a cliche was called a >>>stereotype plate in English. My understanding is that it was a mold--usually >>>of a whole page of type or an engraving--that was used to print from instead >>>of the original. >>> >>>At 02:34 PM 5/17/97 -0600, you wrote: >>>>> >>>>>Never mind cliches. What are "mnemonic devices"? In what sense are the >>>>>phrases "long-suffering Odysseus" or "swift-footed Achilles" or >>>>>"rosy-fingered Dawn" mnemonic? In this sense: they are formulaic, >>>>>*predictable*, and therefore *easier to memorize* than Virgil's >>>>>carefully-thought-out alternatives [in Latin]. Homer's sense of "a >>>>>memorable phrase" is different from ours. >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>I want to chime in here to note that, as far as I know, cliche is a >>>>typesetter's term--i.e. having to do with certain clusters of words which >>>>occurred often enough together that a piece of type could be made to cover >>>>the group of words instead of using the individual plates separately >>>>(requiring fewer physical gestures on the part of the typesetter to rach >>>>for type--important given that many were in fact illiterate). Thus, our >>>>*ideolgical* notion of cliche is very much determined by a technology >>>>that's part of the early modern period and after. The formulaic phrases >>>>(as above) may not be mnemonic, but formulaic in terms of the meter >>>>itself--memorable in the sense of predetermined phomemic spaces employed to >>>>help propel the narrative, but not, I think, in terms of "cliche" or >>>>prepackaged ideas at least in the way we understand that signifying process >>>>of the cliche. >>>> >>>>JE >>>> >>>> >> >> ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 16:15:14 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:28 PM 5/17/97 -0400, you wrote: >1. >I can't think of a poet whose work I did not begin to understand (to >'hear') much better once I heard that poet read. > >Once I heard that poet's voice. i'm aware this isn't really the focus of the discussion, but i identify strongly with this. There are poets of course we (especially from New Zealand) will/have never got/get to hear, but (for example) i certainly found listening to Lyn H when she was here a few years ago - provided a whole lot of strategies for rereading her. Not necessarily in a meaning sense although i can't deny that her presentation of her words did change the experiences of meaning i found in her works, but particularly in a visceral (or musical) sense. dan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 22:49:12 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: dirty postmodernism I just re-subscribed and happy to come back. Let's see...I feel I should contribute some kind of snippet, so here goes: I heard from a friend that Paul Hoover's book (the editor of the humoungous (sp?) Norton _Postmodern American Poetry_), had been selected by none other than Marvin Bell, most recently author of the very depressing series "Poems of the Dead Man," and director, I think, of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, for the "coveted" National Poetry Series! I was wondering: Is this cause for rejoicing, embarrassment, second- thoughts, or factional reconciliation? Certainly, Mr. Hoover's authority as an arbiter of "Postmodernism" (insofar as he gladly accepts Mr. Bell's approval) might be called into question? I was, in part, wondering, because I heard from a third party that when Mr. Hoover was in Iowa City a couple months ago, he talked shit at the bar to Creative Writing students about my friend (and significantly greater poet than he) Forrest Gander, who was visiting poet at the time there. Is it possible, I wonder, that Mr. Hoover's little visit to Iowa City could have had something to do with his little prize? (I would like to say here that if Forrest knew I was writing this, he would be extremely pissed, and he will certainly be when he finds out, but I can't contain myself...). anyway, it's good to be back. I've missed the great people on this list! Even Bromige and Bowering, who write code behind everybody's back. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 06:45:49 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To be contentious about it, I'm not surprised at all that an estabnik like Marvin Bell might want to publish poetry by the editor of an anthology as incompletely representative of contemporary craft-extending work as the Norton anthology of "postmodern" poetry. I DO value the Hoover anthology, and am pleased with the recognition it has brought to many previously over-looked poets of excellence, but it's no *Firebird* to Bell's *Swan Lake*. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 07:02:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Things that make you go 'hmm' In-Reply-To: <4115DC7841@student.highland.cc.il.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Kent, I think it's bloody little related to post, pre, or any other kind of modernism--I think that the whole Iowa mafia is an extremely sticky crew, little given to observing niceties of ethics. Jorie Graham is well known for never accepting a gig unless there's something in it for hubby James Galvin too; she is also notorious for "coincidentally" selecting Iowa-student work for every major prize she's been asked to judge. (The most recent such prize was given by an organization whose head is another Iowa graduate. Hmmm.) My suggestion would be dispatching an immediate squadron of Rinzai monks with well-oiled kyosakus and piercing yells. Maybe they could awaken justice, no pun intended, of course. Disgusted in DC ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 10:08:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: epic cliches Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's great when a new mind (a new voice?) joins an online community; suddenly you hear another sound, and what thoughts you heard thought are displaced and changed in value. So George Thompson. Whatever the provenance of the word "cliche" it is used to mean "a received idea pithily expressed." Truth is not at question in a cliche -- hey, 2 and 2 = 4, right? -- nor is truth being concluded. A template of truth is being used to tell you how to view a given situation. Of course, it's also possible to use cliches ironically. For my money, this is one of the two or three most overused devices in contemporary poetry of the mainstream (whatever that is). If the I in a poem is to be set apart (and it always is in some degree), irony is the weakest device to this end, as it lets that I out of things and their consequences at very little cost. And, often, that scot-clean irony merely sets the stage for a lyric outburst in which the I reinserts itself and the *you* of the poem (i.e. the reader) is meant to marvel and experience an epiphany. In fairness, there's a lot of use of this basic schema in poetry on *our* side of the fence where, oddly, the grass is greener (had you noticed?) (I'm imitating what annoys me, sorry). Especially, I find, by those whose clay feet have been planted long on the academic road. Of course, that's just me and my prejudices at work. In any case, cliche has nothing to do with epic. If I'm right, the formulaic sections of an oral composition are there to allow the reciter/teller time to think of what comes next and formulate it. That "what comes next" may also be partly formulaic, inasmuch as the demand for "what's next" only ceases with the poem's sound. I.e., formally, these are compositional aids. When oral devices appear on a printed page, they become very different, how could they not? The Iliad *is* a written work -- it only *was* an oral work. As we read the Iliad, sitting alone in a chair in a pool of lamplight or halted interminably at a red light, jaw dropped, and the traffic an angry snarl of unnoticed horns and shaking fists, take your choice (more imitative irony, and again I'm sorry). That which has been formulated, that which still must be formulated and quickly, that's the essential situation of the oral poet (a useful template for much of life, yes?). On the page, the devices that register this situation are foregrounded and static; as such, they become available for use to entirely different ends. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 09:16:15 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: voice, and I'm still catching up from a week in California & lots of desk work on my return. I'll start a new administrative job in a few days, and next week I'll be in federal court for an interesting lawsuit. But I do want to try to respond to several Poetics postings of the past couple of weeks. On advertisements, book listings, and readings: please do continue these. Such listings help me get a feel for who is reading where & what's being published, particularly by folks associated with this list. In fact, this list, from chatty to profound, is one of the most important sources I have for thinking about poetry. Thanks to all! Several of you have asked me to post my Anti-Wonder/Wonder conference talk. The talk itself is still in rough shape. I'll outline what I'm working on because these writing projects touch on the developing topic of voice. I had written a new ten pages of material which I thought would be part one of the talk. This portion treats in some detail what I think of as the rhetoric of wonder: begins with a generic wonder-moment in Kerouac's _On the Road_, then moves on to look at what others on the list are criticizing as a kind of voice poem (a topic that I trace via Robert Pinksy's 1976 _Situation of Poetry_ and Charlie Altieri's 1984 _Self and Sensibility..._). but, as others on the list (Ron? Dodie?) have begun to point out, the anti- voice (or anti-wonder, or anti-epiphany) poems has its own conventions, its own liabilities, its own pretensions. I plan to develop examples and discussions. That is, I'll shoot fish in at least two opposing or apposing barrels. That part of Part One is unfinished. Part two (which I did not read at Stanford due to time constraints) involves a few pages from an essay on Myth and Poetry. I've recently edited a section of a new journal, _Mythospheres_, due to begin in 1997 (Fall?). I've begun to think about the writings of certain poets who are often admired in innovative poetry circles, but whose work, it seems to me, is in many ways antithetical to that innovative work. Specifically, I've begun to think seriously about the shamanistic and mythic claims in Jerry Rothenberg's work, and the high emotionalism in Jerry's work, and in Robert Duncan's. I've always had an ambivalent relationship to myth-based poetry, though I've always greatly admired Duncan's work. In the section I edited, I've included an Introduction, and an essay and poems by Jack Foley, Jake Berry, and me. In my essay, I work through some of Duncan's "Truth and Life of Myth" essay, trying to explain my allergies and affinities, using Duncan's work as an occation to think about the possible "censorship" (in innovative poetries) of a kind of myth- based high romanticism (and high emotionalism). I guess in all three parts of my intended Stanford talk, I'm trying to think through what I feel as fissures _within_ language poetry or within a broad range of innovative poetries. Specifically, I'm trying to think about the place of spirituality, emotional intensity, wonder, and lyricism. After more mainstream expressions in these categories are critiqued and understood as falling within the domain of rhetoric (but what isn't within the domain of rhetoric??!), it still remains to be asked whether one would like to have a poetry that might include such things in it, and how might one go about such a poetry in a way that was not cliched or overly manipulative. Back to my talk. I'll be glad to alert folks to the publication of the Myth materials (late 1997?), or to those with a strong interest, e-mail me back channel & when I get a spare moment, I'll send you a copy (of my portion, or of the whole thing). Part Three consists of a few pages from an essay called "The Lyric Valuables," which began as a talk for a panel Lisa Samuels organized at NEMLA (Montreal, April 1996). That essay, which includes material on Mackey, Mullen, bpNichol, Oppen, Kit Robinson, Enslin, Zukofsky, and others, will be out in a few weeks in a special issue of _Modern Language Studies_. Lisa Samuels edited the issue, and it includes essays by Joseph Conte, Jerry McGann, Tom Schaub, and Lisa (on Hejinian), as well as some new poetry by Lyn Hejinian. In my essay, I try to develop some ways of sounding out new lyricisms, ways to describe and consider the importance of odd (and perhaps initially discordant, or in Stein's terms, "ugly") new musics in poetry. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 10:32:48 -0400 Reply-To: CHRIS MANN Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: epic cliches In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970518100838.006c43c8@cais.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 18 May 1997, Tom Mandel wrote: > > In any case, cliche has nothing to do with epic. > - i for one am quite happy to argue that cliches are only epic. for example, in all the kvetching about mafias (iowan and other), i don't think it such a bad thing that people trust those they know. that there is a tendency to be interested in what is known is what i find disconcerting. 'i am interested in the music i don't like, yet.' herbert brun ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 09:58:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: "voice"? In-Reply-To: <199705170627.CAA14249@SMTP.USIT.NET> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" actually i like the phrase "sartorial strategies" --it hisses with calculated sibilants, it resonates with "sartor resartus," one of my favorite books, as well as all of those sartoris characters in faulkner, and it's broader than "cross dressing," which it seems to me refers to only one sartorial strategy. it also implies that one is dressed to kill, or at least to do major military battle...etc. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 10:28:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: He does the List in Diff'rent V'ices Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 12:49:32 +-900 >From: Daniel Tessitore >Subject: Re: Kara Walker's "voice" > >rsilliman wrote: > >Many of the criticisms of voice poetry "voiced" here were about how the >point of it is to make the "I" sound deep. We're not really supposed to >share the epiphany, we're supposed to marvel at the epihaner. But, I think >the non-I in many "language-centered" works is just as manipulative and >transparent. Instead of an emotional epiphany we're lead to an >intellectual epiphany--and in the worst scenerio what we're really supposed >to marvel at is the smarts of the non-I who's generating this text. > >______________ > >Thanks for crystallizing this so well. You're welcome. But I didn't write that. Dodie did. Sincerity is not about exposing the writer's soul, sincerity is a tone, an >effect." The presence of the author, to me, would only make the experience >of "abandonment" more sexy. I agree completely. As I'm sure, you'll agree, Ron, a well-constructed theory >book can be most thrilling. "There is nothing better than a theory." C. Harryman The problem with the book (aside from the fact >that the writers didn't seem to have any ideas) was the clumsy use they >made of theory buzz words. For instance, when they were talking about >Brook's and Barney's tendency to adopt the clothing of male dandies, the >writers would consistently refer to this as their "sartorial strategies." >After a while the point of the chapter seemed really to be how many >different ways they could work in their buzz-baby "sartorial strategies." >Not that one should never write "sartorial strategies," but in some cases, >"cross dressing," a term which seemed to scare them, would have been less >awkward. The writers, to me, seemed pretentious, but more than that to be >terribly insecure, lacking confidence in what they were saying. If they >were less sincere, more into creating effects, I think the book might have >worked better. > No room for "gender fuck"? It sounds like yet another instance of under- editing, a phenomenon that is the true intellectual movement of our time vis a vis critical writing. Ron Ron Silliman When this you see 262 Orchard Road Remember me Paoli, PA 19301-1116 (610) 251-2214 (610) 293-6099 (o) (610) 293-5506 (fax) rsillima@ix.netcom.com rsillima@tssc.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 08:52:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: "voice"? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:58 AM -0500 5/18/97, Maria Damon wrote: >actually i like the phrase "sartorial strategies" --it hisses with >calculated sibilants, it resonates with "sartor resartus," one of my >favorite books, as well as all of those sartoris characters in faulkner, >and it's broader than "cross dressing," which it seems to me refers to only >one sartorial strategy. it also implies that one is dressed to kill, or at >least to do major military battle...etc. And that one could end up a fashion/theory victim. My students refered to people who were overly concerned with fashion as "fascists." I thought that was clever. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 10:52:02 -0700 Reply-To: ttheatre@sirius.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen and Trevor Organization: Tea Theatre Subject: Re: "voice"? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hugh Steinberg wrote: > I think chops is a great way of looking at this voice thing. A lot of > problems with the term "voice" is that it's too broad: everyone's got a > voice. What's at stake is the nervous desire to make each voice (your > voice) unique. This may be a foolish desire, up there with wanting to be a > famous poet, but, like Dodie, I don't want my poems to look/sound like > anyone else's (especially all those hordes of other MFAs out there). > That's why I work on my chops. > > Hugh Steinberg I've been following this thread from the beginning, and all the variations, and I've been pondering the "MFA factory" comments. I guess you could call me a MFA "clone" except for the fact that I can never write about things they want me to, in a voice like every one else etc. I don't worry about voice, my voice that is. This is probably because in my first MA workshop with Aaron Shurin someone said something about voice, their distress in not knowing what their voice was. Aaron said something to the effect of that really no writer should be concerned about their voice, that maybe when you have written a few books you can go back and see if there is something that can be construed as voice. But before that, you can't really "pick" your voice and decide to write in it. So basically I don't worry about my voice as a writer. I'm much more interested in looking at voice in other work. Karen ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 11:01:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: "voice"? Comments: To: Karen and Trevor In-Reply-To: <337F41C2.32CF@sirius.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII since this thread seems to continue -- permit me to remind everybody of the excellent selection of poems by Ed Roberson titled _Voices Cast Out To Talk Us In_ in which "voice" is more in the sense of "voicings" for piano or trumpet, matters of inflection and describable technique, as opposed to that more mystic/mythic MFA mode of voice, as in "some of us got it and some of us don't" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 13:37:18 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: voice and... On may 16, Hank Lazer wrote: > to think through what I feel as fissures _within_ language poetry or > within a broad range of innovative poetries. Specifically, I'm > trying to think about the place of spirituality, emotional intensity, > wonder, and lyricism. After more mainstream expressions in these > categories are critiqued and understood as falling within the domain > of rhetoric (but what isn't within the domain of rhetoric??!), it > still remains to be asked whether one would like to have a poetry > that might include such things in it, and how might one go about such > a poetry in a way that was not cliched or overly manipulative. Hank: In terms of spirituality within "innovative poetries," I'd like to suggest a book I edited (with Craig Paulenich)a few years back: Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry (Shambhala, 1989, Introduction by Gary Snyder). A poetically eclectic collection, gathering poets for whom Buddhist thought and practice has been key. You will find statements and essays therein on the interface of poetics and spiritual practice by people like Steve Benson, Alan Davies, John Cage, Norman Fischer,Michael Heller, Robert Kelly, Jackson Mac Low, Andrew Schelling, Chuck Stein, Philip Whalen, Nathaniel Tarn, Jed Rasula, Leslie Scalapino, George Quasha, Anne Waldman, and Armand Schwerner. In fact, this is only a partial list of innovative writers who take Buddhist thought seriously, and the breadth and depth of the connection is interesting-- and would certainly need to be noted, I think, in a study of the "fissures" (nicely put) of the spiritual within radical poetries. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 15:44:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: "voice"? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:52 AM -0700 5/18/97, dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: >At 9:58 AM -0500 5/18/97, Maria Damon wrote: >>actually i like the phrase "sartorial strategies" --it hisses with >>calculated sibilants, it resonates with "sartor resartus," one of my >>favorite books, as well as all of those sartoris characters in faulkner, >>and it's broader than "cross dressing," which it seems to me refers to only >>one sartorial strategy. it also implies that one is dressed to kill, or at >>least to do major military battle...etc. > >And that one could end up a fashion/theory victim. > >My students refered to people who were overly concerned with fashion as >"fascists." I thought that was clever. > >Dodie yes indeed; i might quote it when my class discusses mullen's "trimmings" next week, i mean, tomorrow, yikes!--md ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 13:51:19 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hoa Nguyen Content-Type: text/plain Hi every one. This is Dale Smith via Hoa's machine. Below is an article I read in today's local paper from the associated press. I found it quite telling and right on. It reveals the distance that has developed between theorists and mere mortals who expect language to function as a medium of shared communication rather than subjective solipsism. Anyway, here's the article: ************************************************************* CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand‹‹Looking for a good read? Here are some writers to avoid. The winner‹‹or loser‹‹of an academics' Bad Writing Contest announced Friday was Frederic Jameson, a professor of comparative literature at Duke University in North Carolina. His book, "Signatures of the Visible," opens with this sentence: "The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer)." Jameson has a significant academic following, contest organizers noted; for their part, the judges believed reading his prose "was like swimming through cold porridge." Telephone calls to Jameson's home Saturday were not answered. All the entries in the contest were from published academic works. The top three offenders were English professors. The judges observed: "This reliance on jargon is an indication of the death throes of English as an academic discipline." Second place went to Rob Wilson of the University of Hawaii, whose sentence reads, in part: "If such a sublime cyborg would insinuate the future as post-Fordist subject, his palpably masochistic locations as ecstatic agent of the sublime superstate need to be decoded as the 'now-all-but-unreadable DNA' of the fast deindustralizing Detroit...." The third-place winner kept his sentence short, but to no avail. "The lure of imaginary totality is momentarily frozen before the dialectic of desire hastens on within symbolic chains," wrote Fred Botting in his 1991 work, "Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory." Botting is a lecturer at Lancaster University in England. The contest showed that academics and major publishing houses have been so busy using the "magical incantations of jargon, they've forgotten what real thinking is," said contest judge Denis Dutton, senior lecturer in the philosophy of art at Canterbury University in Christchurch. --------------------------------------------------------- Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 17:43:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: "voice"? / anti-fashion / cliche MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > >My students refered to people who were overly concerned with > >fashion as "fascists." I thought that was clever. > > > >Dodie > > yes indeed; i might quote it when my class discusses mullen's > "trimmings" next week, i mean, tomorrow, yikes!--md anecdotally, I once had occasion to resort to the phrase "anti-fashionist" -- (the occasion being the writing of a poem responsive to a WSJ article abt. the beige craze in men's fashion) though to speak of an "antifascist" (in the above context) wd require folks being really in the no -- to be "fashionably out of fashion" was among the cliches Rinde Eckert has some fun with, in his electronic opera *Slow Fire* (Paul Dresher Ensemble, circa 1984 [?], et seq.) . . . "fashionably late" is another matter d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 18:04:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: more of Padgett's voice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Ron Padgett poem Tom Mandel -- hey, I could make that a whole stanza -- The Ron Padgett poem Tom Mandel refers to is "When I Think More of My Own Future Than of Myself". It takes place as the speaker (one hears, if one's heard Ron, _Ron_) comes out of the bathroom, thinking "'How sad it is that I must die.'" It's actually a complicated procedure one performs getting to this bathroom; "one has to go down the stairs one-half flight/Out a door into an elevated courtyard/Along a little balcony". The speaker of the poem proceeds to separate his (I'm presuming again) awareness of the inevitability of death from his departure from the bathroom. However, just as quickly, the speaker acknowledges that one's thoughts may change as one leaves the bathroom. So far, nothing about love! Just death, and the bathroom, and thoughts. The last four lines of the poem, though, contain the epigram that Tom Mandel (and I and who knows how many other readers of the poem) carried away: --Just as, since my college studies, When the thought was made available to me, I have never been able to make any sort of really reasonable connection Between Love and Death One would _think_ (or _I_ thought, anyway) that the meaning of this poem consisted of the safe delivery of the last two lines. Rereading it now, though, in the wake of Tom Mandel's mention of it, it seems to me that Padgett is making a subversive equation -- namely, that "that though one's thoughts may change as one leaves the bathroom, leaving the bathroom does not necessarily cause one to be aware of one's mortality" is _somehow_ analogous (equivalent?) to the statement that "though one may be educated to assume that it is so, one cannot prove that people love eachother because people are mortal." The epigram is a character in a little demonstration, and though it and the famous idea it negates are attractive and memorable, neither are at the center, the pivot of the poem on which the speaker turns (away from sophistic half-connections?) and unironically disavows epigrams. The other day here at the company store, Ron confessed that he has thought of two epigrams in his life: "If you think you saw a mouse, you did" and "Metal was a mistake". _____ Near as I can remember, the term Milman Parry uses is "epithets" for the two- or three-word tags attached to the names of gods and people to fill out the lines of the homeric epics so they scan. I forget whether he uses epithet to refer to those phrases (as when words escape "l'enclos de ses dents" in the french translation Joyce liked so much) used to depict (and magnify) certain repeated actions in the poems. The one that freaked me out was about spears penetrating the centers of shields going straight through to the given soldiers' nipple. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 18:00:24 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: He does the List in Diff'rent V'ices In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 18 May 1997 10:28:25 -0500 from Sincerity & creating "tone" & effects to seduce the auditor are not alternatives. Sincerity is not a strategy. Sincerity is not a pitfall unless it's a ploy. Writers work on different levels of technique, motive, & skill. There is pseudo-sincerity - but unless there is sincerity underlying the pseudo-, it's not art but propaganda. Begone, ye Mickey-mockeyavellis! - Hank the voice of the vicious "Henry is a long-tooth varmint who likes to type all day instead of laying wire." - Jack Spandrift ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 18:16:25 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 17 May 1997 19:34:24 -0600 from On Sat, 17 May 1997 19:34:24 -0600 Jocelyn Emerson said: >Yes, of course "originality" was a desirable commodity--economically, >discoursively, aesthetically--prior to the Romantics--inscribed and imbued >by various fantasies of social cohesion, mobility, blah, blah; i.e. Old >Ben's construction of his ms after the publishing syndicte's First Folio >and all that--and even farther back into coterie and court culture, etc. >It just seems to me that after all the interiorizing subjectivitzing of the >(canonical male) Romantics and the ensuing discoursive codification of >that as "natural" (via the New Critics and the like)--, it's important to >specify the historical and constructed nature of "originality" as well as >to understand it in its plurity of historical, economical, genered, racial >contexts (standard New Historical line, I know)... > Isn't this a codification of a codification? Just read an interesting book in the Shakespeare authorship controversy [wouldn't you know it, old Hank is into that, heh heh... - Eric Blarnes] by Sobran (_Alias Shakespeare_) argues that the 1623 Folio was put together by family of Oxford long after he died basically because they saw his works being scattered to the wind. Big Ben was already a patented individual at that time. This is Old Historical, in a new light. I like to think of Homer as a person, even if neither he, nor the Greeks, nor the postmoderns do. - Henry G. Of course maybe the reason we know neither the personal Homer or the real Shakespeare isn't because the Romantic Individual hadn't been codified yet but because aristocratic culture thought being a published public author was demeaning. (Now some theorists think so too! Look how abject it is to have a voice, be a self, be an individual, seduce people with your phony sincerity, etc. etc.) O Democracy! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 20:11:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: more of Padgett's voice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT quoth Jordan Davis: > The other day here at the company store, Ron confessed that he has > thought of two epigrams in his life: "If you think you saw a mouse, > you did" and "Metal was a mistake". re: epigram #2 -- could you give some manner of explication? - clueless in DC ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 17:27:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At some point in my early adolescence I picked up a thick memoire called, I think, A Syrian Yankee, about an immigrant from said country. In the course of his travels he falls in with a group of Syrian nationalists who, as colonials, feel that they can only raise their status by the appropriation of the cultural icons of the conquerors. Accordingly, they develop the theory that Shakespeare was really an arab nobleman (you guessed it--Sheik Espeare) who somehow made his way to England. The details escape me--the book was over 500 pages long, and the Shakespeare thing is all I remember. At 06:16 PM 5/18/97 EDT, you wrote: >On Sat, 17 May 1997 19:34:24 -0600 Jocelyn Emerson said: >>Yes, of course "originality" was a desirable commodity--economically, >>discoursively, aesthetically--prior to the Romantics--inscribed and imbued >>by various fantasies of social cohesion, mobility, blah, blah; i.e. Old >>Ben's construction of his ms after the publishing syndicte's First Folio >>and all that--and even farther back into coterie and court culture, etc. >>It just seems to me that after all the interiorizing subjectivitzing of the >>(canonical male) Romantics and the ensuing discoursive codification of >>that as "natural" (via the New Critics and the like)--, it's important to >>specify the historical and constructed nature of "originality" as well as >>to understand it in its plurity of historical, economical, genered, racial >>contexts (standard New Historical line, I know)... >> >Isn't this a codification of a codification? Just read an interesting book >in the Shakespeare authorship controversy [wouldn't you know it, old Hank >is into that, heh heh... - Eric Blarnes] by Sobran (_Alias Shakespeare_) >argues that the 1623 Folio was put together by family of Oxford long >after he died basically because they saw his works being scattered to the >wind. Big Ben was already a patented individual at that time. This >is Old Historical, in a new light. I like to think of Homer as a person, >even if neither he, nor the Greeks, nor the postmoderns do. - Henry G. > >Of course maybe the reason we know neither the personal Homer or the real >Shakespeare isn't because the Romantic Individual hadn't been codified yet >but because aristocratic culture thought being a published public author was >demeaning. (Now some theorists think so too! Look how abject it is to have >a voice, be a self, be an individual, seduce people with your phony sincerity, >etc. etc.) O Democracy! > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 20:45:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: epic redux / the Sheik's Pir MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT from Mark Weiss -- > At some point in my early adolescence I picked up a thick memoire > called, I think, A Syrian Yankee, . . . . the theory that Shakespeare > was really an arab nobleman (you guessed it--Sheik Espeare) who > somehow made his way to England. The details escape me--the book was > over 500 pages long, and the Shakespeare thing is all I remember. a few months back, other variants on this were bandied about (in jest) on the South Asian Literature listserv -- I'd not been aware of A Syrian Yankee, but I do seem to recall that in his somewhat massive -- and quite good -- tome *The Sufis*, Idris Shah has some discussion of alleged association of Shakespeare (and/or Francis Bacon?) with Sufi teachers/teachings -- and I do rather think the "Sheikh" thing comes into it somehow (possibly along the lines noted in subject line above -- a Pir being, you know, a high-level spiritual figure, roughly translated as "saint") -- but that (likewise) was a book I read in teens & not since . . . . but must say, in more recent viewings of some of Shakespeare's plays (esp. some of the comedies, but others too), one does find much akin to sufism -- the Hamlet & Yourick tete-a-tete being (for instance) highly reminiscent of things found in Khayyam . . . couple summers ago, I picked up the painstakingly literal translation of the Khayyam corpus done by a couple of British chaps, Avery and Heath-Stubbs, and I set to, reworking a number of 'em. For poss. general amumsement, here's a small sampling. best, d.i. [parenthetical numerals refer to the Avery / Heath-Stubbs version] 13. (23) Amid this dwelling of two doors no boon does one receive there's nothing here but sadness & the need anon to leave that man alone is happy who has never drawn a breath: the guy whose mother never bore him -- he shall never grieve 16. (27) Neither day nor life can we make more long nor less neither plenty nor penury merit our dim distress these conditions aren't like wax that one might mold -- neither you nor I our own design express 17. (28) The only thing the pretty stars achieve is pain: whatever gift they give they take away again those beings queuing up for birth -- if they should sniff what happens here would swiftly pour it down the drain 18. (29) O you whom seven planets & four elements produce who for that four & seven act like one whose screw is loose subtract an inch of brandy: I've explained a million times -- the second you hit nullity they'll zero out your juice 25. (59) Mr. Wiseman! rise & shine! the morning's here see that youngster sifting dust? now look with care you could lend him sage advice: "hey stir it gently -- for both Plato's brain & Picasso's eyes are there" (the last being among those reminiscent of the alas-poor-Yourick-riff's ilk) . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 21:48:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: more of Padgett's voice "Metal was a mistake" as in "It's a mistake to meddle." ? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 01:17:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth W Sherwood Subject: oral epithets In-Reply-To: <199705190401.AAA16010@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Veering left at the epithet 'oral formulaic', I want to suggest that the 'formula' bears about as much relation to oral poetries as the couplet does to written ones. A formal device that's a special case getting generalized to the whole. From what I've read on oral poetry, there is no instance of strictly 'formulaic' (in Parry's sense) poetry coming from firmly oral traditions. The Yugoslav poets Parry and Lord work from compose in a borderline literate context. Homer comes down to us through numerous textual stages which impinge on the relation of formula and orality. Check out Evers/Molina's _Yacqui Deer Songs_ or Tedlock's _Finding the Center_ for instances of non-formulaic oral poetry. Meanwhile, forget about formula-- a concept overemphasizing the 'cultural preserving' aspects of oral poetry. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 01:35:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth W Sherwood Subject: chops and voice In-Reply-To: <199705180406.AAA28211@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Glad to introduce 'chops' here, which to me splits voice into voice(s)--at least-- if not voicings (following Aldon). The jazz player with chops can play various voices, can sound like Armstrong, Davis, Bird, and Coltrane. Here the sense of accomplished craft (perhaps a finding of ones' 'own' styhle/voice) assumes a preliminary facility in multi-voicing. And in performance one earns points oftener for voice-switching than for maintaining a steady, constant lyric self. The intersection of threads brings to mind Baraka's "How You Sound" (Allen, New Am Po, 1960): The only 'recognizalbe tradition' a poet need follow is himself... & with that, say, all those things out of tradition he can use, adapt, work over, into something for himself. To broaden his *own* voice with. (You have to start and finish there ... your own voice... how you sound. Which seems obviously voice/self-centered but by 1963 ("Expressive Language" _Home_) has broadened to: Words have users, but as well, users have words... Words' meanings but also the rhythm and syntax that frame and propel their concatenation, seek their culture as the final reference for what they are describing of the world. An A flat played twice on the same saxophone by two different men does not have to sound the same. That's chops. Ken Sherwood ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 23:00:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Re: more of Padgett's voice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "All I have is a voice"! Does Auden preempt Jordan's remarks on Padgett's disavowing epigram? In the same stanza as that "voice" line, Auden wrote the love or die epigram, then of course disavowed the whole thing. And later wrote a great poem about bathrooms. Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 02:36:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: i root ii rise MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i root MAILER-DAEMON:root daemon:root sys:root bin:root jenn:root audit:root sync:root tape:root sysdiag:root sundiag:root AUpwdauthd:root AUyppasswdd:root root2:root@mailspool.zinger.com treeroot-list:treeroot,treeroot2,root2 fwd_leaves.org_tree: :include:/users/dfl/leaves/tree ii rise Across the jeweled sandals glittered as lost rings in the sands, She-camel raced past a woman bearing musk, you lightly on her skin, Called towards the wadi where hidden from all view but for her, Time traced filaments erased in sounds, you are no nomad, But sprayed stars gather your steed like eunuch's memories of her, Twenty formulas in Egypt, fifteen in Syria, I would add five in Rome, Visitations of the grape, chalice of pure purple wine, These were all the slaves beneath her, beds of perfect flesh, Toned into oases of color and longing, gardening of musk and death, She in Aleppo, twelve in Damascus, the love of remnants, silver cloth, But for nights spent among eunuch and virgin, she whom love abounded, Never abundant, veiled and cut or bladed, hungered by steed or camel, Dark rock in black sky, among vultures, scattered birds, Would have been to sing in Jar al-Buwaira, valley of tamarisks,* Fourteen, and then twelve, and then twelve, she erased, Abounded, there were gazelles, Turban, wild olives and always more, Grain among grain, sand among sand, rock among rock, stream in stream, Wind in wind, sky in sky, earth in earth, wind in earth and sky, ----- *Some would say beyond, or farther, some would say anywhere at all, would say to hear pure sound, would say for perfect presence. ________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 06:53:24 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Lewis Subject: Re: lowell Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'll put in a vote for lowell's notebook, which was brought back into print after a long absence. i find it fascinating stuff -- some of the poems, like Exra Pound, have about five published variant versions -- lowell made corrections on the 2nd printing, published a revised Notebook, broke the volume into smaller volumes, then revised some poems twice in each edition of the selected. there a story there about lowell & the fetish of revising. during his heyday, young acolytes would revise there poems hundreds of times like their mentor. late poems were VERY troubling to his fans, which might account as to why there is no collected to appear (in addition to the editor's dilemma of picking among revisions). still, i think he's a lot more interesting poet in hindsight --now that he no longer grand poobah of verse (it seems that E. bishop has much more of an impact). joel ************************************ JOEL LEWIS penwaves@mindspring.com >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SLEEP FASTER! WE NEED THE PILLOWS! --- Yiddish aphorism <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 04:48:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: fashion victims MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dodie Bellamy wrote (in part): > >My students refered to people who were overly concerned with fashion as > >"fascists." I thought that was clever. Somebody (Abbie Hoffman? or David Bowie, who should know) said that "fashion is fascism." Something in the new and highly recommended _Poetic Briefs_ ("Shadows: New & Selected Dialogues on Poetics by Mark Wallace and Jefferson Hansen") struck me as fascinating commentary on poetic fashion, or perhaps fashion commentary on poetic fascism: "...At a recent reading, I was told the story of a poet who's been having trouble writing lately because he found elements of narrative creeping back into his writing, and he had become so worried about his 'social complicity' that he couldn't write for a long time. And I thought it sounded like a story of someone who was stuck on avant garde writing as closing possibilities, not opening them, because his thoughts on poetry were still riddled with shoulds and shouldn'ts, and 'narrative' for him had become a shouldn't. I thought that was sad, because for me avant garde had always been about saying 'fuck you' to the shouldn'ts, not just about having a new set of them." [MW] Have to admit that what I immediately saw was a cartoon: wretched, disheveled poet sits on a couch, head in hands, while friends to the side whisper "George is disconsolate about the social complicity of his poems." Talk about being "too wrapped up in [your] own importance to leave any breathing space," as Pam Brown quoted Laurie Duggan (on poems of voice). Anyway, thanks to all for the voice posts--many of these have already become important reference points when I argue with myself in the shower. Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 08:46:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: cartoon phrases Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re: Dodie's >>actually i like the phrase "sartorial strategies" --it hisses with >>calculated sibilants, I'd like to hear the phrase spoken by Daffy Duck myself. Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 08:58:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: metal was a mistake Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> you did" and "Metal was a mistake". >re: epigram #2 -- could you give some manner of explication? Hmmm, David, you looked completely conscious at 8am this morning when we met as you stepped from and I hopped on the Red Line, you on the way to work (I suppose) and I returning home after my morning stumble I mean run. Working with metal was a big step in cultural evolution. weapons and plowshares alike. tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:19:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: cartoon phrases In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970519084620.0071bd8c@cais.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tom, you perchance thinking of Sylvester the Cat, who would say it as "thartorial thtrategies"? On Mon, 19 May 1997, Tom Mandel wrote: > Re: Dodie's > > >>actually i like the phrase "sartorial strategies" --it hisses with > >>calculated sibilants, > > I'd like to hear the phrase spoken by Daffy Duck myself. > > Tom > > > Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com > ******************************************************** > Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com > 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 > Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 > ******************************************************** > Join the Caucus Conversation > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 07:42:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism In-Reply-To: <4115DC7841@student.highland.cc.il.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:49 PM +0600 5/17/97, Mr. Kent Johnson wrote: >I heard from a >friend that Paul Hoover's book (the editor of the humoungous (sp?) >Norton _Postmodern American Poetry_), had been selected by none >other than Marvin Bell, most recently author of the very depressing >series "Poems of the Dead Man," and director, I think, of the Iowa >Writer's Workshop, for the "coveted" National Poetry Series! > >I was wondering: Is this cause for rejoicing, embarrassment, second- >thoughts, or factional reconciliation? Certainly, Mr. Hoover's >authority as an arbiter of "Postmodernism" (insofar as he gladly >accepts Mr. Bell's approval) might be called into question? > >I was, in part, wondering, because I heard from a third party that >when Mr. Hoover was in Iowa City a couple months ago, he talked shit >at the bar to Creative Writing students about my friend (and >significantly greater poet than he) Forrest Gander, who was visiting >poet at the time there. Is it possible, I wonder, that Mr. Hoover's >little visit to Iowa City could have had something to do with his >little prize? Hi, this is Kevin Killian, in psychic bewilderment about what is going on in above item. Is Mr. Hoover to be reviled because he accepted some kind of prize from Mr. Marvin Bell? If so, what to be made of Mr. Gander, who accepted some kind of "visiting poet" post from Mr. Bell? I don't get it. Sounds like all of us should stay out of bars, where students congregate, since students will report what we say to our enemies. Report or distort, since I, once a student myself, remember delighting myself in complete invention and once gave such a terrible account of the ancient Katherine Anne Porter that she died a few weeks later. I was also there during Robert Lowell's last poetry reading and yes, went to a bar with him afterwards, and then he got on that plane and, well, died while I was still lying about him! I felt no guilt about this and believe that few students would. If there are other students on this list perhaps you can confirm or deny my suspicions. As for McVay's note that "Jorie Graham is well known for never accepting a gig unless there's something in it for hubby James Galvin too," it's true that Elizabeth Taylor killed her own career by making too many films with Richard Burton. But I keep thinking, God, can't Bruce Willis think of some way to help poor Demi Moore out of her precarious pitch on the lower slopes of hasbeenism? I feel for these people. But now I am thinking that perhaps Johnson means only that Gander should have gotten the award, if he is the "significantly greater poet" than Hoover, while Hoover should have been content with the visiting poet position? I say, give it a rest, all will come right at the end. I'm sure none of these people are half as bad as Johnson has made them out to be. We're only here for a short while and we might as well try to hold out the olive branch and peace, love and understanding. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:47:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon In-Reply-To: <199705182051.NAA10985@f48.hotmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable i actually think jameson is quite a good writer. i wonder why it is that marxist theorists come in for this kind of anti-intellectual bashing, while for example medical research scientists aren't taken to task for the "esoteric jargon" they use to describe simple human functions like breathing or digesting. since the "judge" of the contest is himself a humanist scholar, i suspect some petty generational ressentiment on the part of these contest runners. At 1:51 PM -0700 5/18/97, Hoa Nguyen wrote: >Hi every one. This is Dale Smith via Hoa's machine. Below is an article >I read >in today's local paper from the associated press. I found it quite >telling and >right on. It reveals the distance that has developed between theorists >and mere >mortals who expect language to function as a medium of shared communication >rather than subjective solipsism. Anyway, here's the article: > >************************************************************* > >CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand=E3=E3Looking for a good read? Here are some= writers to >avoid. > >The winner=E3=E3or loser=E3=E3of an academics' Bad Writing Contest announce= d >Friday was >Frederic Jameson, a professor of comparative literature at Duke University = in >North Carolina. > >His book, "Signatures of the Visible," opens with this sentence: > >"The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its >end in >rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an >adjunct to >that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films >necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess >(rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer)." > >Jameson has a significant academic following, contest organizers noted; for >their part, the judges believed reading his prose "was like swimming throug= h >cold porridge." > >Telephone calls to Jameson's home Saturday were not answered. > >All the entries in the contest were from published academic works. The top >three offenders were English professors. The judges observed: "This relia= nce >on jargon is an indication of the death throes of English as an academic >discipline." > >Second place went to Rob Wilson of the University of Hawaii, whose sentence >reads, in part: > >"If such a sublime cyborg would insinuate the future as post-Fordist subjec= t, >his palpably masochistic locations as ecstatic agent of the sublime superst= ate >need to be decoded as the 'now-all-but-unreadable DNA' of the fast >deindustralizing Detroit...." > >The third-place winner kept his sentence short, but to no avail. > >"The lure of imaginary totality is momentarily frozen before the dialectic = of >desire hastens on within symbolic chains," wrote Fred Botting in his 1991 >work, >"Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory." Botting is a >lecturer at >Lancaster University in England. > >The contest showed that academics and major publishing houses have been so >busy >using the "magical incantations of jargon, they've forgotten what real >thinking >is," said contest judge Denis Dutton, senior lecturer in the philosophy of = art >at Canterbury University in Christchurch. > > > > >--------------------------------------------------------- >Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com >--------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:53:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: cartoon phrases In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970519084620.0071bd8c@cais.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" actually tom is was i who liked the phrase not dodie...but then i think fred jameson's a good writer so what do i know... At 8:46 AM -0500 5/19/97, Tom Mandel wrote: >Re: Dodie's > >>>actually i like the phrase "sartorial strategies" --it hisses with >>>calculated sibilants, > >I'd like to hear the phrase spoken by Daffy Duck myself. > >Tom > > >Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com >******************************************************** >Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com >4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 >Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 >******************************************************** > Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 11:06:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: metal was a mistake Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Metal was a mistake--ron preferred the old Rock. (Heavy Metal, and Bronze Age/Stone Age, yes) >>> you did" and "Metal was a mistake". > >>re: epigram #2 -- could you give some manner of explication? > >Hmmm, David, you looked completely conscious at 8am this morning when we >met as you stepped from and I hopped on the Red Line, you on the way to >work (I suppose) and I returning home after my morning stumble I mean run. > >Working with metal was a big step in cultural evolution. weapons and >plowshares alike. > >tom > > > >Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com >******************************************************** >Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com >4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 >Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 >******************************************************** > Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:47:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: 'whose' 'voice'? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A couple of days ago (sorry about that), Hugh Steinberg wrote: "Sylvester Pollet wrote: >Yeah, but Henry, aren't some people allergic to wheat? I don't see what all >the fuss is about myself. Dodie hit it for me. Another way to think of >"voice" is as a synonym for "chops," as in jazz, not lamb. Which doesn't >mean every solo you blow will be the same, but it will have the years >behind it. I think chops is a great way of looking at this voice thing. A lot of problems with the term "voice" is that it's too broad: everyone's got a voice. What's at stake is the nervous desire to make each voice (your voice) unique. This may be a foolish desire, up there with wanting to be a famous poet, but, like Dodie, I don't want my poems to look/sound like anyone else's (especially all those hordes of other MFAs out there). That's why I work on my chops." I like this idea too, but in another context I was thinking about 'voice' & subjectivity. The concept does seem to be attached to the ideal of a singular, settled subjectivity. At which point the famous Aussie modernist poet, Ern Malley came to mind (again: there was a discussion of this wonderful hoax that backfired earlier this year). Because it suddenly occured to me that 'ern' does have 'his' own voice, felt throughout, but its very presence sure does undermine the very concept as attached to that singular, settled subjectivity so much of the poetry the writers on this list write also seeks to question. There's poor young 'ern,' the written effect of two poets (who believed each in his own voice), created by a number of aleotropic means they did not believe in, & yet the poems, which also work much better than they believed could be so, & the poems do seem to have a recogizable 'voice.' Hmm. Indeed. ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 12:09:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: your mail In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII With medical research, it's necessary. I've taught pomo a number of times (graduate level etc.) and still find Jameson turgid. And I do think that a lot of theory has become self-referential, pebbled with reification, etc. - as if there were nothing left to do. Alan ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ and Javascripted text/webpages -- Tel. 718-857-3671, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY 11217 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE CUSEEME 166.84.250 -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:20:48 -0700 Reply-To: MAXINE CHERNOFF Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism Comments: To: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Rumor-mongers: Paul Hoover has not been in Iowa City since, I think, 1974, when one of our friends lived there and went t o library school and nwe visited him. As for the Georgia Prize, Mr. Hoover entered the contest which Mr. Bell happened to judge for that year. Like all people who get chosen by someone, he had no idea who the judge would be and became a finalist on the authority of Bin Ramke. What does this all mean? That perhaps there are better things to talk about than how someone gets a book published. Perhaps if the story of Paul Hoover's visit to an Iowa bar wnhere he conspired with Marvin Bell to get his new book, Viridian (read it, it['s very good and has little to do with Marvin Bell's usual aesthetic) published, is getting circulated in Iowa and on this list, the circulating is perpetrated by people who perhaps wish they had a new book. No? As for who chooses us for what, anyone who has ever taken grant money, accepted a cxheck from a rather compromised source, a federal or local government, and anyone who ever got published by a major press, well I hate to think of where $$ comes from, even for publishing ventures! So Kent Johnson should either check his sources or ask Ted Buczinsky to advice on living purely and simply in harmony with nature outside the military/industrial/university/publishing/Marvin Bell/Iowa City Bar conspiracy. Maxine Chernoff> >other than Marvin Bell, most recently author of the very depressing > >series "Poems of the Dead Man," and director, I think, of the Iowa > >Writer's Workshop, for the "coveted" National Poetry Series! > > > >I was wondering: Is this cause for rejoicing, embarrassment, second- > >thoughts, or factional reconciliation? Certainly, Mr. Hoover's > >authority as an arbiter of "Postmodernism" (insofar as he gladly > >accepts Mr. Bell's approval) might be called into question? > > > >I was, in part, wondering, because I heard from a third party that > >when Mr. Hoover was in Iowa City a couple months ago, he talked shit > >at the bar to Creative Writing students about my friend (and > >significantly greater poet than he) Forrest Gander, who was visiting > >poet at the time there. Is it possible, I wonder, that Mr. Hoover's > >little visit to Iowa City could have had something to do with his > >little prize? > > Hi, this is Kevin Killian, in psychic bewilderment about what is going on > in above item. Is Mr. Hoover to be reviled because he accepted some kind > of prize from Mr. Marvin Bell? If so, what to be made of Mr. Gander, who > accepted some kind of "visiting poet" post from Mr. Bell? I don't get it. > > Sounds like all of us should stay out of bars, where students congregate, > since students will report what we say to our enemies. Report or distort, > since I, once a student myself, remember delighting myself in complete > invention and once gave such a terrible account of the ancient Katherine > Anne Porter that she died a few weeks later. I was also there during > Robert Lowell's last poetry reading and yes, went to a bar with him > afterwards, and then he got on that plane and, well, died while I was still > lying about him! I felt no guilt about this and believe that few students > would. If there are other students on this list perhaps you can confirm or > deny my suspicions. > > As for McVay's note that "Jorie Graham is well known for never accepting a > gig unless there's something in it for hubby James Galvin too," it's true > that Elizabeth Taylor killed her own career by making too many films with > Richard Burton. But I keep thinking, God, can't Bruce Willis think of some > way to help poor Demi Moore out of her precarious pitch on the lower slopes > of hasbeenism? > > I feel for these people. But now I am thinking that perhaps Johnson means > only that Gander should have gotten the award, if he is the "significantly > greater poet" than Hoover, while Hoover should have been content with the > visiting poet position? I say, give it a rest, all will come right at the > end. I'm sure none of these people are half as bad as Johnson has made > them out to be. We're only here for a short while and we might as well try > to hold out the olive branch and peace, love and understanding. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 12:22:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: metal was a mistake > > ... "Metal was a mistake". > > -- could you give some manner of explication? Tom Mandel clears the fog: << Working with metal was a big step in cultural evolution. weapons and plowshares alike. >> ah, thanks, -- I didn't *think* the chap was referring to heavy-metal as a phase of post-rock culture (so to say) [the parallelism from macro- to micro- here could bewilder, in translation] also: now I'm adding Ron P. to the (growing) roster of poets seems I need to do some catchup in regard to -- (having too-spotty an education in the peers (or somewhat-seniors) of my somewhat-seniors at this point) -- << Hmmm, David, you looked completely conscious at 8am this morning when we met as you stepped from and I hopped on the Red Line, you on the way to work (I suppose) and I returning home after my morning stumble I mean run. >> "completely conscious" is perhaps a formidable: supposition I dare not own; -- but happy to say I was on a more leisurely jaunt than you surmise: my dayjob doesnt' start so early (more like 11:30 am, 12:30 pm, depending) -- for quotidian anecdotate here, Tom, I got me a copy of the Sunday NYT at the CVS, a package of Macanudo cigars (at same), and thereafter lazed away some morning hours at Kramerbooks' sidewalk cafe, delighting in the French chitchat (totally beyond my comprehension) issuing from a neighboring table. Also to note (speaking of rock, proto- or post-, got a freebie promotional cassette of Jonny Lang's *Lie To Me* title cut (they even threw in a free video of same) -- for a 16 year old, this young R&B fellow sure knows his blues-voice chops . . . now it's typing time at the Word Processing Center -- but first, a news flash: Germany's Daimler-Benz has developed a prototype "cyber Mercedes" with its own Internet access that works even while the car is moving. The car, undergoing tests in California, has a "smart card" slot in the armrest, infrared ports for laptop networking, a wireless keyboard built into the dash, multimedia screens in the head rests, and a voice activation system for drivers to control the system without taking their hands from the steering wheel. A spokesman says the car "opens up a completely new dimension of options and services" for drivers. (UPI) So when Janis sang, "Oh Lord won'tcha buy me a Mercedes-Benz" . . . she really meant . . . [fill in the blanks] . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:27:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Another thought: The last time Paul Hoover wasn't in Iowa City, he also wasn't "talking shit" about Forrest Gander, whom he and I last saw in SF in fall of this year. Hi, Forrest, if you're listening. Tell you pal Ken Johnson to get his information straight. (Or maybe someone is impersonating PH at Iowa?) Chernoff again ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 12:38:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: er pardon moi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" David Israel's observations re Indian epics are accurate, as far as they go. But there is a whole other universe of epic in India, in all of the vernacular languages, about which very little is known [by us]. For the most part, these epics have been subjected to the techniques of folklore analysis, rather than to what might be called literary analysis [which is to say that attention has been given more to their content, genre, performance, sociology, etc., than to their "literary merit"]. Their subject matter is very diverse [again, not always that "arms and the man" stuff that we might expect]. But one thing that they all have in common is that they are "popular", very literally. As for the Sanskrit epics that David refers to, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana: their authors were in no way "individual writers", even if they are represented as such in the epics themselves. Vyasa and Valmiki [and Homer, for that matter] are "real", I have to say, *only* in the same sense that Zeus or Achilles or Krishna or Arjuna are "real." This is not to say that there were not individual performers who, by means of their verbal, or narrative, or psychological, or other sorts of dexterity, profoundly modified their traditions. But these are "individuals" who operated within a tradition that embraced them, and which they embraced in turn. I don't think that you see "the anxiety of influence" and other literate diseases in them. Their relationship to name and signature is rather intriguing too [but that's another story].. David is also right in pointing out that, in India, epic and Vedic are two entirely distinct strands in the tradition. You might find it interesting to know that the Vedic cognate of the Greek word 'epos" is "vacas", which means "word, utterance, hymn." So my own work isn't so much focussed on the poetics of the epic, as much as on the poetics of the hymn. But for historical reasons there is a connection between these in Indo-European. George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:52:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: cartoon phrases In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:53 AM -0500 5/19/97, Maria Damon wrote: >actually tom is was i who liked the phrase not dodie...but then i think >fred jameson's a good writer so what do i know... > >>>>actually i like the phrase "sartorial strategies" --it hisses with >>>>calculated sibilants, Maria, Actually, I never criticized the phrase--I just criticized the writers' bad taste in using it when a simpler word would have worked better. Some things work in some contexts, but not in others. A lime green scarf with a red pants suit might be yuck, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't look fabulous with a black pants suit. As far as Jameson goes, writing such as in the passage Dale quoted has an appealing poetry to me, the kind of thing I would underline heavily for a chapter, steal from, and then drop the book on the bedroom floor with the other dejecta of my life. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 12:59:02 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: er pardon moi In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 19 May 1997 12:38:20 -0400 from re: Indian epic: everyone should see the great trilogy by Satyajit Ray the name of which of course, neither I nor Blarnes nor Spandrift can remember. In the 2nd film there's a scene of the local brahmin(?) poet intellectual on the stone riverbank in the big city, reciting verses crosslegged to a crowd of attentive seated listeners. Archaic peaceful nostalgic otherworldly. - Blarnes ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:17:08 -0400 Reply-To: CHRIS MANN Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: have you heard? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII paul mccartney now claims to have been asked more questions than anyone ever ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:32:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: voice & refrain For those of us who grew up under the sway of new criticism in which usually the guy in the poem was identified always as "the speaker", and not say Keats, wasn't it also a given that such a speaker would have a "voice."(?) I'm curious and too lazy to research why that "voice" in the poem was called a "speaker" in the first place. For a critical movement that prided itself on pointing out fallacies of one sort or another ("pathetic fallacy") etc. it's ironic (to use another favorite critical expression of the time) to see the old "speaker" and "voice" be given the a perhaps similar "pathetic" heave. I prefer the notion of "signature" in the way that a writer's work, overtime, will achieve that- and within that signature there will be layers and varieties of change (focus, content, rhythms, color etc.) Yet - in the mature work - there is something constant there - and I will refrain from using the word "sensibility" -- since I think that word avoids deeper issues of form, structure, etc. Cheers, Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:44:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: 'whose' 'voice'? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've never understood the idea that Ern Malley "backfired." I thought the point of the hoax was that it was possible for two clever jokers to do much _better_ at modernism by _not_ taking it seriously than one serious determined dilletante could by turning his whole 'vegetative eye' to it. The invention of the poet only works if the poems "work". If the point was to pass rubbish off as great, then whoops! I admired something hateful. Cleaning my shoe, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:50:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: PCBA Bookworks Passing this on for those interested. The show has some great stuff in it, including a Tom Raworth book done by Alastair Johnston & much that works well as visual poetry, often erupting into a 'sculptural' realm. (Would also point out the show, "Artist's Books Today," a survey of sculptural expanded books curated by Carol Barton, through June 14 at the San Francisco Center for the Book, 300 De Haro. 415.565.0545.) Charles Smith ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ B O O K W O R K S The 8th Biennial Pacific Center for the Book Arts Members' Exhibition will be on display in the San Francisco Public Library's 6th Floor Skylight Gallery, Civic Center, through June 28, 1997. What is a book? Should it have words, pages, covers? The works of book artists today try to answer these questions and their answers provide a fascinating and often bizarre look at the ancient form of the book. Where else but in the PCBA show can you see such diversities as Chinese scrolls, wax tablets in the Roman style and surrealist poetry hidden inside kitchen toasters? The members of PCBA represent traditional craftsmanship and innovative experimentation. They are calligraphers, bookbinders, fine printers, book artists and xerographers. Some use the computer to help generate their books; some have never been near a computer in their lives, but rely on good old- fashioned lead and sticky ink to get their words onto paper. Others have forsaken paper altogether and print on Plexiglas, fruit, or match sticks. The exhibitors in this year's show include many well-known book artists from the Bay Area, across the country, and abroad. Newcomers are always encouraged, and the D. Steven Corey Award is given to one artist whose work exemplifies PCBA's pioneering spirit. For more information, please contact Dominic Riley, Exhibition Chair, at 510-525-5614, or the Book Arts and Special Collections Center at 415-557-4560. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 10:59:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Kent Johnson: I'm responding to your post of May 19 in which you claim that my book VIRIDIAN was selected by Marvin Bell for the National Poetry Series because I had schmoozed with him at an Iowa City bar. First, your errors of fact: (1) I have not been in Iowa City since the 1970s. (2) The book won the Georgia Prize, not the National Poetry Series. (3) Marvin Bell does not head the Iowa Writer's Workshop, though he has taught there for many years. (4) I would never slander Forrest Gander. We had dinner with him at Frances Mayes' house in San Francisco in the fall, and he was good company. I have read his work with interest and respect it. (5) Because I did an anthology of postmodern poetry doesn't mean I'm locked into an ideology. I like expressive poetry, too, when it has intelligence and freshness. My anthology, like the magazine NEW AMERICAN WRITING, has been noted for its range. It includes August Kleinzahler, who is very far from being a language poet. (6) The final judge of the Georgia Prize was never announced, at his or her request. The reasons for this are mysterious. I heard through rumor that the judge was Marvin Bell. If so, thanks. And what if he were the judge? Is it somehow wrong for him to pick a poet from outside a given community? You may like Forrest Gander's work better than mine, which is fine. I don't see a necessary opposition between the two of us. I do know that he is open to more than one concept of the poem, which is also my position. I doubt that you have read much of my work. We should ask ourselves why the Ashberys and Ginsbergs were included in anthologies of contemporary American poetry, but the Nathaniel Mackeys and Lyn Hejinians are not. A strict sense of opposition has been the rule, always to the exclusion of the "experimental." But the larger problem is the economy of poetry in the boomer era. Everyone is encamped because of the market niches demanded by too large a supply of poets. Poets become resentful because there isn't enough reward to go around, despite the explosion of prizes, grants, and awards announced in POETS AND WRITERS. I'm responding, by the way, not to your original post but to how it is excerpted in Kevin Killian's response. Could someone backchannel me the original? Paul Hoover ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:06:00 CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Zukowski Subject: er . . . pardon moi Henry, You're referring to, of course, Ray's _Apu Trilogy_: _Panther Panchali_ (Song of the Little Road) 1955 _Aparajito_ (The Unvanquished) 1956 _Apur Sansar_ (The World of Apu) 1959 available individually, or as a boxed set at just about any Border's. Old, scratchy, hard-to-read subtitles, shaky sound, but beautiful, enlightening, and transcendent to film buffs, and those interested in Hinduism and the "Indian Epic." There's a Satyajit Ray Filmography at: http://arts.ucsc.edu/RayFASC/filmographypage.html and a nice little essay about Ray and _The World of Apu_ at: http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_sa/socs/basement/worldofapu.html and many other sites about Ray and his films which can easily be found with just about any web search engine. At 12:59 PM 5/19/97 EDT, you wrote: >re: Indian epic: everyone should see the great trilogy by Satyajit Ray >the name of which of course, neither I nor Blarnes nor Spandrift can >remember. In the 2nd film there's a scene of the local brahmin(?) >poet intellectual on the stone riverbank in the big city, reciting >verses crosslegged to a crowd of attentive seated listeners. Archaic >peaceful nostalgic otherworldly. - Blarnes Peter Zukowski zukowski@uic.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:33:39 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: cartoon phrases Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ah... At 9:52 AM 5/19/97, dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: >At 9:53 AM -0500 5/19/97, Maria Damon wrote: >>actually tom is was i who liked the phrase not dodie...but then i think >>fred jameson's a good writer so what do i know... >> >>>>>actually i like the phrase "sartorial strategies" --it hisses with >>>>>calculated sibilants, > >Maria, > >Actually, I never criticized the phrase--I just criticized the writers' bad >taste in using it when a simpler word would have worked better. Some >things work in some contexts, but not in others. A lime green scarf with a >red pants suit might be yuck, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't look >fabulous with a black pants suit. > >As far as Jameson goes, writing such as in the passage Dale quoted has an >appealing poetry to me, the kind of thing I would underline heavily for a >chapter, steal from, and then drop the book on the bedroom floor with the >other dejecta of my life. > >Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 14:24:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: wasn't someone collecting new onomotopoetica...? dodie just coined a new one -- "dejecta" dejected/derilicts/rejected/objects/and many more e ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:39:20 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism Comments: To: MAXINE CHERNOFF Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:20 AM 5/19/97, MAXINE CHERNOFF wrote: >Dear Rumor-mongers: etc i must say i'm with maxine on this one. not knowing any of the players, this thread struck me as one of those saturated-in-ressentiment exchanges that have little to do with anything other than wounded egos. but that's easy for me to say, precisely since i don't know any of the players and have no particular reason to champion or bash either of messieurs bell ou hoover. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:30:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Landers Subject: Metal was a mistake In-Reply-To: <199705190401.AAA38616@node1.frontiernet.net> from "Automatic digest processor" at May 19, 97 00:01:39 am Content-Type: text Metal was a mistake meaning... 1.) Someone left the ore on the fire? 2.) I was trying to record disco and it came out like Ozzie? 3.) We should never have smelted; people weren't ready for it? 4.) CRO2 wears your heads down? FWIW, I've moved. Selby's got to fix my address. It's Pete Landers Happy Genius 34 Rose Circle Hamlin, NY 14464 It's irregular and #1 is looking very cool. soon. Pete oh, and Re: the anthologist. Doesn't ee cummings have the perfect poem for him? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 14:30:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: have you heard? Chris Mann asks, have you heard: > paul mccartney now claims to have been asked more questions than > anyone ever no I hadn't, but in the gossip-corner of today's Washington Post, there's a report abt. his recent internet fielding of questions from 2 million folks (he didn't manage to answer all of 'em -- but did supposedly address 300, I think they say) -- if McC. alleges as quoted above, the quote has (of course) odd resonance w/ regard to the (let it be said, for now) more famous utterance of the late Lennon, that the Beatles are [or were] "now more popular [or was it, indeed, more famous?] than Jesus Christ" I read the news today oh boy that paul mccarney had just won the war two million surfers typed away but I just had to belch having mucked the mulch d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 14:50:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism Comments: To: maxpaul@SFSU.EDU To Paul Hoover, c/o Maxine Chernoff << . . . I'm responding, by the way, not to your original post but to how it is excerpted in Kevin Killian's response. Could someone backchannel me the original? Paul Hoover >> Since I'm online and have the post from Kent Johnson that is (I believe) in question -- ergo by way of friendly bystanderism, here's sending a copy of same direct to Hoover/Chernoff (& copying Poetics with this, by way of gen. ref. or whatnot) -- regards d.i. / / / / / Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 22:49:12 +0600 From: KENT JOHNSON Subject: dirty postmodernism I just re-subscribed and happy to come back. Let's see...I feel I should contribute some kind of snippet, so here goes: I heard from a friend that Paul Hoover's book (the editor of the humoungous (sp?) Norton _Postmodern American Poetry_), had been selected by none other than Marvin Bell, most recently author of the very depressing series "Poems of the Dead Man," and director, I think, of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, for the "coveted" National Poetry Series! I was wondering: Is this cause for rejoicing, embarrassment, second- thoughts, or factional reconciliation? Certainly, Mr. Hoover's authority as an arbiter of "Postmodernism" (insofar as he gladly accepts Mr. Bell's approval) might be called into question? I was, in part, wondering, because I heard from a third party that when Mr. Hoover was in Iowa City a couple months ago, he talked shit at the bar to Creative Writing students about my friend (and significantly greater poet than he) Forrest Gander, who was visiting poet at the time there. Is it possible, I wonder, that Mr. Hoover's little visit to Iowa City could have had something to do with his little prize? (I would like to say here that if Forrest knew I was writing this, he would be extremely pissed, and he will certainly be when he finds out, but I can't contain myself...). anyway, it's good to be back. I've missed the great people on this list! Even Bromige and Bowering, who write code behind everybody's back. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 15:39:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: from "George Thompson" at May 17, 97 02:05:28 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear George Thompson: First of all, let me apologize for the somewhat snarky tone of my response to your original post. Your opening seemed a bit condescending to "poets", as if they would be too busy rhyming or whatever to have paid attention to the basic intellectual debates about the nature of epic, and I responded somewhat sharply. Excuse me. I still stick to my main, point, however, that the theory you present is just that--theory--whether Parry's or your own--not fact. Your proposal about Homeric formulas or cliches has no claim on truth--it's an imaginative reconstruction based on a philological analysis of texts written down long after the poems were "composed" (whatever that word may mean in this context). We have no way of _knowing_ what function those verbal forms played 3,000 years ago. We can look at how oral traditions today work and argue for parallels, but, again, it's an imaginative leap, not a statement of truth. They could very well have worked the same way all those memorized riffs worked for John Coltrane--as a kind of foundational vocabulary to fall back on or take off from during the process of improvisation. That's as likely as anything else. Classicists have a different imagination of their relationship to epic than poets do--but the difference is not in their access to or awareness of current and past scholarship. It's in the use to which they see that relationship being put. Classicists--and I apologize in advance if I distort a position that's not my own--see themselves as studying the poetry in order to arrive at a more "accurate" measure (perhaps just a new measure) of the origin and development of the form--i.e. a new theory. Poets (those who are interested) need to figure out a relationship in order to proceed with making poems. Neither relationship has a greater claim on "truth". Both are fundamentally imaginative. But poets do seem more forthcoming about that than scholars, who frequently seem to want to cover their tracks. Who, after all, had the more interesting theory of the epic: Virgil, Dante, Milton, Blake, H.D., Olson? or Milman Parry? I know who I think people will be reading 500 years from now. And reading for the news. Best, Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 14:54:27 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jocelyn Emerson Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I want to contribute a note of defense on Marvin's behalf; I worked with him the course of my MFA at Iowa (can I expect to be flamed now?) and have known him for a few years and can tell you that if he did or does pick poets' work for awards, prizes, etc. which are radically different from his own "aesthetic" that wouldn't be at all surprising. He's extremely deft and knowledgable as a reader and can see and value what's going on in a poet's work or in a "school" of poetry like nobody's business. I am not sure what his "tastes" are--but he does know what the hell he's looking at and how to talk about it and value it, to be sure, and to say the very least. Early on in my work here, he recommended I read Scalapino's work as well as someone of "his generation" of people like Hecht in order to think about some problems I was working on in a particulr poem at a formal level. Finally, as the Flannery O' Connor Professor of Letters, he'd be in an easy position to skip "undergaduate workshop teaching duty" or to fill the course with Ph.D.'s from other departments (i.e. not undergraduates)--something he never does and remains strongly commited, from what I can see, to beginning writers here--which is not an elite but state school serving some 400+ per year undergraduate students in various workshops (fiction, poetry, nonfiction): i.e. to a democratic process of teaching and learning. So, any more trash about the Workshop, please check your facts with those of us who are here and don't necessarily find it the worst place on earth to be. Many of the problems cited in these conversations have to do with market issues, the commodification of poetry and the arts, the use of "debates" about the NEA as a smoke screen for the far right to justify and cover their campaigns of terror against women, the poor, people of color and lesbigay people. There are far more relevant issues to discuss about the problems within the poetry industry: how about sexual harrassment at institutions and why MFA programs don't seem to have a problem hiring people (usually men) who have been dismissed or are "on leave" for harassing, intimidating or assaulting students? Now that's some terrifying stuff. Seems we have bigger fish to fry here people if we want to deal with issues which affect us as writers and teachers and which affect our students. Jocelyn Emerson Dear Kent Johnson: > >I'm responding to your post of May 19 in which you claim that my book >VIRIDIAN was selected by Marvin Bell for the National Poetry Series >because I had schmoozed with him at an Iowa City bar. > >First, your errors of fact: > >(1) I have not been in Iowa City since the 1970s. >(2) The book won the Georgia Prize, not the National Poetry Series. >(3) Marvin Bell does not head the Iowa Writer's Workshop, though he has >taught there for many years. >(4) I would never slander Forrest Gander. We had dinner with him at >Frances Mayes' house in San Francisco in the fall, and he was good >company. I have read his work with interest and respect it. >(5) Because I did an anthology of postmodern poetry doesn't mean I'm >locked into an ideology. I like expressive poetry, too, when it has >intelligence and freshness. My anthology, like the magazine NEW AMERICAN >WRITING, has been noted for its range. It includes August Kleinzahler, >who is very far from being a language poet. >(6) The final judge of the Georgia Prize was never announced, at his or >her request. The reasons for this are mysterious. I heard through rumor >that the judge was Marvin Bell. If so, thanks. > >And what if he were the judge? Is it somehow wrong for him to pick >a poet from outside a given community? > >You may like Forrest Gander's work better than mine, which is fine. I >don't see a necessary opposition between the two of us. I do know that he >is open to more than one concept of the poem, which is also my position. >I doubt that you have read much of my work. > >We should ask ourselves why the Ashberys and Ginsbergs were included in >anthologies of contemporary American poetry, but the Nathaniel Mackeys >and Lyn Hejinians are not. A strict sense of opposition has been the >rule, always to the exclusion of the "experimental." > >But the larger problem is the economy of poetry in the boomer era. >Everyone is encamped because of the market niches demanded by too large a >supply of poets. Poets become resentful because there isn't enough reward >to go around, despite the explosion of prizes, grants, and awards >announced in POETS AND WRITERS. > >I'm responding, by the way, not to your original post but to how it is >excerpted in Kevin Killian's response. Could someone backchannel me the >original? > >Paul Hoover ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 13:58:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: your mail MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan Jennifer Sondheim wrote: > > With medical research, it's necessary. Much 'medical' 'research' can be questioned as to its 'necessity'--questionable as well are 'its' illocutionary habits, its ostensible tautological necessaries. > I've taught pomo a number of times > (graduate level etc.) and still find Jameson turgid. ". . . there is the private matter of my own pleasure in writing these texts: it is a pleasure tied up in the peculiarities of my 'difficult' style (if that's what it is). I wouldn't write them unless there where some minimal gratification for myself, and I hope we are not yet too alienated or instrumentalized to reserve some small place for what used to be handicraft satisfaction." (Jameson in _Diacritics_ 12) > And I do think that a > lot of theory has become self-referential, pebbled with reification, etc. > - as if there were nothing left to do. Theories of theories. Self-referentiality and/or re-ificaiton do not necessarily mean quiesence or abjection. 'Re-ification' in particular for Jameson is what he calls the 'meditory code' (following Lukacs) that he writes *in* not *of*. Pebbled perhaps, but more like a Hansel and Gretel minima moralia. A trail surreptitiously left to find one's way out of the forest. That is if one believes in that particular hope of escape, that particulare 'persistence of the dialectic'. But I guess we are in post-theory times. 'Nothing left to do' but mark the return of the real . . . our journal(s) of the plague(s) year(s). mc ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 14:10:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: wasn't someone collecting new onomotopoetica...? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest wrote: > > dodie just coined a new one -- > "dejecta" > > dejected/derilicts/rejected/objects/and many more > > e Julia Kristeva in _Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection_ triangulates the 'abject' subject with the 'deject': "The one by whom the abject exists is thus a *deject*. . . . A deviser of territories, languages, works, the *deject* never stops demarcating his universe whose fluid confines . . . A tireless builder the deject is in short a *stray*. He is on a journey, during the night, the end of which keeps receding . . . the more he strays, the more he is saved." This one of the dejecta on my bedroom floor. It lays atop my Celine novels. mc ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 16:10:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: Announcement Query... (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 14:38:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Other Voices To: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu Subject: Announcement: Other Voices __________________________________________________________________________ *** OTHER VOICES *** An Electronic Journal of Critical Inquiry Published by the Students of the University of Pennsylvania http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~othervcs __________________________________________________________________________ Other Voices, a new electronic journal based at the University of Pennsylvania, has just released its first issue. Other Voices is a quarterly publication dedicated to interdisciplinary criticism in the humanities and social sciences founded in March 1997 in response to the limited number of local publications highlighting advanced undergraduate and graduate work in the humanities. Other Voices is dedicated to publishing criticism and research that both reflects current scholarship and highlights the diversity of the University of Pennsylvania's academic environment. It is not envisioned as a forum for editorial opinion or discussion of current events per se, but instead as a challenge to students who would wish to critically analyze specific cultural products, contemporary thought, or our current historical circumstances from within a variety of discursive frames. Its format is conceived specifically as an alternative to both the one-dimensionality common in standard political and literary publications, and the superficiality of the op-ed newspaper piece. *** Table of Contents, vol. 1, no. 1 *** Reading in the Ruins Articles: * Death Reckoning in the Thinking of Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida * The Dialectics of Allegoresis: Historical Materialism in Walter Benjamin's Illuminations * Falling into Time: The Historicity of the Symbol * Georg Lukacs: The Antimonies of Melancholy * Necromancy and Necrophagia: The Movement of Oscillation in S/Z * Tell him that I...Women Writing the Holocaust Interviews/Lectures: * Odysseus and the Siren Call of Reason: The Frankfurt School Critique of Enlightenment Hypertext Projects: * Fragments of the Passagenwerk: Reading in the Ruins Book Reviews: * David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity * William Scheuerman, Between the Norm and the Exception: The Frankfurt School and the Rule of Law *** CALL FOR PAPERS *** Other Voices is currently accepting submissions for its next issue (Vol. 1 No. 2). These should be received (by email or post) NO LATER THAN: May 30th, 1997 Submissions recieved after that date will be held for future consideration. In lieu of standard paper publication, Other Voices takes advantage of the capabilities of the Internet for author/reader interaction, public dialogue, and multimedia presentation. Thus, submissions may take a variety of forms ranging from more traditional academic essays and book reviews to multimedia presentations involving video, inline images, sound and text. Individual issues of the journal are constructed around a core of six to eight scholarly articles; one or two hypertext/multimedia projects; a transcribed lecture, panel discussion or interview; and a variable number of book reviews. We strongly encourage our readership to submit suggestions for projects falling outside of this scope. Submissions from any source are warmly welcomed; however, we especially encourage participation by students of the University of Pennsylvania and other regional universities in the local tri-state area. Please consult the our site for specific information on formating requirements. *** Contact Information *** Snail Mail: Other Voices Attn: Vance Bell P.O. Box 31907 Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA E-mail: Editors, othervcs@dolphin.upenn.edu We look forward to your involvement and appreciate your feedback!!! Sincerely, Vance Bell vbell@dept.english.upenn.edu Editor-in-Chief Other Voices ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 15:08:37 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism On 17 May, Kent Johnson wrote: > > >I heard from a > > >friend that Paul Hoover's book (the editor of the humoungous (sp?) > > >Norton _Postmodern American Poetry_), had been selected by none > > >other than Marvin Bell, most recently author of the very depressing > > >series "Poems of the Dead Man," and director, I think, of the Iowa > > >Writer's Workshop, for the "coveted" National Poetry Series! > > > > > >I was wondering: Is this cause for rejoicing, embarrassment, second- > > >thoughts, or factional reconciliation? Certainly, Mr. Hoover's > > >authority as an arbiter of "Postmodernism" (insofar as he gladly > > >accepts Mr. Bell's approval) might be called into question? > > > > > >I was, in part, wondering, because I heard from a third party that > > >when Mr. Hoover was in Iowa City a couple months ago, he talked shit > > >at the bar to Creative Writing students about my friend (and > > >significantly greater poet than he) Forrest Gander, who was visiting > > >poet at the time there. Is it possible, I wonder, that Mr. Hoover's > > >little visit to Iowa City could have had something to do with his > > >little prize? > > On 19 May, Kevin Killian wrote: > > Hi, this is Kevin Killian, in psychic bewilderment about what is going on > > in above item. Is Mr. Hoover to be reviled because he accepted some kind > > of prize from Mr. Marvin Bell? If so, what to be made of Mr. Gander, who > > accepted some kind of "visiting poet" post from Mr. Bell? I don't get it. > > > > Sounds like all of us should stay out of bars, where students congregate, > > since students will report what we say to our enemies. Report or distort, > > since I, once a student myself, remember delighting myself in complete > > invention and once gave such a terrible account of the ancient Katherine > > Anne Porter that she died a few weeks later. I was also there during > > Robert Lowell's last poetry reading and yes, went to a bar with him > > afterwards, and then he got on that plane and, well, died while I was still > > lying about him! I felt no guilt about this and believe that few students > > would. If there are other students on this list perhaps you can confirm or > > deny my suspicions. > > > > As for McVay's note that "Jorie Graham is well known for never accepting a > > gig unless there's something in it for hubby James Galvin too," it's true > > that Elizabeth Taylor killed her own career by making too many films with > > Richard Burton. But I keep thinking, God, can't Bruce Willis think of some > > way to help poor Demi Moore out of her precarious pitch on the lower slopes > > of hasbeenism? > > > > I feel for these people. But now I am thinking that perhaps Johnson means > > only that Gander should have gotten the award, if he is the "significantly > > greater poet" than Hoover, while Hoover should have been content with the > > visiting poet position? I say, give it a rest, all will come right at the > > end. I'm sure none of these people are half as bad as Johnson has made > > them out to be. We're only here for a short while and we might as well try > > to hold out the olive branch and peace, love and understanding. [a re-post here, the below sent this morning (but not posted) before various posts by Paul Hoover, Maxine Chernoff, and others.] To the list: One thing I will never do again is come up to the computer with a chip on my shoulder after over-celebrating the dawn of summer break with open-walleted colleagues. The truth is that Kevin Killian above lets me off the hook fairly easily, I think. My post on "dirty postmodernism" was idiotic and, like most dirty gossip, devoid of logical argument. I regret it, and offer, for what it's worth, an apology to Paul Hoover, whom I've never even talked to, and to Forrest, whom I certainly embarrassed by bringing up his name in such a context without any permission from him. And, for the stained record, it turns out that my comment about Paul Hoover "talking shit" about Forrest to the latter's students (the cause of my indignation) was based on misinformation heard from someone I haven't mentioned. What a way to come back to the list and say hello. Now, I still do think that there is some interesting irony in Mr. Hoover (an arbiter and champion of radical American poetics) being selected by Mr. Bell (a long-time arbiter and champion of the standard) and I wouldn't retract my questions relating to it. And I think the matter is interesting because it seems to have something to do with the "avant-garde's" relation to the culture industry (or at least its willing (or unwitting) absorption into it. I realize the issue is an old one and maybe it's just a little thing- - so what, as Kevin says, if Bell selected Hoover's book? Isn't it better if we all just get along and extend the olive branches of prestigious awards to one another? But I wonder about the imperceptible accretion of those small things and where they lead. I remember being in Holland last year and going into a museum and coming upon all these collages by Schwitters encased in massive, gilded frames... Maybe there's nothing to be done about it. > Anyway, my main point here is to apologize. > > Kent > > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 16:22:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Jameson's prose In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" and don't lets forget Jameson has written that he includes himself (e.g., in _Marxism and Form_) among Marxist theorists (Adorno, Sartre) who have attempted to "include the dialectical process in every sentence" (this paraphrase from memory is originally from _Search for a Method_, I think*), a 'method' of writing that deliberately complicates the grammar in a manner not necessarily unlike the work of some of our listees, who attempt to make the act of reading more clear, all it glorious complexity _________________ *maybe _Between Marxism and Existentialism_?** ___________________ **wherever it is I never read even the original (?) translation, only read it quoted by Jameson, of that I am absolutely sure PS: I also think that of the 3 winners (losers) of that ridiculous prize, the difference between Jameson's prose and that of either of the other two is marked ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 16:38:59 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: wasn't someone collecting new onomotopoetica...? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest wrote: > > dodie just coined a new one -- > "dejecta" > > dejected/derilicts/rejected/objects/and many more > > e In lurk mode, thanks eliza for pointing out, will stick in the dictionary of neologisms. miekal beyond words -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 17:36:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: oral epithets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Some comments on Kenneth W Sherwood's comments: >Veering left at the epithet 'oral formulaic', I want to suggest that the >'formula' bears about as much relation to oral poetries as the couplet >does to written ones. A formal device that's a special case getting >generalized to the whole. > I wouldn't blame anyone for expressing annoyance with some of the early, excessive, claims of Parry and Lord and other early theorists of the formula. But I don't agree with this suggestion at all. I myself try to avoid making large universal claims that are beyond my competence to defend, or simply beyond proof in any sense. So I have never said that *all* oral poetry is formulaic. But I do think that the formula exists at a far deeper level of linguistic structure than the couplet does. And that it is important to understand it before throwing it out. >>From what I've read on oral poetry, there is no instance of strictly >'formulaic' (in Parry's sense) poetry coming from firmly oral traditions. >The Yugoslav poets Parry and Lord work from compose in a borderline >literate context. Homer comes down to us through numerous textual stages >which impinge on the relation of formula and orality. First there is *at least* one sure "instance of strictly 'formulaic' (in Parry's sense) poetry coming from firmly oral traditions" -- and that is Vedic. Completely pre-literate. Highly formulaic. You will not understand Vedic very well if you don't pay attention to its formulaic patterns. The problem here is that the *transmission* of oral poetic traditions to us, here at our desks, ultimately has to pass through some written stage. Sure. But I myself am convinced that at their roots [in "Homer"] both the Ill and the Odd also were orally composed and largely formulaic. > >Check out Evers/Molina's _Yacqui Deer Songs_ or Tedlock's _Finding the >Center_ for instances of non-formulaic oral poetry. Meanwhile, forget >about formula-- a concept overemphasizing the 'cultural preserving' >aspects of oral poetry. The existence of just a few non-formulaic poetries [*if* such a thing could actually exist, theoretically speaking] does not mean that there are not many, many more *significantly* formulaic poetries out there. And there are. And finally, the formula has many other aspects than these 'cultural preserving' aspects, which, I agree, have been over-emphasized. Formulas also have, just for example, poetic features: i.e., they can be used to contribute to poetic structure. They also have what is called "phatic" features: they generate a sense of complicity, community, comfort, between performer and audience. etc., George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 17:41:50 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 19 May 1997 10:59:59 -0700 from On Mon, 19 May 1997 10:59:59 -0700 Paul Hoover said: > >We should ask ourselves why the Ashberys and Ginsbergs were included in >anthologies of contemporary American poetry, but the Nathaniel Mackeys >and Lyn Hejinians are not. A strict sense of opposition has been the >rule, always to the exclusion of the "experimental." > >But the larger problem is the economy of poetry in the boomer era. >Everyone is encamped because of the market niches demanded by too large a >supply of poets. Poets become resentful because there isn't enough reward >to go around, despite the explosion of prizes, grants, and awards >announced in POETS AND WRITERS. The question we shd ask ourselves here has been one of the perennial topics on this list. And I happen to agree with the statement in the second paragraph. The unstated corollary, however, is that the "experimental" has also become a niche (as a way of dealing with "the larger problem"). The only solution is narrative: write stories which contain the poetic para-narrative (in verse, of course) presenting the encapsulation of boomer destiny in a suitable award-winning minus-zero centigrade of "originality" ("The most original writers are, of course, the most accomplished imitators" - Eric Blarnes) and "experiment" ("Experimented on a gopher once" - Jack Spandrift). And remember, in non-literate cultures, "niche" rhymes with "cliche". - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 15:12:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: more "of" In-Reply-To: <970518214835_-1130827082@emout16.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "Metal was a mistake" as in Iron Butterfly? _____________ re: the bad writing contest -- I don't know about everybody else, but it seems to me that the Jameson passage, for all its demerits, is far surpassed by the second and third place examples -- I smell an ideological preference in the judging ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 18:18:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: dirty postmodernism / niche >And remember, in non-literate cultures, "niche" rhymes with "cliche". - > Henry Gould hey, same place where Rilke rhymes w/ Milk? (Anne Beattie pointed that one out, in a novel) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 08:32:00 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Subject: where the sea stands still - ICA May 27th Comments: To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable *** apologies for cross-postings and shameless self-promotion *** WHERE THE SEA STANDS STILL a performance reading with cybertextual projections original Chinese poetic sequence by Yang Lian cybertextual design and scripting by John Cayley English translations by Brian Holton additional calligraphy by Qu Leilei and visual material by Gao Xingjian & John Cayley Part of the 'Fortune Cookies' season ("of experimental and subversive performances and installations from across the Chinese diaspora") at The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London May 27th | 20:00 | Theatre 8 pounds | 6 pounds members and concessions 'Where the Sea Stands Still' is a poetic sequence by the contemporary Chinese poet, Yang Lian. John Cayley has worked it into a 'performance hypertext.' Yang and Cayley will perform live against a projected text which plots it's own pathway through the sequence, "as words and images collide and weave together in a network of poetic meaning." The previously published paperbound version of 'Where the Sea Stands Still' (parallel text) is available from the ICA Bookstore at =A33.50, or direct from the publisher, WellSweep, 1 Grove End House, 150 Highgate Road, London NW5 1PD, (0171) 267 3525, ws@shadoof.demon.co.uk. There will be a Web version of the piece, at the ICA web site . This will be online by the date of the performance. On the same bill, Chinese Artnet will perform: 'The Horse and the Buffalo' "a multi-media piece combining poetry, music and computer generated ideograms..." -------------- ALSO ESSENTIAL in the same season: Xu Bing A BOOK FROM THE SKY + SQUARE WORDS: NEW ENGLISH CALLIGRAPHY + A CASE STUDY IN TRANSFERENCE 24-26 May | 12:00-20:00 Nash and Brandon Rooms =46ree with day membership A rare opportunity to see three works by Xu Bing, a controversial and acclaimed Beijing artist, now living in exile in the USA. A *must* for all poetically-inclined and cross-art grammatologists. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > John Cayley / Wellsweep Press http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/ 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD UK Tel & Fax: (+44 171) 267 3525 Email: cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 23:15:02 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: voice & refrain Stephen Vincent wrote: For those of us who grew up under the sway of new criticism in which usually the guy in the poem was identified always as "the speaker", and not say Keats, wasn't it also a given that such a speaker would have a "voice."(?) I'm curious and too lazy to research why that "voice" in the poem was called a "speaker" in the first place. __________________ This is so, I believe, because in the NC approach is the assumption that the writer wears a kind of 'mask' when he/she writes, and thus a distinction needs to be drawn between the person of the writer and and the person of the poem. I think there is some value to the notion, since writers I think often make the distinction themselves in writing (though not all of them all the time to be sure). __________________ For a critical movement that prided itself on pointing out fallacies of one sort or another ("pathetic fallacy") etc. it's ironic (to use another favorite critical expression of the time) to see the old "speaker" and "voice" be given the a perhaps similar "pathetic" heave. _________________ I think the notion of speaker re: NC is fundamentally different from 'voice,' at least the way the latter term is used nowadays. 'Speaker' is a way of distancing the poem from the poet so that the poem may be treated as 'art object,' whereas 'voice' I think implies the foregrounding of the writer him/her-self. DT _________________ I prefer the notion of "signature" in the way that a writer's work, overtime, will achieve that- and within that signature there will be layers and varieties of change (focus, content, rhythms, color etc.) Yet - in the mature work - there is something constant there - and I will refrain from using the word "sensibility" -- since I think that word avoids deeper issues of form, structure, etc. Cheers, Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 16:10:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: wasn't someone collecting new onomotopoetica...? In-Reply-To: <3380C1CC.6C02@bitstream.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 2:10 PM -0700 5/19/97, michael corbin wrote: >Julia Kristeva in _Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection_ triangulates >the 'abject' subject with the 'deject': "The one by whom the abject >exists is thus a *deject*. . . . A deviser of territories, languages, >works, the *deject* never stops demarcating his universe whose fluid >confines . . . A tireless builder the deject is in short a *stray*. He >is on a journey, during the night, the end of which keeps receding . . . >the more he strays, the more he is saved." Though I believe that Gideon should put out an edition of _Powers of Horror_, I came upon dejecta via Catherine Clement's "The Guilty One" in _The Newly Born Woman_ (Minnesota, 1986), a book that was originally published in France in 1975. Clement's essay, which covers many of the very things that sound so dopey in 70s American feminism and makes them fascinating, reclaimed 70s feminism for me. On page 37 she compares the writer to the hysteric (in response to an anonymous text about coughing up dead words): "A wonderful anonymous text . . . which connects the hysterical cough to writing. The writer puts his dejecta on paper. But with this difference, radical in its effects: the symbolic inscription of the written wastes is published and passes into another register. That is where the passionate thread of these wandering associations stops. For the hysteric does *not* write, does *not* produce, does nothing--nothing other than makes things circulate without inscribing them." But I've seen dejecta many a place since then. It *is* one of my favorite words, I use it whenever I get the chance I love it so much. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 00:20:17 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: He does the List in Diff'rent V'ices Oops--apologies to Dodie... DT ---------- From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM[SMTP:rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM] Sent: Monday, May 19, 1997 12:28 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: He does the List in Diff'rent V'ices >Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 12:49:32 +-900 >From: Daniel Tessitore >Subject: Re: Kara Walker's "voice" > >rsilliman wrote: > >Many of the criticisms of voice poetry "voiced" here were about how the >point of it is to make the "I" sound deep. We're not really supposed to >share the epiphany, we're supposed to marvel at the epihaner. But, I think >the non-I in many "language-centered" works is just as manipulative and >transparent. Instead of an emotional epiphany we're lead to an >intellectual epiphany--and in the worst scenerio what we're really supposed >to marvel at is the smarts of the non-I who's generating this text. > >______________ > >Thanks for crystallizing this so well. You're welcome. But I didn't write that. Dodie did. Sincerity is not about exposing the writer's soul, sincerity is a tone, an >effect." The presence of the author, to me, would only make the experience >of "abandonment" more sexy. I agree completely. As I'm sure, you'll agree, Ron, a well-constructed theory >book can be most thrilling. "There is nothing better than a theory." C. Harryman The problem with the book (aside from the fact >that the writers didn't seem to have any ideas) was the clumsy use they >made of theory buzz words. For instance, when they were talking about >Brook's and Barney's tendency to adopt the clothing of male dandies, the >writers would consistently refer to this as their "sartorial strategies." >After a while the point of the chapter seemed really to be how many >different ways they could work in their buzz-baby "sartorial strategies." >Not that one should never write "sartorial strategies," but in some cases, >"cross dressing," a term which seemed to scare them, would have been less >awkward. The writers, to me, seemed pretentious, but more than that to be >terribly insecure, lacking confidence in what they were saying. If they >were less sincere, more into creating effects, I think the book might have >worked better. > No room for "gender fuck"? It sounds like yet another instance of under- editing, a phenomenon that is the true intellectual movement of our time vis a vis critical writing. Ron Ron Silliman When this you see 262 Orchard Road Remember me Paoli, PA 19301-1116 (610) 251-2214 (610) 293-6099 (o) (610) 293-5506 (fax) rsillima@ix.netcom.com rsillima@tssc.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 00:20:21 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: voice & refrain and... For about a year now, and especially since the 'voice' thread began, I've been mulling over what seems to be/have been a surge in the use of 'dramatic monologue.' In the past few years I've seen what seems to be a proliferation of books with 'characters,' often enough set in specific historic periods. Right away Voigt's "Kyrie" comes to mind, a book which is if I'm not mistaken a semi-epistolary sonnet series based in the post-WWI Spanish flu-pandemic. My question to the list is, if there is a surge in the first place, what if anything does it represent with regards to attitudes about 'voice,' 'speaker,' the value placed on personal experience,...? Is it a kind of backlash against the private world(s) of poets, or a fumbling around for new 'subjects'...? Any thoughts? DT ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 02:26:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Neg. Cap. (oh providence and the russians) So, obsessing on negative capability--- As a critical terms with CREDENTIALS stemming from two letters by a poet who had none.... And the contradictions you pointed out in Providence may "stem" from the two different letters-- One is about the "chameleon poet" (b[o]y george) who is everything and nothing-- and for whom EVIL is just a matter for speculation (i think Harriet monroe yelled at wallace stevens for that one) and the OTHER letter is the one about the IRRITABLE GROPING, which seems to contradict the other one on a certain level because this requires some sense of a stable identity, an integrated personality. They become complementary symbiotic nemeses (hiss). One man's "speculation" is another's "irritable groping"--It may have a lot to do with the tension between ESTABLISHING an identity on (or in or by or through or as) the indeterminacy of writing and NOT NEEDING to do so because one has LIFE for that, and suddenly (voila or POOF), there's no need to.... ---- Oh(m) or O(h)m--- ------ Me thinks I'm getting personal again.... went to a lot of poetry readings last week (well, this is relative--a lot for me). Jennifer Moxley was great....read New stuff... then saw Larry Price....also great (but didn't read enough) Was doing okay at Garret Kalleberg and Lewis Warsh reading too.... Unfortunately, by sunday (talisman book party--much food and books called WORDFLOW--and anselm berrgan, who's quite intensely loopy, back and forth dialogic not, LUCKILY, a synthesis, between push and pull of ego language language ego though anxiety because anxiety too much performance pressure but doesn't seem to get in the way negatively more than anybody else's burden, familial or otherwise)-- unfortunately by sunday, i was burnt on the scene and feeling bitter again and thinking that there are certain writers (not the one's mentioned above) who don't seem to NEED writing as a compensation, or integral part of their identity, but who think their plain selves are a sight too behold and who are kinda cocky and snobby and oh so cool about their "trip" and that this becomes a doubled edged questionmark i choke on even in the spitting up of celery as a salary and the art-life wall collapses for those who are not on the wrong side of the one-way mirror waving the banner "LIFE LIFE LIFE" as if it's a cereal killer and I'll be branded and (which could be contrasted with or, but back in shakespeare's day it was synonymous with IF ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 19:17:34 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: v=o=i=c=e This thing dabout v=o=i=c=e: Why would people who still attach their names to poems want to have something to say about it? My friend Motokiyu asked that, and he predicted that few would would sincerely care about following the question to its conclusions, and I predict that he was right. There are too many Georgia poetry prizes to win. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 01:47:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth W Sherwood Subject: arguing orality MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII George: It's great to have some engagement on these issues. Thanks for picking up the thread! Glad we agree at least that the mnemonic function of formulae has been overemphasized. But can the term now be separated from these concerns? For the poetic (structural) and performative features in this family I prefer something like repetition, or riff-- which leads to parallelism and other aural effects (which fascinate me in oral and written poetries). I think we're having a difference of opinion that's pretty well established. Interesting evidence of the rift among oralists can be found in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetics where Lord writes the entry on oral poetry (pretty much collapsing it into oral formulaic theory, ie. treating 'oral poetry' and 'oral formulaic poetry' as nearly synonomous). [Compare the entry on Ethnopoetics] Here Lord defines 'formula' as "a word or group of words regularly used under given metrical conditions to express a given essential idea." This regularity and the push to expression of given essential ideas reflects the kind of focus on oral-art-as- cultural-preservation that I gestured towards earlier. I'll admit not knowing my Vedic; but Walter Ong's _Orality and Literacy_ casts pretty strong doubts (to my mind persuasive) on their purely oral foundation. (Meaning that the formulaic elements, however present, could have grown from brushes with literacy. His larger point, which I suspect you'd concur with, is to emphasize that verbatim repetition is not characteristic of 'oral' poetry.) You write: The existence of just a few non-formulaic poetries [*if* such a thing could actually exist, theoretically speaking] does not mean that there are not many, many more *significantly* formulaic poetries out there. Perhaps I'm missing the theoretical impasse--but any time a song is improvised, can't it be non-formulaic. Now I guess what constitutes a significant degree of formulaic pattern is debatable. (This I guess was part of the Parry mission, to persuade that the level of formulaic patterning in Homer showed it to be 'oral'-- bear with me, I'm no classicist.) Quibbling aside, if I read the above right you are suggesting that non-formulaic oral poetry IS the EXCEPTION rather than the rule. I'll give you Vedic and Yugoslav Epic, and throw in one or to others... but still my understanding is that much oral poetry is in no meaningful way 'formulaic'--does not rely on a restricted collection of epithets for composition. This (what I'll call an) erring toward the formulaic seems like a tendency of folks for whom oral poetry is an ancient (dead) art. And formula let's em have there cake and eat it too with respect to Epic--the text is relatively stable (cf. masterpieces of literature); is oral in origin; was conceivably spoken by one 'man' (call him Homer or Singer of the Tribe if you like) in one voice; a proto-author. (Here I betray my sense the Kalevala, said to be a reconstructed epic, is in fact a written Epic composed from oral sources, that there perhaps can be no Oral Epics like the Odyssesy, unless the corpus of the blues, taken as a whole and assembled end-to-end (stretching to the moon) is the great African American Epic.) Just a few miles up or down the road from here (Buffalo, NY) one could seek out non-formulaic oral poetry. I mentioned a few examples, last post, of books on my shelf. I'll add now the whole run of ALCHERINGA/Ethnopoetics. Most Native American poetry... etc. Should we take this back channel soon? Back to you, Ken ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 03:12:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: thedeathofthekennethauthorangertrashtalktrashtalk Yeah, and the worst think about it is that I hear MARVIN BELL had the audacity to sign MARJORIE PERLOFF'S NAME to an article in which the death of the author is invoked to justify play (AS LONG AS IT ISN'T IN MY BACK YARD---see Derrida for practice/preach dualism "reinscribed") in which the UNAMBOMBER fesses us to being FOREST GUMP i mean gander and the pen that wrote YASUDA is found in the home of PAUL HOOVER while the swan falls into the firebird and none of the big publishers like my idea for a coffee table book called PIGEONS (go figure). signed, the geisha girl on skis......... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 23:40:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Jameson's Prose MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I want to understand Jameson's sentence. Calling the contest's judge a "humanist" or sniffing ideological bias--both true, as I know from another List--still does not help me make more than vague sense of Jameson's sentence. Nor does Michael Corbin's defense help: > Self-referentiality and/or re-ificaiton do not necessarily mean > quiesence or abjection. 'Re-ification' in particular for Jameson is what > he calls the 'meditory code' (following Lukacs) that he writes *in* not > *of*. Pebbled perhaps, but more like a Hansel and Gretel minima moralia. > A trail surreptitiously left to find one's way out of the forest. That > is if one believes in that particular hope of escape, that particulare > 'persistence of the dialectic'. Not enough trail here for me, although, as with reading Jameson's sentence, I can vaguely see where I am. I read posts here that unabashedly paraphrase difficult poems. So can those who attacked the Bad Writing Contest and defended Jameson explain his *sentence*? "The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer)." You don't need to rehash Jameson's theory or its aims. Assume I'm willing to sympathize with his dialectic, have read his own defense (in _Marxism and Form_) of the prose he claims to imitate, and know that your explanation will lose the poetry in the translation. My guess, however, is that some of your explanations will lose nothing, do better what Jameson intended to do, and show that at least in this sentence he wrote very badly. Lucidly, Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 23:12:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Mas Voces Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dan Zimmerman wrote: >Steve, > I want to thank you for your reportage on SF readings, and to ask how >your selection of lines might relate to the current "voice" discussion, >i.e., does your selection reflect a "voice" you "hear" more than >others--a transpersonal voice incarnating itself occasionally in various >poets who happen to have listened to the same channel on Cocteau's >radio? Do those lines resonate with your own "voice"? Do they contrast >with or reply to it? Do they exemplify exactly what you would, after >hearing them, strive never to imitate or reproduce in any even >paraphrasable rendition/karaoke? You seem in a good position to >contribute something to this "voice" discussion. Wouldja, wouldja? >Dan Zimmerman Well, I'll try. My experience is that most, anywhere from 50 to 95% generally speaking, of what I hear at poetry readings is the equivalent of chatter. I'm by no means excepting my own poetry when I say this. Every so often, a line will come into being with a resonance in it that calls for remembering. When the chattering voice becomes the calling voice, I start writing. The challenge then is to hold the whole line in my inner ear until I have it all written down, cause if the next line is also in the calling voice, it will often replace the half-written one and I won't be able to write down either. It's transpersonal in that it's always the calling voice, but each poet sounds the call in hir own accent (to put it metaphysically as well as geographically). So, sometimes the voice does resonate with my own in that I recognize the "dialect" as if from a locale I've stayed in (I can often, though not always, tell when someone's been influenced by the Celan of _Breathturn_, since I've been reading that obsessively since Pierre Joris' translation came out); at other times, and this is getting more rare as I spend more time on the planet, the voice will strike me as utterly otherworldly, something I couldn't have conceived of sounding like. My natural tendency is to try to speak the dialect, that is, to mimic a new and interesting voice; but there are plenty of exceptions to that, things that, for whatever reason, I don't think sound interesting when spoken in my voice. ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 22:31:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Now They Know How Many Poets... Comments: To: maz881@aol.com, CHRIS1929W@aol.com, Levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, daviesk@is4.NYU.EDU, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, drothschild@penguin.com, jdavis@panix.com, jms@acmenet.net, maj6916@u.cc.utah.edu, AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM, jarnot@pipeline.com, lgoodman@acsu.buffalo.edu, lppl@aol.com, poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, aburns@fnbank.com, normacole@aol.com, acornford@igc.org, olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbg.com, tlovell@sfsu.edu, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, peacock99@aol.com, murphym@earthlink.com, cburket@sfsu.edu, selby@slip.net, cah@sonic.net, doug@herring.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ...It takes to fill New Langton Arts. Saturday, May 17th, through dawn on Sunday the 18th, Alex Cory took over the literary directorship of New Langton Arts with a marathon reading dubbed, "A Night in the Life of San Francisco Writing." I have no notes to report from, since I was busy manning a camera for the first 3 hours and a little overwhelmed by heat and the sheer magnitude of the beast to do much after that, but I had a great time and I'll share what I can of the event with you. Anyway, the whole thing was captured on 3 video cameras and a cassette recording made using a clip-on mic, with a fourth camera interviewing poets upstairs, so watch for the documentary in the future. Each writer read for approximately 15 minutes: Lyn Hejinian kicked things off just after 4 PM by reading a new piece and an older one. She was followed by Kit Robinson, who read the complete "Messianic Trees." Next Robert Gluck read a couple of funny prose pieces on community, one literary, the other residential. Jean Day followed, then Bill Berkson, reading a few things, including some for Ginsberg. Next came Robert Hale, Laura Moriarty, Avery Burns. New College newcomer Jono Schneider read from his "100 Pages Which Scrape the Face of 'God'". Jack and Adelle Foley gave their usual energetic performance of 2 pieces, one for Allen Ginsberg, one for Jake Berry. Aaron Shurin followed with new work, then Gloria Frym read recent prose-poems. Kevin Killian read from his Argento series to record it for posterity, then Benjamin Hollander read his work "Onome". George Albon read from three different projects, one old, one new, and one kind of both (he wrote back through poems he'd written in high school, sometimes incorporating lines but more often simply commenting on the original work somehow). I got off my shift on the camera and was incredibly hungry, so I went across the street to Pizza Love for a slice of cheese with pineapple. I missed Leslie Scalapino and most of Rodrigo Toscano in the process, but believe me, it was unavoidable. Craig Dworkin read poems and made intriguing phonemic gestures, to be followed by Norma Cole, Jaime Robles, and Robin Trembley-McGaw. Darin DeStefano then read some new work, including a long poem (he said he'd never read a long poem before because he hated it when people read long poems at readings). Linda Voris next read some prose-poems laid out four-square on the page (she showed us), followed by Faith Barrett, then Scott Bentley, and Alicia Wing read from her just-completed (after 2 years and 7 months, you go, girl!) manuscript. Glenn Ingersoll was next, but I had to get some fresh air and quiet my mind and figure out what I was going to read (sorry Glenn!) so I sneaked out again. By now it was after 11:00 PM and Camille Roy was up with that great short bleached hair, straight-leg jeans and ripped up but still wearable Converse look, reading from her work about jaded 15-year-olds. Renee Gladman followed with what I thought was one of the highlights of the festival (just wait for the film). Eric Selland read from new work (prose poems) and old, followed by Pamela Lu reading a serial poem, Katie Lederer performing a serial poem about a girl and her dad. Lauren Gudath and Kathy Lou Schultz followed Katie, then Travis Ortiz read his dense philosophical poetry. Lytle Shaw, Jocelyn Saidenberg, and then it was my turn. It was 1:45 am. I'd been scheduled for 1:30, so considering the huge number of readers, we weren't too far off schedule. There were still maybe 15 people in the audience (during the peak hours, there were maybe 60 people in the room, and people would rotate in and out with each new reader). I read some new poems, most of the recently-published "brushstrokes", some autobiographical stuff about growing up in the suburbs listening to punk rock, and finished with "Oxygen" from DRUGS. It was 2 am and I was beat, and I had to work Sunday, so I had to leave. Thus, I missed: Ann Simon, Hung Tu, Fitz Schwartz, Braden Randall, Ed Ainsworth, Edmund Berrigan, Adam DeGraff, Charles Foster, David Larsen, David Hayward, Gennui Raffill, Alex Cory and Jay Schwartz, who was scheduled to be reading when the sun rose at 5:57 am Sunday. So I'm going to have to wait for the documentary, too. P.S. Luckily I managed to get my work done early enough on Sunday to go to Bob Gluck's house and celebrate Kevin Killian's new award-winning book. Bob made an awesome strawberry shortbread and it was fun sitting out in his tiered backyard which he gardens himself. I was sure ready for a nap when I got home from that, though. ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 02:02:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Franklin Bruno Subject: pardon my iteration Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry, I (ahem) 'meant' to say something about Chris Mann's comment of a few days ago, but hit 'Queue' by accident. I hope you all charitably assumed this. Chris Mann wrote, and I repeated: >meaning is rather a compulsive act of charity bestowed by an audient (not >the same thing (and it is probably this not-sameness that is poetry >(voice is just another way of saying oops))) All I was going to say is that this sounds a lot like Donald (not Daniel) Davidson, or some other philosopher of language who doubts the possibility of accounting for utterer's meaning in terms of linguistic meaning. But the assumption that meaning has nothing to do with intention and everything to do with 'charity' is, to my mind, far too simple. Better to say that meaning comes from a (stunningly) complex relationship between what the speaker/writer 'meant to' say and how the audient interprets the words/conventional signs which the speaker/writer uses for this purpose. Several papers in Paul Grice's -Studies in the Way of Words- are among the more interesting and intellectually honest attempts in recent philosophy to understand this relationship. The above has more to do with conversation than with the literary text, in which more is up for grabs. But even here, the 'intentional fallacy' is -not- that the author had some intentions, but that the author's intentions are the final arbiter for what is 'in' the text. By the way, the 'Bad Writing Contest' Associated Press article reminds me of those filler items that used to appear in -The National Enquirer- describing federally funded scientific studies in shocked-and-amazed terms. "Your Tax Dollars Used To Study Cow Flatulence" and the like. Hey, someone's doing something I don't understand immediately, it must be bullshit! fjb ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 22:31:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Direct From The Rex Comments: To: maz881@aol.com, CHRIS1929W@aol.com, Levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, daviesk@is4.NYU.EDU, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, drothschild@penguin.com, jdavis@panix.com, jms@acmenet.net, maj6916@u.cc.utah.edu, AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM, jarnot@pipeline.com, lgoodman@acsu.buffalo.edu, lppl@aol.com, poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, aburns@fnbank.com, normacole@aol.com, acornford@igc.org, olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbg.com, tlovell@sfsu.edu, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, peacock99@aol.com, murphym@earthlink.com, cburket@sfsu.edu, selby@slip.net, cah@sonic.net, doug@herring.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Friday, May 16th there was a reading at the Hotel Rex in San Francisco featuring Sally Doyle, Ann Guy and Michelle Murphy. The Hotel Rex is a Hotel Algonquin-style place near Union Square. There were canapes (no mere nosh, mind you--little processed turkey slabs rolled up and skewered with toothpicks!) and most everyone was dressed up like society folk. Michelle Murphy introduced Sally Doyle, who talked about how hot it was: "I thought, 'It's too hot for words.' And then I went, 'Oh no!'" and about a recent dream in which she had angrily told a man, "Stars aren't stupid--they're brilliant!" Then she read some poems and a section of her novel in progress which is about losing her mother. Lines, you ask? Observe: and to think they were transporting this field through the mail even my walking was startled the objects collide with me and make a drama Sally introduced Ann Guy, who read several poems which seemed to echo with the influence of Gary Snyder (for its relation to the natural world) and Barbara Guest (for its thoughtful precision of syntax). one of her poems was called "Inside the Penumbra", which may give some impression, but if not, here's more: I rest my hope in its tilt closing off the Pleiades to hammer down the roof this assumption that once born you have a life worn only by you that image of the fox in the laundry basket recurred Ann then introduced Michelle, who brought us around full circle with some old and some new work: I shake whole syllables from my spine, stutter in what remains not what I meant to say, but nothing else was handy snarled as the fence posts that try to hold down the land whose arms are wide enough to keep the whole horizon from falling? what kind of crazy bird leaned into its wings and granted this hour? like dice thrown over the blackest of felt I didn't know about three-quarters of the attendees (Michelle said a lot of her friends and family were there), but there was Joseph Aukee, Adam Cornford, Thoreau Lovell, Cheryl Burket, Andrew Joron, and Robin Trembley-McGaw (if I'm not mistaken), Ann's husband George, and a Lori (or Laurie) whose last name I didn't get who was on crutches. ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 05:57:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: that ridiculous prize (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE in the list owners mailbox by mistake... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 02:03:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Tom Orange To: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu Subject: that ridiculous prize let's not also forget the ridiculous posturings of self-appointed chief arbiter-of-"bad"-academic-prose, denis dutton. i lurked for quite a while on the phil-lit email list until the strong-arm moderating tactics and frequent theory-bashing began to reflect in less subtle ways the general tenor of the journal which dutton edits, _philosophy and literature_ (a recent issue of which was largely devoted to publishing proceedings from an annual alsc conference). such talk of theory/jargon as marking "the death throes of english as an academic discipline" -- strangely territorial, nay colonial, for a senior lecturer in the philosophy of art who, if he is responsible for his own copy-editing, can't spell jameson's first name right... tom orange > >The winner=E3=E3or loser=E3=E3of an academics' Bad Writing Contest announc= ed >Friday was >Frederic Jameson, a professor of comparative literature at Duke University= in >North Carolina. > [snip] > >All the entries in the contest were from published academic works. The to= p >three offenders were English professors. The judges observed: "This reli= ance >on jargon is an indication of the death throes of English as an academic >discipline." > [snip] > >The contest showed that academics and major publishing houses have been so >busy >using the "magical incantations of jargon, they've forgotten what real >thinking >is," said contest judge Denis Dutton, senior lecturer in the philosophy of= art >at Canterbury University in Christchurch. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 05:57:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: the magical incantations of jargon (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII d-toe ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 02:17:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Tom Orange To: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu Subject: the magical incantations of jargon "The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer)." [Jameson,"Signatures of the Visible"] the visual is (list sense essent, has its ...to say end rapt fast, pour no graphic mind, less facts: attributes .. think becomes an add porno-gramme? junk, that. fits unwilling to betray its ( Thud ... ) dejecta! object, the most austere draw from the attempt: own excess / discipled, tempt warily repress mere thankless ". . . there is the private matter of my own pleasure in writing these texts: it is a pleasure tied up in the peculiarities of my 'difficult' style (if that's what it is). I wouldn't write them unless there where some minimal gratification for myself, and I hope we are not yet too alienated or instrumentalized to reserve some small place for what used to be handicraft satisfaction." [Jameson in _Diacritics_ 12] (thanks for that one, michael) "To find like old and effaced titles to be given back to the living, here; and there, an entire evocation of types dead in their original idiom but which have not disappeared at all somewhere else..." [Mallarme, "Les Mots Anglais"] tom orange ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 02:33:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: QUESTIONS I'll be signing off sometime quite soon... and once again realized that there's some questions I have about things. 1) JOEL KUSZAI--what ever happened to the OH CANADA issue of that RUSTED ROOD or whatever it was called? Just curious. Could you please respond. Ditto for the two MEOW MS's I sent you.... Just curious. I know you're busy. If Joel's not on anymore, and if anyone else can help, I'd appreicate it.... 2) If anyone wants my new snail mail address, please backchannel me. 3) Does anybody know the HAPPY GENIUS email number... I gotta contact this person too. 4). Don't worry Doug Messerli about sending the GERTY STEIN awards book. I broke down and bought it from ROD SMITH... 5) Don't worry GERTY STEIN about sending me the ROD SMITH AWARDS I broke down and bought it from JOHN WESLEY HARDING (he's a friend to the poor). 6. Don't worry baby about the Beach Boys they don't worry about the talking heads who don't worry about the government and how it ripped off PHIL and RONNIE SPECTER 7. DOn't worry about the specter of hobgoblins... 8. DO THINK about the specter in ARETHRA FRANKLIN'S REMAKE of "BORDER SONG" and why she changes the tarpaulin lyric to "WHAT'S HIS COLOR. DO YOU CARE?" and I think I had other questions, but can anybody remember them for me....... chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 20:03:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Dear George Thompson: > >First of all, let me apologize for the somewhat snarky tone of my >response to your original post. Your opening seemed a bit condescending >to "poets", as if they would be too busy rhyming or whatever to have >paid attention to the basic intellectual debates about the nature of >epic, and I responded somewhat sharply. Excuse me. Well, I regret the tone of my original post, condescending as it was, so I also apologize [by the way, ritual apologies, I find, are highly formulaic too -- don't you?]. > >I still stick to my main, point, however, that the theory you present >is just that--theory--whether Parry's or your own--not fact. Your >proposal about Homeric formulas or cliches has no claim on >truth--it's an imaginative reconstruction based on a philological >analysis of texts written down long after the poems were "composed" >(whatever that word may mean in this context). We have no way of >_knowing_ what function those verbal forms played 3,000 years ago. We >can look at how oral traditions today work and argue for parallels, >but, again, it's an imaginative leap, not a statement of truth. They >could very well have worked the same way all those memorized riffs >worked for John Coltrane--as a kind of foundational vocabulary to fall >back on or take off from during the process of improvisation. That's >as likely as anything else. I have no trouble with the analogy with Coltrane's "memorized riffs" [it has frequently occurred to me, as well as to oral theorists like Paul Zumthor]. But I fail to see how it contradicts my "theory" in any way. As for the status of my truth-claims [or, rather, their lack of status in your eyes], I have a certain respect for cultural, linguistic, and other forms of relativity, and I acknowledge that truth-claims are often made problematic by one's biases, bad attitudes, personal blinders, etc. But if I have taken the trouble to read, no study, "Homer" in his own language, if I have studied Homeric scholarship, if I have done all that philology stuff, all that linguistics stuff, etc., etc., don't you think that my chances [to turn to probability theory] are a *little* better at approximating "the truth", than someone else's who hasn't made that effort? I think that an imaginative leap informed by relevant geography is much more likely to have a good landing than a blind leap of faith. That's just a hunch, though. > >Classicists have a different imagination of their relationship to >epic than poets do--but the difference is not in their access to or >awareness of current and past scholarship. It's in the use to which they >see that relationship being put. Classicists--and I apologize in >advance if I distort a position that's not my own--see themselves as >studying the poetry in order to arrive at a more "accurate" measure >(perhaps just a new measure) of the origin and development of the >form--i.e. a new theory. Poets (those who are interested) need to >figure out a relationship in order to proceed with making poems. >Neither relationship has a greater claim on "truth". Both are >fundamentally imaginative. But poets do seem more forthcoming about >that than scholars, who frequently seem to want to cover their tracks. Actually, I don't consider myself a Classicist, and I don't like them much either. But if we are going to pit the scholar against the poet, I think it would be wise to resort to the one for what she can offer you, and to the other for what she can offer you. But I'm not here to get into a debate about what poets are good for. I joined this list, to tell the truth [not that I have any special claims on it], because I am a Vedicist working on Vedic poetics. I have found that Vedic studies is a kind of intellectual backwater when it comes to poetics. So I have resorted to this list, as I would to someone who might be able to help me with my car, or my broken arm, or my near-sightedness, or my plumbing. Yes, plumbers are very imaginative too, about certain things. > >Who, after all, had the more interesting theory of the epic: Virgil, >Dante, Milton, Blake, H.D., Olson? or Milman Parry? I know who I think >people will be reading 500 years from now. And reading for the news. News is gossip [does anyone know the etymology of gossip?]. If no one will be reading M. Parry in 500 it will because his science will have made progress in those years, by standing on his as well as on many other shoulders. So, who's being condescending now? > >Best, George ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 06:57:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: epic redux In-Reply-To: from "George Thompson" at May 19, 97 08:03:58 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > News is gossip [does anyone know the etymology of gossip?]. If no one will > be reading M. Parry in 500 it will because his science will have made > progress in those years, by standing on his as well as on many other > shoulders. So, who's being condescending now? > > > >Best, > George I assume your question is rhetorical, but I'll answer it anyway: it's from the old English _godsibb_, a person spiritually related to god, having to do with godparents. My point exactly. Actually, I love classicists and I love that discourse, so I wasn't putting them down at all. They have provided me with much imaginative material over the years. I still read Jane Ellen Harrison and F.M. Cornford with great pleasure (as did H.D. who worked some of their material into her epic, _Helen in Egypt_), tho that shows you how out of touch I am. Sorry if it sounded like I was putting down philology. I think I was still responding to what I found troubling in your original post. My point was not to put down that scholarship, but to assert that it too originates with a Muse. It's exactly your notion of "progress" that I find problematic, with it's implication that what comes later is somehow closer to truth (in your metaphor that's an upward movement--standing on shoulders, etc.--so we're maybe back to gossip as the embodiment of knowledge). I see it more as the passage of fashions, as a concurrent thread on this list recently had it. Even the real "sciences" are coming to understand that the accumulation of data leads not to progress but to discontinuous rupture--Thomas Kuhn's proposal about the revolutions in in the cosmologies that found "scientific" thinking. More likely people will read Parry for the "historiography"-- that "back then, because of x conditions, people actually believed this." Best, Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 08:09:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Re: QUESTIONS In-Reply-To: <970520023351_-2001021477@emout02.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII CHRIS STROFFOLINO - SOME ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS OK LIKE I'M ABOUT TO CANADIAN ISSUE OF THE RUSTY WORD IS BEING RECONFIGURED BY SCOTT POUND, WHO BEING FULLY OF CANADIAN BLOOD AND SPIRIT HAS TAKEN IT UPON HIMSELF TO REPRESENT THE ENTIRE NATION. re: MEOW MS. YOU SENT I ONLY REMEMBER ONE BUT IF YOU NEED TWO REJECTION LETTERS I WILL BE HAPPY TO SEND IN DUPLICATE On Tue, 20 May 1997, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > I'll be signing off sometime quite soon... > and once again realized that there's some questions I have about things. > 1) JOEL KUSZAI--what ever happened to the OH CANADA issue of that RUSTED ROOD > or whatever it was called? > Just curious. Could you please respond. > Ditto for the two MEOW MS's I sent you.... > Just curious. I know you're busy. If Joel's not on anymore, and if anyone > else can help, I'd appreicate it.... > 2) If anyone wants my new snail mail address, please backchannel me. > 3) Does anybody know the HAPPY GENIUS email number... > I gotta contact this person too. > 4). Don't worry Doug Messerli about sending the GERTY STEIN awards book. I > broke down and bought it from ROD SMITH... > 5) Don't worry GERTY STEIN about sending me the ROD SMITH AWARDS I broke down > and bought it from JOHN WESLEY HARDING (he's a friend to the poor). > 6. Don't worry baby about the Beach Boys they don't worry about the talking > heads who don't worry about the government and how it ripped off PHIL and > RONNIE SPECTER > 7. DOn't worry about the specter of hobgoblins... > 8. DO THINK about the specter in ARETHRA FRANKLIN'S REMAKE of "BORDER SONG" > and why she changes the tarpaulin lyric to > "WHAT'S HIS COLOR. DO YOU CARE?" > and I think I had other questions, but can anybody remember them for > me....... > chris > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 08:23:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: notice subject to change MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I really think that most people subbed to the poetics list are actually "set no mail" and will probably never receive this. It would be interesting to do a roll call. As the custodial crewman designed to sustain healthy list operations, I feel it is my duty to report the following. I will be leaving Buffalo for the summer and until I get an e-mail address in East Lansing, Michigan, I will be hard to reach via email. My current address will still be functioning and eventually all mail sent to this address will find me in Michigan. I will be able to log in in the interim, via long-distance, in the interim. Perhaps it will be only a few days. I'm not really sure. I've lived in Buffalo since 1992 and one might say that it is my whole world. (not the school, but the city). I hope to get work done on my dissertation and get caught up on the Meow Press activities. If anyone out there lives in the vicinity of East Lansing, or Ann Arbor (I will be researching at the Labadie Collection at U of M) or Detroit, and would like to trade endless poetics gossip, let me know back channel (and be patient for my response may be slow...). Hopefully there will not be much of a lag in the poetics mop-up I do around here daily. Please, keep short chatterbox messages to a minimum. Backchannel whenever possible. Consider your posts and perhaps write them off-line, posting longer pieces whenever possible. Sorry to nag, but you don't want to ruin it for everyone! NEW ADDRESS IN BUFFALO p.o. box 527 Buffalo, NY 14226-0527 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 08:34:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: thedeathofthekennethauthorangertrashtalktrashtalk In-Reply-To: <970520031235_1888547093@emout11.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Excuse me, young man, you seem to be taking quite a frivolous attitude. I, for one, was quite offended by the naked, pregnant James Galvin depicted on the cover of /Ploughshares/ a few issues back. On Tue, 20 May 1997, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > Yeah, and the worst think about it is that I hear MARVIN BELL had the > audacity to sign MARJORIE PERLOFF'S NAME to an article in which the death of > the author is invoked to justify play (AS LONG AS IT ISN'T IN MY BACK > YARD---see Derrida for practice/preach dualism "reinscribed") in which the > UNAMBOMBER fesses us to being FOREST GUMP i mean gander and the pen that > wrote YASUDA is found in the home of PAUL HOOVER while the swan falls into > the firebird and none of the big publishers like my idea for a coffee table > book called PIGEONS (go figure). > signed, the geisha girl on skis......... > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 08:06:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose In-Reply-To: <33814756.2F5B@bc.sympatico.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i didn't mean humanist as a putdown. just thought it important to point out that the judge was not exactly the "everyman" he was being justified as, but rather someone from jameson's own neck of the woods who obviously felt he had a mission to clean up his territory and rescue it from scary young turks. i.e. he's a professional scholar, just like jameson, and the degree of generational ressentiment runs high here. At 11:40 PM -0700 5/19/97, Mark Baker wrote: >I want to understand Jameson's sentence. Calling the contest's >judge a "humanist" or sniffing ideological bias--both true, as >I know from another List--still does not help me make more than >vague sense of Jameson's sentence. Nor does Michael Corbin's >defense help: > > >> Self-referentiality and/or re-ificaiton do not necessarily mean >> quiesence or abjection. 'Re-ification' in particular for Jameson is what >> he calls the 'meditory code' (following Lukacs) that he writes *in* not >> *of*. Pebbled perhaps, but more like a Hansel and Gretel minima moralia. >> A trail surreptitiously left to find one's way out of the forest. That >> is if one believes in that particular hope of escape, that particulare >> 'persistence of the dialectic'. > > >Not enough trail here for me, although, as with reading Jameson's >sentence, I can vaguely see where I am. I read posts here that unabashedly >paraphrase difficult poems. So can those who attacked the >Bad Writing Contest and defended Jameson explain his *sentence*? > > >"The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its >end in >rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an >adjunct to >that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films >necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess >(rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer)." > > >You don't need to rehash Jameson's theory or its aims. Assume I'm >willing to sympathize with his dialectic, have read his own defense >(in _Marxism and Form_) of the prose he claims to imitate, and know that >your explanation will lose the poetry in the translation. My guess, however, >is that some of your explanations will lose nothing, do better what >Jameson intended to do, and show that at least in this sentence he >wrote very badly. > >Lucidly, >Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 09:58:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >It's exactly your notion of "progress" that I find problematic, with >it's implication that what comes later is somehow closer to truth (in >your metaphor that's an upward movement--standing on shoulders, >etc.--so we're maybe back to gossip as the embodiment of knowledge). > >I see it more as the passage of fashions, as a concurrent thread on >this list recently had it. Even the real "sciences" are coming to >understand that the accumulation of data leads not to progress but to >discontinuous rupture--Thomas Kuhn's proposal about the revolutions in >in the cosmologies that found "scientific" thinking. More likely >people will read Parry for the "historiography"-- that "back then, >because of x conditions, people actually believed this." > >Best, >Mike Mike, You will never see me marching in any parade for progress. I actually like Kuhn, paradigm shifts, and all that. My metaphor about shoulders is actually a *cliche* intended to express a little humility, a gesture of respect, toward a scholar who has changed the way that some of us, at least, see epic. Presumably such gestures can be made without being scientistic. I don't want to be steered into making absolute statements about anything so large as "truth".... Actually, in many ways my views are more like yours than they are like those of classicists [insofar as classicists tend to share views of poetics]. But let's take a closer look at your last remark about the historiographical interest that people might have in Parry in 500 yrs. Two things. My first reaction to the question of what people will be reading then is that they probably won't be reading at all [and I'm not saying that *that* would be progress, or not]. But since I myself have no interest in anybody's "imperishable fame", it didn't seem to me to matter, either way. But yr. remark suggests to me that in 500 yrs people will have *only* an historical interest in scholars like Parry ["back then, because of x conditions, people actually believed this..."]. The remark implies that in fact you *don't* view all fashions as equally "news". Some beliefs, tied to some time and place now remote and forgotten, actually will die. So perhaps we both operate with some vague notion of "progress" after all? Except, I think that ultimately all beliefs will die [this is the long view that I picked up from the Upanishads]. From here on I will try to stick to poetics. Begging the list's indulgence [I'll try not to take up so much of your time], and btw thanks for the generous welcome. George ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 09:28:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >My guess, however, >is that some of your explanations will lose nothing, do better what >Jameson intended to do, and show that at least in this sentence he >wrote very badly. > I wanted to do this, but each time I re-read Jameson's sentence I felt that much less capable. 109. ...And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all *explanation*, and a description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: *in despite of* an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the betwitchment of our intelligence by means of language. 115. A *picture* held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. 126. ...--Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. _Philosophical Investigations I_, L. Wittgenstein, Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Macmillan, NY: 1958) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 09:43:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: 'whose' 'voice'? In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII About Malley and his creators (see quote below)-- Well, yes, their intention WAS to pass off something they considered rubbish...The point was to badly embarrass Max Harris and "demonstrate" that the surrealist-influenced work he wrote and championed, because it was not more conservative in form, tone and intention, had no *fixed point* from which good and bad could be discerned. You have to remember just HOW conservative (in most senses) the mileu was, in which all of this was taking place. In the final analysis, the hoaxers seem to have kind of wanted to demolish Harris publicaly, yet not really wanted him to precisely go away or to be personally devastated. In the event, he WAS devastated and quit writing poetry and being involved in the poetry world in large part, and the Australian state (to the horror of the hoaxers) was stimulated by the publicity to try Harris and his magazine for obscenity (on the grounds of the mildest imaginable incidental erotic references in poems whose point was not erotic at all...the prosecution was truly something out the 19th century). And yes, the fact that many people continue to admire the poems the hoaxers produced in one afternoon to "demonstrate" that surrealist-tinged work was silly, has been considered by many to have been a kind of "failure" for the hoax..Its immediate impact was both wildly successful and complexly unsuccessful...in that the hoaxers seem genuinely not to have wanted to cause as much personal pain and persecution for Harris and several of his associates, as they did. People should read Malley's poems, by the way. Apart from being very interesting and rather good in a weird way, they make one point clear: Just what was at stake **then** cannot be easily recovered in any immediate sense for us in the U.S. today...I mean these "outrageous" surrealist/modernist texts are **pretty mild**....I shudder to think what the Australians of that time would have done if confronted with Clark Coolidge or Susan Howe...As for work that existed in 1942, well Zukofsky and Stein and such simply were not part of the same universe; most of the principles in the case would have agreed that such work was beyond the pale! Not that there aren't losts of important parallels to Yasusada and other contemporary events, parallels that are geniunely interesting and important...But the precise battle of modernists and anti-modernists that was the original origin of the Malley affair, is very distant from our own time and place. Mark P. Atlanta On Mon, 19 May 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > I've never understood the idea that Ern Malley "backfired." I thought the > point of the hoax was that it was possible for two clever jokers to do > much _better_ at modernism by _not_ taking it seriously than one serious > determined dilletante could by turning his whole 'vegetative eye' to it. > The invention of the poet only works if the poems "work". If the point was > to pass rubbish off as great, then whoops! I admired something hateful. > > Cleaning my shoe, > Jordan > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 11:31:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose Calling the contest's >judge a "humanist" or sniffing ideological bias--both true, as >I know from another List--still does not help me make more than >vague sense of Jameson's sentence. Seems to me the main point about all this is that it emanated from associated press-- this is not the place to go for a good cup of context. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 10:25:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: epic redux/etymology Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'd like to propose a new term for the list's consideration: the etymological fallacy--a. that two words wrom the same root continue to mean the same thing. b. that a word retains the meaning of its root. Here's a recent example of a.: sensible and sensitive. Example: "I was starving, your honor. In my situation stealing your wife's purse was the sensible thing to do." Substitute sensitive. And here's an example of b.: epic as gossip. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 14:12:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology regarding Mark Weiss's . . . >And here's an example of b.: epic as gossip. well if there's an opening for an epic columnist, let me know d.i. p.s.: last night, happily caught the made-for-TV production of the gab from that epic-monger, Homer -- p.p.s.: question for George T. -- is your "Vedic" research primarily focused on (a) what are usually called the Vedic Hymns? -- or might it also include (b) the (I believe somewhat later & various) body of Upanishadic material? (which presumably are also "Vedic"(?) -- though, in Hinduism, distinquished as "Vedanta"). There'd be quite a difference between (a) & (b) -- from what I've seen in translation & discussion. If inclusive of the Upanishads, then your focus would include a good bit of narrative and storytelling and conversational utterance & philosophical statement; but if more strictly dealing with the former, then the focus would largely (so far as I know) center on (what's sometimes called) "vatic" utterance: mantric invocation of all the various divine figures and celebration of their attributes . . . . -- The distinction seems of interest, in context of some of these ongoing discussions. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 14:40:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Cydney Chadwick's work MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'd like to second the positive notice of Cydney Chadwick's new chapbook from 3300 Press, INTERIORS. Cydney has quietly but surely been building up quite a collection of short fictions remarkable for their precision and cunning. Her work frequently features characters put through a process of destabilization which would be easy to miss because of the apparent but deceptive straightforwardness of their narrative surface. This attention to surface and its destabilization reminds me of the work of Lydia Davis. Cydney is able to take seemingly ordinary situations and invest them with sinister angles and a sense, almost, of the existential--the characters find themselves removed from the terms of their own ordinary understandings of the world. Some of the stories feature minor grostequeries which shock not so much because of their oddness but because they finally do not seem odd. I highly recommend this new book--check out the story of what happens to people who come to the hotel where Kleist and a friend committed suicide. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 15:44:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I'd like to propose a new term for the list's consideration: > >the etymological fallacy--a. that two words wrom the same root continue to >mean the same thing. >b. that a word retains the meaning of its root. > >Here's a recent example of a.: sensible and sensitive. Example: "I was >starving, your honor. In my situation stealing your wife's purse was the >sensible thing to do." >Substitute sensitive. > >And here's an example of b.: epic as gossip. A good proposal, Mark, but not a new one, at least for us philologists, who wrestle with this fallacy all the time. But it calls for some precision. Now, if I had argued that the Greek word "epos" means "hymn" *merely* because its Vedic cognate "vacas" means "hymn -- *that* would be an example of the etymological fallacy, type b. But how do you find out whether this is actually a fallacy or not? Well, a philologist would go straight to the relevant texts themselves, and closely examine the contexts in which the word "epos" occurs, say in Homer, or Aristotle, or even the scholiasts. You know what? A philologist who did that would find that in fact the word "epos" *can* mean something like "hymn" sometimes [e.g., in Homer, Pindar]. In the scholiasts the word "epos" is used to introduce Homeric passages [so it means "epic words" there], but also Homeric hymns [therefore "hymn" also]. So sometimes etymological "fallacies" can lead to historical truths. But your example b is not an etymological fallacy, type b. There is no etymological relationship between "epic" and "gossip", and none was claimed. What I was suggesting with my rhetorical question [yes, MB, you read it right] was that the suggestion "epic" = "gossip" might be less irritating if we considered the earlier sense of "gossip". "Godsibb" also had to to with midwives and their secondary function of bringing the news, which by the way is how the word got its negative connotations -- "women's epic" [as a philologist, I checked this out in the OED]. Has the meaning of the word "gossip" changed over the centuries? Sure. But I'd like to change it yet again [in a circle]. And I would recommend a new, popular book: "Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language" by Robin Dunbar [who by the way did not take advantage of the word's etymology]. Epic is gossip, gossip is epic. My mantra for now. George ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 15:48:47 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: epic redux MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reading Ken Irby right now these "definitions" of his seem to feed into the thread: lyric: "The continuous metaphor of a feeling" epic: "The metaphor of an intellectual point of view" -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 15:54:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology In-Reply-To: from "George Thompson" at May 20, 97 03:44:03 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In philosophical/rhetorical theory this is known as the "genetic fallacy" -- that the origin of a word is necessarily related to its current usage -- & goes back at least as far as Wimsatt/Beardsley (you know, the "pathetic fallacy," etc. etc.). There are others but I'm too witless at the moment to make up ones funny enough to pass my internal censor. > >I'd like to propose a new term for the list's consideration: > > > >the etymological fallacy--a. that two words wrom the same root continue to > >mean the same thing. > >b. that a word retains the meaning of its root. -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 13:26:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanx for the tip. For my next trick I'll invent the wheel. At 03:54 PM 5/20/97 -0400, you wrote: >In philosophical/rhetorical theory this is known as the "genetic fallacy" >-- that the origin of a word is necessarily related to its current usage >-- & goes back at least as far as Wimsatt/Beardsley (you know, the >"pathetic fallacy," etc. etc.). There are others but I'm too witless at >the moment to make up ones funny enough to pass my internal censor. > > >> >I'd like to propose a new term for the list's consideration: >> > >> >the etymological fallacy--a. that two words wrom the same root continue to >> >mean the same thing. >> >b. that a word retains the meaning of its root. > > >-- >dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu >David Golumbia > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 13:23:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" c. two words seen as related because, although they come from different roots, they once meant different things than they do now; these earlier meanings, because they may converge, might lead an observer to think that their meanings are still related. When such a relationship is stated baldly it tends both to obscure meaning and to discount the historical trajectory of the terms by favoring a presumed origin. Thanks for helping me be more precise. At 03:44 PM 5/20/97 -0400, you wrote: >>I'd like to propose a new term for the list's consideration: >> >>the etymological fallacy--a. that two words wrom the same root continue to >>mean the same thing. >>b. that a word retains the meaning of its root. >> >>Here's a recent example of a.: sensible and sensitive. Example: "I was >>starving, your honor. In my situation stealing your wife's purse was the >>sensible thing to do." >>Substitute sensitive. >> >>And here's an example of b.: epic as gossip. > >A good proposal, Mark, but not a new one, at least for us philologists, who >wrestle with this fallacy all the time. But it calls for some precision. > >Now, if I had argued that the Greek word "epos" means "hymn" *merely* >because its Vedic cognate "vacas" means "hymn -- *that* would be an example >of the etymological fallacy, type b. But how do you find out whether this >is actually a fallacy or not? Well, a philologist would go straight to the >relevant texts themselves, and closely examine the contexts in which the >word "epos" occurs, say in Homer, or Aristotle, or even the scholiasts. > >You know what? A philologist who did that would find that in fact the word >"epos" *can* mean something like "hymn" sometimes [e.g., in Homer, Pindar]. >In the scholiasts the word "epos" is used to introduce Homeric passages >[so it means "epic words" there], but also Homeric hymns [therefore "hymn" >also]. So sometimes etymological "fallacies" can lead to historical >truths. > >But your example b is not an etymological fallacy, type b. There is no >etymological relationship between "epic" and "gossip", and none was >claimed. What I was suggesting with my rhetorical question [yes, MB, you >read it right] was that the suggestion "epic" = "gossip" might be less >irritating if we considered the earlier sense of "gossip". "Godsibb" also >had to to with midwives and their secondary function of bringing the news, >which by the way is how the word got its negative connotations -- "women's >epic" [as a philologist, I checked this out in the OED]. > >Has the meaning of the word "gossip" changed over the centuries? Sure. >But I'd like to change it yet again [in a circle]. And I would recommend a >new, popular book: "Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language" by >Robin Dunbar [who by the way did not take advantage of the word's >etymology]. > >Epic is gossip, gossip is epic. My mantra for now. > >George > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 17:02:37 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Lewis Subject: in the news..... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *** (from mercury news) France's Le Pen swears in talking postcard France's extreme-right National Front launched a talking postcard Monday in which anti-immigration crusader Jean-Marie Le Pen swears at voters in an election campaign gimmick. The party plans to distribute the postcards in cafes and bars ahead of next Sunday's first round of a parliamentary election. When the card is pressed, a recording of Le Pen's voice says: "What about France, goddammit? Do you think about it? It's high time. Tomorrow will be too late. So go to the polls, citizens, and vote FN (National Front)." For the full text story, see http://www.merc.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=3016991-599 ************************************ JOEL LEWIS penwaves@mindspring.com >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SLEEP FASTER! WE NEED THE PILLOWS! --- Yiddish aphorism <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 14:42:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: grubby and querulous techno query; quick happy Bromige visit note Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 1. I'm getting POETICS via DIGEST again. But this time around, the broken lines between messages no longer show up. The lists I get in DIGEST form here at Arizona (I mean the ones emanating from the Arizona listerv) still have the lines between messages to make it easy to tell one message from another (as POETICS used to); but POETICS is all run together, making it pretty confusing to follow the day's posts. Is this fixable? Or am I the only one w the problem? I read poetics via Eudora Pro. 2. on a much happier note: POG, kind of the Tucson local chapter of POETICS, recently sponsored (barely: it was pretty much pro bono on David's part) a really wonderful mini-residency by David Bromige (hi David): terrific talk on how poems (might) get generated, wonderful reading the next day; general good talk all around. So thanks to David for the terrific poetry stint! --Tenney ---------------------------------------------------------- tenney nathanson tenney@azstarnet.com nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 19:47:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Re: genetic fallacy / etymological fallacy: It's been a long time since I read Heidegger's _Poetry, Language, Thought_, but doesn't H. make central use of "etymological reasoning"? I'm not defending the procedure, just asking. As I reacll, H. engages in what feels to me like a sort of lingusitic mysticism based on etymology. __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "To think, not to dream, that is our duty." Van Gogh to his brother ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 22:21:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Zitt Organization: Human Systems Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit henry wrote: > > On Mon, 5 May 1997 11:21:06 -0400 Brian McHale said: > >And she quoted the rabbis (but which one?): "It is not incumbent on > you to fin- > >ish the task. Nor are you free to give it up." > Wasn't that Rabbi Franz K. of Prague? In case no one has answered this: it's Rabbi Tarfon, as quoted in Pirkei Avot 2:20. (The book can be found in English variously as "Sayings of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" or, in Rami Shapiro's beautiful recent translation, as "Wisdom of the Jewish Sages". -- ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ===== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Austin, Texas! =========== SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/ http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt == <*> <*> == Empty Words == ecto \| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 20:46:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: Things that make you go 'hmm' Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One of Portland's 2 recent winner of poetry fellowships from NEA, Michelle Glazer (a splendid person and talented poet), was a recent student & protege of Jorie Graham, who was one of the NEA judges. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 14:10:50 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: Things that make you go 'hmm' Dan R. wrote: One of Portland's 2 recent winner of poetry fellowships from NEA, Michelle Glazer (a splendid person and talented poet), was a recent student & protege of Jorie Graham, who was one of the NEA judges. _______________ Of course this kind of thing makes one wince, but can it be avoided? Judges are poets, poets teach, teachers have students, and those students apply for bucks from judges. It would be unreasonable to expect that all the work in those mss would be completely unfamiliar to every judge every year. DT ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 00:20:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jocelyn Emerson Subject: Re: Things that make you go 'hmm' In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19970520204845.0ca79b3e@mail.aracnet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >One of Portland's 2 recent winner of poetry fellowships from NEA, Michelle >Glazer (a splendid person and talented poet), was a recent student & protege >of Jorie Graham, who was one of the NEA judges. And Jorie directed my MFA thesis, served as my Teaching Advisor and I still work with her as I am doing a Ph.D. here and I DIDN'T get an NEA in that same round. Or a book contract. Or a free lunch. Or coupons good for a free career. So much for The Great Iowa Conspiracy (we also control the oil market and NASDAQ by the way). Think it's time for me to exit the poetics list if I need to be slogging through this. Hoped it would have been better. JE ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 01:10:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: Jameson's Prose MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark Baker wrote: > So can those who attacked the Bad Writing Contest and defended Jameson > explain his *sentence*? i'm not especially in favor of defending jameson or explaining his sentence when it's ripped out of context and made to stand synecdochally for something deemed "bad writing" by a group of self-appointed judges whose "contest" serves merely to assuage their hostilities and fears with presumptuous academic yuk-yuks. rather, i would want to read on, find out exactly what "the visual" might be, how it might be "unwilling to betray its object," what are some of "the most austere flims," etc. and if after putting in a certain amount of labor the ideas aren't doing anything for me, i put the book away with, as dodie i think said the other day, so much other dejecta.... or cut up that first sentence and make a pome outta it. the visual is essent, has its end rapt fast, pour... tom orange ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 04:04:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: Things that make you go 'hmm' MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Jocelyn Emerson writes: << And Jorie [Graham] directed my MFA thesis, served as my Teaching Advisor and I still work with her as I am doing a Ph.D. here and I DIDN'T get an NEA in that same round. Or a book contract. Or a free lunch. Or coupons good for a free career. So much for The Great Iowa Conspiracy (we also control the oil market and NASDAQ by the way). Think it's time for me to exit the poetics list if I need to be slogging through this. Hoped it would have been better. >> Please don't do any such rash thing; the remarks & opinionations of a few needn't be construed as the consensus of a witch-hunt. For what worth, Jorie Graham's *poetry* was also, on this list, spoken of in fairly admiring terms not too long ago. I, for one, have a good opinion of her as a poet, and not a bad one as a figure in the evanescent game of publishing / critique courtship behavior. One thought that at some point could use exploring -- this follows from Kent Johnson's remarks (and Kevin Killian's excellent & interesting insert-quoted response) -- is this: the tendency to bifurcate the poetry universe (to construe the world of writers into what are imagined as opposing camps) is often a strong one, and no doubt it has a rather archetypal imperative behind it. Nonetheless, it can be an incideous urge in certain respects. It is not above critique -- indeed, the illusory nature of what are, for a time, felt to be "established" and "obvious" bifurcations of this type, is, I dare say, worth considering. cheers, d.i. p.s.: I had MSS overlooked for several years from the Yale Younger Poets and the Nat'l Poetry Whatever (and for that matter have had poetry submissions rejected from both establishment (official verse culture etc.) and alternative (experimentalist etc.) journals -- such that I've ceased bothering trying to get my stuff in print -- and might simply web-publish myself at some point) . . . I've a good opinion of much work issuing from writers in both alleged "camps" and am (in a word) skeptical of the eternality (or even present accuracy) of many a child's line drawn in the wind-swept sand . . . . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 08:34:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: Things that make you go 'hmm' Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A former NEA Fellow, I'm arriving at the conclusion that the NEA is becomming irrelevant--at least for individual artists, even in the literature program, the last that gives them grants--but not because of cronyism. I don't know about the Michelle Glazer case, but I'd like to see some actual documented cases of "incest" before we go charging off in search of people to tar and feather. The NEA has become irrelevant because the amount of money it can spend is so paltry--it's been driven out of the economic culture at the same time it has tried to preserve its status by moving aesthetically to the middle of the road. The enemy, friends, is not Michelle Glazer or even Jorie Graham, but Dick Armey and Jessie Helms and the Christian right. By the way, I deserved every cent they gave me! __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "To think, not to dream, that is our duty." Van Gogh to his brother ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 07:52:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Things that make you go 'hmm' In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19970520204845.0ca79b3e@mail.aracnet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:46 PM -0700 5/20/97, Dan Raphael Dlugonski wrote: >One of Portland's 2 recent winner of poetry fellowships from NEA, Michelle >Glazer (a splendid person and talented poet), was a recent student & protege >of Jorie Graham, who was one of the NEA judges. instead of crying "corruption! nepotism!" why not imagine that: the winner deserved the award 2) the friend of the winner who was a judge kept a low profile during the discussion,esp if s/he had written a letter of reference 3) the same thing could be said to happen in any network of poets. it is, for example, an absurd rule in some academic departments that, in order to guard against nepotism or conflic of interest, assistant professors coming up for tenure may not have as their external reviewers anyone they have met or had any interaction with. however, if the goal is to have a national profile, and the reviewers are the top people in the candidate's field, this is directly punitive to those young faculty members who do have a national profile and are visible in their professional networks. let's get real. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 09:37:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: NEA That Goes "Hmm" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re: >A former NEA Fellow, I'm arriving at the conclusion that the NEA is >becomming irrelevant--at least for individual artists, even in the >literature program, the last that gives them grants--but not because of >cronyism. I don't know about the Michelle Glazer case, but I'd like to >see some actual documented cases of "incest" before we go charging off >in search of people to tar and feather. >Joseph Duemer >School of Liberal Arts >Clarkson University Actually, many such cases of "incest" were documented in detail by Hilary Masters in _The Georgia Review_, Summer 1981, in his essay "Go Down Dignified: The NEA Writing Fellowships" (followed, by the way, with a response from David Wilk, then Literature Program Director). This piece stirred up a great deal of controversy at the time; it reported -- naming some names, no less -- several sordid stories about cronyism. What's really interesting, though, is how Masters reserved his sharpest machete for the then-fledgling Language Poets, beating up on folks like Hejinian, Watten, Bill Berkson, Anne Waldman, etc., alleging some kind of conspiracy. No, Mr. Duemer, the incest was there, is there, and will always be there, but to most of us cronyism is a fact of life in just about any aspect of social interaction you can name; it's a given, and I'd agree with you that it's foolish to waste time and energy bitching about it when we could be writing exciting poetry that earns attention no matter who we are. A positive story... I remember hearing that some years ago the NY State Foundation for the Arts rejected a poetry fellowship applicant's work because it "sounded too much like Ashbery." After the process was over the panel was amazed to discover that the rejected applicant was indeed Ashbery himself. That says something good about NY's process, if not something about the kind of work JA was writing at the time. One more note on this subject. To me the cash award of an NEA fellowship is beside the point; what it really represents -- as Masters points out -- is an imprimatur, a badge that says your peers think you're one helluva poet, an honor that even non-poet tenure committees understand. Lately I've been thinking that the NEA should drop the money award to writers and just give the winners some kind of framed certificate or medal. Then maybe some of the saved bucks could be used to reinstitute grants for painters and sculptors, who at least can use the money for materials. *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 09:41:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: NEA That Goes "Hmm" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>Then maybe some of the saved bucks could be used to reinstitute grants for painters and sculptors, who at least can use the money for materials. The *materials* could be useful, too, in themselves... a nice frame and a sheet of glass aren't cheap. I rather like the idea of recycling the physical materials of the award. Gwyn, now looking at her husband's 87 debate trophies with a new eye ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 10:20:25 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: NEA That Goes "Hmm" In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 21 May 1997 09:37:30 -0400 from Seems like cronyism should not be considered a fact of life. The fact that poets form groups & make friends is a VERY good thing; but awards, grants, etc. should TRY to avoid nepotism in order to provide the ONE thing of value they could provide: a relatively anonymous, chancy, recognition of value. I know at least SOME journals try to maintain this approach in their editorial decisions; grants & awards should do the same. I know that since I began writing myself the idea of being at the behest of some mentor, teacher, or friend's concept of whether what I was doing was good or not simply throws the whole creative process out of whack. You need a measure (immeasurable?) of independent subjectivity. But it can be different for beginning writers, I know. This is one of those paradoxes the more you talk about it the less you feel or understand. Poetry for me though has always been under the sign of total anarchy & independence (believe it or not, gentle readers). In dialectic with basic literary education. But at the beginning, yeah, a few enthusiastic informed readers sure helps... Let's go back to the WPA. Writers, poets, painters, musicians get the hell to work, you all get minimum wage & you all get paid, no judges, no cliques, no prestige, let the people judge. & no darn abstract regionalism!! A chicken in every poem!! - Hen Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 11:14:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: voice & refrain and... In-Reply-To: Daniel Tessitore "Re: voice & refrain and..." (May 20, 12:20am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >For about a year now, and especially since the 'voice' thread began, I've >been mulling over what seems to be/have been a surge in the use of >'dramatic monologue.' In the past few years I've seen what seems to be a >proliferation of books with 'characters,' often enough set in specific >historic periods. Right away Voigt's "Kyrie" comes to mind, a book which is >if I'm not mistaken a semi-epistolary sonnet series based in the post-WWI >Spanish flu-pandemic. >My question to the list is, if there is a surge in the first place, what if >anything does it represent with regards to attitudes about 'voice,' >'speaker,' the value placed on personal experience,...? Is it a kind of >backlash against the private world(s) of poets, or a fumbling around for >new 'subjects'...? >Any thoughts? One way to look at it is to look at the distinction between private and public life, and what problems can occur when the two are interchanged. One could also see the search for new subject matter, perhaps even a vampirizing of the suffering of others in a growing number of contemporary works. Subject matter is not what poetry is made of. Right? However we are seeing a great deal of thinking that personal tragedy or suffering is unique, and that it privileges the speaker, and worse yet, that it is news. I was at a bookstore reading of "Kyrie" by Ellen Voigt here in Ft.Lauderdale when someone asked her if she had somehow been connected to the Spanish influenza. Her unapologetic response was that she had no family history of the Spanish flu, but that she was interested in the life stories of those she researched. What I noted in the question was a common public demand for authority, for personal ownership of experience, tragedy or suffering. Since she later spoke with me about poetry that finds a resonance in the reader, I gathered that she intended to dwell on the human condition of suffering, as well as death, and that the Spanish flu was just her vehicle or source. I don't know if it was meant to justify the book or not. It seems to me that reviewers remarks frequently play up such points though as if to justify a book. Best, Bill B. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 11:43:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: sweet virginia / le medecin malgre lui In-Reply-To: <9705211114.ZM8345@plhp517.comm.mot.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks Mark P (and Steve C backchannel) for verifying that if not out and out malicious the Ern Malley conspirators were hostile to modernism _in general_ and not merely to the insufficient examples of modernism Max Harris was peddling (no Australians will speak to this?). Haven't been able to enjoy the Yasusada hoax for similar reasons -- too hostile a move to be worth appreciating -- hostile not merely to the magazines involved nor even to the 'poetry community' whatever you think it is but to sympathy _in general_. Was surprised at "The Incredible Shrinking Man" the other night to hear Gastr del Sol's 'Our exquisite replica of "eternity"' as the opening theme or obviously vice versa, gds borrowed the theme for the song -- is this the kind of thing I should be reading zines to know about? Is it so important to know all the sources and roots? is it so important to know what tones people are taking (toward _you_ -- or _the system_)? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 08:51:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Things that make you go 'hmm' In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I have to agree with Maria Damon here. Often on these kinds of panels, panelists must disqualify themselves for any number of reasons-- you know the editors (I served on a magazine panel), you've been in the magazine, etc. Thus while other less sypathetic people stay and decide if $$ should go to worthy contenders, you're out in the hallway twiddling your thumbs and when you see what happened in your absence, you're not even able to comment! I found it a very frustrating and peculiar experience, to be able to exert no power in advocating the aesthetic I might have represented on that panel. Maxine Chernoff On Wed, 21 May 1997, Maria Damon wrote: > At 8:46 PM -0700 5/20/97, Dan Raphael Dlugonski wrote: > >One of Portland's 2 recent winner of poetry fellowships from NEA, Michelle > >Glazer (a splendid person and talented poet), was a recent student & protege > >of Jorie Graham, who was one of the NEA judges. > > instead of crying "corruption! nepotism!" why not imagine that: the winner > deserved the award 2) the friend of the winner who was a judge kept a low > profile during the discussion,esp if s/he had written a letter of reference > 3) the same thing could be said to happen in any network of poets. it is, > for example, an absurd rule in some academic departments that, in order to > guard against nepotism or conflic of interest, assistant professors coming > up for tenure may not have as their external reviewers anyone they have met > or had any interaction with. however, if the goal is to have a national > profile, and the reviewers are the top people in the candidate's field, > this is directly punitive to those young faculty members who do have a > national profile and are visible in their professional networks. let's get > real. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 09:44:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: Re: "voice" In-Reply-To: <337F41C2.32CF@sirius.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Well, here's what you can learn for $185. I've always thought the whole voice thing has more to do with "brand recognition" than anything else...protecting your own "look and feel" against the competition. Then, even if you leave your name off the ms., the judges will know who you are. ---------------------- From the UCLA Extension Catalog, Summer 1997: Finding Your Unique Voice: A Two-Day Workshop X 448.10A English 1.5 Units $185 Just as every human being has a unique personality, every writer has--potentially--a unique voice through which his/her vision may be best expressed. Designed to help beginning and established writers discover/develop that voice, this workshop includes exercises to discover personal patterns of diction and imagery, dissolve blocks, recover lost memories, tap into the individual wellsprings of creativity, and explore personal mythologies. Participants also study selected writers to determine what constitutes a "style" and read student works in a supportive atmosphere. Through active and playful class participation, each student learns how to listen for his/her own writing voice and let it emerge. (Enrollment limited to 30 students.) Instructor: Charles Webb, Ph.D, widely published poet, fiction writer, and psychotherapist in private practice. Dr. Webb's published works include _The Wilderness Effect_ (novel); _Everyday Outrages_ (poetry); _Poetry That Heals_, a no-nonsense approach to self-help and self-exploration through creative writing; and _Reading the Writer_, winner of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 11:07:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: NEA That Goes "Hmm" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:37 AM -0400 5/21/97, Fred Muratori wrote: >One more note on this subject. To me the cash award of an NEA fellowship >is beside the point; what it really represents -- as Masters points out -- >is an imprimatur, a badge that says your peers think you're one helluva >poet, an honor that even non-poet tenure committees understand. Lately >I've been thinking that the NEA should drop the money award to writers and >just give the winners some kind of framed certificate or medal. Then maybe >some of the saved bucks could be used to reinstitute grants for painters >and sculptors, who at least can use the money for materials. What a bizarre notion that writers have no costs for materials (like what about computer equipment, books, a desk chair that doesn't cripple you), that they need no money to write. What about the old cliche "Time is money." What about not having to work two jobs for a few months, or not having to take on yet another stupid journalism assignment--I think that money would certainly make a difference in any writer's ability to produce work. Remember Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own . . . Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 13:39:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: "voice" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Extension, 1997 every being, every his/her vision established patterns diction & dissolve, tap individual explore personal determine what works through participation and emerge ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 14:45:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: things that make you go hmmmm -- a hyhouihnmmmmmmmhhh but by the same token, we've all seen too much of University X writing program students publishing in University Y lit mag, and vice versa, and isn't it cozy how faculty from university X just happen to hang out with faculty from university Y... and meanwhile, betty boop, from dingdonaka illinois, sends in some really fine work, but hey, she doesn't KNOW anyone, and like, we only have space for maybe 2 poems here, and like, i met Biff B at the last conference and he was really happening, and he has his own lit mag... and bla bla bla or, my favorite, look at writing classes and english classes -- students usually 2/3 to 3/4 women, right. now, look at faculty in english and writing programs. usually 3/4 or more men! and if there are lots of female names, look at their titles and positions -- they're mostly part-time and non-tenured! contests that are not blind (writer's names on manuscripts) -- winners 3/4 or more men. blind contests, 1/2 or more winners women! adn look at magazines -- 1 woman to 10 men. on last, though, i have to say i have another gripe that shows a different and very scary slant -- i am assist. edit. on electronic 'zine and i swear, i mean, i SEE them so i know, we get 3/4 to 9/10 men submitting. we've tried like heck to recruit women writers, i know they're out there, but no luck, and i hear this from most of the other editors i've talked to. as editor, i 1) don't publish my work in our magazine; 2) if someone i know sends work in, i don't decide or even comment or even see work, and my editor has same arrangement with me -- her friends' work goes to me and i decide, and she never argues with my decisions. if i were on panel, or helping give money, and someone i knew came up, i might say that i know their work and what i think of it, but if it were a student, or a colleague, i think i might ask to be left out of vote. certainly if there were any ethical issues of hand/washing/hand in it (university x/y situation) i'd back out completely. i think one can say, from vantage point of knowing person's work, what one thinks of it. but even that worries me. the ethical crux of this is: what about betty boop in dingdonaka illinois... the point of these awards, magazines, mfa programs, etc. is the WORK. work work work work work work work work work work work work work work NOT how many famous poets betty's parents are friends with and introduced her to at the supper table from the time she was growing up, and how many she met in class, and who she impressed with what a hip chick she is in conferences, or how many times john boop or biff managed to suck up to famous visiting Something Or Other. so, letters of recommendation, who knows who, connections, all of that should not be in there. otherwise, we get stagnant, self-referential, and shut out brilliant people who should get heard. having said that, on the other hand there is such a thing as context. a poem from hecht, submitted blind, might be very good, but it is even more interesting, and as such, more important to publish, knowing it is BY hecht, how it fits in his genre, what the departures/similarities are. or, something from spicer might be part of group of poems. knowing it is part of that group gives it an interest that, as a blind submission, it might not have... oh god. we're back at Death of the Author... why do all things lead back there (just like all roads in boston lead into the callahan tunnel... e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 14:44:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Writers and Painters Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dodie wrote: > >What a bizarre notion that writers have no costs for materials (like what >about computer equipment, books, a desk chair that doesn't cripple you), >that they need no money to write. What about the old cliche "Time is >money." What about not having to work two jobs for a few months, or not >having to take on yet another stupid journalism assignment--I think that >money would certainly make a difference in any writer's ability to produce >work. > >Remember Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own . . . > >Dodie Dodie -- Well, though I didn't say that writers have *no* costs -- you're extrapolating from my statement quite a bit here -- I do think that visual artists have more expenses directly related to the production of their work. If you talk to painters you know how insanely expensive paints, canvas, brushes, studio rental, etc., are. Talk about bizarre. Certainly, writers can use NEA money in a variety of ways that can help them -- including things like travel and time off from the job. But I'm sorry if I don't quite feel your pain, having worked 8-5 with very limited vacation time for more than 20 years and written hundreds of poems anyway, uncomfortable chair and all. An NEA would buy some time I'd love to have, but who can wait for that cold day in hell? When I talk about "materials," I'm talking about the very basics that visual artists need simply to get their ideas out in a tangible form. While a computer can certainly make life easier, plenty of poets are still writing poems without them, and many of those who apply for and receive NEAs are -- let's face it -- teachers who already have access to computers, pencils, paper, typewriters, even free postage! etc. via their departments, not to mention 3-4 month sabbaticals every few years. My point was that it made little sense to me for the NEA to cut off visual artists from fellowships while sparing writers, though I can see how it would make sense to Helms -- it's a lot harder to spot that there porno when there's all them little words all around it. Also -- I know poets who would kill for a "stupid journalism assignment" now and then. It's writing and you get paid for it -- another bizarre notion! In search of a cheap, comfortable desk chair myself, -- Fred *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 14:53:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" Subject: Re: sweet virginia / le medecin malgre lui In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jordan, the sources and roots are important only as handshakes (or connecting flights) but I wonder if they're more substantial than that. Gastr del Sol is always incredibly shrinking; the zines typically do two things: a) they chart the data (Punk, Louisville, Chicago, Brains, Classical, Eyeglasses), or, b) they state flatly "this group makes difficult music." Does it go further than that? I don't know. Zines are ambience and digestibility. Without zines, what would GdS or Red Krayola or Brise Glace or Merzbow, what would any such stuff be (not that any of these groups are similar or equal)? Does the poetry world have the equivalent of zines (which don't serve the same functions as journals)? Besides the Poetry Project Newsletter? I'm ignorant and curious. hot and cold skulls, Bennett &c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c. &c. Bennett Simpson &c. bms5q@virginia.edu &c. &c. &c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 15:45:13 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: things that make you go hmmmm -- a hyhouihnmmmmmmmhhh In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 21 May 1997 14:45:06 -0400 from Elliza's message should be nailed to the door of every editorial & grant office. & read by every editor & grantor. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 12:49:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Writers and Painters In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 2:44 PM -0400 5/21/97, Fred Muratori wrote: >Also -- I know poets who would kill for a "stupid journalism assignment" >now and then. It's writing and you get paid for it -- another bizarre >notion! I'll have to show this to the woman I know who writes user manuals for a softward company. She's *really* lucky, she gets paid to write eight hours a day! There seems to be an attitude among funders that all writing (and art) is equal, with more and more grants being geared towards social work type public art projects and less and less non-restricted money for writers to just produce their own work. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 15:59:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: NEA That Goes "Hmm" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Having had a lot of contact with the science world, I feel that grants and awards (not to mention accepting material for publication) could very usefully be done in the same way for poetry as it is in much of science--the typescript to be evaluated is "blinded" by the editor, and reviewed by a reviewer who has no name, only the work, to judge. In recent debates in science, folks have pointed out that in small specialized areas (and a lot of science now falls out into small specialized areas!!) a reviewer often knows from the work itself that this is X or Y, since only X or Y is modelling growth rates in termite populations in Uganda. The same thing would happen in poetry--some judges would guess that this poem had been submitted by Alice Fulton or Charles Bernstein or Will Alexander 'cause it *sounds* like that person...But on the whole, having to respond to the work without knowing "who" the poet is is an interesting exercise..Hopefully everyone on the list reads Antenym (if you don't, you should)..That magazine sets up the work so that unless you spend some time and energy first with the table of contents, you don't know the poet's name, you just encounter the poem. It is a very interesting experience to not have (to be allowed to have) any preconceptions. Mark Prejsnar Atlanta On Wed, 21 May 1997, henry gould wrote: > Seems like cronyism should not be considered a fact of life. The fact that > poets form groups & make friends is a VERY good thing; but awards, grants, > etc. should TRY to avoid nepotism in order to provide the ONE thing of value > they could provide: a relatively anonymous, chancy, recognition of value. > I know at least SOME journals try to maintain this approach in their > editorial decisions; grants & awards should do the same. > > I know that since I began writing myself the idea of being at the behest > of some mentor, teacher, or friend's concept of whether what I was doing was > good or not simply throws the whole creative process out of whack. You > need a measure (immeasurable?) of independent subjectivity. But it can > be different for beginning writers, I know. This is one of those paradoxes > the more you talk about it the less you feel or understand. Poetry for > me though has always been under the sign of total anarchy & independence > (believe it or not, gentle readers). In dialectic with basic literary > education. But at the beginning, yeah, a few enthusiastic informed readers > sure helps... > > Let's go back to the WPA. Writers, poets, painters, musicians get the hell > to work, you all get minimum wage & you all get paid, no judges, no cliques, > no prestige, let the people judge. & no darn abstract regionalism!! > A chicken in every poem!! > - Hen Gould > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 16:06:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" Subject: Re: Writers and Painters In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 21 May 1997 dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: > Dodie wrote: > > There seems to be an attitude among funders that all writing (and art) is > equal, with more and more grants being geared towards social work type > public art projects and less and less non-restricted money for writers to > just produce their own work. > > Dodie > It's true, and this unfortunately pervasive linkage to social utility governed the recent NEA restructuring as well. Regardless of one's views of public support of the arts or of the NEA itself, it should be noted that individual grants to writers were continued because a consortium of writers' organizations (CLMP, Poets & Writers, etc.) hired a Washington lobbyist and set continuation of such fellowships as a priority. Organizations representing the visual arts seemed to be more focussed on institutional funding. As a further point of information, the NEA rule governing panelists' special interests is the "no love, hate, blood or money" rule, whereby a panelist is supposed to excuse him/herself if any of these apply. --Carolyn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 16:17:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Tiger Woods "We had already developed a brand plan that encompasses who I am. American Express isn't going to branch off into areas where we're in conflict. So I'm going to be promoted in the way I hope to be perceived." ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 17:28:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "P.Standard Schaefer" Subject: Re: NEA, Names Response to Mark Prejsnar's comments on Antenym: I agree with you about Antenym's format. I like the way the name is less important than the work and I would just mention that a new journal coming out of Atlanta (where you are, I take it) called Syntactics is promising a similar format. Editor: John Lowther. Having said that, I would mention that I've been told it is coming out this month and that there are some "names" in the first issue, like Ray DiPalma, and Bernstein too (if I'm not mistaken). Standard Schaefer ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 17:37:17 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Things that make you go 'hmm' MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm with Maria Damon and Maxine Chernoff about nobly recusing oneself as an arts judge to avoid the horror of "conflict of interest": I'm against it. Seems to me if judges consider only work whose authors they don't know, they'll only consider work they're incompetent to judge--because they'll be dealing with schools of poetry they haven't studied sufficiently to recognize the work of everyone of consequence in. But arts competitions are like all the rest of life: the prizes go to the credentialed while personal satisfaction goes to the productive. It's probably a waste of time trying to do anything about it; nonetheless, here's one suggestion, a follow-up to David R. Israel's comment about how he's seriously thinking about web-siting his poetry: junk the NEA and use the funds saved to buy web-sites for randomly- selected poets--and other artists (and critics). A government-funded universal index to artwork and art-criticism on the internet would be nice, too. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 16:53:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Writers and Painters In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hell, what is writing anyway? What, creativity? I get paid to write all day every day, with this small proviso: those words arn't mine. But then, when are they--????? signed, Matthias Regan, Word Processor ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 17:53:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark W Scroggins Subject: communities, virtual & subtropical MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Hello from a lurker: Living in South Florida, where innovative poetries & poets are few & far between, I've been thinking a lot about poetic communities, largely spurred by Ron Silliman's frequent published comments on the importance of community for poetics-formation and by what seems my own isolation here (save of course for one or two people who want to talk the same language). The List, on one level is a great thing, and it's very heartening to see the reading series and publications happening all around; on another level, it makes me long for what I'd known during graduate school and when I lived in the DC area--a group of lively and verbal writers with whom one could interact in an immediate way. I'm sure many of us on the list know this feeling, especially those who are far from urban centers, or who live in endless suburban wastelands like I do. I'm wondering about ways that others have found to establish communities, perhaps from the ground up. Any fruitful suggestions? And more specifically--there've GOT to be more listmembers than just Bill Burmeister and me in South Florida; it's hard to tell who's where from just a printout of listmembers with e-mail addresses. Those of you out there in West Palm Beach, Broward, Dade, and counties surrounding, could you please backchannel me? With delurking blushes, Mark Scroggins ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 17:01:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Writers and Painters In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I agree with almost everything this thread has said so far. But it's also important to remember, isn't it, that making poems or painting or music or what have you operates remarkably well outside of standard economies. And this goes both for creation and reception.Not a hell of a lot of money--if any-- is NEEDED: I'd be if not the first right up there if they were offering it, but that has more to do with wanting a) the recognition (as mentioned earlier in this thread) and b) to "get paid" for something I'm doing anyway, rather than only for something I do BECAUSE it pays. I don't think getting paid (via grants, or per word by a publisher, what have you) is equivalent to "selling out"--in the eyes of the writer: but it usually is in the mind of the buyer. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 15:10:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Writers and Painters Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Fred Muratori wrote: >My point was that it >made little sense to me for the NEA to cut off visual artists from >fellowships while sparing writers, though I can see how it would make sense >to Helms -- it's a lot harder to spot that there porno when there's all >them little words all around it. The Endowment still awards writing fellowships while dropping them from other programs because several literary organizations lobbied long & hard for it. Since support for individual artists has often been the best place for conservatives to look for "controversial" work to rouse the rabble against government funding for the arts, expect to see more, not less, complaints about writers in the coming months. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 15:10:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: NEA That Goes "Hmm" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Fred Muratori wrote: >Actually, many such cases of "incest" were documented in detail by Hilary >Masters in _The Georgia Review_, Summer 1981, in his essay "Go Down >Dignified: The NEA Writing Fellowships" (followed, by the way, with a >response from David Wilk, then Literature Program Director). This piece >stirred up a great deal of controversy at the time; it reported -- naming >some names, no less -- several sordid stories about cronyism. What's really >interesting, though, is how Masters reserved his sharpest machete for the >then-fledgling Language Poets, beating up on folks like Hejinian, Watten, >Bill Berkson, Anne Waldman, etc., alleging some kind of conspiracy. No, Mr. >Duemer, the incest was there, is there, and will always be there, but to >most of us cronyism is a fact of life in just about any aspect of social >interaction you can name; it's a given, and I'd agree with you that it's >foolish to waste time and energy bitching about it when we could be writing >exciting poetry that earns attention no matter who we are. Not having read the Masters article, I can tell you some of how and why this works at the Endowment as well as other funding agencies public and private, and why it may not be a bad thing. I've worked for more than a dozen years writing grants for arts organizations & have about a dozen years of the NEA's annual reports, so I'm not just working from anecdotal evidence here, I've seen the figures. NO writer doing experimental work EVER gets funded in years when there is no writer sympathetic to that kind of work on the panel. A group of writers who work in the "workshop" or "new formalist" modes are not going to be persuaded by an example of "language writing" or any else, when there's no one to argue in favor of its merits. Since the panels so rarely have representatives from this area of the field, the effect is pretty obvious. It was the same thing for composer fellowships, no one with a "downtown" style got funded except in the few years there were like-minded panelists on the selection committee. Is this cronyism or a difference of aesthetics? Most of the complaints I've seen about "avant garde" cronyism on panels like these boil down to "hey, fewer of my favorite kind of writers got support this year, cause of a few opiniated avant garde cronies who couldn't tell GOOD writing if it bit them on the ass." For what it's worth, panelists at the NEA & all other public-supported agencies are supposed to announce conflicts of interest, & may have to recuse themselves from considering works by friends, lovers, bosses, plaintiffs, etc. How this is implemented on fellowship panels with allegedly "blind" judging can get a little, uh, questionable, though. After all, who's to say whether someone REALLY didn't recognize work before the names get put on for the final rankings? >A positive story... I remember hearing that some years ago the NY State >Foundation for the Arts rejected a poetry fellowship applicant's work >because it "sounded too much like Ashbery." After the process was over the >panel was amazed to discover that the rejected applicant was indeed Ashbery >himself. That says something good about NY's process, if not something >about the kind of work JA was writing at the time. This anecdote is probably an urban legend, as I've heard it about virtually every artistic discipline in which "blind" judging is used. >One more note on this subject. To me the cash award of an NEA fellowship >is beside the point; what it really represents -- as Masters points out -- >is an imprimatur, a badge that says your peers think you're one helluva >poet, an honor that even non-poet tenure committees understand. Lately >I've been thinking that the NEA should drop the money award to writers and >just give the winners some kind of framed certificate or medal. Then maybe >some of the saved bucks could be used to reinstitute grants for painters >and sculptors, who at least can use the money for materials. By this logic, the artists who should be funded are not painters and sculptors but media & computer artists whose expenses are even greater. As a former, & founding, board member of a local private organization that supports indivdual artists (in Washington state only), I'd say that fellowships are a form of peer recognition and while the money is technically provided to buy time for artists, if they buy a car or make a down payment on a house that they wouldn't otherwise buy, I don't think it's a bad thing. Painters & sculptors work within an economic structure in which they MAY be able to sell their work for a figure that reflects the time and materials that went into it. Few writers, and fewer poets, have the same opportunities. & because of this, there are more instances of visual artists who "can afford to work without it" getting fellowships than writers. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 15:28:03 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hoa Nguyen Subject: Re: NEA That Goes Comments: To: AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU Content-Type: text/plain >Let's go back to the WPA. Writers, poets, painters, musicians get the hell >to work, you all get minimum wage & you all get paid, no judges, no cliques, >no prestige, let the people judge. & no darn abstract regionalism!! >A chicken in every poem!! The NEA, with AmeriCorps and local arts agencies-- and in its first year with AWP, *has* sponsered a project like the WPA called WritersCorps, for the last three years. WritersCorps is based in San Francisco, DC and the Bronx (although I believe the NY branch is working without fed. dollars in their third year). Since I worked for WritersCorps in CA for two years, I can personally attest for the near minimum wage-- although you do get an educational voucher for several thousands and your student loans go in forbearance. Of course cliques are involved-- it is a group of people after-all-- some prestige and perks too-- we had goldfish crackers as treats for some of our meetings (and I got to accompany one of my students to the White House and met the first Lady!). In San Francisco we worked with inner city youth-- it was tough and great-- I loved "my" kids hugely, it was fun, we got to know each other-- they were good poets. Two anthologies to check out: "Flavors of the City" and "Word from the (415)" featuring work SF WritersCorps' Youth wrote in '95 and '96, the latter book includes some lesson plans. The third anthology is at the printers now. All are available through Small Press Distribution. (End of plug-- thanks!) Hoa --------------------------------------------------------- Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 18:30:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: conceptualizing web publication Bob Grumman writes, << here's one suggestion, a follow-up to David R. Israel's comment about how he's seriously thinking about web-siting his poetry: junk the NEA and use the funds saved to buy web-sites for randomly- selected poets--and other artists (and critics). A government-funded universal index to artwork and art-criticism on the internet would be nice, too. >> I've no response to these broad ideas, but will add a different, modest remark. My views about (or tentative stance re:) website "publication" generally, and web-based self-publication in particular, were moved along a notch by a conversation I had with a Berkeley writer a couple months ago. This woman is a Chinese novelist -- having written several novels in modern Chinese, evidently of a somewhat experimentalist ilk (by contemp. Chinese-fiction standards -- which frankly I wouldn't exactly know . . .) She encountered red lights all the way, so far as possibility of publishing her books -- and found herself, after a time, discouraged. Friends, however, suggested she self-publish on the web. She did this (via the SinoLogic website established by her husband, Dajuin Yao -- who, incidentally, also has some Chinese [& partly bilingual] "concrete poetry" material on another branch of his SinoLogic site); -- and now the novelist has the full text of several books online, for Chinese-literate readers worldwide. This writer remarked on an interesting advantage of web-publishing: it serves to separate the distribution of one's work from mercantile forces. Usual issues of commerce are simply nullified: one no longer needs to sell books (or convince publishers to publish, distributors to distribute, bookstores to stock, etc.) Presto! -- the work is made directly available (w/ obvious limitation: the reader must be a denizen of the online world, and must know where to find the writer's work). This interesting writer [pardon my vagueness -- her name is something like Yueh-lian Wei (??), but I'd need to check . . .] commented further: she has developed a devoted international readership, including readers who await each new volume, read everything she writes, and directly offer their informed critical feedback to her by email. In short, she's managed, via this technology, to connect with an intelligent & responsive readership, circumventing commercial aspects of publishing. (One might remark that such de-commercialization of art seems in keeping with the old Chinese mores -- where, in days of yore, a serious painter would be loathe to *sell* a painting, much favoring, say, staying over at your home for a week or a month, and then giving you a painting as a parting gift. Kindred noncommercialism perhaps attended the poetry world . . . i.e., one didn't make money from poetry per se, albeit poetry skills could indeed get one tenure [er, I mean, a job in Washington] . . . ] but I stray from my theme . . . ) This woman's remarks served to dislodge & perhaps dispose of certain prejudices of mine (re: self-publication in general & web-publication in particular). By the time I left our shady afternoon chat, I found myself starting to look favorably on such notions for my own tucked-away, dust-gathering manuscripts. My thoughts abt. this remain tentative & exploratory -- but I'm rather hopeful that I might in fact find the web's waters (as they say) fine. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 15:57:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: more of Padgett's voice In-Reply-To: <970518214835_-1130827082@emout16.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Well, metal was a mistake: In baseball bats In pop music In condoms and in underarm deodorants. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 19:04:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: China-po & money / Captain of Butterflies pardon, a small postscript -- my idle remarks re: money & poetry in old China were perhaps flawed. Certainly the noncommercial ideal was often prevalent for the so-called "literati painters" (a remarkable brood of folk in, say, the Mongol [Yuan] dynasty]. On the other hand, poets -- & musicians, etc. -- were of course wined & dined & supported by the aristocracy in general & often courts in particular. (Some problems of art & livelihood that we'all face are, no doubt, related to some broad issues of democracy vs. aristocracy. The NEA has tried to fill those shoes, and seemingly did rather well for a nice stretch . . . ) d.i. p.s.: Sam Hamill's essay abt. Poetry & Money (in his Broken Moon Press volume, *The Poet's Work*) presents some good (if familiar) thoughts on this, more broadly. p.p.s.: Enjoyed Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom's reading in DC last evening -- including a couple poems from Sun & Moon's volume *The Captain of the Butterflies*, just out -- 1st time Nooteboom's poetry has been presented in English. He's best known for his novels, but also has published some 11 poetry volumes in Dutch (& he has himself translated a good bit of contemp. American poetry into Dutch, he remarked). After a time (if nobody else happens to do so first), I might offer a few remarks abt. *The Captain of the Butterflies*, which I'm enjoying. The translation is by Leondard Nathan & Herlinde Spahr. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 19:09:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: Things that make you go 'hmm' Comments: To: Bob Grumman In-Reply-To: <33836B0D.67A2@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 21 May 1997, Bob Grumman wrote: > an arts judge to avoid the horror of "conflict of interest": > point of grammar only, self interest is not a conflict of interest ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 11:35:19 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: University of Auckland In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable > Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 09:47:52 -0500 > Reply-to: UB Poetics discussion group > From: Maria Damon > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU I agree about Jameson. The judge, Dr. Denis Dutton, (Doctor DeeDee) edits an academic journal called Philosphy & Literature; he teaches aesthetics to art school students at the University of Canterbury, unfortunately. He's representatative of a breed of anglo-american philosophers (Dr. DD is an American who has been here 10-15 years) who feel their subject has been stolen from them by pretentious people in other fields, and seeks ways to hit back. But he's also got a good nose for what makes news--and this version of The World's Top Ten Worst Dressed is just his kind of thing--the journalists love it. He has written a book on the Shroud of Turin, and likes to expose frauds of all kinds--people who bend spoons with mind power,and so on. Christchurch, a small city in the South Island once had a vibrant intellectual culture, but these days is increasingly occupied by the Duttons of the world. Wystan > i actually think jameson is quite a good writer. i wonder why it is tha= t > marxist theorists come in for this kind of anti-intellectual bashing, wh= ile > for example medical research scientists aren't taken to task for the > "esoteric jargon" they use to describe simple human functions like > breathing or digesting. since the "judge" of the contest is himself a > humanist scholar, i suspect some petty generational ressentiment on the > part of these contest runners. > > At 1:51 PM -0700 5/18/97, Hoa Nguyen wrote: > >Hi every one. This is Dale Smith via Hoa's machine. Below is an artic= le > >I read > >in today's local paper from the associated press. I found it quite > >telling and > >right on. It reveals the distance that has developed between theorists > >and mere > >mortals who expect language to function as a medium of shared communica= tion > >rather than subjective solipsism. Anyway, here's the article: > > > >************************************************************* > > > >CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand=E3=E3Looking for a good read? Here are some = writers to > >avoid. > > > >The winner=E3=E3or loser=E3=E3of an academics' Bad Writing Contest anno= unced > >Friday was > >Frederic Jameson, a professor of comparative literature at Duke Univers= ity in > >North Carolina. > > > >His book, "Signatures of the Visible," opens with this sentence: > > > >"The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has it= s > >end in > >rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an > >adjunct to > >that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere f= ilms > >necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own exc= ess > >(rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer)." > > > >Jameson has a significant academic following, contest organizers noted;= for > >their part, the judges believed reading his prose "was like swimming th= rough > >cold porridge." > > > >Telephone calls to Jameson's home Saturday were not answered. > > > >All the entries in the contest were from published academic works. The= top > >three offenders were English professors. The judges observed: "This r= eliance > >on jargon is an indication of the death throes of English as an academi= c > >discipline." > > > >Second place went to Rob Wilson of the University of Hawaii, whose sent= ence > >reads, in part: > > > >"If such a sublime cyborg would insinuate the future as post-Fordist su= bject, > >his palpably masochistic locations as ecstatic agent of the sublime sup= erstate > >need to be decoded as the 'now-all-but-unreadable DNA' of the fast > >deindustralizing Detroit...." > > > >The third-place winner kept his sentence short, but to no avail. > > > >"The lure of imaginary totality is momentarily frozen before the dialec= tic of > >desire hastens on within symbolic chains," wrote Fred Botting in his 19= 91 > >work, > >"Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory." Botting is a > >lecturer at > >Lancaster University in England. > > > >The contest showed that academics and major publishing houses have been= so > >busy > >using the "magical incantations of jargon, they've forgotten what real > >thinking > >is," said contest judge Denis Dutton, senior lecturer in the philosophy= of art > >at Canterbury University in Christchurch. > > > > > > > > > >--------------------------------------------------------- > >Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > >--------------------------------------------------------- > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 17:45:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Steinberg Subject: Re: things that make you go hmmmm -- a hyhouihnmmmmmmmhhh Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think much of this discussion hinges on ethics: specifically, where does advocacy end and cronynism begin? We all want to advocate the work of writers we like and admire, and hope the same is done for us. And it is often upsetting (or nauseating) to see the work of writers we don't like or admire get published, funded, employed because we think that writer has a connection we are not privvy to. I think the identifying value here is "worth," although identifying it is tricky and sometimes hard to defend. This sense of worth is often tangled up with personal tastes, and perhaps it's the responsibility of editors and contest judges to disentagle it, if this is possible. I think advocacy is an essential value in poetry: it supports and extends communities, forming connections where none might otherwise exist. There are a lot of writers I would never have heard of if someone hadn't shoved their work in my hands and say you ought to read this, or to put a larger spin, if someone hadn't published their work or scheduled them for a reading in my geography (and publicizing these events so I have chance to attend). Advocacy turns into cronyism when it operates as a closed, exclusive activity, a form of literary bigotry, when factors other than, as Eliza puts it, the work, come into play in your decisons. It all boils down to the rules and ethics we keep and share, and they are not always simple, hard and fast. Are you publishing someone because you're sleeping with them or because they can do a favor for you? What if the person you're sleeping with happens to be a better writer than you? I co-edit a magazine, JackLeg, that operates on the exact opposite principle of blind judging: we only publish by invitation. In some ways it is inherently unfair: we will not publish an unsolicited manuscript from Joe or Betty Boop (there are plenty of magazines out there that will publish the Boops, no matter how unknown they happen to be, if their work is good (worthy) enough for publication). We started the magazine because a lot of writers (specifically in Chicago and Tucson) we knew were not getting published who deserved to be (lots of magazines start this way). We wanted the writers in those two cities to become aware of each others work. Some of the ethical concerns we had to deal with: the other co-editor is a grad student in an MFA program: should we publish her fellow grad students (we decided not to, because it would poison her workshops). How do we prevent our magazine from only turning into another cronyistic operation (we decided not to publish authors more than once, and to solicit our authors to find other people to publish). Hugh Steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 14:30:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Etymological Fallacy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark Weiss wrote: >I'd like to propose a new term for the list's consideration: >the etymological fallacy--a. that two words wrom the same root continue to >mean the same thing. >b. that a word retains the meaning of its root. >Here's a recent example of a.: sensible and sensitive. Example: "I was >starving, your honor. In my situation stealing your wife's purse was the >sensible thing to do." >Substitute sensitive. >And here's an example of b.: epic as gossip. I'm just curious about the use of the word "fallacy" here. In order to come to a judgment that the use of a word is fallacious with respect to its meaning, doesn't one have to proceed from the assumption that the word has a stable meaning against which individual uses of the word can be compared to determine whether they're correct or incorrect? And doesn't the proposal rest on precisely the opposite assumption--that the word's meaning changes over time, i.e., is unstable? And, if I may just shunt over to take up Joseph Duemer's question about Heidegger's _Poetry, Language, Thought_: yes, Heidegger employs etymology in this and throughout his work to tie his thinking on Being into an investigation of language and the historicity of the language in which that thinking take place. Your use of the phrases "etymological reasoning" and "based on etymology" make it sound to me as though Heidegger's thought could then be evaluated on the accuracy of his philology, which I wouldn't agree with. Fanciful as they often are, Heidegger's etymologies nonetheless open up realms of thinking about words that aren't available to us if we insist on the primacy of a single stable denotative meaning for the word, or if we deny the associative power that the word has within and without its "own" language, or if we fail to account for the context in which the word appears (meaning for whom?). I guess I'm seconding something George Thompson said and adding another term: sometimes etymological "fallacies" can lead to philosophical truths. What Mark sees as the obscuring of meaning is often a strategy employed to problematize meaning so that what may seem like the "obvious" meaning of a word is no longer taken for granted. The word is no longer transparent but prismatic, bent into the component colors that are present within the white light. ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 16:27:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: broadsides Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Over the years, Chax Press has accumulated a number of hand printed broadsides, usually (but not always) printed for specific poetry readings or poetry festival appearances. Generally, after the occasion passes, these are rarely offered for sale except at open studio events, and then they are generally sold for $10. Some of these broadsides were printed by Chax Press, some by me in earlier days (pre-1984) for Black Mesa Press. Some were our decision to print, others printed at the request of Woodland Pattern Book Center or the Tucson Poetry Festival. But we are definitely in fundraising mode here for new projects, and I'd like to offer the following broadsides and small folded printings. Broadsides are generally rather difficult and sometimes expensive to pack and send safely, which is why the prices here go down considerably if you buy more than one. Please send any email replies directly to Chax at chax@theriver.com -- and not to the poetics list. Or send orders with checks to Chax Press 101 W. Sixth St., no. 6 Tucson, AZ 85701-1000 If you buy one (copy or item), the cost is $7. If you buy two, the cost is $10. If you buy three, the cost is $14. If you buy four, the cost is $17. If you buy five, the cost is $20, and we'll throw in a surprise as well (probably a small pamphlet or book). If you buy more than five, you'll get a good deal -- I promise. Here's the list of what's available: Jonathan Williams, from the book of days, An Enchiridion of Asps David Miller, from The Break (with a drawing actually drawn on each broadside by Cynthia Miller) Paul Metcalf, The Players (this is an announcement for a play performance, but not the text of the play -- but a nice handprinted piece with a vintage baseball image on it) Pauline Oliveros, Horse Sings from Cloud Karl Gartung, "I was pregnant . . ." Edward Dorn, Maximum Ostentation Joel Oppenheimer, For Max & Ted Berrigan (two poems both printed on the broadside) Clark Coolidge, Mammoth Night Karen Brennan, Poetry, Language, Thought Create Culture -- general broadside from Chax Press with image/word play Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Tan Tien Gwendolyn Brooks, First Sermon on the Warpland Beverly Dahlen, selection from A Reading Ron Silliman, Albany Charles Alexander and Cynthia Miller, Aviary Corridor (this is an offset-printed "screenfold" co-published with Light & Dust Books) Thomas A. Clarke, I Love Those Clean, Bright Rooms Also, a reminder that Karen Mac Cormack's _The Tongue Moves Talk_ has just been issued and is available. It is a new full-length book of poems available for $11. More information about it can be found at the Chax web site, http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax in the "new books" section. thanks for admitting such posts as this into this space charles charles alexander / chax press / chax@theriver.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 20:56:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: Etymological Fallacy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Steve Carll wrote: "Your use of the phrases "etymological reasoning" and "based on etymology" make it sound to me as though Heidegger's thought could then be evaluated on the accuracy of his philology, which I wouldn't agree with." If I implied the above I didn't mean to; though I am no authority on Heidegger, having read at him years ago, I don't beleive his thought can be reduced to philology." Steve Carll wrote: "Fanciful as they often are, Heidegger's etymologies nonetheless open up realms of thinking about words that aren't available to us if we insist on the primacy of a single stable denotative meaning for the word, or if we deny the associative power that the word has within and without its "own" language, or if we fail to account for the context in which the word appears (meaning for whom?). I guess I'm seconding something George Thompson said and adding another term: sometimes etymological "fallacies" can lead to philosophical truths." I agree with this. Maybe we need a term of art: the etymological lie. Years ago in a workshop the professor complimented a couple of lines as being "a fine lie." Though I was happy about the compliment, I had to fess up and admit that the lines were lifted directly from the OED. So what I had, I guess, was a truth so good it "had to be a lie"! PS Just a personal note: I'm new to the Poetics List, but the civil tone and thoughtful commentary are much appreciated. _________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of the earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 13:28:22 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: University of Auckland Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Maria, you wrote > i didn't mean humanist as a putdown. just thought it important to point out > that the judge was not exactly the "everyman" he was being justified as, > but rather someone from jameson's own neck of the woods who obviously felt > he had a mission to clean up his territory and rescue it from scary young > turks. i.e. he's a professional scholar, just like jameson, and the degree > of generational ressentiment runs high here. Yep, but I think Dutton is if anything younger than Jameson. Each age group has its old farts. As for 'young turks', where's THAT expression from--the Balkan Question or what?--calling young multiculturalists, etymologists .... Wystan > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 22:00:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: Writers and Painters In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970521165322.006a6354@chem.nwu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 21 May 1997, Matthias Regan wrote: > Hell, what is writing anyway? What, creativity? I get paid to write all day > every day, with this small proviso: those words arn't mine. > But then, when > are they--????? > > signed, > Matthias Regan, Word Processor > ME TOO, ME TOO... signed, Steven Marks, Ghostwriter __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 22:05:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Clarification Comments: To: Bob Grumman In-Reply-To: <33836B0D.67A2@nut-n-but.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Oh hell. I should have been clear about this in the first place. These are the circumstances as they occurred to me. Let me lay them out and see what you-all think. I work for Associated Writing Programs (at least for the moment; my DEROS is August 1st). Every year, we have the Award Series, a $2000 prize for book-length mss. Last year, Ms. Graham was our poetry judge. During her judging process, she called and said she was dissatisfied with the screeners' choices, and named a few titles of mss. she would like to see, assuming they had been entered. Nobody thought much of this at the time; we assumed they were mss. she had seen while judging the Whitman or the National Poetry Series. We sent them to her. As it turned out, the winner she picked was Michelle Glazer, with whom she had worked recently and closely at Iowa. The finalists she named turned out to have been Iowa students as well. Now, I'm all for advocacy for students, being a grad student myself. But the rep of this contest rests on its being blind-judged. What really amazes me is that, like other staff members, I got a call from a woman who would not give her name but pointed out that the Whitman and NPS winners had been Ms. Graham's students as well, and that we were more likely than not to have this be true of the Award Series. I vigorously defended her, and said I felt this was unlikely to happen. That is the sequence of events. It makes me uneasy. I am willing to accept that I may be mistaken on this one. What do the rest of you think? bests Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 21:46:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: things that make you go hmmmm -- a hyhouihnmmmmmmmhhh In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 5:45 PM -0600 5/21/97, Hugh Steinberg wrote: ... And it is >often upsetting (or nauseating) to see the work of writers we don't like or >admire get published, funded, employed because we think that writer has a >connection we are not privvy to. I think the identifying value here is >"worth," although identifying it is tricky and sometimes hard to defend. >This sense of worth is often tangled up with personal tastes, and perhaps >it's the responsibility of editors and contest judges to disentagle it, if >this is possible. > i agree that there's an ethical tho nuanced distinction between advocacy and cronyism. just want to throw in this 2 cents: it sometimes does my heart good to see mediocre work published cuz i think, if they can get published, so can i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 22:51:30 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Clarification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit As a gossip-hound, I loved Gwyn McVay's story about the Associated Writing Programs Award Series. The more I think about it, though, the less "unethical" what Graham did seems to me. The competition was pre-judged, like almost all such competitions. How? By the selection of the judge, in this case, Jorie Graham. The competition was thus designed to give money to a Jorie Graham clone, with the details as to just which of her clones it should go to being left up to her. There not being any competitions I know of that'd choose a judge interested in the kind of poetry I most admire, it's all one to me. Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 21:52:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:28 PM +1200 5/22/97, Wystan Curnow wrote: >Maria, you wrote >> i didn't mean humanist as a putdown. just thought it important to point out >> that the judge was not exactly the "everyman" he was being justified as, >> but rather someone from jameson's own neck of the woods who obviously felt >> he had a mission to clean up his territory and rescue it from scary young >> turks. i.e. he's a professional scholar, just like jameson, and the degree >> of generational ressentiment runs high here. > >Yep, but I think Dutton is if anything younger than Jameson. Each >age group has its old farts. As for 'young turks', where's THAT >expression from--the Balkan Question or what?--calling young >multiculturalists, etymologists .... > >Wystan i believe "young turks" was an expression first used to characterize, was it catullus and his generation of young latin poets? somebody out there in poetixland will know this. > > >> >> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 20:15:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Re-in-er-voice Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" And Chris, what's notable about that course description is how much it sounds like anybody's course description. It reminds of those schools of broadcasting that turn out people who have learnt this one use of a voice. Sure, beyond the course description lie acres of unblazed vocal chords; it w o n ' t be a course in learning how to produce course-descriptions. It may serve some students well. Had I composed it, though, I'd worry that the students I brought in with it, would be a bit tin-eared. Huh? We've all written job letters, mind you, etc etc, let's not be holier than him. It's no moral point, not to me. It just feels like, well, "Hello out there! You--you voices! I f you have one! Anything worthy of the name! Bring it on in & just m a y b e I'll do something about it. . . Like float it into Santa Monica Bay & install some rusted Tristrams in its stead, or a few choice [complete this sentence & send it in with your $98]" might be more attractive all round. More revealing. More concealing. Face it, though, there might not have been a choice. There a r e guidelines, Mr Clifton. If you don't care to fit the format, we have further candidates dying to offer this course. In the old days, we (me an some ov the boys dahn at the Works) didn't care for this cant of "Your Voice," but for me it wasnt anything against sounding like yourself, it had to do with n o t doing so, with sending a jelly-mould in one's place. With recognizing that oneself was a jelly-mould. "Finding _a_ voice" would be what I'd study. The contradictions are deliberate, after all. Uh, hi all, if anybody has sent me a message in the last three weeks, please send it again, because my software, hardware & self have been thru the cybernetic wringer, & all messages have been lost. My server claims he had to cut them adrift, or the entire raft would have gone to the bottom. Bob Perelman and Ron Silliman, did you get my messages of 3 weeks or so ago? Lisa Jarnot, did you? Pierre, are we all caught up? --Everything was sent swirling down he maelstrom. Do you think, as one friend has suggested, that my server ought to give me a month rent-free? toodle-oo.[name here]. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 23:56:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Clarification Gwyn -- << . . . That is the sequence of events. It makes me uneasy. I am willing to accept that I may be mistaken on this one. What do the rest of you think? >> Thanks for setting forth this little history in much clearer detail -- such a scenario does seem surprising unsettling, and potentially scandalous. In fact, it would be a matter for surprise if Jorie were not to hear a good deal about these questions, anon. (And one can't help but wonder whether, in the end, such a compromised-seeming situation could very well redound to the credit of those selected, for that matter.) Off hand -- given merely the info & version of things you've shared -- there seems an odd suggestion of hubris (rather classically construed). A side note: besides the issue of those Iowa students, I must confess some startlement (not having kept track) that Ms. Graham was called in to serve as judge in no less than three distinct competitions of this type, one after another. We human beings (& poets) are famed for our flaws, no doubt. While I'm sure I'll continue to admire Jorie's astonishing poetry, yet a less salutory manner of astonishment does creep into the picture here. Naturally, the poet must have her own perception and conception of what was going on. I hope she sees her way clear to share that with us, in the course of things. (I'll even admit to being mildly hopeful of one further surprise-twist: a *somehow* more-satisfying explanation for the events you've related?) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 22:32:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I wanted to understand Jameson's sentence. So I got several more attacks on Dutton, a couple on Associated Press, and some very familiar Wittgenstein. All this is fine by me, especially since I knew it all already. We're all Young Turks here--who, to answer an etymological fallacy, were the mid-nineteenth-century reformers in the Ottoman Empire. My thanks to Tom Orange, for a decent response and a poem I ain't dumb enough to ask him to explain. Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 23:17:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Etymological Fallacy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Check out "fallacy" in the OED, meanings 3 and 4, or the American Heritage, meanings 1 and 2. "Fallacy" doesn't mean "wrong." The issue was the denotation of a particular word. It is possible to argue that "epic" was understood by Greeks in say, 400 BC, differently than it had been understood 400 years earlier without changing the meaning of the word so that it no longer denotes anything reliably--so that it no longer communicates efficiently. But I'm a conservative old fart in these matters. "Problematize," for instance, strikes me as a barbaric usage. At 02:30 PM 5/21/97 -0700, you wrote: >Mark Weiss wrote: > >>I'd like to propose a new term for the list's consideration: > >>the etymological fallacy--a. that two words wrom the same root continue to >>mean the same thing. >>b. that a word retains the meaning of its root. > >>Here's a recent example of a.: sensible and sensitive. Example: "I was >>starving, your honor. In my situation stealing your wife's purse was the >>sensible thing to do." >>Substitute sensitive. > >>And here's an example of b.: epic as gossip. > >I'm just curious about the use of the word "fallacy" here. In order to >come to a judgment that the use of a word is fallacious with respect to its >meaning, doesn't one have to proceed from the assumption that the word has >a stable meaning against which individual uses of the word can be compared >to determine whether they're correct or incorrect? And doesn't the >proposal rest on precisely the opposite assumption--that the word's meaning >changes over time, i.e., is unstable? > >And, if I may just shunt over to take up Joseph Duemer's question about >Heidegger's _Poetry, Language, Thought_: yes, Heidegger employs etymology >in this and throughout his work to tie his thinking on Being into an >investigation of language and the historicity of the language in which that >thinking take place. Your use of the phrases "etymological reasoning" and >"based on etymology" make it sound to me as though Heidegger's thought >could then be evaluated on the accuracy of his philology, which I wouldn't >agree with. Fanciful as they often are, Heidegger's etymologies >nonetheless open up realms of thinking about words that aren't available to >us if we insist on the primacy of a single stable denotative meaning for >the word, or if we deny the associative power that the word has within and >without its "own" language, or if we fail to account for the context in >which the word appears (meaning for whom?). I guess I'm seconding >something George Thompson said and adding another term: sometimes >etymological "fallacies" can lead to philosophical truths. > >What Mark sees as the obscuring of meaning is often a strategy employed to >problematize meaning so that what may seem like the "obvious" meaning of a >word is no longer taken for granted. The word is no longer transparent but >prismatic, bent into the component colors that are present within the white >light. > >********************************** >sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll >http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym >http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym > >In seed- >sense >the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. > > --Paul Celan >********************************** > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 23:30:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think Young Turks is a reference to the party of Ataturk, which first reformed and then replaced the sultanate. At 01:28 PM 5/22/97 +1200, you wrote: >Maria, you wrote >> i didn't mean humanist as a putdown. just thought it important to point out >> that the judge was not exactly the "everyman" he was being justified as, >> but rather someone from jameson's own neck of the woods who obviously felt >> he had a mission to clean up his territory and rescue it from scary young >> turks. i.e. he's a professional scholar, just like jameson, and the degree >> of generational ressentiment runs high here. > >Yep, but I think Dutton is if anything younger than Jameson. Each >age group has its old farts. As for 'young turks', where's THAT >expression from--the Balkan Question or what?--calling young >multiculturalists, etymologists .... > >Wystan > > >> >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 05:52:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: NEA, cronyism, etc. Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Let me speak here as one of the NEA grantees whose award provoked the Masters article. I think Herb Levy's post got it exactly right. Whenever you take anything like "professional contributions to the field" or whatever into consideration, you're going to get all of the aesthetic leanings that lend themselves to people making such charges (and I'm sure we've all heard the same with regards to every other grant making body, from NYSCA to the California Arts Council to the Guggies to the Gerbode). The field of poetry is not, as a profession, all that large. Problems develop when the same aesthetic orientation is represented over and over and over again (viz the Guggies, the Pulitzer and for the most part the conservative leaning years at the NEA). I took the Georgia Review piece to be a classic example of a member of a privileged clique yowling that their clique had one year in which it did not dominate the whole terrain, a phenomenon remarkably like the "white backlash" over the few spaces in law and medical schools that people of color have taken up. In fact, the rotation of aesthetic positions should be a regular occurrance at all of the grants-making organizations. I used my NEA grant to write two books (Lit and Paradise) and work on several others, to edit the anthology In the American Tree and be able to take the time off from a real job to teach for a year at SF State and UC San Diego (which I could never have afforded to have done otherwise). I also brought my teeth (sadly neglected in the 60s and 70s) back to something approaching the state of the art. I managed to make that ten grand last five full years. I know plenty of other poets (of all aesthetic stripes) who've similarly marshalled what little they've received in funds from whichever organization just as frugally. There may be a poet somewhere who bought a sportscar, but wasting the grant money would be his or her loss, not ours. It reminds me of Mark Strand's comment about the Poet Laureate-ship of the US, that it "hadn't done much" for him. Contrast that with the way Bob Hass used the position to do something for poetry. (I'll vote with Hass on this one every time.) But the fellowship money is not where the real value in the NEA has been--it just hasn't reached enough people. I've heard supporters and officials of the NEA argue that the majority of funds spent on poetry in the US comes from the NEA, but that certainly hasn't been true in my life. Of the roughly $100K I've made from poetry (spread out over 30 years), maybe one third could have been traced back, directly or indirectly, to the NEA. The real value of the Endowment has been in the book grants, which have done a substantial amount to underwrite thousands of good small press books. Every time Sun&Moon or Segue or Chax or Grey Wolf or whomever gets a grant, I get the benefit and so do you. If Steve Dickison or somebody from SPD is on the list, I'd be curious to get a sense of what percent of the books that store carries were underwritten at least in part by the endowment (whatever the number, I'm sure that it's gone down significantly in the past 5 years). And, for whatever reason, the book grants have been notably more even handed than the fellowships for years. All best, Ron Ron Silliman When this you see 262 Orchard Road Remember me Paoli, PA 19301-1116 (610) 251-2214 (610) 293-6099 (o) (610) 293-5506 (fax) rsillima@ix.netcom.com rsillima@tssc.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 00:41:13 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: judges We should remember that those Ms. Graham selected would not have been selected had those students not earned her respect and admiration well before then. Certainly she has had more than ONE student in the years she has been teaching. DT ---------- From: David Israel[SMTP:DISRAEL@SKGF.COM] Sent: Thursday, May 22, 1997 12:56 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Clarification Gwyn -- << . . . That is the sequence of events. It makes me uneasy. I am willing to accept that I may be mistaken on this one. What do the rest of you think? >> Thanks for setting forth this little history in much clearer detail -- such a scenario does seem surprising unsettling, and potentially scandalous. In fact, it would be a matter for surprise if Jorie were not to hear a good deal about these questions, anon. (And one can't help but wonder whether, in the end, such a compromised-seeming situation could very well redound to the credit of those selected, for that matter.) Off hand -- given merely the info & version of things you've shared -- there seems an odd suggestion of hubris (rather classically construed). A side note: besides the issue of those Iowa students, I must confess some startlement (not having kept track) that Ms. Graham was called in to serve as judge in no less than three distinct competitions of this type, one after another. We human beings (& poets) are famed for our flaws, no doubt. While I'm sure I'll continue to admire Jorie's astonishing poetry, yet a less salutory manner of astonishment does creep into the picture here. Naturally, the poet must have her own perception and conception of what was going on. I hope she sees her way clear to share that with us, in the course of things. (I'll even admit to being mildly hopeful of one further surprise-twist: a *somehow* more-satisfying explanation for the events you've related?) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 08:20:39 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Clarification In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 21 May 1997 22:05:53 -0400 from If, as Ron Silliman points out, the problem is getting more grant money to poets & presses, then I have to disagree with Bob Grumman that ethics don't come into play in Gwyn's story & it doesn't matter anyway. Seems to me the AWP award was designed so that the judge would choose from finalists selected by AWP rather than personal favorites or students of hers, and AWP should have said no to her. That seems pretty obvious. I agree with Mark Prejnar that the aim shd be anonymity & fairness in judging if we want more government or other money to go to these things. Sounds like AWP did a disservice to all those people (not me, thanks) who dutifully sent in their xeroxed ms & application money. On the balance between cronyism ethics & advocacy: seems an ironic downside of balkanization & "schools" formation in poetry - the schools help build movements but make it hard for them to get funded. The idea that there are different aesthetics (ours are good, of course, theirs are bad) & that this justifies cut-throat advocacy to the point of closing down competitions - this is sad. Advocacy shd not be an excuse for cronyism. This is a complex issue - maybe editors & grant awarders need to get their heads together from all ends of the spectrum to design certain standards & means of working together. Judges should be required to have certain expertise & openness across the whole field. Poets could be asked to provide a couple paragraphs with their ms. outlining their own development & influences(?). Judges could ask for 2nd opinion on screened finalists they don't "get". All competitions anonymous. Judges shd sign an agreement statement on certain standards and approaches to judgeship. Etc... - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 08:55:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: Clarification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Several years ago I was a screening judge for the AWP Poetry Competition, and the organization went to great lengths to keep the judging blind, replacing names with numbers, etc. And when I recognized a manuscript from a student I had taught in a summer workshop, I sent it to another screener. Now I have so far taken a rather indulgent view of the networking that goes on in various corners of the poetry world, thinking that advocating for the kind of thing you believe in is more important than some abstract sort of "fairness." But the Graham case is a little different--she seems to have gone outside the established conditions of the competition, and I think the people who plunked down their twenty bucks have at least the right, if not to be treated "fairly," then to have the stated rules followed. The judge, as I recall, has the right to name his/her own screeners, so if even a hand-picked jury didn't put through the mss Graham was looking for, maybe those books weren't any good. Had the final judge gone outside the screeners' recommendations the year I worked for the competition I'd have screamed bloody murder. (The screeners work a lot harder than the final judge.) If a press just wants to have Jorie Graham's name associated with their editorial selections, they can hire her as a consultant, but then of course they wouldn't get the entry fees a contest generates. Perhaps, as in some competitions, the name of the judge should be revealed only after the selections are made. For the record: I am an Iowa grad (pre-Graham), have published Graham's poems in one of the journals for which I serve as an editor, and am currently the volunteer General Editor for the AWP's Intro Journals Project, a competition for students in AWP writing programs, which is judged blind, and for which the judges read every single submission in their genre. __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of the earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 08:17:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose In-Reply-To: <3383DA6B.226A@bc.sympatico.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:32 PM -0700 5/21/97, Mark Baker wrote: >I wanted to understand Jameson's sentence. So I got several more >attacks on Dutton, a couple on Associated Press, and some very >familiar Wittgenstein. All this is fine by me, especially since >I knew it all already. We're all Young Turks here--who, to answer >an etymological fallacy, were the mid-nineteenth-century reformers >in the Ottoman Empire. sorry mark, i wasn't trying to answer your question, just expressing my irritation w/ dutton-types and jameson-bashers. don't take it personally that there were several strands to this jameson matter.--md > >My thanks to Tom Orange, for a decent response and a poem I ain't >dumb enough to ask him to explain. > >Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 09:46:09 -0400 Reply-To: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. In-Reply-To: <19975226521356334@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 22 May 1997 rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM wrote: > > The real value of the Endowment has been in the book grants, which have done > a substantial amount to underwrite thousands of good small press books. > Every time Sun&Moon or Segue or Chax or Grey Wolf or whomever gets a grant, > I get the benefit and so do you. If Steve Dickison or somebody from SPD is > on the list, I'd be curious to get a sense of what percent of the books that > store carries were underwritten at least in part by the endowment (whatever > the number, I'm sure that it's gone down significantly in the past 5 years). > > And, for whatever reason, the book grants have been notably more even handed > than the fellowships for years. > I've never served on the individual fellowships panel at the NEA but in 1994 I was a panelist for the small press grants, and in 1995, chaired that panel, and I very much agree with Ron regarding the benefits and relative fairness of the book grants. The fairness may result from the panel's composition, which differs from the fellowship panel, in that publishers, editors, booksellers and usually an outside business person, as well as writers, participate. The presses are scored on book design, distribution efforts, sales, financial management, marketing, etc., as well as "quality" of literature and the "diversity" of the lists. In my experience with the panel, presses were favorably regarded if they managed money well, made efforts to sell books (by linking up with SPD, printing catalogues, placing ads, whatever), design well, and if they published a "diverse" list, by which they meant race/gender/ethnicity. Each of these factors was independently scored. (Panelists spent months reading application materials which included detailed financial statements and plans, as well as publications in advance). At the end of the day, we were given our tallies: a list of the presses in the order in which they had been scored by us. We were then told where the "cut off" was--the line above which presses would be funded. On our list of, say, 273 presses, we would learn that only the first 84 would get money. We could then review the presses close to the line on either side. Both years, we asked for (and got) additional funding for two or three presses. Both years, we felt that twice or three times as many presses should have been helped, were deserving of support, as received the aid. The sad news is that there is no longer a small press panel. I believe there are categories in which the presses may still apply for NEA support, but the literature program has been eliminated, along with all other "discipline-based" programs. Only the individual fellowship grants remain in place (for the reason I posted earlier). Having said all this, however, I was very disconcerted to encounter such strong resistance to innovative/experimental writing, and the arguments deployed against it were quite spurious. "Appeals only to a small coterie," etc. This, it seemed to me, could be said of all serious writing. I found it useful, in these instances, to play the "diversity" card in a different manner. --Carolyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 10:54:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: bias in judging Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just so we don't get the idea that we're the only ones who have to wrestle with issues of rewards and bias, here's a short piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education, distributed to the Clarkson Liberal Arts faculty by our dean, bless his heart. MAGAZINES & JOURNALS A glance at today's issue of "Nature": Swedish study finds sexism in peer review Why do few women hold high academic positions in biomedicine? Among the many theories is the view that women are less productive than men. But Christine Wenneras and Agnes Wold, two researchers at Sweden's Goteborg University, found that the peer-review system was to blame. The researchers examined the peer-review system of the Swedish Medical Research Council and compared the productivity of male and female scientists with the scores they had received in applications for postdoctoral fellowships. The reviewers, they found, had consistently given female applicants lower scores than equally productive men. In some cases, they found that female applicants would have had to publish three extra papers in "Nature" or "Science," or 20 extra papers in less-prestigious journals, to be ranked the same as male applicants. "If gender discrimination of the magnitude we have observed is operative in the peer-review systems of other research councils and grant-awarding organizations, and in countries other than Sweden," they write, that could account for the discrepancy. (The journal may be found at your library or newsstand.) _________________________________________________________________ Copyright (c) 1997 The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inc. -- __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of the earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 11:05:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: bias in judging In-Reply-To: <33845E0F.1F7F@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Interesting piece about bias. Having worked as a managing editor for a scientific journal (J. Neurosci.), I believe it. But I have to comment: > (The journal may be found at your library or > newsstand.) "Nature"? I've yet to see "Nature" at a newsstand. Perhaps it's hidden somewhere behind "Hustler". And now back to our regular programming. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 08:11:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: "Horror Tape Script" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello everyone, it's Kevin Killian. I hope all of you in the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend, especially you visitors, come to see me in my greatest role in Raymond Pettibon's play "Horror Tape Script" which we are putting on at New Langton Arts on Friday and Sunday. That's at 1246 Folsom between 8th and 9th (San Francisco). Those of you who have seen Pettibon's work, say at the Whitney Biennial, will be glad to know that besides having written the play, he has designed this production too. I am playing "Grif," the fullback for the John Dewey High School Bobcats, and Wayne Smith and Edmund Berrigan are my team mates. We bring our cheerleader girl friends (Mark Ewert, Cliff Hengst and Karla Milosevich) to a deserted mountain lake in the woods and then the play turns into a kind of Friday the 13th/Berlin Alexanderplatz kind of festival of violence and sensation. Don't miss it if you possibly can, we've been rehearsing like crazy and it should be terrific. We're doing this play in support of the new exhibition at Langton by D-L Alvarez and Ruby Neri which opens tonight. On Saturday if you are still in town Carla Harryman and Lyn Hejinian will be reading, same space, same location, amid Pettibon's marvelous sets. So, come on down. Thanks everyone. Hope to see you, I'll be there in my supporter and thigh pads, dress accordingly. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 01:15:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. In-Reply-To: <19975226521356334@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >The real value of the Endowment has been in the book grants, which have done >a substantial amount to underwrite thousands of good small press books. >Every time Sun&Moon or Segue or Chax or Grey Wolf or whomever gets a grant, >I get the benefit and so do you. If Steve Dickison or somebody from SPD is >on the list, I'd be curious to get a sense of what percent of the books that >store carries were underwritten at least in part by the endowment (whatever >the number, I'm sure that it's gone down significantly in the past 5 years). Speaking for Chax, without NEA money there likely wouldn't be a Chax. When I first began making books, by hand, in the very early 1980's, some of these books, by stroke of luck, came under the eye of David Wilk (he & I had been visiting at the same time in Toronto and I had left books at Coach House Press, where he saw them). David was then NEA Lit Program Director. He got in touch and suggested we apply for a grant. We did, and that was the first thing that made me start making books whose aims went slightly beyond "books I just wanted to make." Later, when we moved to produce trade editions, rather than just hand printed editions, we had NEA grants for two out of the first three years we were doing such books. This helped books by bp Nichol, Ron Silliman, Bev Dahlen, Sheila Murphy, and several others. Without such funds, I don't know if we'd have ever continued to do more than the first book or two of trade paperback editions. And in the present climate, I often wonder if we can continue to produce such books. I don't really expect that Chax will ever be able to get another NEA grant. This means that we have to find a way to raise $12,000 or more a year from donations, as in our case there are no local foundations or corporate sponsors who are likely to champion a literary press, much less one seen as experimental in some way and without a proven and sizable 'local' audience. NEA has particularly been important for presses producing just a few books a year, as, in my experience, local and state arts councils see such presses as only supporting a few artists/writers in a year, and rather find that a kind of elitist activity which doesn't merit the use of public funds. > >And, for whatever reason, the book grants have been notably more even handed >than the fellowships for years. I don't know why this is. But I think NEA lit staff has always wanted to be as even handed as possible, and they've gone out of their way to get a breadth of people on press panels. charles charles alexander / chax press / chax@theriver.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 11:51:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: Jameson's Prose In-Reply-To: Mark Baker "Re: Jameson's Prose" (May 21, 10:32pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > We're all Young Turks here--who, to answer >an etymological fallacy, were the mid-nineteenth-century reformers >in the Ottoman Empire. Well, the Young Turks were the would-be reformers of the Ottoman Empire. They were also the ones that betrayed the trust of the dominant Armenian political party in Turkey in 1908, the Dashnakhzagans, and became fully responsible for the systematic genocide of the Armenian people in Turkey and the Near East from 1908 until around 1922 when their leader, Enver Pasha, was killed by the Russians in mopdern day Armenia. Bill B. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 11:26:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ok, i'll delurk on this one!... in addition to all the really fine points being made: -- in academic terms, there are distinctions to be drawn twixt the 'scholarly' and the 'creative'---relatively speaking, few 'creative' publications with which i've been associated conduct "blind review"... whereas scholars pride themselves on same... now (you folks know me well enough to know that) i don't believe that "blind review" is generally, or in its entirety, blind, and i certainly don't wish to privilege the scholarly over the creative... as some of you have pointed out, there is a selection process that generally takes place *first*... an editor for a well-known academic press once confided in me that if he didn't want a manuscript published, he *could* simply send it to an editor whom he knew would reject it... those of us who've been involved in "blind reviews" know that we were asked to review such & such... which is not exactly to argue against same, but to reinforce the point made by joseph deumer re the way this process works, can work... gwyn's account (thanx gwyn) of the awp jorie graham situation is, in my view, and given the stated contest criteria, deplorable... --- BUT as maria d. indicated, wrt tenure, this idea of "anonymity" is entirely problematic in itself... as though "fairness" (what? who?) were at stake... moving the discussion of evaluation to tenure, btw, is a gear-shift, yes---please bear with me... there are depts. that conduct only INTERNAL tenure review (they don't use external reviewers), there are some that use only external reviews, some that use both, some that require (as maria indicated) "anonymous" external reviews... this is all very contentious, the entire tenure system is all very contentious... and incredibly ambiguous---did any of you read in _the chronicle_ about m. norton wise having been rejected for tenure at princeton?... m. norton wise?---C'MON!... if he's vulnerable to such capriciousness (and hidden agenda), *everybody* is... but isn't the point here, in any case (and to switch back to publication, which is btw so keyed to tenure in academe) that anonymity can get you published and unpublished, and that recognition too can get you published and unpublished?... reputations can work against you... and anonymity, again, is compromised by *any form* of advocacy---what so many judges view as the imprimatur of their "taste" (which, simply by virtue of being chosen as judges, judges often feel has been somehow legitimated)... that said, i've judged material mself, and i try to be open as i can to that which is not entirely to my liking... and to say it as simply as i can, it's NOT EZ... --- still, a further complication: i need here to beat the drum some of the media question... the most problematic review situations of which i'm aware have to do with how to evaluate work in (what is perceived as) a new medium... how CAN you evaluate a hypertext if in fact there are no generally agreed-upon "standards," however fraught, for what a hypertext is supposed to "do"?... that is to say, when the question of "standards" itself, which in so many cases is a canard when it comes to art, cannot be erected as a putatively neutral arbiter of value... and doesn't the media question highlight the general inadequacy of (1) simple "blind review" AND (2) mere advocacy?... as to (1), you have to choose somebody as a reviewer, as in all such reviews but here even more critical perhaps, who can be "open-minded" enough to somehow (how?) evaluate that which is emerging as such... and as to (2), you want somebody to be selective, *even as* they advocate said emerging item... you don't want, that is, simply to import w/o critical intervention criteria from print textuality into electronic textuality... this is one reason why it may be necessary to maintain the UNblind review status of so many electronic venues---to keep them fresh, as it were, and to finally, finally permit less orthodox work to get some air-play... --- all of which is to say one thing further: as a writer, i just wasn't weaned on the contest track... i know many writers, some of them mighty fine writers, whose entire self-image rests on putting together manuscripts and submitting them to contests and award series and the like... i think we was raised on different planets... while i understand the value and security of such writing networks, i have never quite trusted them to value what i value... perhaps primarily b/c i sense the sheer power distributed throughout such regions... at the same time, i know damn well that i could *never* have seen an academic book in print w/o the sheer advocacy of like-minded souls... so in all, i'd have to say that this entire question of evaluation is made messy by the all-too-human structures we've created that (can) aspire to awarding meritorious work... whatever the ethix implied here, seems to me we need to be willing to *say* as accurately as possible what's going on... and to take some responsibility---if we're judging or evaluating---for making our decisions understood to our various publics... btw, imho, the contest model has become the model *against which* the slam scene rails... slams did not invent the agonistic spectacle of poetry on the hoof... in effect, both the slam event and the more specifically mfa-directed (sorry you mfa-ers!---not your fault) contest acquisitions approach to publication share a certain similarity in this regard... yes---here the craft/voice thread is most pertinent, the capacity for "identification" linked tacitly and not so tacitly with "value"... and as to publishing one's friends: friends often publish friends, and there's nothing wrong with this, as long as it's out in the open... it *may* lead to a product saturated with a specific aesthetic (however 'successful' or 'unsuccessful'), but here the question of friendship is a problem only if one is concerned with sales, or with what non-friendly audiences may think... if (as eliza indicates) your role on an editorial board is broadly conceived as serving a public constituency that is competing (in effect) for publication space, there may be good reason not to publish your own work in such a place... on the other hand, i have been *asked* (by my seniors) as an editorial board member to publish work in the respective journal simply b/c they wanted something "different"... now i'm not really comfortable with this (my call!) so next time i'm asked i'll be *selecting* somebody else(s)... one may, of course, consider all publications as simply prize-winning fora... but this latter, i think, constitutes a reduction i'm just not willing to make... finally (!)---what *about* this discussion, here, in these spaces?... speaking of gossip (see epic/redux thread) this is a fine medium for pulling out and displaying the hidden variables, provided we're coming at same with care and goodwill... i'd like to see it stay that way... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 12:52:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: arguing orality Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ken, I'll make a few general points that may be of interest to the list as a whole, and then maybe we can continue the discussion of details off-list [I'd like to; the issues are important for me]. I do not want to step into the breach [a formula, btw] between the different orality camps. There are issues, like the crude distinction between improvisation and memorization, which Parry-Lord admittedly have not handled well. And other issues, like a precise definition of "formula" and the degree to which the formula may be a mark of orality, innovation vs. tradition, etc., are too complicated to be worked through in a brief post. It might be interesting explore these off-list. Putting aside Parry-Lord, Ong, Finnegan, Goody, and other oralists who doubt that Vedic is unambiguously oral are *badly* misinformed. There is no evidence whatsover of any writing on the Indian subcontinent before 4th cent. BCE [putting aside the Indus Valley script, which has not been deciphered, and with which the Vedic clans had no contact] - and there is no reference to writing in early Vedic. The hymns of the Rgveda were composed orally and transmitted orally [and still are transmitted orally] -- this is a point that Ong et al. badly confuse. The astonishing mnemonic techniques that were used to memorize Vedic texts [literally backwards and forwards -- without writing!] might be worth talking about at some point. But this is a technique of *transmission*, not of composition. It is obvious to all Vedicists that there are good measures of both memorization and improvisation in the *composition* of Vedic texts [so that one could use Vedic to dispute with Lord's insistence that oral texts are not memorized compositions]. It is true, though, that Vedicists have not kept up with oral theory [except for moi, and maybe one or two others]. A far more important point is this [and I'll try to be brief]:for me the most significant thing that the P-L thesis has done is to contribute to a new way of seeing composition in general [not just oral! and not just poetic!]. The basic unit of composition is *not* the individual [aha!] word, but rather the formula. The metaphor "flow of speech" [which is very old and very good] suggests that the segmentation of "speech" [cf. Grk. "epos", Skt. "vacas"; also the related Latin "vox"] is arbitrary [think of Heraclitus]. Certain linguists and grammarians and others might for personal reasons choose the isolable word as their primary unit of analysis [i.e., segmentation]. But others [like certain native grammarians of India] preferred to work with larger units [like "complete thought" - "sphota"]. I wld suggest that this is how Vedic poets operated too: with larger units. Not that they couldn't segment out the individual word when they wanted or needed to, but rather that the *basic* unit that they worked with was larger than the individual word. In Vedic poetics, the basic unit of analysis is the formula, which I wld define loosely [I agree that the P-L model has been mechanistic and static]: a word string that is perceived as a meaningful unit and that can be manipulated as such [sometimes coinciding with metrical units, sometimes not]. I think this sort of analysis [at a higher level than the word] might work with other poetries. What do you think? Besides P-L and the Sanskrit grammarians [the planet's first true linguists] other sources for this poetics are Jakobson, Benveniste [and in general theorists of a semiotics of discourse]. Of course, now I've gone over the edge and have abandoned the orality-literacy distinction completely... Hope this makes sense. George ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 13:20:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. In-Reply-To: <199705221626.LAA27549@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i've been following this thread with interest. however, what strikes me about the testimonials and the kvetching both is the more-would-be-better reductionism. two points: peer assessment for that without peer is at the very least suspect, and the design brief of most bureaucracies is to function with as few mistakes as possible. i admit to being disappointed by the normative aspect of most rewards for merit, but i positively lust after those dysfunctions of the state of play that grant insight into what passes for an economy of ideas. prejudice against mistakes (yes, it's public money, but it's all public money!) will always and only give us more of what we know and what we know is obviously.. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 13:09:05 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 22 May 1997 11:26:16 -0500 from Joe, do you mind if I summarize what I see as a couple of your points? You decry what happened in the Graham case as Gwyn described. But you don't see the point of these contests anyway & slams (another kind of contest) have showed one alternative. Electronic publication raises a whole new set of issues. & the whole thing is murky & complex & friends will help each other & what they believe in and "anonymity" is an abstract ideal. ok? Too reductive, probably. Here's what I say. Yes, contests inevitably involve power, prestige, publication, past history. But the potential is there for contests to be an extension of the basic author/reader relationship, and the basic author/editor relationship. In other words: when I write something, I want it to stand on its own 2 feet & maybe interest an INDEPENDENT reader. (I'm using "I" here in sort of an impersonal exemplary mode.) (Still an individual, though!) I expect editors to try to act also as themselves - as independent readers (with all the tendencies which I will try to inform myself about regarding their publication). And I expect contests to act in exactly the same fashion. I would like them to judge my work anonymously & play by the rules as far as they are able. Just read it. You'll see it's better than anybody else's stuff & I should have had my own monikered leatherbound easy chair at the Academy of Fussbudget Letters long ago. I don't see this as a totally unattainable ideal. Nor do I see it as the be all & end all, OF COURSE!!! Where would we be without editors & publishers who pursue their own leads & taste & are very finicky? I hear a lot of waffling on this thread. Get in line, gang, & give me the money. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 13:57:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Mason & Dixon MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sorry for the belatedness of this post given the import of the current threads, but just wanted to invite other readers of Mason & Dixon to share questions/comments/conversations from time to time. I have started it just recently, but am glad to see Pynchon still using Various & Sundry ludicrous Songs & Verses. And the names, yes the names...Cherrycoke is truly an Inspired Act of Nomenclature. Gary R ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 12:58:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" henry, my post was trying to tiptoe on the line twixt what i mself find desirable (for me!) and what i think i can add to what others may find desirable... of course this is itself an act of judgment... i am tiptoeing simply b/c i don't share some folks' enthusiasm for awards and contests and so forth, but would certainly not turn one down if offered!... nor would i turn down some bucks!... make sense?... i hope so... in any case, i trust we can balance and maintain irreconcilable epistemologies (if this is what they be)... and i don't think, though i'm not quite sure you meant this, that this balancing act is "waffling," if by "waffling" you meant to imply a lack of moral certainty or some such... it's just not, never has been, in my experience, a matter of "neutralities"... yes, there is anonymous review, to varying degrees---but this then becomes a matter of somebody or other's taste... and i can't imagine that taste isn't time- and place-bound (we really don't need bourdieu to understand this, but if you like bourdieu, why then---)... so of course i assume there are times when we'll all, to varying degrees, be writing for our friends... and times when we may find ourselves writing for some collective fiction... who knows?---mebbe our 'friends' are fictions too?!... but the point here is that there is no one or two ways to understand this contest/awards thing, as either "blind" or simple advocacy... whatever way you come to it, of course, i would think it wise to include that political-institutional dimension (which is, ironically enough, the dimension that tends to get excluded)... personally, i don't aspire to fame in such terms... i did, at the advice of my friends and publisher (and in part for my publisher's sake) try to enter my first book into all sortsa contests... came up with beans, but it didn't mean much to me b/c it was all ex post facto... what i once imagined were contest/award possibilities (some time back) evaporated for me as quickly as i became disillusioned with the realities of same---i.e., once i found mself more on the judging side of things... while i feel i can do some good as a judge (and others can too), as a writer i find i just can't direct mself toward same... some can (some who are my friends, again)... so it's very much a matter of how you construct yourself as a writer... for me, there are times i want to make some money... i haven't been real good at this, btw, but i'm trying!... at the same time, if i write simply FOR money, i am, in my view, in real trouble... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 14:25:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry, Thanks for your thoughtful questions. "Decry" may be too strong a term, but it does seem fishy on ethical grounds. The point of contests? I think I see the point & I've entered a few myself. My first book was published by Georgia out of a batch of first books they solicit each year, and my secodn during a "contest" sponsored by Owl Creek, but neither of these paid a chas prize, and both were done in-house. So are these contests? One had an outside reader, the other didn't. What I'm driving at is that there is a whole range of competitions, some more like contests than others. OK, but that's background. Slams do provide an alternative, and I have never said they shouldn't prosper, only that with my aesthetic I'm not comfortable participating in them. So, I don't really have a problem with competition in the arts in general or poetry in particular. But once you admit competition, you want the conditions of any particular instance to be consistent, I think. Which doesn't mean their couldn't be a range of competitions from the blind peer-review model of the sciences all the way over to a judge just plain old soliciting the book they want to win from one of their students (Doesn't this happen in the National?)--as long as everybody knows from the start how the thing will run. Does that clarify my position? And I'm so new to cyber-anything I can't speak to the ethics of electronic publication, though it seems like it might produce in time a functional alternative. Probably it would be better if the world were a better place and everybody agreed that we would read poems as poems & forget the author's name and/or reputation even when we know it. Having been raised by fundamentalists, however, I am very suspicious of better worlds, so I'm skeptical about your "I don't see this as an unattainable ideal." Not to be overly cynical, but in my book, all ideals are unattainable. It really comes down, doesn't it, to the line between a judge advocating a KIND of work, and advocating the work of a particular student? I do a fair amount of editing, and I know other editors, and I know a couple of folks who have served on NEA review panels, and we all, I think, to the best of our ability, try to read the work that walks through the door on its own two feet. Now I know there are editors and judges who don't do this, but they have to live with themselves. Well, I seem, as is my wont, to have rambled off the topic. If I haven't made myself clear, or responded to your specific issues, try me again. best, JD _______________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of the earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 14:30:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry: Two Joes have responded to your query. Your summary of Joe Amato's post sounded like an attempt to pin some of mine down that I responded--well, anything for the mix! (Actually, your questions made me frame my thoughts more clearly, so thanks!) best, Joe (the second) __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of the earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 12:30:42 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Steinberg Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron Silliman writes: >The real value of the Endowment has been in the book grants, which have done >a substantial amount to underwrite thousands of good small press books. >Every time Sun&Moon or Segue or Chax or Grey Wolf or whomever gets a grant, >I get the benefit and so do you. If Steve Dickison or somebody from SPD is >on the list, I'd be curious to get a sense of what percent of the books that >store carries were underwritten at least in part by the endowment (whatever >the number, I'm sure that it's gone down significantly in the past 5 years). > >And, for whatever reason, the book grants have been notably more even handed >than the fellowships for years. I couldn't agree more. Although I would love to get an NEA grant for myself, I'm quite proud of the NEA grant money I helped raise for Tia Chucha. Individuals tend to be a lot more resiliant to arts funding cutbacks than institutions, with publishing, by being so capital intensive, the most vulnerable literary institution around. Without that money, there would be a lot fewer books around, to the loss of us all. Hugh Steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 13:31:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: electronic publishing In-Reply-To: <01IJ67QFHFRSHV77EN@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" joe a mentioned electronic publishing as an alternative to print, and it's pretty clear to all that this is the wave of the future. however, my dept, which only recognizes number of pages published when it passes out "merit pay" (there's no cost of living increase) changes the rules when it comes to electronic publishing. rather than count ms pages and then figure what it wd be in print, as they do with print articles, they cut that number in half, on the assumption that standards are less rigorous for electronic journals. I recently published a 30pp ms article in Postmodern Culture, and tho' i proved to them that the journal was refereed and owned by Johns Hopkins, they assigned the absolute minimum, the same as i'd have gotten for a couple of 500 word reviews. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 12:49:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Steinberg Subject: Re: Clarification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In response to the Jorie Graham issue, this was not the first time I've heard this complaint about her. I would never ask her to judge any contest, and I will not send a manuscript to a contest in which she is a judge (why waste my money when there are all those good books/CDs/beer I can buy?). There are plenty of writers with reputations equal to or exceeding Graham's who are fair and play by the rules. If you're running a contest, ask around and pick them to be your judge. Hugh Steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 13:47:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: Clarification In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "Judge not, lest ye be judged . . ." Bob Grumman had an excellent point--appointing a judge can pre-determine a case--an award-- There is no taxonomy without taxation just as to be defined is to be fined. (Antithetically, Picasso claimed: "I don't seek, I find . . . ") Tammany Hall is ever with us. There's been quite an increasing storm of attacks on judges in the last few years--Federal judges--by various interest groups, each of whom feels that the person on the bench has not their interests in mind--whether it be the death penalty,abortion rights--or that the judge is a drunk or an atheist or in some other way incapable of seeing things "the right way". As Claude Rains said in Casablanca: "What!!! There's gambling going on here! I'm shocked! Round up the usual suspects!" In a wonderful essay called "MNMLST POETRY: Unacclaimed but Flourishing" up at Light and Dust (http://www.thing.net/~grist/homekarl.htm ) Bob Grumman notes that his all time favorite minimalist poem is Aram Saroyan's lighght this poem, to be sure--caused a brouhaha with the the NEA nearly thirty years ago . . . "Plus ca change . . ." In the early 1940's Henry Miller and the painter Abe Rattner applied for Guggenheim Fellowships. They wanted to travel the USA, from which they'd been in voluntary exile for a decade and write and paint about the place.Miller at the age of fifty learned to drive to undertake the trip. Rattner had to cancel out and Miller continued on alone. The pair never received a Grant, but Miller wrote a book about the trip. It's called The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. The book concludes with an Addenda listing all those who received awards and giving the address to apply for them. It's easy to say "Let there be light"-- just don't expect much "lighght" or as the Brazilian proverb has it: "When shit is worth money, the poor will be born without assholes" --dbchirot ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 15:03:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: one successful "contest" model.../ speaking as fiction AND poetry writer for a minute, i've found pushcart prize series a really good model. 1) stories picked are GOOD. i mean, they are just plain interesting and GOOD. a pushcart volume from any year is always a good read...; 2) they have an incredibly diverse database as base. for those who don't know, pushcart small press prize series publishes one collection a year of "best" short stories published that year. they have the most voracious readers in their screening panel that i've ever seen. mags with readerships of 200 from teeny weeny towns in the corners of midwest states to punk 'zines to Old Line Literary Journals to house organs for mfa programs...; 3) they seem to have no particular "camp" or set of cronies. authors included range from pulitzer prize winners to first timers -- for example, i remember a Tim O'Brien story, one of my favorite and so memorable that nine years after reading it, it still drifts into my mind about once a week in one way or another. i also remember a story from a woman who'd never published before. ANYWHERE. it was in a small state run literary journal or something, and got chosen from out of that. i don't know how they do what they do, but i'd love to see that kind of range and diversity in prizes/contests/magazines/etc. e ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 14:57:33 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 22 May 1997 12:58:25 -0500 from Responding to Joe & Joseph, Joe, the "waffle" bit was my kinda humor - not aimed at you. I meant people shd stop waffling & send me the dough. God, what if there were ONLY contests! Sometimes it seems like that in poetwy pubwishing. & what a hellhole that is. Think if the painters had to submit everything to judges. Well, they do, actually... but there's also a life to be lived there. & in poetry too. "Some painters, including myself, do not care what chair they are sitting on. It does not even have to be a comfortable one. They are too nervous to find out where they ought to sit. They do not want to "sit in style". Rather, they have found that painting - to be painting at all, in fact - is a way of living today, a style of living, so to speak. That is where the form of it lies. It is exactly in its uselessness [& the public's indifference - HG] that it is free. Those artists do not want to conform. They only want to be inspired." - Willem de Kooning But all I say is, if there are contests, hey, let them live up to the standards at least of the contest I won in 3rd grade, from the "Alex & His Dog" show (a local tv show). I sent in a picture or something, & got to be on the show & got a pair of two-gun holsters (I mean a 2-gun holster). Still use it today in moments of stress. Now I know that contest had no inside track, no name recognition, no ulterior motive, totally anonymous, based purely on quality according to the judge's most impersonal objective judgement. At'sa way it oughta be. The attainable ideal - on local MN television, no less! - Henry Gould (but then, they do it better in Minnesota...) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 15:25:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: BOYCOTT CONTESTS WITH READING FEES In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII self-publication and redundant electronic publication all the way... J On Thu, 22 May 1997, Hugh Steinberg wrote: > In response to the Jorie Graham issue, this was not the first time I've > heard this complaint about her. I would never ask her to judge any > contest, and I will not send a manuscript to a contest in which she is a > judge (why waste my money when there are all those good books/CDs/beer I > can buy?). There are plenty of writers with reputations equal to or > exceeding Graham's who are fair and play by the rules. If you're running a > contest, ask around and pick them to be your judge. > > Hugh Steinberg > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 14:37:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" it occurs to me, while i'm busy shooting my mouth off in these parts, that i might introduce an example of judging that seems to compromise me no matter what i do... on my campus, for five years now, i've judged, along with my colleagues, a departmental writing contest... i judge, among other categories, our poetry and fiction awards, each of which gives a top prize of $250---hardly insignificant!... at the same time, students may submit multiple entries, and may work with faculty (are encouraged to do so!) on their entries... now given that i'm one of two faculty who teaches creative writing, i tend to see my students' work showing up as submissions... technically, work is supposed to be anonymously submitted, but nobody makes any bones about the fact that it's not this way de facto---and how *can* it be anonymous if we work with students?... needless to say, i try as i can to pick what i think is the best work... and b/c [he sez], the better writers tend to migrate into my courses (being as how i'm on a tech campus and teaching creative writing), i end up often picking the writing of students in my classes, "my" students (i'm not the only judge, but still)... in any case i try, i try to pick (for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place) the best of various different writing styles... i do what i can, that is... but what i also do each year is revisit (for mself that is) what the function of this contest is supposed to do... as i see it, it's supposed to provide students with some spending money (much needed given our high tuition, and the economic class of many of our students), it's supposed to encourage writing, and it's supposed to reward talent (perhaps in order of increasing supposed-to's)... ysee, it's supposed to do so many things... so when i say that the jorie graham-awp situation is "deplorable," i am trying to be forgiving, i am trying, based on gwyn's account, to 'account for' what it means to choose one's students---and i have some experience in doing so, albeit in what i think is a substantively different context (one with a pretty clear authority hierarchy, to boot, twixt teacher and student, that is part of the contest structure)... anyway, advocacy is all tied up in what i do as judge---i try to advocate the best of different aesthetics... at the same time, i try to be fair... but i end up (generally) picking my own students' work, no doubt revealing my prejudices in the process... one can argue that the contest itself is flawed in concept, but then---can you really set it up so as to avoid entirely these sorts of conflicts?... in any case, it's *not* set up that way, we are *not* allowed to change it (the money comes from an endowment, with stipulations), and $250 a pop is $250---sure to help somebody... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 15:52:19 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Clarification MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry Gould makes a good point about "the AWP award (being) designed so that the judge would choose from finalists selected by AWP rather than personal favorites or students of hers," something I didn't know. Once again I've responded before knowing the full background. Hard not to with such a buzzer-stabber of a topic. I would still contend that the contest is, in effect, pre-judged: a group of people decide a certain kind of poet should be given money so pick the screeners and judge or judges they think most likely to reward that kind of poet. Jorie Graham, if she acted as reported, went over the line, though, I would now agree to that. Henry's suggestions about ways to improve judging make sense, too. I particularly go for the idea of making it possible for a judge not understanding some poet's work to get a second opinion. How to get that judge to admit to lack of understanding, though. . . . As for books getting better treatment from the NEA than individual writers, which is probably true, I suspect it's because: (1) there aren't as many presses as poets (and they don't take rejection so personally), and (2) awards to presses are awards to groups--i.e., to the several writers a given press has published; so compromises are easier: Judge X can be charitable to the publisher of otherstream poet Q, whom Judge X despises, because the same publisher published knownstream poet R, whom Judge X loves. --Bob G ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 14:53:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: electronic publishing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" maria, of course your dept. doing that is absolute bullshit... this is the sort of thing that's calculated to ruin the eletronic environment, at least in terms of academic participation... next they'll be saying that "only such & such online work" will count toward tenure... tell me, what "value" do they assign to a hypertext?... what's even more intriguing is the difference twixt u of minnesota and where i am... here, we don't "assign" value to publications as such... we have no written criteria as to what constitutes sufficient publication for tenure... every time i ask this question i'm told that this "can't" be done... when so many institutions do just that... if you assign value, you tend to reify categories... at the same time, if you don't, tenure candidates are left groping for direction... i would think that general guidelines for publication should be provided, and that these should be flexible enough to permit for innovative work [note my dropping into adminese]... in any case, i participated in a symposium held at uic this past weekend, on "the teaching of cyberspace through online courses"... the symposium was led by jim sosnoski, who teaches in the english dept. at uic... among the many topics discussed over two days was this question of tenure & promotion for online work (including publication, teaching, moos, etc.)... suffice to say that this debate will continue, and that (i hope) its terms will alter in the process... once again i found mself advocating [wink] that we use these newer media to help institute change... against which, some tend to see such media as merely extensions of the print world, authority and all intact---'let's preserve the status quo'... anyway... an essay in _pmc_ is an essay in a critical journal, period... the idea of devising some sort of "conversion table" strikes me as sheer nonsense... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 15:49:52 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 22 May 1997 14:37:35 -0500 from re: Joe's dilemma: a light suddenly went on: why not get an outside judge? Attainable ideals begin at home, quoth Everyman the Couch Potato. In Minnesota, they have a well-run contest called Happy Face Awards. You go into a supermarket. These people in clerk smocks are waiting there, smiling at you. If you smile back, you're in the running. Out of the blue, you get this envelope in the mail, with your very own photo of yourself, entering the store, along with a gift certificate for anything in the smorgasbord section! This contest really rewards people for beautifying their environment with joyful countenance & the appearance of inner peace. No names involved (they get that from the electronic eye at the check-out counter). - A Real Minnesotan ("It's been real") ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 15:12:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" henry, an outside judge is a good idea... but it won't happen on my campus, given that you'd most probably have to PAY somebody to do alla that reading!... and that, even setting aside the matter of money, my dept. likes to keep such activities 'in-house'... all sortsa reasons why that i won't go into... one reason i *will* mention is that, by keeping it in-house, we look (as a dept. of humanities on a tech. campus) as though *we're* putting in the extra effort, making a vital contribution to the campus that's not "service"-related, etc... not that we aren't, but--- but you know this tune, i'm sure... i'm not blaming anybody in my dept.---it's just the way things work, have worked, for over twenty years now... and twenty years is, well, twenty years... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 16:29:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: Etymological Fallacy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi Mark. George again. About this: >The issue was the denotation of a particular word. It is possible to argue >that "epic" was understood by Greeks in say, 400 BC, differently than it had >been understood 400 years earlier without changing the meaning of the word >so that it no longer denotes anything reliably--so that it no longer >communicates efficiently. > It is interesting. I took some time to dig around. In fact, the semantic range of the word "epos" is wide at the beginning [Homer, Pindar], wide at the middle [say, Plato or Aristotle], and wide at the end [the scholiasts]. That is, the word covers a rather large territory from Homer all the way down to late antiquity. I won't go into details. I also looked into the derivate "epikos". It turns out to be unattested until just abt the Christian era. The Latin borrowing "epicus" surfaces in the 3rd cent BCE, usually accompanying words like "poeta", "poema, "carmen". In short, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Grk word changed its meaning: its mg. was *always* broader than "our" "epic". It seems to me that it might be more likely that the semantic change is the responsibility of Latin writers, rather than Greek ones. I'm going to consult some classicists to see what they think. >But I'm a conservative old fart in these matters. "Problematize," for >instance, strikes me as a barbaric usage. How abt Jameson's prose? > Hope you are enjoying our tennis match. Yr. serve. George ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 17:02:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: electronic publishing In-Reply-To: <199705221953.OAA20824@charlie.cns.iit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 2:53 PM -0500 5/22/97, amato@charlie.cns.iit.edu wrote: >maria, of course your dept. doing that is absolute bullshit... > >this is the sort of thing that's calculated to ruin the eletronic >environment, at least in terms of academic participation... next they'll be >saying that "only such & such online work" will count toward tenure... tell >me, what "value" do they assign to a hypertext?... none. i submitted the hypertext i'm working with miekal on, and it didn't even rate as anything. zippo, zilch, bubkis, nada, etc.--md > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 18:19:40 -0400 Reply-To: Steven Marks Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: arguing orality In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 22 May 1997, George Thompson wrote: > I'll make a few general points that may be of interest to the list as a > whole, and then maybe we can continue the discussion of details off-list > [I'd like to; the issues are important for me]. I do not want to step into > I'd like for George and others to keep this discussion on-list. Are there others who would like the thread to be visible? I backchanneled GT and he said he would if enough were interested. What do you-all say? cheers, Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 18:59:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: electronic publishing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" maria, is there anybody in your dept. whose responsibilities could be conceived, at least in part, in electronic terms---somebody who is understood as "the" hypermedia, hyperfiction, etc., expert?... i can think of LOTS of ways to go with this... one way would be to drop a citation list the size of mt. everest on top of somebody or other's head---scholarly essays and books that deal with hypermedia, the effect of which is to legitimate ht as scholarly-academic practice... another is to try to publish your and miekal's hypertext... technical difficulties rear their ugly head here---there are more and more online journals looking for such items, though this is limited to an html/java interface---but if the ht is in, say, storyspace, you can always try a publisher like eastgate (and storyspace exports to html, with some difficulties likely)... and yet another way is to actually compose a (print!) justification for doing such work... probably best to take all three tacks at once... if i can help in any way, just let me know... i'm sure john cayley, jim rosenberg and others on this list can help too... for what it's worth, i'm faced mself with much the same problem... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 12:23:24 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: University of Auckland Subject: Contests, competitions, prizes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Last time I had anything to do with contests, competitions, prizes was in Korea. I was the New Zealand 'commissioner' for the CheChu Biennale. An Asia-Pacific affair with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Philipines, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand represented. And there were prizes. I've never been involved in an exhibition with prizes before. Although there's still one attached to the Venice Biennale, it is definitely non-standard behaviour. Here at home sponsors like this idea because 'competition' is belongs to a 'language they understand' and the arts don't, but equally because its got PR value. 'And the winners are'. And this is why lots of us don't like it--it makes a circus of what we do. But back to Korea, not only was the media--swarms of roving video cameras, mainly, held by men in Hawaiin-style shirts, while everyone else in the audience except the artists from foreign countries were wearing dark suits-- there at the prize-giving, not only were the prizes given out by the Governor of the Province, but also these chrome 'silver' platters in red silked- lined, velvet-covered boxes, inscribed to the winners, and ' medals' set in blocks of clear plastic in similar boxes for all the artists. The Grand Prize went to one of the Korean artists, then one artist from each of the other countries got a prize and platter, too. Several hundred people were at this gathering which occurred at 10.30 in the morning. We all trooped out then and outside a brass band was playing, and there were traditional dances, and there was a flag-raising for the exhibition. After than there was the ribbon- cutting. I had a part to play in this. Along with the other commissioners I was given a pair of white gloves and apair of sissors with sheep-skin covered handles and altogether, at the count of three, we cut this ribbon to 'open' the exhibition. However, it didn't end here because there were three venues for the Biennale on different parts of Chechu Island, so we spent the rest of the day on buses going to these venues and repeating the speeches and the ribbon-cutting. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 21:09:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: arguing orality Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd be happy to see this discussion continue on-list. JD__________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of the earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 21:55:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Paul Hoover Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Paul Hoover is a good friend of mine; he is a wonderful writer and person. I hope he gets the Nobel Prize! I've met Forrest Gander a couple of times too; he seemed really interesting and interested, and I think he's a terrific writer too. I hope he gets the Nobel prize too. What the hell is the matter with you people? Who wrote that stupid post anyway? I'd bet at least 3 nobel prizes it was written by a man and not a woman -- how do I know that? Spank his ass. Heeesh! Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 22:12:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Hey, cut that out! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" First Kent Johnson apologizes to Paul Hoover for smearing him, then Mike Boughn and George Thompson start kissing each other on the cheek. Hey, cut it out! Soon there's gonna be nobody left for me to paste on the puss! tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 22:18:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Tarfon and successors Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" But the connection between Tarfon and Kafka is not an accidental one at all. Kafka would certainly have read Pirke Avot, and he was certainly influenced by it. And, underlying the influence is something that makes it possible and is of a more profound interest. To the wise a hint is sufficient. Tom Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 22:21:48 -0500 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: More Poetry & the Public Sphere Conf Summary (LONG) henry wrote: > > On Mon, 5 May 1997 11:21:06 -0400 Brian McHale said: > >And she quoted the rabbis (but which one?): "It is not incumbent on > you to fin- > >ish the task. Nor are you free to give it up." > Wasn't that Rabbi Franz K. of Prague? In case no one has answered this: it's Rabbi Tarfon, as quoted in Pirkei Avot 2:20. (The book can be found in English variously as "Sayings of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" or, in Rami Shapiro's beautiful recent translation, as "Wisdom of the Jewish Sages". -- Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 12:42:04 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Pam Brown Subject: The Rich Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Christina quoted - " "When shit is worth money, the poor will be born without assholes" --dbchirot" "If the rich could hire people to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living." --George Alexander, 'Sparagmos' Pam Brown ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 22:07:17 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: electronic publishing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maria Damon wrote: > none. i submitted the hypertext i'm working with miekal on, and it didn't > even rate as anything. zippo, zilch, bubkis, nada, etc.--md > > > the key to this maria, is to get hardcopy journals to review these online texts & then use the reviews to validate the virtual. by the way when are we gonna finish that puppy? miekal in wordless wonder -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 13:04:08 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Pam Brown Subject: Amended Rich Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The crucial word is "other"... the actual quote is - "If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living." apologies to George Alexander... Pam ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 22:18:07 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: electronic publishing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote: > > maria, is there anybody in your dept. whose responsibilities could be > conceived, at least in part, in electronic terms---somebody who is > understood as "the" hypermedia, hyperfiction, etc., expert?... maria, I thot the creative writing dept was interested in a computer poetry course. that would be one way to modernize the academy. > i can think of LOTS of ways to go with this... one way would be to drop a > citation list the size of mt. everest on top of somebody or other's > head---scholarly essays and books that deal with hypermedia, the effect of > which is to legitimate ht as scholarly-academic practice... another is to > try to publish your and miekal's hypertext... technical difficulties rear > their ugly head here---there are more and more online journals looking for > such items, though this is limited to an html/java interface---but if the > ht is in, say, storyspace, you can always try a publisher like eastgate > (and storyspace exports to html, with some difficulties likely)... and yet > another way is to actually compose a (print!) justification for doing such > work... pleasureTEXTpossession is online at my Qazingulaza site, so in that sense it is accessible & published. it is specifically a work in html so Im not sure storyspace would coincide. we have discussed a hardcopy version, but this of course does nothing to address the legitimacy of the virtual text. probably best to take all three tacks at once... > > if i can help in any way, just let me know... i'm sure john cayley, jim > rosenberg and others on this list can help too... for what it's worth, i'm > faced mself with much the same problem... personally feel that while Maria is probably not in a position to tweak this situation to her advantage, that as an issue for writers in electronic space these are the kinds of pigeonholing barriers that want to put electronic writing in the same dusty file cabinet as concrete & visual, sound, performance, & other traditional edges of poetrivance. lurking forth miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 23:53:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: how rich Pam Brown wrote . . << The crucial word is "other"... the actual quote is - "If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living." apologies to George Alexander... >> In any event, those 2 quotes went quite nicely together. As for this "other" issue -- must say I found the rhythms of the sentence in your initial (san-other) version much better. Don't know who this Geoerge Alexander is (or if he wrote in English), but imho [as they say], the "other" is (already) implicit & (thus) superfluous. ALSO (more importantly), without the word "other," the sentence has a (considerably) greater startlement & twist of surprise to it. With "other," one is too much set up for the sequel. (Well there's my editorial opinion, in fine.) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 17:57:59 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rob wilson Subject: Robocop Lives In Christchurch In-Reply-To: <97May21.180358hwt.370549(2)@relay2.Hawaii.Edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The bias and perversity of this "Bad Writing" award was clear to me right away, and the more I thought about it to be associated (with Jameson) and the downfall of a certain kind of narrow English writing ("real thinking") and the downfall, alas, of "English as an academic discipline" was something to take (perverse) pleasure in. The attack on language is, per usual, a veiled attack on a differetn kind of thinking, another writing style that would push against the limits of clarity, conformist assumptions of social reality, and "common sense." That I was writing about the sublime cyborg, Robocop, and tried to give the sentences a parodic feel of the postmodern machinic being would be lost on a lecturer in the philosophy of art who cannot tell the sublime from the beautiful nor Jameson from an idiot (or just resentful mediocrity?) like himself. The push was towards the "dialectical sentence" that trries to incorporate the difficulty of grasping and reading the social into its very formation. What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches, towards Christchurch New Zealand to be born? I do. Rob Wilson PS. And thanks, Maria Damon et al, for reading between the lines of that AP anti-language release. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 00:17:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mgk3k@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU Subject: Re: electronic publishing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The University of Virginia now hosts complete archives of Humanist, a humanities computing discussion list which first went online back in 1987 (an announcement from the folks responsible is forthcoming). In the meantime, and in the context of this current Poetics thread, I offer the following, one of the very earliest messages posted to Humanist: >Date: 30 May 1987, 16:24:10 EDT >Reply-To: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS >Sender: HUMANIST Discussion >From: MCCARTY@UTOREPAS > >A colleague from Arizona has pointed out to me that pre- or >co-publication of material on HUMANIST and in printed journals is or >could be problematic. A journal editor might easily get upset, and >whether the law would interfere or not, none of us wants to make that >kind of enemy. I know there are some editors among you and, I suspect, >several authors of review articles, so I would guess that as a group we >are well qualified to talk about the issue. On the one hand publication >in a printed journal is professionally advantageous if not necessary; on >the other, the major journals can be far too slow for material of this >nature. So far, electronic publication has not been well respected -- >often for very good reasons. The informality of the medium (whether >historically or intrinsically determined) seems to have encouraged >sloppiness; one tends to dash off a note not caring very much if the >language is just right. The primitive nature of many mainframe editors >doesn't help. >It seems to me that an open discussion of electronic publication would >be an excellent beginning. What attitude would you editors take if a >review article, say a very good one, were to appear first on HUMANIST? >If electronic publication had to be in lieu of appearance in a respected >journal, what would you authors do? What sort of guidelines might be >worked out for authors and editors? How can we so raise the quality of >electronic publication that it would gain the respect of wired and >unwired scholars alike? >Replies to these questions should be directed to all HUMANISTs, don't >you think? I'm not sure what to add here, except that obviously legitimating online publication has been an issue for longer than we usually imagine. Seems to me that the real difference ten years has made is in the dialation of the audiences for online work, rather than in its professional validation (though I think there's hope there too). --Matt ====================================================================== Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ The Blake Archive | IATH ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 00:37:04 -0400 Reply-To: "Thomas M. Orange" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: electronic publishing In-Reply-To: <199705230407.AAA15740@julian.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII maria d wrote: I recently published a 30pp ms article in Postmodern Culture, and tho' i proved to them that the journal was refereed and owned by Johns Hopkins, they assigned the absolute minimum, the same as i'd have gotten for a couple of 500 word reviews. PMC may be distributed by hopkins -- or isn't it oxford up? regardless, its co-founders, john unsworth and eyal amiran, are currently at univ of virigina and north carolina state univ, respectively. givin' credit where it's due, tom ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 00:58:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin J Spinelli Subject: LINEbreak in RealAudio at the EPC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Folks, LINEbreak, the 1996 radio series hosted and co-produced by Charles Bernstein, is now available at the Electronic Poetry Center in easy-to-use RealAudio format. http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak LINEbreak was a series of weekly performance/interview programs featuring a wide array of poets and prose writers (Robert Creeley, Susan Howe, Jackson Mac Low, Bruce Andrews, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Ray Federman, Madeline Gins, Ron Silliman, Cecilia Vicua, Dennis Tedlock, Steve McCaffery, Ted Pearson, Peter Straub, Carla Harryman, Kenneth Sherwood, Loss Pequeo Glazier, Jena Osman, Fiona Templeton, Luci Tapahonso, Ben Yarmolinsky, Lance Olsen, Karen Mac Cormack, Ben Friedlander, Paul Auster, Jerome Rothenberg, Hannah Weiner, and Leslie Scalapino) which recently won a national award for radio programming. Programs and excerpts have been up for some time at the EPC in other soundfile formats. In recent weeks we've made the switch to RealAudio which requires no downloading of files (just click and listen). If your computer is not kitted out with RealAudio we've included clear information on how to install it. But if you have any further questions about playing soundfiles on your system don't hesitate to email me. For those of you unfamiliar with the EPC, it is (by our reckoning) the largest free online collection of poetry and poetics related material. There is now, for example, more than 20 hours of audio up at the EPC. Use it! Best, Martin _________________________________________________________________________ Martin Spinelli martins@acsu.buffalo.edu LINEbreak Producer SUNY Buffalo English Department LINEbreak http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak EPC Sound Room http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/sound ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 15:23:11 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pam Brown Subject: Re: how rich Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm not actually CERTAIN the "other" was in that quote...I'm at work - my books are at home.So why did I apologise ? Because maybe I'd misquoted... Anyway, George Alexander is a contemporary Australian writer/art critic/curator (of Greek origin). Cheers, Pam 11:53 PM 22/5/97 -0400, you wrote: >Pam Brown wrote . . > ><< The crucial word is "other"... the actual quote is - >"If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor would make >a wonderful living." > >apologies to George Alexander... >> > >In any event, those 2 quotes went quite nicely together. As for this >"other" issue -- must say I found the rhythms of the sentence in your >initial (san-other) version much better. Don't know who this Geoerge >Alexander is (or if he wrote in English), but imho [as they say], the >"other" is (already) implicit & (thus) superfluous. ALSO (more >importantly), without the word "other," the sentence has a >(considerably) greater startlement & twist of surprise to it. With "other," >one is too much set up for the sequel. > >(Well there's my editorial opinion, in fine.) > >d.i. > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 13:24:55 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. In-Reply-To: <199705222012.PAA26238@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII the value of winning a prize or grant, it would seem to me, breaks down into several aspects. there's the actual money, which certainly is a positive for whoever gets it. then there's the endorsement value, if you put it on your resume or whatever. and finally, there's the psychic income from "winning," competing, being chosen, etc. if you get the prize because it was wired for your before hand, then you certainly don't get the third benefit, and the second type of value is diminished to the extent that the "riggedness" is known, (and anyway, the person who gave you the prize would probably give you a blurb quote or a letter of recommendation for a job, etc, etc, so from the "prize" poiont of view you aren't getting full value either if it was an inside job. so there's just the money, and that matters, but there are other ways of getting money, would you rather Jorie Graham gave you $5,000 in prize money or $10,000 for an easy gig as a "research assistant" where all you had to was take books out of the library for her? so patronage can be provided in other ways as well. when I was an undergraduate I won a poetry prize of some sort given by my university, but since I figured that the sole creative writing professor there had been the judge, I didn't think particularly much of it. I think I only entered because he asked me to, it was no big deal. the money was something like $50 and I guess I spent it on books right away. on the other hand, a few years later, I was a CAPS semi-finalist -- never got a cent, didn't win the prize, but the pleasure of being chosen by some anonymous reader was much greater than winning the other thing & I'm sure I boasted much more over the latter than the former. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 02:13:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo@AOL.COM Subject: who gets the prizes, etc. May I suggest that the (yes, yes, all right, 'so-called') Iowa Writers Workshop "network" is perhaps less like the nostalgic Mafia or the international cartels presently taking over the globe, but rather like the old Soviet Writers' Union? Operating as it does in these laissez-the-fat-cats-faire Untied States (no typo), it is of course not so tightly organized and not as clear about its socio-aesthetico-political agenda, but you're either in it or you ain't. (Barry Goldensohn, bless his heart, pointed this out to me many years ago in Iowa City: "You're just not *family*." ) Many decades of transmitted experience in maneuvering alumni into key positions on prize (award, fellowship) committees, writing program associations, and university press boards are bound to bear fruit such as those described in Gwyn McVay's post. One must admit, however, that one is more fortunate than poets such as Arkadii Dragomoschenko and Ilya Kutik were in pre-1989 Russia: the Small Press Distribution catalogue, the Buffalo Poetics Discussion Group, programs at Brown and Buffalo, New College of California, The Jack Kerouac School of Writing and Poetics at The Naropa Institute, etc., had no counterparts in that place and time. Thus, from the writing person's point of view, late-stage corporate capitalism may be seen as preferable to Stalinism, in that it is closer to medieval feudalism: troubadours hanging out with the "right" and better-connected overlords probably stood a better chance of having their works survive to be translated by (definitely non-"Iowa") Paul Blackburn on smoky nights above McSorley's Saloon: It is worthless to write a line if the song proceed not from the heart: nor can the song come from the heart if there is no love in it. ... A fool's love is like verse poor in the making, only appearance and the name having, for it loves nothing but itself, can take nothing of good, corrupts the rhyme. And their singing is not worth a dime --Bernart de Ventadorn / Paul Blackburn Yes, friends, irony is not singular: it is ironies upon ironies ... Anselm Hollo ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 18:32:59 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Atua Wera Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Back to Epics briefly, i just purchased Kendrick Smithyman's Atua Wera, which the blurb describes as "a New Zealand epic for the late twentieth century." Whatever, it seems to contain some good poetry & fascinating history, page 10 & so far thumbs up. Dan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 04:11:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Fwd: Bad Writing Awards (fwd) My now famous colleague, Rob Wilson, asks me to send this along. sms --------------------- Forwarded message: From: wilson@fl.nthu.edu.tw (Rob. Wilson) To: sschu30844@aol.com Date: 97-05-23 00:13:17 EDT Susan, Could you forward this to the "poetics list" so that they can get a fuller sense of what-- ideologically, and in terms of language police-- these "Bad Writing Awards" stand for? Sayonara Tinfish, Rob ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 17:24:00 -1000 From: rob wilson To: wilson@fl.nthu.edu.tw Subject: Bad Writing Awards (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 08:21:37 -1000 From: Houston Wood To: Robert J Wilson Subject: Bad Writing Awards (fwd) This was fowarded to me. So, in case you still haven't seen it, here it is. And, I repeat: This is complementary. If you got nothing (that they are envious of), then you got nothing to lose (or mock). Houston Wood hwood@hawaii.edu 808-956-3059 _o \o_ __| \ / |__ o _ o/ \o/ __|- __/ \__/o \o | o/ o/__ /\ /| | > > / \ ( \ /o\ / ) | (\ / | < \ / \ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- --- Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 23:27:23 -0500 (CDT) From: Carol.Poster@uni.edu Bad Writing Contest Winners-- We are pleased to announce winners of the third Bad Writing Contest, sponsored by the scholarly journal Philosophy and Literature (published by the Johns Hopkins University Press) and its internet discussion group, PHIL-LIT. The Bad Writing Contest attempts to locate the ugliest, most stylistically awful passage found in a scholarly book or article published in the last few years. Ordinary journalism, fiction, etc. are not eligible, nor are parodies: entries must be non-ironic, from actual serious academic journals or books. In a field where unintended self-parody is so widespread, deliberate send-ups are hardly necessary. This year's winning passages include prose published by established, successful scholars, experts who have doubtless labored for years to write like this. Obscurity, after all, can be a notable achievement. The fame and influence of writers such as Hegel, Heidegger, or Derrida rests in part on their mysterious impenetrability. On the other hand, as a cynic once remarked, John Stuart Mill never attained Hegel's prestige because people found out what he meant. This is a mistake the authors of our our prize-winning passages seem determined to avoid. * The first prize goes to a sentence by the distinguished scholar Fredric Jameson, a man who on the evidence of his many admired books finds it difficult to write intelligibly and impossible to write well. Whether this is because of the deep complexity of Professor Jameson's ideas or their patent absurdity is something readers must decide for themselves. Here, spotted for us by Dave Roden of Central Queensland University in Australia, is the very first sentence of Professor Jameson's book, Signatures of the Visible (Routledge, 1990, p. 1): "The visual is _essentially_ pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the more thankless effort to discipline the viewer)." The appreciative Mr. Roden says it is "good of Jameson to let readers know so soon what they're up against." We cannot see what the second "that" in the sentence refers to. And imagine if that uncertain "it" were willing to betray its object? The reader may be baffled, but then any author who thinks visual experience is essentially pornographic suffers confusions no lessons in English composition are going to fix. * If reading Fredric Jameson is like swimming through cold porridge, there are writers who strive for incoherence of a more bombastic kind. Here is our next winner, which was found for us by Professor Cynthia Freeland of the University of Houston. The writer is Professor Rob Wilson: "If such a sublime cyborg would insinuate the future as post-Fordist subject, his palpably masochistic locations as ecstatic agent of the sublime superstate need to be decoded as the 'now-all-but-unreadable DNA' of a fast deindustrializing Detroit, just as his Robocop-like strategy of carceral negotiation and street control remains the tirelessly American one of inflicting regeneration through violence upon the racially heteroglossic wilds and others of the inner city." This colorful gem appears in a collection called The Administration of Aesthetics: Censorship, Political Criticism, and the Public Sphere, edited by Richard Burt "for the Social Text Collective" (University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Social Text is the cultural studies journal made famous by publishing physicist Alan Sokal's jargon-ridden parody of postmodernist writing. If this essay is Social Text's idea of scholarship, little wonder it fell for Sokal's hoax. (And precisely what are "racially heteroglossic wilds and others"?) Dr. Wilson is an English professor, of course. * That incomprehensibility need not be long-winded is proven by our third-place winner, sent in by Richard Collier, who teaches at Mt. Royal College in Canada. It's a sentence from Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory, by Fred Botting (Manchester University Press, 1991): "The lure of imaginary totality is momentarily frozen before the dialectic of desire hastens on within symbolic chains." * Still, prolixity is often a feature of bad writing, as demonstrated by our next winner, a passage submitted by Mindy Michels, a graduate anthropology student at the American University in Washington, D.C. It's written by Stephen Tyler, and appears in Writing Culture, edited (it says) by James Clifford and George E. Marcus (University of California Press, 1986). Of what he calls "post-modern ethnography," Professor Tyler says: "It thus relativizes discourse not just to form--that familiar perversion of the modernist; nor to authorial intention--that conceit of the romantics; nor to a foundational world beyond discourse--that desperate grasping for a separate reality of the mystic and scientist alike; nor even to history and ideology--those refuges of the hermeneuticist; nor even less to language--that hypostasized abstraction of the linguist; nor, ultimately, even to discourse--that Nietzschean playground of world-lost signifiers of the structuralist and grammatologist, but to all or none of these, for it is anarchic, though not for the sake of anarchy but because it refuses to become a fetishized object among objects--to be dismantled, compared, classified, and neutered in that parody of scientific scrutiny known as criticism." * A bemused Dr. Tim van Gelder of the University of Melbourne sent us the following sentence: "Since thought is seen to be 'rhizomatic' rather than 'arboreal,' the movement of differentiation and becoming is already imbued with its own positive trajectory." It's from The Continental Philosophy Reader, edited by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater (Routledge, 1996), part of an editors' introduction intended to help students understand a chapter. Dr. van Gelder says, "No undergraduate student I've given this introduction to has been able to make the slightest sense of it. Neither has any faculty member." * An assistant professor of English at a U.S. university (she prefers to remain anonymous) entered this choice morsel from The Cultures of United States Imperialism, by Donald Pease (Duke University Press, 1993): "When interpreted from within the ideal space of the myth-symbol school, Americanist masterworks legitimized hegemonic understanding of American history expressively totalized in the metanarrative that had been reconstructed out of (or more accurately read into) these masterworks." While the entrant says she enjoys the Bad Writing Contest, she's fearful her career prospects would suffer were she to be identified as hostile to the turn by English departments toward movies and soap operas. We quite understand: these days the worst writers in universities are English professors who ignore "the canon" in order to apply tepid, vaguely Marxist gobbledygook to popular culture. Young academics who'd like a career had best go along. * But it's not just the English department where jargon and incoherence are increasingly the fashion. Susan Katz Karp, a graduate student at Queens College in New York City, found this splendid nugget showing that forward-thinking art historians are doing their desperate best to import postmodern style into their discipline. It's from an article by Professor Anna C. Chave, writing in Art Bulletin (December 1994): "To this end, I must underline the phallicism endemic to the dialectics of penetration routinely deployed in descriptions of pictorial space and the operations of spectatorship." The next round of the Bad Writing Contest, results to be announced in 1998, is now open with a deadline of December 31, 1997. There is an endless ocean of pretentious, turgid academic prose being added to daily, and we'll continue to celebrate it. ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 05:06:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: orpheus Subject: Re: clarification In-Reply-To: <199705230407.AAA31513@alcor.concordia.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII agree agree agree agree agree agree agree agree agreed agreed agreed agreed agreed "if shit was worth money the poor wouldn't have assholes" and so says our old friend Freud filthy lucre money money money makes the artist mad, makes the poet resentful where is it in the cantos that Ez Pound rants about dough, scratch, cash, currency, bucks, moolah, change, silver, paper, money is like drugs dont neva' end never nevah He also talks that line in ABC... In Guide to Kulchur ahyes, of course the cantos and of course, and Mauberly "And no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece. And give up verse, my boy, there's nothing in it." "Butter reviewers. From fifty to thee hundred I rose in eighteen months; The hardest nut I had to crack Was Mr. Dundas." Canto XLV ....With usura no picture is made to endure nor to live with. but it is made to sell and sell quickly ... They have bought whores for Eleusis Corpses are set to banquets at behest of usura. And Tzara for the "Is the aim of art to make money and cajole the nice nice bourgeois. Rhymes ring with the assonance of the currencies and the inflexion slips along the line of the belly in profile." Manifesto 1918 "All groups have arrived at this trust company after riding their steeds on various comets." Ditto. ********************************* ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 07:36:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: AWP Fandango Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" As one of the screeners for Jorie Graham's judging of the aforementioned AWP contest, I can attest that this chump did not recognize one of the 100+ manuscripts I read, and that the screening represents a good week from this life, gone. Back to Catullus for some good epithets. Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 08:05:04 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Tarfon and successors In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 22 May 1997 22:18:52 -0500 from On Thu, 22 May 1997 22:18:52 -0500 Tom Mandel said: >But the connection between Tarfon and Kafka is not an accidental one at >all. Kafka would certainly have read Pirke Avot, and he was certainly >influenced by it. And, underlying the influence is something that makes it >possible and is of a more profound interest. To the wise a hint is sufficient. > >Tom Actually I believe Kafka uses the saying almost verbatim somewhere, or perhaps in many, many variations. Sorry I can't be more specif. - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 08:08:59 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: The Rich In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 23 May 1997 12:42:04 +1100 from >" "When shit is worth money, the poor will be born without assholes" > >--dbchirot" [quoting the proverb] Not to worry. Cynicism (idealism too!) can make anyone an asshole. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 07:54:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: electronic publishing In-Reply-To: <3384B576.3288@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:07 PM +0100 5/22/97, Miekal And wrote: >Maria Damon wrote: > > >> none. i submitted the hypertext i'm working with miekal on, and it didn't >> even rate as anything. zippo, zilch, bubkis, nada, etc.--md >> >> > > > >the key to this maria, is to get hardcopy journals to review these >online texts & then use the reviews to validate the virtual. by the way >when are we gonna finish that puppy? > > >miekal > >in wordless wonder hey baby, i'm planning to come out after school's over, second week of june, say, for a few dayz? howz that by you? > >-- >@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# >Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime >QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: >http://net22.com/qazingulaza >e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 08:02:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: electronic publishing In-Reply-To: <3384B7FD.6DF5@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks guyz, the problem isn't that my colleagues don't know about technology. they teach courses in it, encourage us to do all kinds of "online teaching" for extra $, and have endless seminars for us in whch we are taught the wonders and glories of modern technology. we all have highpowered computers in our offices whether we want them or not. departmental business is routinely conducted by e-mail. the problem is that they don't like to give raises, and will use any excuse not to. also, the system is very much at the mercy of how well you get along with the people on the merit review committee, how well you get along with the chair, how these indivduals feel about the kind of work one does, etc. it's all about petty internicene politics rather than any actual understanding of the value of one's work. At 10:18 PM +0100 5/22/97, Miekal And wrote: >amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote: >> >> maria, is there anybody in your dept. whose responsibilities could be >> conceived, at least in part, in electronic terms---somebody who is >> understood as "the" hypermedia, hyperfiction, etc., expert?... > >maria, I thot the creative writing dept was interested in a computer >poetry course. that would be one way to modernize the academy. > > >> i can think of LOTS of ways to go with this... one way would be to drop a >> citation list the size of mt. everest on top of somebody or other's >> head---scholarly essays and books that deal with hypermedia, the effect of >> which is to legitimate ht as scholarly-academic practice... another is to >> try to publish your and miekal's hypertext... technical difficulties rear >> their ugly head here---there are more and more online journals looking for >> such items, though this is limited to an html/java interface---but if the >> ht is in, say, storyspace, you can always try a publisher like eastgate >> (and storyspace exports to html, with some difficulties likely)... and yet >> another way is to actually compose a (print!) justification for doing such >> work... > >pleasureTEXTpossession is online at my Qazingulaza site, so in that >sense it is accessible & published. it is specifically a work in html >so Im not sure storyspace would coincide. we have discussed a hardcopy >version, but this of course does nothing to address the legitimacy of >the virtual text. > >probably best to take all three tacks at once... >> >> if i can help in any way, just let me know... i'm sure john cayley, jim >> rosenberg and others on this list can help too... for what it's worth, i'm >> faced mself with much the same problem... > >personally feel that while Maria is probably not in a position to tweak >this situation to her advantage, that as an issue for writers in >electronic space these are the kinds of pigeonholing barriers that want >to put electronic writing in the same dusty file cabinet as concrete & >visual, sound, performance, & other traditional edges of poetrivance. > >lurking forth > >miekal > >-- >@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# >Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime >QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: >http://net22.com/qazingulaza >e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 08:08:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Robocop Lives In Christchurch In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 5:57 PM -1000 5/22/97, rob wilson wrote: >The bias and perversity of this "Bad Writing" award was clear to me right >away, and the more I thought about it to be associated (with Jameson) and >the downfall of a certain kind of narrow English writing ("real thinking") >and the downfall, alas, of "English as an academic discipline" was >something to take (perverse) pleasure in. The attack on language is, per >usual, a veiled attack on a differetn kind of thinking, another writing >style that would push against the limits of clarity, conformist >assumptions of social reality, and "common sense." That I was writing >about the sublime cyborg, Robocop, and tried to give the sentences a >parodic feel of the postmodern machinic being would be lost on a lecturer >in the philosophy of art who cannot tell the sublime from the beautiful >nor Jameson from an idiot (or just resentful mediocrity?) like himself. >The push was towards the "dialectical sentence" that trries to incorporate >the difficulty of grasping and reading the social into its very formation. >What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches, towards >Christchurch New Zealand to be born? I do. Rob Wilson > >PS. And thanks, Maria Damon et al, for reading between the lines of that >AP anti-language release. the pleasure is all mine... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 09:14:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: NEA, cronyism, etc. In-Reply-To: <199705221626.LAA27549@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think Amato's long post was as always interesting and passionate and worthwhile. I've been a poet for decades and have never been within lightyears of the academic world (being an un-degreed library worker in an acadmic library is *very* far out of the loop of academe, so don't let my "edu" fool ya)...So I can't speak to those concerns. But there are a lot of interesting points that keep occuring to me as I read this thread...On the one hand there are a lot of folks who have done crucial work for the benefit of all of us, with nea and other funding (such as Charles Alex., and his post speaks well to the current crisis that right-wing attacks on social values are bringing to those operations); on the other hand there have always been networks of publication and exchange and mutual support that have existed *without* grant-type funding, and it may be that there will be no option for the counterstream but to operate in that way, increasingly. Less mainstreamish approaches to poetry, such as I respond to, have always been made to function with fewer resources, unfortuantely. That's not in any way itself a good. But if there is less capital accumulated from a variety of public, tax-base, private and institutional sources behind a given poetry mag, say, or publisher, then the physical quality of the product will suffer, and of course distribution will suffer big time; but it's true that in that case there is less "corrupt cronyism" involved too--We support those we feel passionately are the poets we care about, the poets we consider the best ones and the vital ones. No doubt I'm to be blamed for not doing a better job at finding grant and institutional support for my projects...Before someone accuses me of it, let me insist that I'm **not** recommending poverty and zamizdat and sugared sonnets among friends, as a *preferable* option. But it does strike me that there are advantages to trying to build a dynamic pluralistic democracy of poetry, on a shoestring. Some of the tangled questions, about where legitimate partisanship and cronyism divide (which are very real problems, if you have been given institutional resources to handle, I realize that) don't come up, for some who more outside well-funded structures. (...by the way, Joe, the comment made to you by one judge, that they could always arrange the rejection of a ms. by sending to someone they knew were out of sympathy, is *widely* known to happen in science, as well, one of a number of dirty little secrets involved in the peer-review system) Mark P. Atlanta ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 08:22:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Awards (fwd) In-Reply-To: <970523041114_977430314@emout20.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 4:11 AM -0400 5/23/97, SSchu30844@AOL.COM wrote: >My now famous colleague, Rob Wilson, asks me to send this along. sms The >fame and influence of writers such as Hegel, Heidegger, or Derrida >rests in part on their mysterious impenetrability. On the other hand, >as a cynic once remarked, John Stuart Mill never attained Hegel's >prestige because people found out what he meant. This is a mistake >the authors of our our prize-winning passages seem determined to >avoid. > thanks for posting this sentence, rob/susan. it foregrounds yet another strand of this factional conflict, namely nationalism and xenophobia. brits, wth their clear, crunchy prose, are the virtuous underdogs, the french and germans with their dreamy obscurity and questionable sexualities, are in the ascendancy in this world war III of language. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 11:35:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Landers Subject: Re: who gets the prizes, etc. In-Reply-To: <199705230407.AAA29326@node1.frontiernet.net> from "Automatic digest processor" at May 23, 97 00:07:04 am Content-Type: text Anselm wrote: > One must admit, however, that one is more fortunate than poets such as > Arkadii Dragomoschenko and Ilya Kutik were in pre-1989 Russia: the Small > Press Distribution catalogue, the Buffalo Poetics Discussion Group, programs > at Brown and Buffalo, New College of California, The Jack Kerouac School of > Writing and Poetics at The Naropa Institute, etc., had no counterparts in > that place and time. > > Thus, from the writing person's point of view, late-stage corporate > capitalism may be seen as preferable to Stalinism, in that it is closer to > medieval feudalism: troubadours hanging out with the "right" and > better-connected overlords probably stood a better chance of having their > works survive to be translated by (definitely non-"Iowa") Paul Blackburn on > smoky nights above McSorley's Saloon... Anselm, I'm sure you would also agree that it's also best just to focus on one's own poetry and aesthetic integrity than to get caught up in poetry politics. I can't imagine how else a poet with new ideas can cope. I agree that it is wise to be aware of the cliques, but acceptance by an "important person" within a clique doesn't change the poetry or the editing (as in Mr. Hoover's case). Hoover's and Chernoff's 'zine is always worth its cover price. There isn't any better criteria for me than that. The issues I take with the anthology have more to do with the exclusion of Zukofsky. If the Objectivists weren't included with the modernists or the post-modernists, when and where will Norton put them. They claim that Ashberry was the first big influence on the language poets, but as those of us who got that 'zine way back when know, it was Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky who inspired them. And everyone was trying to fathom Clark Coolidge. The anthology is generally full of really fine poems, but the historical background given at the front of the book is not to my liking. Anyhow, my real point is that Hoover's award from the Iowa camp is not any kind of "selling out". For me it is good to see people of one armed camp making peace with people from the other. It is good to disagree; that helps us clarify our thoughts, but some of the warfare has been plain ugly. Maybe this is a sign that things are improving. But probably not. Mariani received much recognition on both sides for having written about WCW, but the meter-beaters still don't give Williams his due. Maybe Hoover's recognition is just a pat on the back for being published by W.W.Norton. Norton does have a great distribution, and some great poets are being read for the first time because of it. Messerli's anthology is better, though, and I can't wait till Jerry and Pierre bestowed their Volume II on us. Concerning battles, I wonder, Anselm, if you see yourself in the thick of it or on the outside. Are you, in your own view, more of a Shaw or a Dickenson. Your work has certainly been called up in the middle of heated arguments. My guess is that you'd rather just stay cool and work on your own vision. Pete Landers landers@frontiernet.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 12:27:10 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Fwd: Bad Writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maria Damon wrote: > > At 5:57 PM -1000 5/22/97, rob wilson wrote: > >The bias and perversity of this "Bad Writing" award was clear to me right > >away, and the more I thought about it to be associated (with Jameson) and > >the downfall of a certain kind of narrow English writing ("real thinking") > >and the downfall, alas, of "English as an academic discipline" was > >something to take (perverse) pleasure in. The attack on language is, per > >usual, a veiled attack on a differetn kind of thinking, another writing > >style that would push against the limits of clarity, conformist > >assumptions of social reality, and "common sense." That I was writing > >about the sublime cyborg, Robocop, and tried to give the sentences a > >parodic feel of the postmodern machinic being would be lost on a lecturer > >in the philosophy of art who cannot tell the sublime from the beautiful > >nor Jameson from an idiot (or just resentful mediocrity?) like himself. > >The push was towards the "dialectical sentence" that trries to incorporate > >the difficulty of grasping and reading the social into its very formation. > >What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches, towards > >Christchurch New Zealand to be born? I do. Rob Wilson > > > >PS. And thanks, Maria Damon et al, for reading between the lines of that > >AP anti-language release. > > the pleasure is all mine... Re: roughing it with the beast in his new clothes... Rob Wilson's defense of a "style that would push against the limits of clarity, conformist assumptions of social reality, and 'common sense.'... [a] push toward the 'dialectical sentence' that tries to incorporate the difficulty of grasping and reading the social into its very formation" strikes me as clear and readable. Does that defeat its purpose? His sentence from The Administration of Aesthetics [in the message forwarded by Simon Schuchat], while not as opaque as Jameson's, lives up to its purpose only too well, to exclusion of anyone not in "the social" milieu which Wilson inhabits or seeks to establish. The question in another thread [on the NEA] about how to distinguish advocacy from cronyism seems apposite here. Should we admire preaching to the converted? Or bamboozling the Great Unwashed with hoo-hah? Objections to bad writing go back at least to George Orwell's "Poilitcs and the English Language" (e.g., his example of Harold Laski's contorted quintuple negative from "Freedom of Expression"!). The message: CYP (cover your petard)--a point well taken, if taken well, Polonius might say. Presumably, Professor Laski--writing well before the present vogue for 'oppositional' syntax--meant to clarify something by his sentence, but failed; thus, Orwell rightly condemned his sentence as bad writing. If Wilson or Jameson seek to obscure something--and succeed--should they receive praise for having written "good" sentences? Since when does the intention of a sentence qualify its merit? [If it did, all our students would get "A"s!]. And if no one can figure out what the sentence tried to obscure, defer, "problematize" [ugh] or "push against" in the first place, how should one judge whether it has succeeded or not? Not that Professor Dutton has any greater claim to "real thinking" than Jameson or Wilson, but at least he says what he says clearly--or tries to, and if he doesn't succeed, one can specify where and why. Some of the impulse for the kind of writing Dutton knocks (as no doubt Orwell would, too) seems to derive from the view of critics like Stanley Fish that criticism constitutes a higher 'art form' than literature & so, presumably, has carte blanche to exploit its methods. Fish, however, writes clearly enough--and interestingly--most of the time. Perhaps Marx (ever actually read Capital?) gives the turgid turn another twist: with the Cold War over and no hope of military insurrection against RoboWar, the pen--no matter how leaky or blotchy--still looks "mightier than the sword." But hey: who reads this stuff? The huddled masses? "Blind mouths"? Hardly. But much of it seems doomed to "fall on deaf (or deafened) ears." I don't see this as a case of "I knew Gedrtrude Stein. Gertrude Stein was a friend of mine...," but I do agree with Mark Baker that Jameson "at least in this sentence... wrote very badly," and I see nothing wrong in saying so about Jameson or anyone else. No doubt those so chided can ably defend themselves--though one may not sympathize entirely with their defenses, as I don't with Wilson's, however clearly he expressed it. Anyhow, waiting for the pie barrage, Dan Zinmmerman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 12:04:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: shameless self-promotion... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hey folks, ad for my forthcoming book follows, which will i think irk poets & critics alike... it's older writing from my pov, but some of it holds up ok... & the bulk of it hasn't till now seen the light of print day... what follows is from the flyer... eternal thanx to marjorie & charles (& gail & michael, who are not in these regions) for blurbing me... i'm told the book will be out early july, but it may be a bit later... apologies for the interrupt, thanx for listening... all best, joe ---------------------------------------------- BOOKEND: ANATOMIES OF A VIRTUAL SELF Joe Amato "_Bookend_ sets the stage for a new kind of writing. Part poetry, part theory, part scholarly exegesis, Joe Amato's book cruises the Information Network, sweeping along, in its rush toward revelation, the flotsam and jetsam of daily life---especially life in the academy---as it is playing itself out in the 1990s. The various 'anatomies,' especially the Anatomy of a Heart, allow us to enter the author's consciousness, and yet _Bookend_ remains curiously depersonalized. Amato tells stories, ruminates on poetics, works on his computer, and arranges every page visually as well as verbally. The lettrist 'breakdown' of the last pages is thus entirely anticipated." Marjorie Perloff, Sadie Dernham Patek Professor of Humanities, Stanford University "Joe Amato's passionate, acrobatic, and audacious engagement with the limits of discursiveness aims to repixelate our reception of virtual culture. Like a test pattern coming from just beyond the Gutenberg Galaxy, _Bookend_'s static is a call for us to readjust our sets." Charles Bernstein, David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters, State University of New York at Buffalo "Situated somewhere between the world of print and cyberspace, Amato's _Bookend_ is an amazing read---fast, provocative, learned, hypertextual, fun. The work departs from standard academic discourse but is at the same time astonishing in its breadth. Part poem, part narrative, part academic argument, Amato uses a wide range of contemporary scholarship to inform his thinking. Yet the book elicits a personal rather than a cerebral response. Through considerations of family, ethnicity, computers, sexuality, lived experience, Amato brings mind and culture to bear on the construction of self." Gail E. Hawisher, Professor of English and Director of the Center for Writing Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign "The verbal energy, intelligence, intensity, and integrity of the vision in this book are compelling. The author brings seemingly contrary texts, concerns, linguistic practices, and discourse to bear upon fundamental problems of our culture, the humanities, and poetics in an almost hypertextual matrix of narrative, philosophical, playful and poetic discourses. This is a difficult book aware of its joys; a joyful book aware of its difficulties." Michael Joyce, Professor of English and the Library, Vassar College A Volume in the SUNY Press Series in Postmodern Culture Joseph Natoli, Editor 190 pages $14.95 paperback ISBN 0-7914-3402-8 $44.50 hardcover ISBN 0-7914-3401-X 1-800-666-2211 (phone orders) 1-800-688-2877 (FAX orders in the U.S.) 607-277-6292 (FAX orders outside the U.S.) State University of New York Press c/o CUP Services PO Box 6525 Ithaca, NY 14851 607-277-2211 (Customer Service) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 10:18:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Etymological Fallacy In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark Weiss wrote: >Check out "fallacy" in the OED, meanings 3 and 4, or the American Heritage, >meanings 1 and 2. "Fallacy" doesn't mean "wrong." Granted, but what it does mean still implies a judgment that I wonder about the possibility of making. >The issue was the denotation of a particular word. It is possible to argue >that "epic" was understood by Greeks in say, 400 BC, differently than it had >been understood 400 years earlier without changing the meaning of the word >so that it no longer denotes anything reliably--so that it no longer >communicates efficiently. I'm pretty suspicious of reliable denotation and efficient communication. It's probably because I was born after advertising, mass media, psychology and politics fused. >But I'm a conservative old fart in these matters. "Problematize," for >instance, strikes me as a barbaric usage. Sorry to knock down your gate, Mister, but can I have my ball back? :-p ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 12:52:40 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Hatmaker Subject: awards MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Following the whole Paul Hoover/Marvin Bell post fiasco, I find myself returning to what I think was a primary point in Kent Johnson's original post. I respect what everyone has said about Paul Hoover and certainly do not begrudge any award he gets nor do I want to cast dispersions about Marvin Bell (whom I know very little about) and his reasons for supporting Hoover's work. However, I am, at a more theoretical level, concerned with possible outcomes of such perceived alliences. In many areas, poetry being one, I am certainly interested in people of differing ideas recognizing the value of each others work but I am also cynical of it, having seen the result in non- poetry cases--thinking here of some of the falseness I about toward American (often middle-class, often white) liberalism. Not that it's happened in the Hoover case (or, quite frankly, any case I can think of), but I guess hearing the story makes me wonder, is there going to be some payoff expected? Is someone like Paul Hoover going to be expected to hold out the olive branch to more conservative writers? Of course, the question comes--are there more conservative writers who deserve awards? This would seen tied to questions (is my (or Paul Hoover's or anyone's) judgement about what is "good" poetry tied to "tastes" or other factors?) too complex for this post . More important to me would be is this how contests are run? I have yet to win any sort of award and I recognize that the struggle to get recognition through awards, publications, etc. is different that that of maintaining a reputation once you have a few awards, etc.--certainly the contests are usually different. I suppose a possible fear I have when I read posts about cronyism is that both types of contests are about poets who already have positions and "reps" working to maintain these positions and "reps" Interesting, but I note two types of posts have occured as a result of the Hoover/Bell and Jorie Graham posts--those which question thier motives, judgements, alliances, etc. (and give off the impression of not knowing the individuals involved) and the "I know this person and you are wrong" posts. Of course, if I thought a poet I knew and respected was somehow called into question I'd proabably write a "I know this person, how dare you" type of post, and I suppose posts which claim "yeah, I know so-and-so and you _should_ questions their motives" wouldn't be taken very seriously, but I wonder what, if any, cronyism underlies even these exchanges. E. Hatmaker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 11:19:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Etymological Fallacy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" George: Thanks for the info. At some point "epic" as genre-definition crystalized, and remained largely unchanged for almost two millenia in the west. What troubled me was what I saw as the imposition of the etymology of a loan word as _meaning_ onto later usage in the context of the borrower languages. Jameson? I admire his mind. But there's no excuse for bad writing. In this case I think he uses the opacity of his style to mask a confusion or conflation of categories: visual=voyeur=pornography. I _could_ translate the sentence in question. At 04:29 PM 5/22/97 -0400, you wrote: >Hi Mark. George again. About this: > >>The issue was the denotation of a particular word. It is possible to argue >>that "epic" was understood by Greeks in say, 400 BC, differently than it had >>been understood 400 years earlier without changing the meaning of the word >>so that it no longer denotes anything reliably--so that it no longer >>communicates efficiently. >> >It is interesting. I took some time to dig around. In fact, the semantic >range of the word "epos" is wide at the beginning [Homer, Pindar], wide at >the middle [say, Plato or Aristotle], and wide at the end [the scholiasts]. >That is, the word covers a rather large territory from Homer all the way >down to late antiquity. I won't go into details. I also looked into the >derivate "epikos". It turns out to be unattested until just abt the >Christian era. The Latin borrowing "epicus" surfaces in the 3rd cent BCE, >usually accompanying words like "poeta", "poema, "carmen". > >In short, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Grk word changed its >meaning: its mg. was *always* broader than "our" "epic". It seems to me >that it might be more likely that the semantic change is the responsibility >of Latin writers, rather than Greek ones. I'm going to consult some >classicists to see what they think. > >>But I'm a conservative old fart in these matters. "Problematize," for >>instance, strikes me as a barbaric usage. > >How abt Jameson's prose? >> >Hope you are enjoying our tennis match. Yr. serve. > >George > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 13:41:10 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Jameson contra Jameson MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit A few words of Jameson's might be of interest to those following the "Bad Writing" and "Jameson's Prose" threads. This is a passage Jameson wrote regarding Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin's "Plumpes Denken", and the putting forth of arguments in plain language. He argues that their plain form of argument is a historical phenomenon, a necessary reaction to the obscurity of a more Hegelian Marxism. That was 21 years ago -- I wonder if we might now have reached a similar point in history, and if the (unfair, narrow-minded, bullying) PHIL-LIT material might be viewed as the nastier side of this phenomenon. It may or may not be relevant that I write this as someone who: A) Thinks _The Political Unconscious_ is one of the most profound books of criticism to appear in my lifetime. B) Does not want to emulate the prose style of the later Jameson. C) Went to graduate school during a time when Jameson was presented as an authoritative, rather than a radically marginal, figure in literary and cultural studies. D) Was asked to desubscribe from PHIL-LIT a couple of years ago over a post I wanted to make about deconstruction. Jameson: "I think that the problem lies in this, that we are always _in situation_ with respect to class and ideology and cultural history, that we are never able to be mere blank slates, and that truth can never exist as a static system, but always has to be part of a more general process of _demystification_. This, in its simplest form, is the justification and the essence of the dialectical method; and the proof is that even _plumpes Denken_ takes its value from the intellectual positions which it corrects -- the overcomplicated Hegelianism or philosophic Marxism for which it substitutes some hard truths and plain language. So _plumpes Denken_ is not a position in its own right either, but the demystification of some prior position from which it derives its acquired momentum and of which it comes as a genuinely Hegelian _Aufhebung_ or cancellation/transcendence" This from the essay "Criticism in History" in Norman Rudich's excellent and hard-to-find anthology _Weapons of Criticism: Marxism in America and the Literary Tradition_ (Palo Alto: Ramparts Press, 1976). Are we about to see the emergence (not just on the right) of a new _plumpes Denken_? At least two conditions seem right for it: 1) we have a complicated and abstruse philosophical Marxism now, which may be generating its own Brechts and Benjamins and 2) with fewer grants and more financial pressures, the presses that have supported this criticism are looking for ways to be more accessible and therefore more profitable Like Daniel Zimmerman, waiting for the pie barrage (or should I say, the cancellation/transcendence of my position), Robert Archambeau PS: The passage above is proof that Jameson can be lucid when he wants to be. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 14:40:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: PATHETIC CREATURE (seen on tombstone) Seen on Tombstone-- "I just wanted to let people know I was (and it's okay to be) a PATHETIC CREATURE"-- it was written or maybe clawed.... c ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 14:46:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Joel K and Scott P. Dear Joel--thanks for letting me know the status of my MS's I figured as much by now and had already sent them elsewhere. Anyway.... Thanks also for the lead for SCOTT POUND.... Are you there SCOTT POUND? Are you a Buffalo person too? If he's not there, how get in touch.... Was I in touch with you before.... I remember over a year ago I was in touch with someone other than Joel K. but I don't remember whether it was SCOTT POUND? At the time, my UNDERSTANDING was that my essay on CLint Burnham was definitely accepted for the review issue. And since I will be off EMAIL by 5/26 I just thought I'd try to find out. So, how get in touch wit him. ?????????? Anybody who can help would be appreciated... chris s. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 14:58:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: who gets the prizes, etc. In-Reply-To: JDHollo@AOL.COM "who gets the prizes, etc." (May 23, 2:13am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >Thus, from the writing person's point of view, late-stage corporate >capitalism may be seen as preferable to Stalinism, in that it is closer to >medieval feudalism: troubadours hanging out with the "right" and >better-connected overlords probably stood a better chance of having their >works survive to be translated... Well said. Feudalism is back! BB ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 15:03:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: who gets the prizes, etc. In-Reply-To: William Burmeister Prod "Re: who gets the prizes, etc." (May 23, 2:58pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >>Thus, from the writing person's point of view, late-stage corporate >>capitalism may be seen as preferable to Stalinism, in that it is closer to >>medieval feudalism: troubadours hanging out with the "right" and >>better-connected overlords probably stood a better chance of having their >>works survive to be translated... >Well said. Feudalism is back! >BB All right. So Trump Tower is not a damp and clammy stone keep. BB ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 15:12:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: bad writing More off-the-top wit & wisdom from your digital Polonius: re: bad writing Okay, so it's fun analyzing turgid style & pointing it out, but who wants to be a writing policeman after 7th grade english class? Lots of fields of scholarship can be mocked for hair-splitting abstrusities, jargon, & circularities. & some I suppose for intentional or subconscious or trained obfuscation. But bad writing is both a convenient club and the wrong handle. Seems to me in any argued discourse you want to look for the logic of it, the correlated evidence, the arguments - and either disagree, point out weaknesses, or agree with it. After seventh grade, style - however sick, corrupt, decadent, & just plain bad - is, contra Pound, not relevant. I'm not talking about poetry here (sorry, you "creative critics"). A lot of these writing policemen claim their targets are obfuscatory or even illogical, when basically they haven't bothered (& who can blame them) to master the writer's terms. - H. Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 13:23:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: Jameson contra Jameson Comments: To: Robert Archambeau In-Reply-To: <33859E76.2D90@LFC.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 23 May 1997, Robert Archambeau wrote (in part): > > Are we about to see the emergence (not just on the right) of a new > _plumpes Denken_? At least two conditions seem right for it: > > 1) we have a complicated and abstruse philosophical Marxism now, which > may be generating its own Brechts and Benjamins > > and > > 2) with fewer grants and more financial pressures, the presses that have > supported this criticism are looking for ways to be more accessible and > therefore more profitable Count me as one who'd like to see this happen and for whom "accessible" is not necessarily a dirty word. But -- to twist the question a little -- are people entirely sanguine about seeing Benjamin JUST as a link in the chain of philosophical Marxism? I've always thought the Gershom Scholem Kabbalistic side of his thought at least as fascinating; in fact, that he combines these two strands at all may be the most fascinating thing about him! Interesting seeing Brecht and Scholem in a tug-of-war for his affections. Kabbala can get pretty abstruse too, of course . . . P.S. and entirely off the radar range: I'm number 99 on the Seattle Public Library wait list for *Mason & Dixon* so won't be able to join that discussion for a while, but instead picked up last week Brad Gooch's bio of Frank O'Hara *City Poet*. Has this book been discussed on the list at all? Does anyone have any strong opinions about it one way or the other? Been reading it in light of recent posts about cronyism and, of course, gossip . . . backchannels fine. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 15:47:16 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: bad writing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" terrific post, ghoul(d). At 3:12 PM 5/23/97, henry g wrote: >More off-the-top wit & wisdom from your digital Polonius: > >re: bad writing >Okay, so it's fun analyzing turgid style & pointing it out, but who wants >to be a writing policeman after 7th grade english class? Lots of fields >of scholarship can be mocked for hair-splitting abstrusities, jargon, & >circularities. & some I suppose for intentional or subconscious or >trained obfuscation. But bad writing is both a convenient club and the >wrong handle. Seems to me in any argued discourse you want to look for >the logic of it, the correlated evidence, the arguments - and either >disagree, point out weaknesses, or agree with it. After seventh grade, >style - however sick, corrupt, decadent, & just plain bad - is, contra >Pound, not relevant. I'm not talking about poetry here (sorry, you >"creative critics"). A lot of these writing policemen claim their targets >are obfuscatory or even illogical, when basically they haven't bothered >(& who can blame them) to master the writer's terms. - H. Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 15:55:43 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Jameson contra Jameson Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:23 PM 5/23/97, Joe Safdie wrote: ... > >Count me as one who'd like to see this happen and for whom "accessible" is >not necessarily a dirty word. nothing wrong w/ accessibility; but one question shd be: accessible to whom, under what circumstances, etc? accessibility and the politics thereof are not transparently self-evident. > >But -- to twist the question a little -- are people entirely sanguine >about seeing Benjamin JUST as a link in the chain of philosophical >Marxism? I've always thought the Gershom Scholem Kabbalistic side of his >thought at least as fascinating; in fact, that he combines these two >strands at all may be the most fascinating thing about him! Interesting >seeing Brecht and Scholem in a tug-of-war for his affections. > >Kabbala can get pretty abstruse too, of course . . . > yes indeed; why split benjamin up this way? his own prose is so organically wide-ranging and brilliant... ... Brad Gooch's bio >of Frank O'Hara *City Poet*. Has this book been discussed on the list at >all? Does anyone have any strong opinions about it one way or the other? i was disappointed, having read edmund white's genet bio shortly before embarking on gooch...lots of pages, lots of pointless "information," little insight or depth... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 17:01:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Joel K and Scott P. -Reply Comments: cc: kuszai@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU, spound@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Chris -- you asked about Scott Pound (whom I don't pesonally know). Evidently Scott is a subscriber to the Poetics listserv; -- his email address is given by the computer as: spound@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU (& ergo, presumably he is "a Buffalo person"). Anyway, I'm copying him with this message -- so that (in case he didn't note it among the mass of Poetics posts) Scott may be aware that you're trying to reach him. best, d.i. (p.s.: likewise copying Joel Kuszai) >>> Chris Stroffolino 05/23/97 02:46pm >>> Dear Joel--thanks for letting me know the status of my MS's I figured as much by now and had already sent them elsewhere. Anyway.... Thanks also for the lead for SCOTT POUND.... Are you there SCOTT POUND? Are you a Buffalo person too? If he's not there, how get in touch.... Was I in touch with you before.... I remember over a year ago I was in touch with someone other than Joel K. but I don't remember whether it was SCOTT POUND? At the time, my UNDERSTANDING was that my essay on CLint Burnham was definitely accepted for the review issue. And since I will be off EMAIL by 5/26 I just thought I'd try to find out. So, how get in touch wit him. ?????????? Anybody who can help would be appreciated... chris s. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 13:57:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Pie Barrage MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For Daniel Zimmerman and Robert Archambeau, don' juan a pie barrage? So: A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye; "Which pye being opened they began to sing," (This old song and new simile holds good), "A dainty dish to set before the King," Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;-- And Jameson, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,-- Explaining Metaphysics to the nation-- I wish he would explain his Explanation. Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 15:01:33 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hoa Nguyen Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology Comments: To: junction@EARTHLINK.NET Content-Type: text/plain Dale here from Hoa's machine: Etymology is not a science with exact definition. Its goal is to show the history of a word's usage. It seems to me that a word is only "defined" through its usage and changes over time for a variety of reasons. As a poet, I find the historical weight of words fascinating and essential to how I understand language. Rather than defining a word's meaning, the etymological process is more like measuring historical transmutations. Knowing how a word was once used offers important contrast to the meanings we apply to the same words now. Besides, an etymological dictionary is necessry for my understanding of poetry from any period. But of course, these tools are relied upon more and more the further back you go in the language. >From owner-poetics@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu Tue May 20 10:32:49 1997 >Received: (qmail 7669 invoked from network); 20 May 1997 17:25:26 -0000 >Received: from listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu (128.205.7.35) > by deliverance.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 20 May 1997 17:25:26 -0000 >Received: from LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU by LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8c) with spool id 14244546 for > POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU; Tue, 20 May 1997 13:25:20 -0400 >Received: (qmail 7675 invoked from network); 20 May 1997 17:25:18 -0000 >Received: from iceland-c.it.earthlink.net (HELO iceland.it.earthlink.net) > (204.119.177.28) by listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu with SMTP; 20 May 1997 > 17:25:18 -0000 >Received: from LOCALNAME (1Cust89.Max13.San-Diego.CA.MS.UU.NET > [153.34.217.217]) by iceland.it.earthlink.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP > id KAA28637 for ; Tue, 20 May 1997 > 10:25:15 -0700 (PDT) >X-Sender: junction@mail.earthlink.net >X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Message-ID: <199705201725.KAA28637@iceland.it.earthlink.net> >Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 10:25:15 -0700 >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >Sender: UB Poetics discussion group >From: Mark Weiss >Subject: epic redux/etymology >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > >I'd like to propose a new term for the list's consideration: > >the etymological fallacy--a. that two words wrom the same root continue to >mean the same thing. >b. that a word retains the meaning of its root. > >Here's a recent example of a.: sensible and sensitive. Example: "I was >starving, your honor. In my situation stealing your wife's purse was the >sensible thing to do." >Substitute sensitive. > >And here's an example of b.: epic as gossip. > --------------------------------------------------------- Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 14:47:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Re: bad writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry Gould wrote: > Seems to me in any argued discourse you want to look for > the logic of it, the correlated evidence, the arguments - and either > disagree, point out weaknesses, or agree with it. After seventh grade, > style - however sick, corrupt, decadent, & just plain bad - is, contra > Pound, not relevant. I'm not talking about poetry here (sorry, you > "creative critics"). A lot of these writing policemen claim their targets > are obfuscatory or even illogical, when basically they haven't bothered > (& who can blame them) to master the writer's terms. Abandon freshman comp. teaching, all you grant-deprived poets! The writer's terms are the style; the logic of Jameson's prose is the logic of his style. Ain't that the point of it? Why else write the way he does? He does it purposely, so criticizing the style (or agreeing with it by imitating it) is doing pretty much what you want people to look for. That's why most people on the List suspect ideological bias in Dutton's contest: the contest criticizes the style because it don't like the argument (which, again, is the style, as we who get pleasure in merely circulating say). Or do you mean *conventional* standards of style are irrelevant? Yup, or at least too limited, because they limit receptivity to different arguments. But not style itself. Mark Baker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 18:40:36 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: bad writing In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 23 May 1997 14:47:55 -0700 from On Fri, 23 May 1997 14:47:55 -0700 Mark Baker said: > >Abandon freshman comp. teaching, all you grant-deprived poets! >The writer's terms are the style; the logic of Jameson's prose is the >logic of his style. Ain't that the point of it? Why else write the >way he does? He does it purposely, so criticizing the style (or agreeing >with it by imitating it) is doing pretty much what you want people to >look for. That's why most people on the List suspect ideological bias in >Dutton's contest: the contest criticizes the style because it don't like >the argument (which, again, is the style, as we who get pleasure in >merely circulating say). > >Or do you mean *conventional* standards of style are irrelevant? >Yup, or at least too limited, because they limit receptivity to >different arguments. But not style itself. > Mark - loved your Augustan stanza. In my view, academic treatises, philosophy, etc. are based on a transparent non-style. Now I know Plato-lovers etc. are already up in arms. But the nonstyle is the transparent ground-bass(?). It's utilitarian prose transmitting ideas, the aim is not to seduce with the felicities of the language per se. That's why the platonic dialogues are so wonderful : it's extraneous pleasure. Each philosopher has her or his own gorgeous individual excellent eccentric STYLE, yes, which may be a rhetorical checkmate but not a logical proof. But these academic explainers (Jameson et al) with their pompous turgid theories don't make it as philosophers. & how sad it is for a POETICS list to even have to deal with them, I say. Winston Curnow, your recent post on your problems with dirtying your hands in the "circus" of award/publication PR are relevant here! What a parade of fools the whole poetry industry really is, more truly than you think! You're in it deeper than you know! To think that entire "schools" of experimental poetry could arise flavored with the pure pomposity of academic "engage" "theorists" and "critics"!! & that good Brother Anselm could single out Naropa, Buffalo, and Brown, etc. as regions of political purity and poetic liberation! Believe me, the false prestige of the established literati (Amer. Acad. of Arts & Letters, Iowa, etc.) - the whole sense of "falseness" there - is based on these poets' LACK of a necessary narrative. The charm of Homer, Ariosto, Milton, even, is that their gifts were bent under the weight of economic & political necessity unto death. This is the charm of their work at work! Same goes for Villon! We live in an Empire, gang, anything goes, it all goes. To think that the Language Poets or the [fill-in-the- blank] School are going to purify the language of the tribe by devoting themselves to Right Doctrine & Politique is the laugh of the end-of-century! Let's talk about the glories of Jameson's PC style, huh poets?? To hell with all them critics. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 19:39:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: bad writing In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII But what if there is no such mastery? What if the text is incomprehensible? What if it separates demographics on the basis of the master's vocabulary? Or should we all accept the role of either ignorance or discipleship? In fact there are situations where one _does_ require in- formation, and it's simply in too obscure a form for most people to be useful - computer papers are an example. Finally, on what basis is "style" equated with writing's com- prehension? Alan On Fri, 23 May 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > terrific post, ghoul(d). > > At 3:12 PM 5/23/97, henry g wrote: > >More off-the-top wit & wisdom from your digital Polonius: > > > >re: bad writing > >Okay, so it's fun analyzing turgid style & pointing it out, but who wants > >to be a writing policeman after 7th grade english class? Lots of fields > >of scholarship can be mocked for hair-splitting abstrusities, jargon, & > >circularities. & some I suppose for intentional or subconscious or > >trained obfuscation. But bad writing is both a convenient club and the > >wrong handle. Seems to me in any argued discourse you want to look for > >the logic of it, the correlated evidence, the arguments - and either > >disagree, point out weaknesses, or agree with it. After seventh grade, > >style - however sick, corrupt, decadent, & just plain bad - is, contra > >Pound, not relevant. I'm not talking about poetry here (sorry, you > >"creative critics"). A lot of these writing policemen claim their targets > >are obfuscatory or even illogical, when basically they haven't bothered > >(& who can blame them) to master the writer's terms. - H. Gould > ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ and Javascripted text/webpages -- Tel. 718-857-3671, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY 11217 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 19:41:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: Jameson contra Jameson In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 23 May 1997, Maria Damon (Maria Damon) wrote: > nothing wrong w/ accessibility; but one question shd be: accessible to > whom, under what circumstances, etc? accessibility and the politics > thereof are not transparently self-evident. And accessibility _always_ constructs a politics, demographics - and divisions as well. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 18:44:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: bad writing Comments: To: henry MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I don't find Jameson turgid at all, but highly provocative and often, very lucid. Far more lucid, say, than Derrida. But I like what Henry is saying here, which, if I may extrapolate, seems to be that all criticism - and all writing - aspires to the condition of poetry. As Valery remarks in his "Introduction to the Method of Leonardo daVinci," (I paraphrase): in the end, what remains of the gorgeous systems of a Plato, a Spinoza, if not a work of art? He goes on to say that this is why we continue to read them: not as "proofs of life" or whatever, but because of the example of their beauty. But "critical thought" can and does reach the level of the poetic - I'm thinking of Barthes' _A Lover's Discourse_ and _Empire of Signs_, of Derrida's _The Post Card_. And of course, Charles Bernstein's _A Poetics_. All "criticisms of life." All "poetic." Something btw I don't find Jameson supplying at all - he seems not to have that particular gift. But I still enjoy reading him, esp. when I disagree with him (as for instance with the beginning of _Signatures_.) Patrick Pritchett who is off to explore the Pawnee National Grasslands and the secrets of the mountain plover - avast ye, Spandrift! ---------- From: henry To: POETICS Subject: Re: bad writing Date: Friday, May 23, 1997 6:14PM That's why the platonic dialogues are so wonderful : it's extraneous pleasure. Each philosopher has her or his own gorgeous individual excellent eccentric STYLE, yes, which may be a rhetorical checkmate but not a logical proof. But these academic explainers (Jameson et al) with their pompous turgid theories don't make it as philosophers. & how sad it is for a POETICS list to even have to deal with them, I say. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 22:14:37 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: bad writing In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 23 May 1997 18:44:00 -0500 from Patrick : interesting, because total, misreading of what I said. Makes me wonder about my own ability to express myself. I don't think all writing aspires to poetry. I think critical analysis & philosophy are distinct activities - they are not poetry. What I was trying to say was that in a democratic world the justification of poetry by means of an academic critique of socio-political structures is the ultimate circus carnival of a self-promotional hyped-up market empire. Poetry is something else. Closer to Ventadour/Blackburn's concept of the singing heart. But even CLOSER to something more allegorical & literary: Ariosto, for example. Another courtly poet singing for his meals. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 22:36:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: Jameson, etc Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Coleridge's Seventh Lecture on Shakespeare begins, "In a former lecture I endeavoured to point out the union of the Poet and Philosopher," a sentence that recalls Wordsworth's notion in the Preface that poetry is "more philosophical" than history. So does it make any sense to frame the discussion of Jameson's "bad prose" in these Romantic terms? Is Jameson a philosopher striving toward a sort of poetic condition of language, or just a bad stylist? The distinction between difficulty and sludge has been discussed here, but what about clarity? Some of Dickinson's poems, for instance, are difficult sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility at the level of the sentence, while remaining "clear"; and in philosophy Wittgenstein can be hard to parse even while being absolutely plain-spoken. Which goes to show, I think, that Bad Writing Contests--and who *enters* them, so are they contests?--are, as has been said here, a political crock. Which is not to say, btw, I think Jameson's sentence is all that *clear* not in fact all that difficult. Clearly (ha!), the Commonwealth academics who set up the "competition" (the word itself is a lie in this usage) just don't like theory. __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 22:42:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: bad writing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry, How different is the language-game we call poetry from the language-game we call philosophy? Is it the difference between baseball and football, or the difference between pitching and playing first base? JD __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 23:36:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: quote unquote MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT (a defining moment?) what separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize (Olympia Dukakis) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 00:41:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: bad writing / good metaphor ? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Joseph Duemer: << How different is the language-game we call poetry from the language-game we call philosophy? Is it the difference between baseball and football, or the difference between pitching and playing first base? >> or: is it the difference between walking thru a landscape so that you can make a map of it (philosophy), vs. glancing at a map so that you can go make your way to & thru the very landscape (poetry) ? who was it (what poet) said he found philosphy a bit embarrassing? -- (rather like a form of nakedness?) that poetry should "resist the intellect, almost" [or words to that effect ?] is also a Famed Adage (or, since I'm not reading m&d, a familiar quote -- I don't remember from whom - W.Stevens?) philosophy & poetry: sense & sensibility ? philosophy was rounding the bases but never arriving poetry was way out in left field -- watching the blimp then poetry hit a Homer & philosophy sat bemused poetry bunts & dives for first (down & dirty) philosophy -- a nervous pitcher -- tends to spit when poets brag about stealing bases philosophers will try to catch 'em out the catcher makes cryptic signals (poetry) the pitcher follows instructions (philosophy) the crowd (philosophy) goes wild! the bases (poetry) are now loaded! but who's on deck? who's on third? who can master the screwball? the stadium (philosophy) empty dusk: the game (poetry) is over the beer can (philosphy) lies crushed crackerjack (poetry) fades from memory even the gift was a mere trinket -- at the bottom of popcorn (philosphy) and the coating (poetry) philosophy was too occupied with the score poetry was too enamoured of the fanfare poetry left to take a leak when philosophy was up at bat when the kid (poetry) returned to his seat the player (philosophy) had been walked no one knew for sure how this happened prudence (philosophy) or guile (poetry)? . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 01:19:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Pie Barrage In-Reply-To: <338604CF.7CD4@bc.sympatico.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This may be considered hoisting Star Trek by its own Picard but isn't Jameson the one who thought Perelman was a schizophrenic poet and now lately Perelman seems to be implying the same thing about his comrades Bernstein and Andrews?...Can't follow the shifting paradymes without a scorecard.James Sherry recently read a satiric piece at the Ear Inn sharply questioning Perelman's East/West L=A biases in his recent "Marginalization" book. I admire the Dryden/Pope flavor of the below, although I'm leery about asserting comparisons like this among such scholarly company. Nick P. On Fri, 23 May 1997, Mark Baker wrote: > For Daniel Zimmerman and Robert Archambeau, > don' juan a pie barrage? So: > > A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye > Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye; > > "Which pye being opened they began to sing," > (This old song and new simile holds good), > "A dainty dish to set before the King," > Or Regent, who admires such kind of food;-- > And Jameson, too, has lately taken wing, > But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,-- > Explaining Metaphysics to the nation-- > I wish he would explain his Explanation. > > Mark Baker > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 02:13:44 -0400 Reply-To: "Thomas M. Orange" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: bad writing In-Reply-To: <199705240400.AAA29505@julian.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i agree with mark baker: the writer's terms are the style. suppose i want to talk about "otherness" -- at what point am i then justified in talking about alterity, non-identity, heterogeneity? if my style, or even what henry calls my non-style (the transparent figure-ground, h.?), demands that i introduce these additional terms, i would hope it's because they give me and my reader something that the original term lacks. what if reader x doesn't pick up the valences behind one of the terms -- say, heterogeneity -- their fault or mine? should i expect reader x to then feel hopelessly underread and forced to go back and read everything from hegel's science of logic to bataille in order to return to my text more valence-friendly? i think i at least have a responsibility to use my style responsibly, in other words: if i start talking about "otherness predicated upon its dialectical overdetermination by a radically heterogeneous alterity" i truely hope you as my reader will find me my copy-editor and my publisher and shake us violently demanding an explanation of what the hell i'm talking about else banish us to a lifetime of reading nothing but postings to the spoons collective's bataille list as punishment... tom. ________________________________________________________ |Was uns, That which | |zusammenwarf, threw us together | |schrickt auseinander, frightens asunder, | | | |ein Weltstein, sonnenfern, a worldstone, sundistant,| |summt. hums. | | | | [Paul Celan] | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 18:28:04 +1000 Reply-To: jtranter@sydpcug.org.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Awards (fwd) ... more MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Maria Damon wrote ... > Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Awards (fwd) > Date: Friday, 23 May 1997 11:22 > At 4:11 AM -0400 5/23/97, SSchu30844@AOL.COM wrote: > >My now famous colleague, Rob Wilson, asks me to send this along. sms. The > >fame and influence of writers such as Hegel, Heidegger, or Derrida > >rests in part on their mysterious impenetrability. On the other hand, > >as a cynic once remarked, John Stuart Mill never attained Hegel's > >prestige because people found out what he meant. This is a mistake > >the authors of our our prize-winning passages seem determined to > >avoid. > thanks for posting this sentence, rob/susan. it foregrounds yet another > strand of this factional conflict, namely nationalism and xenophobia. > brits, wth their clear, crunchy prose, are the virtuous underdogs, the > french and germans with their dreamy obscurity and questionable > sexualities, are in the ascendancy in this world war III of language. ________ The Brits? What about the Australians, with their liking for Vegemite, their fondness for naming their children "Bruce", their penchant for keeping child-eating dingoes as pets, and their obsessive use of the adjectives "bloody" and "beaut" ... as in "That's a bloody beaut poem you wrote about the dingo, Bruce!" » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Australia Phone Sydney (+612) 9555 8502 FAX (+612) 9212 2350 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 08:49:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Dale here from Hoa's machine: > >Etymology is not a science with exact definition. Its goal is to show the >history of a word's usage. It seems to me that a word is only "defined" >>through its usage and changes over time for a variety of reasons. As a >poet, I >find the historical weight of words fascinating and essential to >how I >understand language. Rather than defining a word's meaning, the >etymological >process is more like measuring historical transmutations. >Knowing how a word >was once used offers important contrast to the >meanings we apply to the same >words now. Besides, an etymological >dictionary is necessry for my understanding >of poetry from any period. >But of course, these tools are relied upon more and >more the further back >you go in the language. > Dale has nicely laid out the important distinction betw etymology and usage, and in an admirably brief post. Of course we don't [necessarily] need etym. to interpret a contemporary poem; we can rely on our native competence. The reason why philologists are prone to over-value etym. is that often it is our only tool. We can't rely on native competence when it comes to Vedic [a dead lang], and usage can't be a tool when it is precisely a word's usage that we are trying to figure out. But good philologists are as sensitive to this distinction as good poets are. As for "epos", I think etym has steered me in the right direction, toward a more accurate understanding of the word's usage. George ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 08:45:41 -0600 Reply-To: rwhyte@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Whyte Subject: its survivors Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII hypnotic gun from the law books engaged pure absorbent glass spreads thin mushroom, a woody smell, reconstituted from the ages 3 5 7 officer in distress quick saves showered time when all the thinking is done cigarettes for columbia absorb the blow dispersion is the rule here shards make silver the backs of victims crunch! crash! thumk! laugh at bad footage porno repeater reload crunch disposable interlude with leaves dirt drinking fatty milk in those huts. boom boom horizon jumps; lets leave those numbers behind although it's stupid to run time with the law. our man bellows orders his dumb glaze like hemingway prose shot in the back of the head crash black his foolish wife or maybe not so when the victims move they glisten sink in the dirt time, menbugs lost guns so to women so to women caw crunch take on new being sound no longer that call of body crunch but other bodies thought possible and planets sink in dirt breathing the telecommunications of the insects cuts the air with rubbing legs and mates otherwise victims move back to these worlds, gates, bleeding blacks no longer turning but finally leaving inscription. think now christina amour fou WHERE WERE YOU BOYS COMING FROM CORPUS CHRISTI SIR OUT COMES THE GUN telegraphic pulse shot black powder telos of gas expansion insects transported in the shock wave wings legs bugs can you hear bird can you hear again this jungle has its survivors, pass the salt quoth last topographical madmen dig the dirt for larger bugs, do a sweep things will be alright because we're getting close to the signal, creeping think now christina amour fou this time the signal what I mean! this time is the time of bugs! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 10:41:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" not to take rob wilson's side (and yes---i respect rob's insights, his ability to talk theory), but let's say we decided to accept as valid something called "theoretical discourse in the academy"... and let's say we decided to gauge the "value" of each such tract or assertion on the basis of the work it did (no need to write "theoretical work" here!) in that context, in those communities... what would "good" writing be?... i don't think there's an ez answer, though there may be some answers... we can agree, i think, that rob's writing (and jameson's---and why isn't jameson online?---i've never caught him online---rob, it should be observed, is at least *here*) is not ez, or "clear," in the context of what a majority of (even articulate) writers might find "clear"... we might even argue that there is a better way to say what rob is saying... but first, first we'd have to answer the question of who the intended audience is... even if "the intended audience is always a fiction," the alternative is not, cannot be to ask that *all* writing that purports at some level to be theoretical be accessible to all readers, can it?... can it really?... from the point of view of even modest reception theory, i don't think so... for example: do we ask the same of theoretical physicists?... clearly [wink], in science, the obscurity gives offense is generally acknowledged to be the concepts and "nouns" themselves, and what they denote (and note michael berube's fine piece in _the chronicle_ a while back, "in defense of obscurity" or some such, his mla talk---very un-obscure!)... we assume, even allowing that the rhetoric of science is itself constructive of scientific knowledge, that an essay in the scientific community will of necessity employ concepts that constitute insider or expert knowledge... and in general we seem to respect same---we don't run around publicly chastising (not most of us anyway) physicists for using terms like "charm physics" (no shit---charm physics!)... the bind of course is that theoretical work in the humanities, as any other writing-based endeavor, IS in so many ways the writing... the work is not accomplished 'beforehand' and written-up (and again, more sophisticated appreciations of science indicate that even science doesn't work quite this way---but my point has to do with general perceptions)... the enacting of a theoretical piece in the humanities IS or can be in so many ways the theory... it was ward tietz i think who (some time ago in these spaces) articulated this descriptive/theoretical conundrum quite expertly, for my money (wish i could find his post, have it somewhere or other)... most of us hereabouts appreciate the fact that a poem cannot really be paraphrased... perhaps poets aspire to different aims (as henry suggests) but we'd have at least to allow that theorists, whatever they aspire to in such terms, can very well aspire to not being paraphrased... who's to say otherwise?... i might be irked by theorists or critics who claims poetic ground (plug: if you read my suny book you'll understand why---maybe!) but only b/c this ground is claimed generally w/o regard for poets... as to the idea of what is "good" writing: are any of you (mostly academics probably) familiar with steven b. katz's essay, "the ethic of expediency: classical rhetoric, technology, and the holocaust"?... appeared in _college english_ in march 1992... katz begins by examining a piece of "good" (i.e., expedient) technical writing authored by an ss group leader, detailing technical changes necessary to alter vans used to gas jews before the "final solution" (i.e., large-scale crematoria)... technically the memo (in translation) is quite "clear"---except of course for the use of words such as "pieces" to describe human beings... katz in fact traces the rhetorical tendency toward "expedient" writing back to poor old aristotle, and gives some idea as to how this ethos was imported into national socialist propaganda, and tech writing theory and practice... this essay raised lots of eyebrows when it appeared, won much acclaim, and in my view has not been confronted sufficiently in most tech writing classrooms (many of which do not in my view sufficiently theorize technology)... anyway, my point should be obvious enough: that "good" writing---like "bad" writing---implies a moral-political judgment... now i'm not against making such judgments---but they need to be understood as such... and when you hear somebody running around using the term "bad writing" as though style can be unproblematically separated from "content"---as though "bad" is 'merely' a stylistic denotation---well that in itself should give one reason to pause... that said: if i were to critique rob's long sentence *in public*---a sentence peppered with critical vocabulary that can, for the theoretically-inclined/informed reader, connote multiple theoretical reference points---i think i would, first, have to argue publicly why theoretical discourse should be more "accessible" to some "lay" public (even as such discourse interrogates the popular)... and even were i able to construct such an argument, one likely oriented to the fraught 'public intellectual' debates, such an argument (theory?) should not be used to delimit "theory" as such, as a field of possibilities... in any case, once such an argument were made, the values i would bring to suggested revisions would at least be operating at the surface of discussion... whether having to be "clear" about such motivations is "where" we are in critical-theoretical terms, at this moment in academic culture (robert's question, as i understood him), i'm not sure... my guess is that we might as academics find some helpful room to move through a more performative understanding of what we are about... but u.s. culture is predisposed toward posing [he sez], both in and out of the academy, so i'm not going to wax entirely optimistic on this count... i hope i don't sound as though i'm beating around the bush... rob's sentence, for me, pointed in lots of directions, but i did find it difficult to read... that somebody with ulterior motives should have singled it out, with a few other such sentences, as "bad" doesn't necessarily mean that we can't learn from same... but maybe a better way for "us" to learn here would be for me to say to rob (if i may) "yeah man, that was a tough swallow"... and if rob valued my opine, perhaps he'd think it over, perhaps not... at least we may then have had an exchange (if rob respects my judgment, which i think he does), and at least i wouldn't be pointing my finger as such... and rob of course would be *free* not to revise!... as to public finger pointing: again i ask, in such terms, what *are* the motives here?... if, as i take it, our theories do not---should not, cannot really---*legislate* life, neither should a given desire for linguistic accessibility or convention---which comprises in fact somebody's lived experience---be used to *legislate* theory... geez i wish i weren't so long-winded, sorry!... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 11:47:15 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: bad writing In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 23 May 1997 22:42:03 -0400 from On Fri, 23 May 1997 22:42:03 -0400 Joseph Duemer said: >Henry, >How different is the language-game we call poetry from the language-game >we call philosophy? Is it the difference between baseball and football, >or the difference between pitching and playing first base? David Israel said it all on that "score". In my last couple irritable posts I was trying to point poetry away from the dull marriage of left theory and experimental verse. Did I succeed? Only Harmon Killibrew in heaven can say. Poetry before the age of democracy was living on the ghost of ancient vatic authority along with the educational/entertainment demands of elite aristocratic city-states. The poetic impulse itself is utterly free & growth-constructive; but for poets to survive in that atmosphere, the impulse had to be harnessed to the narrative/song/occasion demands of its patrons. This NECESSITY is what tempers the poetry - brings it to a concrete and complex beauty & wholeness. Ariosto is my mantra exemplar of the day. Now we live in a democratic age & poetry thrives under the sign of indifference. Thus the prestige of prestige poetry, the blurb announcements, the gush, the overvaluation - under the sign of indifference - can be read as the utmost buffoonery. "Avant-garde", postmodern poetries, whose promoters distance themselves from bourgois values on the one hand and decry at the same time the inadequate prestige & rewards extended to them from the bearers of those bourgois values, are the icing on the comedy cake. My point is that the spur of NECESSITY no longer salts the verse at all. There is only the inner necessity of the poetic impulse; the outside is all imperial pomp & flatulence; the outside is pure freedom & neglect. But indifference & neglect can be a GOOD thing for artists. Can we find the NECESSITY to match our creative impulses? Who knows, if you get honors when you finish the MFA program, perhaps the Muse will descend & you can be the laureate of West Rutabaga Jr. College. All I can say is the spirit of poetry should be sought in the great works of the past in all their necessity, and in the honest scholarship (one of the glories of this century) which investigates those works. Not in the explanatory hobgoblins of sociopolitical pedants. Poetry is not the voice of Professor [fill-in-the-blank]. - Henry Gould "Classicism is revolution" - Mandelstam pie-slingers, Fernando awaits. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 12:33:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: bad writing In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII knowledge as normative. i rest my case On Sat, 24 May 1997, hen wrote: > On Fri, 23 May 1997 22:42:03 -0400 Joseph Duemer said: > >Henry, > >How different is the language-game we call poetry from the language-game > >we call philosophy? Is it the difference between baseball and football, > >or the difference between pitching and playing first base? > > David Israel said it all on that "score". In my last couple irritable posts > I was trying to point poetry away from the dull marriage of left theory > and experimental verse. Did I succeed? Only Harmon Killibrew in heaven can > say. Poetry before the age of democracy was living on the ghost of ancient > vatic authority along with the educational/entertainment demands of elite > aristocratic city-states. The poetic impulse itself is utterly free & > growth-constructive; but for poets to survive in that atmosphere, the impulse > had to be harnessed to the narrative/song/occasion demands of its patrons. > This NECESSITY is what tempers the poetry - brings it to a concrete > and complex beauty & wholeness. Ariosto is my mantra exemplar of the day. > Now we live in a democratic age & poetry thrives under the sign of > indifference. Thus the prestige of prestige poetry, the blurb announcements, > the gush, the overvaluation - under the sign of indifference - can be > read as the utmost buffoonery. "Avant-garde", postmodern poetries, > whose promoters distance themselves from bourgois values on the one hand > and decry at the same time the inadequate prestige & rewards extended to > them from the bearers of those bourgois values, are the icing on the > comedy cake. My point is that the spur of NECESSITY no longer salts > the verse at all. There is only the inner necessity of the poetic impulse; > the outside is all imperial pomp & flatulence; the outside is pure freedom > & neglect. But indifference & neglect can be a GOOD thing for artists. > Can we find the NECESSITY to match our creative impulses? Who knows, > if you get honors when you finish the MFA program, perhaps the Muse > will descend & you can be the laureate of West Rutabaga Jr. College. > All I can say is the spirit of poetry should be sought in the great works > of the past in all their necessity, and in the honest scholarship > (one of the glories of this century) which investigates those works. > Not in the explanatory hobgoblins of sociopolitical pedants. Poetry > is not the voice of Professor [fill-in-the-blank]. > - Henry Gould > "Classicism is revolution" - Mandelstam > > pie-slingers, Fernando awaits. > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 12:35:53 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: bad writing In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 24 May 1997 12:33:22 -0400 from could you restate your case, Chris, before you rest? What's your criteria for normative? Stuff you don't like? Stuff you didn't write yourself? Stuff in general? Headpiece stuffed with straw? - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 13:17:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: bad writing / good metaphor ? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Israel's riffing certainly demonstrates one distinction between poetry and philosophy: poetry / metaphor sponsors copia, expansion and variation, whereas philosophical language (at its best) tends to narrow to a point. Which of course does not imply that poetry cannot take ideas as its material. Still, and though I brought up Coleridge and Wordsworth, I worry about Henry's and David's veer toward romanticism. JD __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 13:28:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: who gets the prizes (wants them) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Although this thread can lead nowhere save back to the skein -- there being no disinterested parties -- here are at least a couple of other ways to look at the question of defined groups and their influence on distribution of reward in the world of poetry. (I should -- and do -- interrupt myself to mention that personally I find it hard to apply to foundations, seek fellowships, go to conferences, work relationships to get critical attention, etc., although I think these are value-neutral activities. I never accepted a scholarship in college or even a loan, driving my parents crazy and causing a lot of part-time jobs on my part. My whole family had been destroyed in Europe by institutions which just didn't seem all that different to me from the ones I was forced to relate to in growing up and in living an adult life -- that's not a comparison, btw, it's just me.) 1. Everybody helps their friends. Who else should they help? I'm sure Jorie Graham sees some young poet emerging from her classes as gifted, needy, and worthy. Should she not promote that person's career if it's possible for her to do so? I see my friends do that all the time, and I do it too -- proposing and promoting some young(er) person's work -- and if you feel like seeing that as promoting one above another who may be as or more worthy, you're probably right but so what. The following is NOT a criticism: Take a look at the list for Charles' LINEBREAK program. What's the total of years of friendship among the people on that list -- a millenium possibly! Who should Charles invite if not his friends. In poetry, friendship usually also means a high regard for the work and even (sometimes) a history of mutual influence and various kinds of poetic working together. Would it be better for Charles or Jorie Graham or whoever to cede the operation of mind to some bureaucratic procedure? Usually we want the other guy to do that, our workings seem utterly embedded and natural. 2. Anselm is right that these cozy worlds are like the Soviet Writers Union (altho without the extremity of influence or function -- it was a writers union hack who spent the evening at the Mandelstams making sure they were present for the arrival of the cops). But, these are multiple such worlds. And their structure is one of mutual back-scratching -- again, how could it be otherwise? At the same time, if you put yourself where there is little you can do for others you may not find they do much for you. That's probably a good sign. Remember this: any structure of power is threatened by any real and new work. A benign sphere of influence is as threatened as any other. Spheres of influence are settled structures. A new locus of force disrupts their workings. This is no less true at Buffalo than it is at Iowa. People on this list simply prefer the aesthetic at Buffalo, as do I. (I interrupt myself one more time to point out that the above analysis doesn't stop over details -- it could be fleshed out, theoretically and empirically; it could be supported with evidence, and it could be made conclusive. It could even be an attack, but it isn't one.) 3. It would be worth investigating the role of criticism, specifically academic criticism, in the workings of these worlds in which prizes are handed and positions doled to prince and dolt alike. I'm not going to do it, tho I could. 4. Rotating the aesthetics. The problem is that you have to create a mechanism to rotate the aesthetics, and a human mechanism is just another layer of who knows whom. MY CONCLUSION -- (I rely, by the way, entirely on my own advice and analysis. Those considering whether and how to weigh it should consider my position and ask whether and how they would wish to emulate it. If you wouldn't wish to I don't blame you, go on and dress for the party. Whatshishername may be there.) --- Look, what has poetry to do with any of this? (In Jewish theology, one position holds that all miracles took place before the world was created, although they may appear to be taking place in our lives. The same position holds that every moment is miraculous and that on the other hand every miracle in your life reduces your merit in the world to come.) It has nothing to do with it; it has as little to do with it as humanly possible. All prizes received, all positions defined, held, and extended, all of that reduces your merit as a poet. (Except of course for the exceptions [of course]... and we are on our way out of a plain look at the truth) Good luck! Oh, and it *is* good to eat. Not all prize money is wasted. I know some poets who got to participate in the real estate boom in the SF bay area in the late seventies because they got NEA grants. Now that's leveraging money for the arts! Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 13:36:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: who gets the prizes (wants them) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >1. Everybody helps their friends. Who else should they help? I'm sure Jorie >Graham sees some young poet emerging from her classes as gifted, needy, and >worthy. Should she not promote that person's career if it's possible for >her to do so? I see my friends do that all the time, and I do it too -- >proposing and promoting some young(er) person's work -- and if you feel >like seeing that as promoting one above another who may be as or more >worthy, you're probably right but so what. > > >Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com True, but there are more direct ways of helping that do not have to involve unfair practice, which I think applies the AWP situation. JG could, for example, lobby her own publisher to publish a student's work, or persuade Colorado Review Press -- she's the poetry editor at CR -- to publish it, put in a good word for the student with editors of other mags, writing positive reviews, etcetera. I don't find anything wrong with this kind of private lobbying -- it's how the literary world works, very often it does spring from honest admiration for the work, and it's likely that some wonderful poets would never have come to our various attentions without it. We have in the AWP case, however, an "open" contest whose sponsors trumpet its being blind-judged (as does the NEA) and the contestants -- however naive -- trust to that. JG violated that trust. Fred Muratori Reference Services Division Olin - Kroch - Uris Libraries Cornell University fmm1@cornell.edu http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ************************** "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important" -- Jon Ashbery ************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 13:42:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: bad writing / good metaphor ? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT From Joseph Duemer: > Still, and though I brought up Coleridge and Wordsworth, I worry > about Henry's and David's veer toward romanticism. From Meher Baba: > don't worry, be happy (but thanks for your concern), d.i. p.s.: the "veer" (above) is interesting -- what was the right course / high road from which I / we present a troubling divergence, a wrong-track trek, I wonder? Romanticism, though, will never be the same (nor, for that matter, nostalgia). It's a new ballgame now, not to mention a whole nother ball of wax. There's also the hardball / softball distinction (philosophy v. poetry, presumably). But poetry is sometimes more like pool -- it's the strategic bounces that count (or at least most amaze). And when things get too heated, you can always head for the high dive. Seriously, the dialogue between philosophy & poetry seems one of the most vital of literate dialogues -- even if each end has its own ways of decontextualizing & re-, of listening & not, its own modes of presentation & interpretation, etc. W.Stevens seems among the most interesting of modern walkers of those borderlands. But many of the fine stuff from langpo-land also take on a much wider / broader swatch at / from philosophy than (mere, -- if you'll allow this) Marxism. Think of Rosemarie Waldrop, Joan Retallack, Michael Palmer (as instances) . . . BTW, are folks familiar w/ F. Schiller's *Naieve & Sentimental* essay? Any neo-romanticism presumably takes things at new (more distant & complex) levels of what Schiller called "the sentimental" -- but his sense of that seems far from the word as generally used in this century. Anyway, Joseph, I'll wear the R badge w/ a difference. Sometimes one carries a sharp machete & chops away at green (romanticism) sometimes one takes a dull wit & plants seedlets in fecund soil (postmodernity) many climates allow for many modes the full gamut issuing many a scale . . . . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 14:21:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: poetry / philosophy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT [ was: "Re: bad writing / good metaphor ?" ] another point re: Joseph Duemer's observations: > David Israel's riffing certainly demonstrates one distinction > between poetry and philosophy: poetry / metaphor sponsors copia, > expansion and variation, whereas philosophical language (at its > best) tends to narrow to a point. Sometimes surely true -- but there are counter instances in each camp. For copiousness of philosphers, what abt. Schaupenhauer? (& I dare say -- from what bits I've read -- the chap does present philosophy "at its best" or at least pretty darn good.) For terseness / compactness / bullion of poets -- what about (say) Paul Celan? (or so many other instances, even the prolific WCW) > Which of course does not imply > that poetry cannot take ideas as its material. Nor that philosophy cannot don beautiful & comely language. Still, if the Rome might sometimes seem the same, the Road does generally diverge. Who'll get there first (& what they'll do if they ever arrive) is an open question. But evidently they're indeed (as suggested) different games. Considering how exaggerated music is -- considering how coolheaded philosophy is -- considering how outlandish poetry is -- the three make a fine triangle, ready for chiming d.i. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 17:44:35 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: who gets the prizes (wants them) In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 24 May 1997 13:28:27 -0400 from But Tom, isn't the difference between what Jorie Graham reportedly did as judge in an open competition, and what Bernstein does in promoting his friends (if that's what he does) on his radio program, just the thing that turns poetry into propoganda and institutions into mafias - i.e., bad faith? How can you deride institutions and in the same sentence defend what makes you suspicious of them? Bernstein doesn't run a contest that claims to take your money in exchange for a fair consideration of your work. Most poets know it's a crap shoot & judges have their own biases - but again, how can you equate the two? - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 17:53:16 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: poetry / philosophy In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 24 May 1997 14:21:34 -0500 from Philosophy aims for the exquisite equation; poetry for the pointed proverb. - Pete Quinine ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 18:32:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: Sentence(ing) Jameson MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Robert Archambeau thoughtfully interrogates: > Are we about to see the emergence (not just on the right) of a new > _plumpes Denken_? > Being able to think and represent the present historically (or more correctly to think and represent the present of capitalism historically) is the obligate parasite of both the poet and the philosopher, here, now. It was Brecht who challenged Lukacs' formal 'realism' of class consciousness in search of that more transparent 'alientation effect'. And it was indeed Benjamin's _Plumpes Denken_ that marked a desire for a cunning clarity. But it was also Brecht, the Theater man, the emergent (silent) Cinema man and Benjamin (brought up rudely, jostled out of the pose--the hope!--of the flaneur to be only *the man in the crowd*) who reacted not merely against a hegelian obscruantism but more, more importantly, against the pellucidus age of electro-mechanical reproduction, the missing aura mis-taken as frames-per-second or streaming RealAudio(TM)(sic). A cusp of history off sorts. And now. An emergent post-theory *ad interim* or perhaps a representational *annus magnus*? Hegel is afoot in this end-of-history-one-superpower-death-of-communism-pax-americana- northern-hemispheric-impererial-alliance. A clarity of style, perhaps a pure form, an _Ecstasy of Communication_ (to appropriate Baudrillard) with trade agreements and trade zones and (pace our Drug Czars) "sentencing guidelines" and "sentencing contests": the judges themselves are ham-strung in the alleged post-ideological verities of law and order and the aristotelian keeping 'in check', syllogistically, of inflation, during the long duree. Daniel Zimmerman wrote: > > Since when does the intention of a sentence qualify its merit? > Good question. And I try with difficulty to write in the margin of my screen, my browser-frames, non-rhetorically and throwing no pies: "Since when did use-value succumb to the totalities of (lets say, post 1989) exchange-value, transmogrifying 'intentionality', 'sentence', 'qualify', 'merit' and the temporaltity of 'since when' in this sentence?" Jameson writes of Wydham Lewis' "machine-sentences" quite outside his 'intentionality' (i.e., his fascism) particularly "the Lewis of the final years, able only to hear his language, reverts to an almost 18th century sobriety, the fireworks of the earlier style now passing over into the content of the narratives themselves." _Fables of Aggression: Wyndam lewis, the Modernist as Fascist_. And now. Perhaps _The New Sentence_ is already bar=coded as the neo-retro sentence. Un-plugged. And *reading-values* succeed in their reproduction precisely through the triumph of the medium of exhange by the triumph of exchange itself. And now. Perhaps a passing over, a giving up the ghost, the haunting specter, for a twenty-first century narrative of agonistic sobriety. mc ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 22:29:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: poetry / philosophy In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII and neither have aught to say. this we know coz if the walls could speak we wouldn't understand them. criteria? why, the ideal - negation. On Sat, 24 May 1997, henry wrote: > Philosophy aims for the exquisite equation; > poetry for the pointed proverb. > > - Pete Quinine > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 00:20:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Linux' Toor of Babel MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - The toor of babel: toor:NOMAD-RELIAM toor:nomad toor:sys toor:nib toor:nnej toor:ti-dual toor:cnys toor:e-pat toor:gained-sys toor:gained-nus toor:dhatuadwpUA toor:did-wissenschaft-app-UA moc.regniz.loopsliam@toor:2toor 2toor,2tooreert,tooreert:tsil-tooreert!!! eert/sevael/lfd/sresu/:educalcni: :eert_gro.sevael_dowf!!! _____________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 17:27:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Pie Barrage In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >This may be considered hoisting Star Trek by its own Picard but isn't >Jameson the one who thought Perelman was a schizophrenic poet and now >lately Perelman seems to be implying the same thing about his comrades >Bernstein and >Andrews?... What? All these poets and critics are now medical men and diognosticians in the field of mental health? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 02:56:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: OrpheEUrydiuce Subject: Fictions of Deleuze (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > Dear Lover > > Derrida just called. He knows a friend, the one in Paris who > detournes the texts - Kathey - and through her and the one who was a friend of Laing and Guattari, he has some information for me about Genet, and> some other things. Iwasnt here when I mailed you earlier I was at MAria's place. By the way I am all done with prostitution now - - how about you? He speaks English very well. The upshot of it is this, he's going to be here to meet some friends of his and we are going to meet! God, Im getting butterflies > in my stomach just thinking about it. He knew my father, Jean Genet. I > mean that literally obviously. Anyhow, you stick that in yer craw > and suck on it. He will probably come to the reading I am doing, and then > who knows, he might even write a little preface (maybe ten pages) for my > next book. Who knows, who knows with Jacques? > > Who knew my father > > Who knew Celan > > Who knew Deleuze > > Who knew Guattari > > Who knew Foucault > > Who knew Sartre > > n Who knew DeMan (who I am now reading - Critical Writings 53-78, > not bad, not bad for a critic) > > Who does not know Seamus Heaney who I am reading - THE REDRESS > OF POETRY > > Who does not know TED HUGHES who had married many loved many and > > writes poetry > > Who I am not > > Who you are not > > So err alone now > > > Err alone > > O artificer stand with me now > "You know, Phaedrus, that's the strange > > >thing about writing, which makes it truly analogous to painting. The > > >painter's products stand before us as though they were alive, but if > > >you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the > > >same with written words; they seem to talk to you as though they were > > >intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a > > >desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing > > >forever....") > > > I saw the second best minds of my generation... > > > Antioedipus found the place, she found it the double edged sexes > > the night spoke, it saw the song of wend and wind, the > percomabulators of thoughtx and desire. Burps and winds the sound night. > Soon her sister shell had spoken the night jaded bumps and morpheme > solobylls, the rolling suds of river and skin tissue turning in the kern > and the button of the breath. Changed with the bull, the release the papal > bull the pull down screens, the paper menus of china in her glass vase, > the petals of a thousand eyes. > > In those days she had been a grammarian > > And the nights were young like her shoulders > > They had soft breast plates left out parts and cleft hearts > > Then in the stare of hum and shell she shelf the shallow weight > of tenebra > against the lips of eyes and other foster children > dictionironary was her place by the ford and the lace > it softened off into rivers and platas > Old black and white movies had to be seen not heard > > When the solo diver moved the plage > the oil of the sand > dreamed of Kuwait > the merchant man > Said Death I am coining in coming in > a soldier of desire in the abc backward straits > > death and children and the photgraphs not fame > not fame > understood as the grave digger of types > and the salamander monkey understood > the gracious word standing upside down > with a syndrome to be re-paid > a life to repair > silent to repent in the hand standing tall > > of the orchards > > a black and white movie to be seen > a lover to be held > a gathering to be burned > > a gate a gathering breath > > silent at the gathering > > a word to be touched > > a jewish word to be touched > > by the lips agains the skin collar > near the necking of the speech > > some pearl like that > > a pearl > > Imagine though if he does write the preface, she'll be so happy! She is such a monk. and such a little chastes brat! Reading Deleuze all night being happy! and that Guattari! wow what a treat! Oh me O my O Dear! > On May 1, Jill wrote I need to read D. all night so I can sleep then masturbate, all my 1000 little sexes need to be aroused all the time, so Ican explore and explode all my pyschotic holes! Oh, if I was alesbian then I would be okay! But Im not what can I do On April 27 Orpheus wrote, You can be me if you want, after all I am nothing but a closet of clothes in the cupboard that no one looks at or cares about Oh those voices those voices! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 03:01:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: OrpheEUrydiuce Subject: Re: pole vaulting In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sat, 29 Mar 1997, AntiOedipus wrote: Who is dead HArold Bloom????????????????????????????> > > On Thu, 6 Mar 1997, [shem] wrote: > > > > > > > from Nietzsche's Daughter > > > > > > Let me correct that minor typo: Tzarathustra the balooning > dadaphony > > of our rest and quiet the dead kicker off er of dead > generations of > > deadly birthed poets suffused and suffering the angst of > influence - No > > Mista' Bloom he dead. I gotta go for the Berlin wall, I > wanna find some > > history, I never asked for sunshine and I gott World War > Three, I lookd > > over the Wall and they Looked Back at Me. Some heurtistic > device for a > > little bit of verse. The adverse of the perennial need to > destroy one's > > aprtents !? - ha! how glib - I destroy the unconcscious > factory of > > resentment in every man. I clean and sweep the stables of > whores and > > parasites of literature/. I eat them for my apoplexic lunch - > my naked > > lunch, my queer Ginsber grab bag of bad poetry my queer > shoulder to the > > wheel. Ah! Mista Bloooom! you dead. sAD TO HEAR THE NEWS > MISTER HAROLD > > BLOOM HAS DIED OF HEART FAILURE. CHECK THE REUTERS IS THIS > JUSTA RUMOUR? > > oR AM i HEARING THING????? hOPEFULL wish full things of > Poets who wish > > the death of Critics and their swamy gang, their gangster > pedallers of > > second rate hand me down thoughts like: "hes the greatest > critic of the > > second half the 20th century." Oh well Gregory Corso a > really bad poet > > if ever there was one is the jewel in the eye of the BEat > poetry > > movement. because of his moral courage and alcoholism he is > regarded as > > hero and anti-hero a deleuzian position that bloomians cannt > handle. > > Only Mr. bloom of Ulyssses can see this, can think this, like > > > Tzarathustra dada bc/ad can see this. The alias of poetry is the disguise > > > of the revolution of the desire machine, its broken back struggling for > > > words. Like Kenneth Patchen, patch and stich the monosyllable of death > > > and breath. The song of pop culture and its raw motorcyle poetry, of > > > tight jeans and class war of culture war of megaphones in india and not > > > metaphors in chromium alley libaries of eltitist americanker universities > > > - elitist creme de la creme - Ah phooey i say I weep at their > Let me > > correct that minor typo: Tzarathustra the balooning > dadaphony of our > > rest and quiet the dead kicker off er of dead > generations of deadly > > birthed poets suffused and suffering the angst of > influence - No Mista' > > Bloom he dead. I gotta go for the Berlin wall, I > wanna find some > > history, I never asked for sunshine and I gott World War > Three, I lookd > > over the Wall and they Looked Back at Me. Some heurtistic > device for a > > little bit of verse. The adverse of the perennial need to > destroy one's > > aprtents !? - ha! how glib - I destroy the unconcscious > factory of > > resentment in every man. I clean and sweep the stables of > whores and > > parasites of literature/. I eat them for my apoplexic lunch - > my naked > > lunch, my queer Ginsber grab bag of bad poetry my queer > shoulder to the > > wheel. Ah! Mista Bloooom! you dead. sAD TO HEAR THE NEWS > MISTER HAROLD > > BLOOM HAS DIED OF HEART FAILURE. CHECK THE REUTERS IS THIS > JUSTA RUMOUR? > > oR AM i HEARING THING????? hOPEFULL wish full things of > Poets who wish > > the death of Critics and their swamy gang, their gangster > pedallers of > > second rate hand me down thoughts like: "hes the greatest > critic of the > > second half the 20th century." Oh well Gregory Corso a > really bad poet > > if ever there was one is the jewel in the eye of the BEat > poetry > > movement. because of his moral courage and alcoholism he is > regarded as > > hero and anti-hero a deleuzian position that bloomians cannt > handle. > > Only Mr. bloom of Ulyssses can see this, can think this, like > > > Tzarathustra dada bc/ad can see this. The alias of poetry is the disguise > > > of the revolution of the desire machine, its broken back struggling for > > > words. Like Kenneth Patchen, patch and stich the monosyllable of death > > > and breath. The song of pop culture and its raw motorcyle poetry, of > > > tight jeans and class war of culture war of megaphones in india and not > > > metaphors in chromium alley libaries of eltitist americanker universities > > > - elitist creme de la creme - Ah phooey i say I weep at their > > > incorigibility, their obverseness tot he avant-garde also swinging in its > > > own dogmatic churn of brilliant brillantine! Ah the American canon > > cracks > under its own desire to be whored - Frank O'Hara the poet once > > gave a > reading and when through with his own work started reading some > > Auden; > not that is love not anxiety, and love is power and levity and > > freedom, > freedom from the 'will" and al its co-called vountatristic > > exercises. Yes > dear ladies and gentlemen you are listening to the words > > of a man who has > never lived, never lived. Take sweet powder and shit. > > Free of its own it > enters the powerless domain of inspiration and > > deities. Ah you cowards, > now I must go eat supper. But I pray to the > > doggess! the feamale whore on > high of language that your sour sore ears > > be awakened! Mental fight as in > William Blake. > > I remain yours, > > Nietzsche's Daughter! > the deathless one of the eternal return > > > disguised as Pierre Knlossowski in drag with Robert the masochist > in > > tow. > > P.S. HArold Bloom is dead - please confirm!!!! > > > P.P.S. re: > > rarefied air : I breath the air of death and bones > each day and there > > aint nuthin' rare bout hat sista! > > > > > > > Interesting what you > > write, Shem darling, nnnnnnnnnhhhhmmmooonnneeee, about your "Zarathustrian > > Dada > > tower". Interesting because I do not think you have read your > > father's book > > Z." closely enough. At the beginning of the book, > > Zarathustra, > > consumed by the rarefied air at the heights where he had > > been living, > > comes down from those heights to refresh his soul. I > > wish you'd > > do the same. And come and see me soon. I need you, your > > Elena> incorigibility, their obverseness tot he avant-garde also swinging > > in its > own dogmatic churn of brilliant brillantine! Ah the American > > canon cracks > under its own desire to be whored - Frank O'Hara the poet > > once gave a > reading and when through with his own work started reading > > some Auden; > not that is love not anxiety, and love is power and levity > > and freedom, > freedom from the 'will" and al its co-called vountatristic > > exercises. Yes > dear ladies and gentlemen you are listening to the words > > of a man who has > never lived, never lived. Take sweet powder and shit. > > Free of its own it > enters the powerless domain of inspiration and > > deities. Ah you cowards, > now I must go eat supper. But I pray to the > > doggess! the feamale whore on > high of language that your sour sore ears > > be awakened! Mental fight as in > William Blake. > > I remain yours, > > Nietzsche's Daughter! > the deathless one of the eternal return > > > disguised as Pierre Knlossowski in drag with Robert the masochist > in > > tow. > > P.S. HArold Bloom is dead - please confirm!!!! > > > P.P.S. re: > > rarefied air : I breath the air of death and bones > each day and there > > aint nuthin' rare bout hat sista! > > > > > > > Interesting what you > > write, Shem darling, nnnnnnnnnhhhhmmmooonnneeee, about your "Zarathustrian > > Dada > > tower". Interesting because I do not think you have read "Thus > > Spoke > > Z." closely enough. At the beginning of the book, Zarathustra, > > > > consumed by the rarefied air at the heights where he had been living, > > > > comes down from those heights to refresh his soul. I wish you'd > > > > do the same. And come and see me soon. I need you, your Elena> > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 10:57:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: theory writing & the public weal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joe Amato's post did not, for me, sound as though he was beating around the bush. I found it provocative & useful. Given we are in the midst of a federal election up here, I found the following relevant: "whether having to be "clear" about such motivations is "where" we are in critical-theoretical terms, at this moment in academic culture (robert's question, as i understood him), i'm not sure... my guess is that we might as academics find some helpful room to move through a more performative understanding of what we are about... but u.s. culture is predisposed toward posing [he sez], both in and out of the academy, so i'm not going to wax entirely optimistic on this count..." I am disturbed by a party, Reform, which seems to be following the worst of the republican far right moves. Reform says it wants to create ('create'? well, it seems to suggest that nothing like exists now, although they are able to be a party & argue their case) a Canada of 'equal' provinces & 'equal' people. A nice thought. But they will do so by 'downsizing' the central government, giving much more power to provincial governments. But can the people trust those governments (any more than that damned federal government)? A question not asked. What is this equality of people? Well everyone must be treated the same (although one Reformer spoke last year of supporting a businessman who would move people of colour or gays into the backroom so as not to bother customers [& people are not longer citizens in this vision but mere customers]). Now, the problem, as I see it, is that the theoretical arguments that would suggest that this equality misses out a lot of socially structured inequalities that Reform wants to make sure can & will not be altered by any government mandated structural changes. And what I want to know (surely this applies down there as well, including all the talk bout the NEA) is what language, what discourse, might reach the very people who have the power (or want it) to destroy what positive (& theoretically valid?) structures now exist. Can anything be accomplished by a discourse they dismiss as 'unreadable'? More important: is it possible to 'translate' the theoretical ideas into a discourse that will reach a wider, political audience? I write this as someone who reads & enjoys a lot of theory, but also, especially, admire the clarity with which Guy Davenport (for example) writes about extraordinarily 'difficult' poetry. ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 11:55:30 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Gnomonology A few weeks back there was some discussion about Howard McCord's poem "Gnomonology." A web site for the poem has recently been created: www.geocities.com/paris/leftbank/7641 Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 11:10:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: philosophy & poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'd just like to recommend a truly fine treatment of this conjunction: Jan Zwicky. _Lyric Philosophy_ (Toronto: Unversity of Toronto Press, 1992). Of which Guy Davenport says: "Something to read with pleasure and enlightenment. The interplay of text and quotations is fascinating ... a substantial book that has the virtues of integrity and domesticity which it celebrates." A collage text, out of Wittgenstein & all the poets Zwicky wanted there (but with the doors left open for others to enter... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 13:19:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: philosophy & poetry In-Reply-To: from "Douglas Barbour" at May 25, 97 11:10:49 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit something which relates to this from my own experience. when i was an art student in graduate school my teachers sd i shld take philosophy. you didn't write in art class you painted. or you drew pictures. or you made objects and sd it was sculpture. but you didn't think abt writing. (i have had bad teachers. but i've also had good ones.) so i took classes in philosophy. on my essays they sd i shld really be thinking abt this stuff in fine arts, or maybe _literature_. so now i'm in _literature_. once a fellow student sd it was a good thing i was taking a certain lit. course with a certain instructor because anyone else wld tell me i cldn't do what i wanted to do. hard to imagine that sort of thing being thot in 1997. actually it was in 1995 but that doesn't matter. a key word is _interdisciplinary_. that's a more precise term in this instance i think than, say, "multi-disciplinary" or "environmental" or even "transdisciplinary." i finally got a degree in _interidsciplinary_ studies. i like hamlet's response to horatio's question best, when he asked him what he was reading. "just words." ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 21:04:09 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew John Miller Organization: Duke University Subject: Misrepresenting Canada (was re: theory writing & the public weal) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Douglas Barbour has moved this discussion onto Canadian terrain. He has done so, however, in a fashion that I find dangerously misleading. Since American eyes tend to glaze over at the mere mention of Canadian affairs, I will do my best to keep my comments brief. In a fashion that ignores the profound differences between Canadian and American contexts, Barbour begins by drawing a direct parallel between Canada's Reform party and "the republican far right": >I am disturbed by a party, Reform, which seems to be following the worst of >the republican far right moves. Barbour then proceeds to zero in on the weakest link in Reform's arguments: its theoretically impoverished concept of personal and provincial "equality." In the process, however, he refuses to face up to the gross defects in Canada's current system of federal government. >Reform says it wants to create [...] a Canada of 'equal' provinces & >'equal' people. A nice thought. But they will do so by 'downsizing' the >central government, giving much more power to provincial governments. Barbour conspicuously fails to mentions that, at present, Canada finds itself saddled with a parliamentary system in which, once a party has formed a majority government, it is able to rule in a fashion that is virtually dictatorial. Under the constraints imposed by the dominant federal parties, individual members of parliament are unable to modify their votes in a fashion that reflects either their own views or the views of their local constituents; any departure from party policy results in harsh disciplinary action. What this means is that the party in power can pass pretty much any legislation that it wishes to pass, no matter how ill-conceived that legislation may be. To make matters worse, the electoral map has been drawn up in such a manner that Canadians living east of the Ontario/Manitoba border play a grossly disproportionate role in determining precisely who will control the federal parliament. As a result, the legislative agenda of the governing party tends almost inevitably to favour the interests of Ontario and/or Quebec over the interests of other provinces--especially those that lie to the west of the Ontario/Manitoba border. None of this would matter so much if there existed, in Canada, an elected senate that was structured in such a way as to provide a countervailing voice, a voice reflective of the teeming diversity of regional and provincial interests. Instead, however, we are stuck with an appointed senate that bears a closer resemblance to a geriatric ward than to a meaningful arm of government. As someone who has recently returned to British Columbia after having lived for eight years in the United States, I find myself appalled by the glaringly undemocratic and asymmetrical character of Canadian federalism. Much to my chagrin, moreover, I find that the only party that is seriously interested in correcting this state of affairs is Reform--a party that, like populist parties elsewhere in the world, is tinged by disturbing hints of nativism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia. Be that as it may, I am quietly hoping that Reform makes a reasonably strong showing in the coming elections. After all, under Canada's current system of parliamentary dictatorship, Reform has no chance whatsoever of implementing the more pernicious aspects of its socioeconomic agenda. Reform does have a chance, however, of reminding the quasi-colonial powers of Eastern Canada that a growing number of Canadians are unhappy with the existing system of asymmetrical federalism, a system that is characterized by arrogant forms of patronage and influence-peddling. Let me add that I do not share Douglas Barbour's concern about the consequences of giving increased power to the provinces. It seems to me that progressive movements for social change in fact probably have a greater chance of succeeding under a more decentralized federal system than they do under the current federal system. Sadly, many Canadian intellectuals have come to imagine that the road to social justice inevitably leads through Ottawa--just as many American intellectuals have come to imagine that the road to social justice inevitably leads through Washington. All of us need to begin thinking our way beyond this crude form of bureaucratic centralism. Although the American situation differs in profound ways from the Canadian situation, there is good reason to believe that both countries would benefit from a general devolution of federal powers. It is crucial, however, that the debate over the form and direction of such devolution not be abandoned entirely to the right. Contrary to what is implied by the ongoing retreat into bland, rear-guard defences of the welfare state, the contemporary left still has much to learn from the anti-statist perspectives of its anarcho-syndicalist heritage. At the risk of being booed off the stage, I will also suggest that the contemporary left still has much to learn from the contemporary right. The trick, in this case, is to subvert and translate our opponent's ideas in ways that open up possibilities that our opponents have not anticipated. I've gone on much longer than I had intended, yet I fear that I still have not done enough to clarify the points that I have been seeking to make. If anyone wishes to press matters further, I will be glad to follow up with additional comments--including comments that will bring us back to the issue of federal funding for the arts and humanities. Otherwise, I will cease and desist. Andrew Miller North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada ajm@acpub.duke.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 21:04:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: (Fwd) Medieval Hebrew Poetry--fellowships MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Poetas, I attach here a call for applications for research fellowships (for post-docs and/or grad students) from a certain Center for Judaic Studies at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. While one assumes (from the description) that the fellowships would include, as prereq., language facility (primarily) in Hebrew, as well as (perhaps) German, Arabic, and/or Latin -- still & all, I felt the mere description of the scope of proposed research might, in itself, prove of some passing interest to our Poetics denizens. (I, for one, wasn't aware of this stuff.) d.i. ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 15:06:02 -0500 To: adabiyat@listhost.uchicago.edu From: Franklin Lewis Subject: Medieval Hebrew Poetry--fellowships FYI-- CENTER FOR JUDAIC STUDIES University of Pennsylvania Post-Doctoral (and Advanced Research) Fellowships 1998-99 Application Deadline November 30, 1997 Topic I: POETRY AND CULTURE IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE JEWRY The writing of Hebrew poetry was a widespread activity in all premodern Jewish communities, and was shaped by intellectual currents and historical forces of all kinds, both internal to the Jewish community (such as kabbalah) and external to it (such as Islamic or Renaissance culture). The full interpretation of Hebrew poetry and the assessment of its place in Jewish intellectual life necessitate interdisciplinary study, which has never yet been systematically attempted. This research group will consist of specialists in medieval and Renaissance Hebrew poetry and specialists in disciplines and subject matters that found expression in or influenced that poetry. Such scholarly interplay will aim at a fuller appreciation of the role of Hebrew poetry in Jewish intellectual life as well as a broader understanding of the disciplines themselves. The disciplines include, but are not limited to, history, philosophy, mysticism, medieval science, Romance literature, and Arabic literature. Topic II: HASKALAH, ENLIGHTENMENT, AND EUROPEAN SOCIETY The impact of the Enlightenment on Jewish thought and social life continues to attract lively debate among scholars from different disciplines. Historians, philosophers, and students of literature have seen the Enlightenment as the source of the 'crisis' in traditional society, as the harbinger of radical assimilation, or as the forerunner of such movements as the Wissenschaft des Judentums, Reform Judaism and even Zionism. The research group will consider such issues from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective within the context of Western and Eastern European societies, focusing on the German Enlightenment. It will examine the impact of Enlightenment thought on European Jewry, as well as the Jewish contribution to the European Enlightenment. Each group will consist of 6-8 Fellows. Outstanding graduate students in the final stages of writing their dissertations may also apply. Stipend amounts are based on a Fellow's academic standing and financial need with a maximum of $30,000 for the academic year. A contribution may also be made towards travel expenses. Awards will be announced on January 30, 1998. For application material and further information, write to: Secretary, Fellowship Program Center for Judaic Studies 420 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19106 Telephone: 215-238-1290 * Fax: 215-238-1540 * Email: allenshe@mail.cjs.upenn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 13:44:08 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Misrepresenting Canada (my entry for bad writing awards) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re: th eparagraph below. Because of the general ignorance and lack of personal and moral integrity of the people who make up such parochial racist movements it is unlikely that any of their policies will be really acknowledged outside those that are ethnocentric/racist - & if any influence is made on the main stream it is likely to be in limiting immigration, toughening up on recent (less affluent) immigrants & in local justification of prejudice already facilitated by the current anti-pc backlash - (or continued lashing). However i am not familiar with Canadian politics & am merely reflecting on what has been going on around here. It's unfortunate to have to bring up Mr Hilter all the time, but there really were aspects of his policies that were beneficial to a 'german' population & i seem to remember a similar argument in a small tavern in Dusseldorf back in 1935 with Fritz Eichhornchen - when i distinctly remember him saying "hoffentlich, wer gesehen nur die gutes poilizies von Herr Hilter und die schlechtes wollen allen disapierien sein." I remember criticising his gramma as well as his politics. But he had been drinking and was from Barvaria so i didn't make too much of it at the time. How wrong he was. Tanielu der poetaster >As someone who has recently returned to British Columbia after having >lived for eight years in the United States, I find myself appalled by >the glaringly undemocratic and asymmetrical character of Canadian >federalism. Much to my chagrin, moreover, I find that the only party >that is seriously interested in correcting this state of affairs is >Reform--a party that, like populist parties elsewhere in the world, is >tinged by disturbing hints of nativism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia. > > >Be that as it may, I am quietly hoping that Reform makes a reasonably >strong showing in the coming elections. After all, under Canada's >current system of parliamentary dictatorship, Reform has no chance >whatsoever of implementing the more pernicious aspects of its >socioeconomic agenda. Reform does have a chance, however, of >reminding the quasi-colonial powers of Eastern Canada that a growing >number of Canadians are unhappy with the existing system of >asymmetrical federalism, a system that is characterized by arrogant >forms of patronage and influence-peddling. > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 21:35:03 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: philosophy & poetry In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 25 May 1997 13:19:09 -0700 from Hamlet's response to Horatio points to the dilemma of poets in a world in which words must be "blooded" with the (fake blood) action of actors as in Al Pacino's magnificent "Looking for Richard" which I recommend to anyone interested in tragic poetry & the "impure" effects of language such as the way Pacino "plays" Richard among his fellow actors even in the scenes when he is "off-scene" (one-upmanship) & points back to my harangue about the buffoonery of poets in a narrated world of films & music where "prestige" (awards, academies, etc.) only serves hilariously to accentuate their unnecessary presence (they are excellent actors, though, all of them, from Ashbery to Zukofsky) & points again back to the necessary TRAGIC NARRATIVE of NECESSITY, SISSIES, SYSIPUSSIES, underlying the demand for "craft" and "voice" if you want to "publish" in a coherent "fashion" your incisive "poetics" etc. etc. "This day should Clarence closely be mewed up About a prophecy which says that G Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be." [Rich. III, I.1.38-40] - Henry G p.s. maybe poetic drama is the coming thing. But then, there's a war of the roses on between poetry and theater. Actors make a mess of poetry, it's said. But then, perhaps poets make a mess of plots. Let's bury all these snow peas & see what comes up. Here comes Walsingador, the Poet Alchemist of Bardolatrocity College! Maybe He can help me with my Writing! Look at that long beard & those intense blazing eyeballs! He is indeed a Legend after his own Time! I have only three semesters left & soon I will be employed in Seattle! Will I be able to Write There? The salmon are spawning! Everybody reads lots of Words now! & She, She too had good Things to say about my ... my Verse!! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 22:52:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: who gets the prizes (wants them) In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970524132827.006c41ac@cais.com> from "Tom Mandel" at May 24, 97 01:28:27 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > Look, what has poetry to do with any of this? > > Tom A big wet kiss on the cheek for Tom. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 May 1997 23:22:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Pie Barrage Comments: To: George Bowering In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Quite right, George B., but of course poets aren't the only ones who indulge in referring to what other people do as crazy. I do wish I had these texts at hand so I could bring forth more exactly what I was referring to in Jameson and Perelman.I'm sure I wasn't being entirely fair to Perelman, and he certainly was not being as off the cuff as I am in this context.I promise to do more homework and report back, but as I remember it many poets I know were astonished some years back when Jameson wrote about postmodern poetry, citing Perelman's poetry as an example of deliberate attempts in poetry to imitate "schizophrenic language." In his recent book discussing so called "language poetry" (a context in which Perelman's mature work, and maybe even his immature work, as a poet emerged) he critiques both Andrews and Bernstein (here's where would be nicer to quote, and unfortunately I can't at the moment) for being less than coherent, let us say, orderly and meaningful in ways that might have significant and useful social value. In short, he apparently is accusing them of publishing works that have aspects of being nonsensical! Without intending to be overly flattering, this is like DeKooning accusing Pollack of being vague and ambiguous, pot accusing the kettle, etc. So the problem, for me, is not so much poets and critics talking diagnostically like doctors, but poets posing as doctors and accusing other poets of being suspiciously disoriented...even, perhaps ,apparently inebriated, at times not completely serious, or almost nuts! Heavens forfend! L=A poets indulging in playfully batty antics! But I am babbling on... Best wishes, Nick P. On Sat, 24 May 1997, George Bowering wrote: > >This may be considered hoisting Star Trek by its own Picard but isn't > >Jameson the one who thought Perelman was a schizophrenic poet and now > >lately Perelman seems to be implying the same thing about his comrades > >Bernstein and > >Andrews?... > > What? All these poets and critics are now medical men and diognosticians in > the field of mental health? > > > > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 > e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 07:49:57 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew John Miller Organization: Duke University Subject: Re: Misrepresenting Canada (my entry for bad writing awards) In-Reply-To: <199705260144.NAA14707@ihug.co.nz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Clearly, my first impulse was correct: there is little point in attempting to explain the complexities of Canadian politics to a non-Canadian audience. Nobody outside the country really gives a damn about our constitutional problems, and nobody outside the country is interested in taking the time to understand the peculiar nuances of our interregional and interprovincial conflicts. And so we find that, before deploying his _ad_Hitlerum_ argument, Mr. DS blandly, and almost proudly, acknowledges that he knows little and cares less about Canada: >[...] i am not familiar with Canadian politics & am >merely reflecting on what has been going on around here. Of course, it is true that, despite appearances to the contrary, my argument bore only a tangential relation to the particulars of Canadian politics. I was in fact attempting to make a broader point about the left's abysmal failure to think beyond the centralist models of the warfare/welfare state. Some of us like to talk about radical democracy, but very few of us seem willing to do anything about it. In Canada, the Reform party has seized upon the perfectly legitimate desire for more participatory forms of democratic governance. By talking, if only in rather specious ways, about the need to make politicians more responsive to local and regional interests, the Reformers have coopted what could--and should--form the basis for a revivified leftism, a leftism that would be predicated upon the assumption that concepts of democratic participation should be extended to all realms of social life, including the workplace (a realm that Reformers conspicuously exclude from their democratizing rhetoric). In British Columbia, at least, many of the people who are now voting for Reform are people who used to vote for the NDP, which remains the most identifiably left-wing of the more prominent Canadian political parties. In addition, Reform has begun to win significant support among many of the recent, Asian immigrants to British Columbia. In response to these shifts in its base of support, the party has been either expelling, or consigning to the back room, its old-line, nativist members. Needless to say, this hardly means that the party should now be given a clean bill of health. But it does make for a more complicated mixture of interests and alliances than is dreamt of in Mr. DS's morally pure version of political theology. (Just in case anybody out there gives a damn about such details, it should probably be noted that, in an earlier period of British Columbian history, Ezra Pound's old favorites, the Social Credit, went through an even more convoluted series of metamorphoses.) I realize, of course, that Mr. DS could easily respond with further Hitlerian analogies. I refuse, however, to take such a static approach to our historical situation. I wrote my previous comments in the sincere belief that the left needs to pay closer attention to the radical potentials latent in the pervasive tendency to seek alternatives to centralist models of government. By allowing the discussion of such alternatives to become entirely the province of the right, we are, I believe, abdicating a crucial responsibility. I end this message with some sense of regret. In the last couple of days, I've finally had a bit of free time. It had been my intention to engage, after long silence, with some of the more specifically literary issues that have been cropping up on the list. Instead, I find myself wrestling with that old demon, politics. I guess, despite all my attempts at rehabilitation, I really am an incurable political junkie. Helas!! Andrew John Miller ajm@acpub.duke.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 00:56:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Misrepresenting Canada Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >To:ajm@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU >From:dcmb@metro.net (David Bromige) >Subject:Misrepresenting Canada > >Or B.C., leastwise. I believe that the Socreds were far in their practice >from the Social Credit Pound advocated. Is anyone out there more capable >thatn I, of delineating these differences? Soc-cred in BC in the 50s was >boondoggles & corruption to my less-than-matured political sense. > >"On the banks at Kelowna >The Socreds all gathered >To sing party songs >And hold Mass on the marge-- > >Then they shed a salt tear >Why cant Bennett be here >We'd sacrifice him on the bond-burning barge." > >anyone recall how this went on? > >Andrew John Miller, I dont mean to mock a seriousness in your postings I >find laudable. My political involvement is all at the local level, which >in this part of my life is a small town in Northern California. I am sadly >out-of-touch with Canada & must take steps to change this. But clearly >there have been racist elements to the Reform Party. I mean, that's >agreed-on isnt it--altho' one person will dismiss them as lunatic fringe, >while another will justifiably bring up History with Herr Hitler in it. >Many "good" Germans temporized with Hitler & Bingo! Became war criminals. > >Societies wont get fairer without more government money & the rich are the >ones with the most money. An entire society exists within which they by >their use of others make millions. Then they deny the connection. (Mrs >Thatcher: "No such thing as society." Who bestowed her title & who wrote >her paychecks? Who imparted value to the currency?" In whose eyes did her >value exist? ) If Reformists want to soak the rich, it's going to be hard >not to listen to them. > >Yours David Bromige. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 07:40:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: Pie Barrage Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In response to Nick P's observations: but as I >remember it many poets I know were astonished some years back when Jameson >wrote about postmodern poetry, citing Perelman's poetry as an example of >deliberate attempts in poetry to imitate "schizophrenic language." In his >recent book discussing so called "language poetry" (a context in which >Perelman's mature work, and maybe even his immature work, as a poet >emerged) he critiques both Andrews and >Bernstein (here's where would be nicer to quote, and unfortunately >I can't at the moment) for being less than coherent, let us say, orderly >and meaningful in ways that might have significant and useful social >value. >In short, he apparently is accusing them of publishing works that have >aspects of being nonsensical! Not having read Jameson's remarks I cannot say what he intended, but it seems to me that an exploration of the language of schizophrenia would be a good thing, an important thing, a meaningful thing, and full of useful social value. Jakobson was fond of the slogan: Linguista sum; linguistici nihil a me alienum puto [I am a linguist; I consider nothing foreign to me that has to do with language] If you replace "linguista" with "poeta", it works equally well for this list, no? George Thompson ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 07:00:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Misrepresenting Canada Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >To:ajm@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU >From:dcmb@metro.net (David Bromige) >Subject:Misrepresenting Canada > >Andrew John Miller, my post last night might have been less than clear. >The link you propose between the Social Credit advocated by Pound, and the >political party that ruled in British Columbia for many years, was a >matter of "in-name-only." I don't believe any of the latters' policies >reflected the influence of Major Douglas. > >Also--in the guying song I cited--the name should be "Bonner," I think. >Bennett would of course have been there (at the bond-burning stunt). Wasnt >Bonner the name of a recently disgraced SocCred minister? > >If my closing remarks sounded like a rant, I'm sorry. BC's Socreds were a >crass lot, precursors to my mind in their greed and selfishness, of >Thatcherism & Reaganism, no matter their policy differences, hence my >anachronistic build-back onto them of Thatcher's phrase "There is no such >thing as society." The practiced detachment of the enormously rich & >powerful from "society" in the sense of the whole human endeavor from >which they draw their money & their powe >--how do they get away with this w/o challenge from the media & with >support from intellectuals? Perhaps Blair's government will alter this >would-be market metaphysics in Britain. The windfall tax is a start. Where >does the Reform Party place itself in relation to this particularly >criminal form of hypocrisy? > >David Bromige. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 08:47:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: but who's saying what... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Andrew John Miller makes some interesting points about the Canadian political scene, but 1) I live in Alberta, & I can tell you I don't want the provincial government there to have any more power than it already has, &, however badly managed & run the central government may be (& I would happily support a system in which all parties got some representation based on voting patterns across the country), it does provide some balance; 2) I think ds salmon hits the nail on the head, & this can be seen in the fact that the "Liberal" government has, in fact, already begun to cut & reshape immigration & law to Reform desires; 3) I really raised the political question in order to ask about the use of language, the how of getting theory down to the street, so to speak. I was only trying to pull some of that discussion into the world of political doing. Possibly theory just doesnt 'go' there? But, no, the questions raised about ideology & power are real, & somehow or other it would be good to bring those questions to bear in the public arena against the leaders who insist that all we need is 'common sense' (whatever that is, or they mean by that). I do think it's worth considering Mr Miller's suggestion "that the contemporary left still has much to learn from the contemporary right. The trick, in this case, is to subvert and translate our opponent's ideas in ways that open up possibilities that our opponents have not anticipated." But I also worry about the ethics of it all... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 10:12:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Misrepresenting Canada (my entry for bad writing awards) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" andrew john miller, i can't speak for canada, though i have close relatives in toronto (originally from france, and from quebec), a close friend in winnipeg, doug in alberta, and friends elsewhere... the politics in canada have always been a bit fuzzy to me, perhaps b/c i don't live with them, perhaps b/c i am not as informed as i should be... but on this side of the border, i do think i grasp what's going on... of course i can appreciate your appeal (as i understand you) to develop a leftist grassroots orientation (about which there are some real activists on this list) that will somehow address the soi-disant centrist-democractic impulses in d.c. (in my view, our best bet at this time, even if woefully deficient)... that is, to develop a populist base for leftist politics equivalent, say, to the christian coalition... but point in fact: whenever i hear somebody on this side of the border talking about a smaller federal government, i begin to fret... clearly the impulse on the right is to turn over the rei(g)ns to what are only putatively local interests, b/c in fact it's clear, in so many communities in this country, who currently has *power* at the local level... this is what the republicans and ralph reed are banking on (pun intended)... and as far as they're concerned, with the notable exception (however misinformed) of somebody like jack kemp, the inner city can go to blazes... seems to me that you have to evaluate political possibilities in terms of what is actually going on---which includes the political disparities already in place (in essence this is an issue of power distribution)... i would act, i think, in two ways---from the top down, and from the bottom up... dismantling a central power base, however compromised, w/o that bottom-up apparatus (sorry!) in place or at least highly visible could be positively lethal, no?... and as far as the u.s. goes, imnsho, you take power away from clinton (or equiv. white house rep) at this moment in time, and (how shall i say this?) you may as well plan on your kids developing expert knowledge of the revised standard version and _the wall street journal_... i hate to give the impression that i'm operating solely out of fear---but i just don't see the viability of pulling support away from the dems at this moment, or away from some central federal power that at least pays lip-service to leftist agenda (symbolic capital, folks), albeit i'm not certain that you're suggesting we should... in any case i hope things go well for you folks with liberal sentiments and commitments on the other side of the border, where things are not so ostensibly binary... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 12:18:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: bad writing Comments: To: henry MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Henry, My mistake. I agree with your point, by and large, though I venture to say it doesn't necessarily cancel my own point, which remains this: while we originally read critics & philosophers for their gist alone, as it were, we re-read them - if at all - for the pleasure their writing may afford us. Is this pleasure necessarily different from the pleasures of the poem? For instance, Heidegger's own work on poetry so clearly, it seems to me, begs to be called poetic (at least by him). I think wherever a certain linguistic density accrues - whatever its aims and intents might be - that density announces the appearance, be it ever so nascent, of the"poetic." But you are quite right to assert that analysis differs entirely from the impulse to write a poem, which is a synthetic operation. All I'm saying is, language makes funny things happen. That's what they say in Wyoming anyway, where the raindrops fall as big as your fist and swarm like the Myrmidons from their black-hulled ships. P.S. - what do you mean exactly by Ariosto singing for his supper? How does that differ from the institutional largesse which so many writers depend on today - unless you're talking about strictly "spiritual" dividends. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: henry To: POETICS Subject: Re: bad writing Date: Friday, May 23, 1997 9:34PM Patrick : interesting, because total, misreading of what I said. Makes me wonder about my own ability to express myself. I don't think all writing aspires to poetry. I think critical analysis & philosophy are distinct activities - they are not poetry. What I was trying to say was that in a democratic world the justification of poetry by means of an academic critique of socio-political structures is the ultimate circus carnival of a self-promotional hyped-up market empire. Poetry is something else. Closer to Ventadour/Blackburn's concept of the singing heart. But even CLOSER to something more allegorical & literary: Ariosto, for example. Another courtly poet singing for his meals. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 13:44:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: three cheers for shameless self-promotion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For anyone who's going to be in New York City this weekend, I'm giving a reading Saturday night (May 31) at 8 p.m. at the Poet's Theater, 37 St. Marks Place basement, under the Gap that's on the corner of St. Mark's Place and Second Ave. Hope I'll see you there. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 13:55:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: Misrepresenting Canada / Tony Blair MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT David Bromiage wrote -- > >Thatcher's phrase "There is no such thing as society." The > >practiced detachment of the enormously rich & powerful from > >"society" in the sense of the whole human endeavor from which they > >draw their money & their powe --how do they get away with this w/o > >challenge from the media & with support from intellectuals? Perhaps > >Blair's government will alter this would-be market metaphysics in > >Britain. . . . Thus speaking (tangentially) of Blair -- I enjoyed reading James Fenton's article, "The Self-Made Man" in the current issue (dated June 12, 1997) of the New York Review of Books. The article is billed on the cover as "At School with Tony Blair" -- so happens, poet Fenton went to school with Blair for a time, and has some close-range memories & wide-angle reflections to share. Since I really know/knew nothing about Blair, I found it useful to get this bit of background. Also should note that I'm just beginning to pick up on / tune into the good writing that Fenton has been regularly doing for the New York Review (since, I guess, a long while). For instance -- incidentally -- the just-previous issue has a good article about Sylvia Plath, written by Fenton best, d.i. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 14:01:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: bad writing / good metaphor ? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Re: "veer" "When we think of the world's future, we always mean the destination it will reach if it keeps going in the direction we can see it going in now; it does not occur to us that its path is not a straight line but a curve, constantly changing directions" (L.Wittgenstein, _Culture and Value_). Which is to say Coleridge, even though he describes his "zig-zag walk," could not have predicted the varieties of postmodernism & etc. Perhaps we can only veer back toward a source? "Do not forget that a poem, although it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information. (L. Wittgenstein, _Zettel_) [cribbing the above from M. Perloff's new _Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary_, which is so far remarkably clear, if only I knew what I meant by clear. jd __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 13:20:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: leftist self-promo... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" and while i'm at it: list members may be interested in a short piece by my partner kass fleisher in this month's _z magazine_, "attention shoppers"... you can feed kass back at my address---just put her name "kass" someplace in the subject line and it'll filter into her mailbox... mark---wish i could be there for your reading... the 31st is my bday and, uhm, whitman's!... i suspect the latter may be worth a nod or two... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 14:32:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: shameless self-promotion... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit joe: 5.31 is *your* b-day? Mine too. The synchronicity she is running high today! Same name, we both teach at tech-colleges, same date, but I bet I'm older (1951). Well, cheers! I'll raise a beer in your honor. jd __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 14:55:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: shameless self-promotion... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit sorry, anyone who got my b-day greeting to joe amato, it was meant as a private backchannel message sent accidently to the list. jd -- __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 14:25:24 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: Pie Barrage MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I just co-directed a psychology/English thesis on avant-garde poetry and the language of schizophrenia. I can backchannel a bibliography of materials (mostly from the discipline of psychology, things unread in lit theory circles) to anyone who has an interest. George Thompson wrote: > it > seems to me that an exploration of the language of schizophrenia would be a > good thing, an important thing, a meaningful thing, and full of useful > social value. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 14:55:38 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Canadian Discontents MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit As an ex-Manitoban of French ancestry, I suppose I am not disinterested with regard to all this discussion about Misrepresenting Canada, but I would like to add my two cents (that's 1.4 cents in US currency) to this debate, even though this is probably not the right forum for any lengthy debate of the issues. I think what is important to recognize is that: 1. The Reform Party has a set of disasterously retrograde, narrow, and bigoted policies. 2. Reform has gained support because people in the Western Provinces feel quite rightly that they are not heard in the capital, where those in power see most conflicts in terms of the balance of power between Ontario and Quebec (the West tends to get collapsed into "English Canada" but the interests represented under this rubric tend to be those of Southern Ontario). IE: REFORM PRESENTS ILLEGITIMATE SOLUTIONS TO VERY REAL PROBLEMS. 3. The discontent in the West is by no means new -- the leftist NDP was once the vehicle of this discontent. 4. We need people on the left in Canada to find a way to articulate their views and mobilize Western discontent. Otherwise we leave the discontented voters to Reform, who are the only people who even *claim* to represent the West. [So why are people like Barbour, whose hearts are in the right place, so suspicious of such action?] I took Andrew John Miller's point to be that Reform (while a reprehensible group) would open the eyes of those in Ottawa to the real needs of the West. This would be the best thing that could come of Reform, but many worse results seem just as likely. (I took this kind of warning of likely bad results to be D.P. Salmon's legitimate point, though he stated it in a way that I find extreme and that will alienate those who might have supported him). Rather than hoping for some good to come of their reprehensible policies, ought we not to mobilize a politically acceptable alternative with which to channel Western discontent? Robert Archambeau (Would a backchannel discussion be more appropriate for this topic?) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 20:59:47 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew John Miller Organization: Duke University Subject: Re: Misrepresenting Canada In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I am tempted to respond to Douglas Barbour's latest remarks on a point-by-point basis. I fear, however, that an excessively specific discussion of Canadian politics may alienate and/or bewilder the many non-Canadians on the poetics list (non-Canadians who, for all I know, have already been thoroughly alienated and/or bewildered by the relatively little that has already been said on what, by world standards, is admittedly a somewhat parochial topic). In an attempt to avoid terminal long-windedness, I shall focus my remarks on an article that appeared in this morning's (May 26th) _Vancouver_Sun_: "Rural residents swinging toward Reform and away from NDP" (available at http://www.vancouversun.com). At the outset of the article, we are told of a carpenter--currently a Reform supporter--who "complains that big business runs Canada, that free trade isn't free and that multinationals rule the world." A few paragraphs later, we learn that this individual "used to support the [left-leaning] NDP because it 'was for your average working person.'" It seems that he, like many others in his position, no longer finds that the NDP speaks adequately to his interests. As the article proceeds, it becomes apparent that those who support Reform are indeed afflicted by many of the ailments that have traditionally afflicted the supporters of populist movements: nativism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-intellectualism. At the same time, however, it also becomes apparent that support for Reform is fuelled, above all, by a legitimate and understandable sense that the Canadian political system is not responsive to the concerns of the "average working person." I would suggest that this sense of powerlessness is something that the left ignores at its own (and ultimately society's) peril. The left (or what's left of it) needs to do more than assert its sense of moral superiority: it needs to speak, in persuasive terms, to those, throughout the world, who find themselves shell-shocked by the effects of accelerated globalization. The left needs to do this, moreover, in a manner that, on the one hand, addresses the legitimate, populist desire for more direct forms of democracy, and that, on the other hand, avoids pandering to the destructive, populist tendency to stigmatize all of those who are somehow alien or different. I could say a lot more about these matters. I believe, however, that it is high time for me to cease and desist. Still, I cannot resist noting that the issues at stake in contemporary Canadian debates have a much broader range of historical and geopolitical relevance than may at first be apparent. I think, for example, of the hostility that Kenneth Burke encountered when, at the 1933 American Writers' Congress, he suggested that the left needed to think more pragmatically and strategically about its strategies of persuasion: "[O]ne cannot extend the doctrine of revolutionary thought among the middle class," K. Burke argued at that time, "without using middle-class values--just as the Church invariably converted pagans by making the local deities into saints." I shall close with two, relatively small points. (Those of you who have no taste for Canadian affairs can feel free to tune out at this point.) First, I want to stress to David Bromige that, in my allusion to Social Credit, I was not attempting to distort the history of BC's (now virtually defunct) Social Credit party. Instead, I was attempting, in an excessively brief and parenthetical fashion, to illustrate the manner in which populist impulses are readily appropriated by those who lack any substantial desire to make government either more responsive or more participatory. (In the Canadian context, the best contemporary example of this form of appropriation is probably the neoconservative authoritarianism of Mike Harris's Ontario government--a government that came into power chanting populist mantras and promising a "commonsense revolution" but that has focused, more than anything else, on limiting the privacy and autonomy of both individual citizens and local municipalities.) Second, I would like to respond briefly to Douglas Barbour's claim that he does not "want the provincial government [in his home province of Alberta] to have any more power than it already has." I would point out, for one thing, that Alberta's current premier, Ralph Klein, has openly opposed himself to Reform's vision of constitutional reform; Klein, it seems, has federal aspirations--aspirations that may eventually land him a powerful role in that top-heavy, central government to which, it seems, Alberta's marginalized left currently looks for encouragement and relief. Finally, I would point out that, in the ongoing dispute over BC's salmon-fishing industry, the federal government in Ottawa has been extremely slow to act on behalf of BC's interests. If Ottawa is now at last beginning to move in a decisive fashion (by seizing American fishing boats and by pressing for meaningful negotiations with the Americans), it is doing so only to the extent that BC's (nominally left-wing) NDP government has chosen to act as an autonomous and sovereig power. When BC's premier, Glen Clark, denied the American navy its traditional access to the testing grounds at Nanoose Bay, he overstepped the limits of the federal/provincial division of powers. In the process, Clark made it clear that, under the current system of asymmetrical federalism, the only way for western provinces to gain the attention of the central government is to ignore the legal niceties and to proceed with a raw assertion of power. I, for one, would prefer a federal system in which all provinces had adequate federal representation and, as a result, did not find themselves compelled to flout the provisions of both Canadian and international law. If anyone wants to talk further about Canadian politics, please feel free to backchannel me. In any further communications to the list, I promise to confine myself to matters of a more overtly poetic sort. Andrew John Miller ajm@acpub.duke.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 09:02:17 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Canadian Discontents Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >(I took this kind of warning of likely bad results to be D.P. Salmon's >legitimate point, though he stated it in a way that I find extreme and >that will alienate those who might have supported him). Actually i was reflecting on current examples of 'grassroots' political movements both here in New Zealand and n Australia. Not wanting to burden the list with yet another regional example i (unsuccessfully - and from the sounds of it offensively - i apologise) tried to allude to this in passing. Unfortunately i came across as merely flippant et al. My intended point was that in the case of these groups - who often do offer certain qualities we associate with the traditional left - it is their racist, xenophobic policies that seem to become their rallying point. & I am sorry - this is unforgiveable to me, regardless of any otherwise-positive social policy. As for accusations of my ignorance re-Caadian politics, i am guilty, but i must ask he who points the finger - (& from whom i would welcome comments on our own political system) just how much he knows about the New Zealand or even the Australian situation. Your friend Dan (DS) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 17:18:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: Canadian Discontents / Aussie developments MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dan Salmon wrote, > Actually i was reflecting on current examples of 'grassroots' > political movements both here in New Zealand and n Australia. BTW, what about that Austrailian chap turned expat critic in London & then "major" Time Magazine art critic in New York (since past couple decades) who, according to a recent New Yorker profile, might run for high office in Australia? (Sorry, I forget his name . . .) Is this for real? Does the bloke seem interesting, from where you sit? Lately saw report of the horrendous-seeming anti-Aboriginal sentiment being drummed up by a woman Oz political figure . . . here in the states, all this appears vague & sketchy -- d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 17:24:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: Misrepresenting Canada In-Reply-To: <3389b7ff.4295519@mail.smartt.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 1 you invited non canadians to tune out before you got to the bit about the us navy. 2 politics is what? poetry in motion? or are we back at pursuing false distinctions just to keep the nominalists happy? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 10:06:48 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Canadian Discontents / Aussie developments Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" wHO? roBERT hUGHES? really? The woman is Pauline Hanson (sp?) & it is not just anti-aboriginal, but perhaps even more so anti immigrant, anti-gay, pro-gun, anti political dissidents - the whole busload. She was one of the people i was refering to previously, having set up the Pauline Hanson party. Have heard her interviewed & was astonished by how un-media savvy & stupid she came across. Can't say much for her supporters. Which seems to be becoming popular. But then wht would i know, I'm a New Zealander (hence the nz on email adress) & AUstralia is a continent far away from this island. Dan >BTW, what about that Austrailian chap turned expat critic in London & >then "major" Time Magazine art critic in New York (since past couple >decades) who, according to a recent New Yorker profile, might run for >high office in Australia? (Sorry, I forget his name . . .) Is this for real? > >Does the bloke seem interesting, from where you sit? Lately saw >report of the horrendous-seeming anti-Aboriginal sentiment being >drummed up by a woman Oz political figure . . . > >here in the states, all this appears vague & sketchy -- > >d.i. > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 19:43:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: Canadian Discontents / Aussie developments In-Reply-To: <199705262206.KAA14116@ihug.co.nz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 27 May 1997, DS wrote: > Have heard her > interviewed & was astonished by how un-media savvy & stupid she came across. > Can't say much for her supporters. Which seems to be becoming popular. > But I've read that this ineptitude with respect to the media is precisely one of the reasons why she is so popular. It's Spiro Agnew deja vu all over again. Get the media to attack you and that gives you legitimacy in the eyes of supporters. I'm not sure from what I've read if she is aware of what she is doing. But you can be sure somebody in a right-wing think tank knows a good thing when he sees it. Saw Bobbie Hughes on Charlie Rose the other night. He made a hint that he was still involved politically in Australia. btw, if Bobbo was a poetry critic, then all the early poems of a poet would be good and the later ones would not be anywhere near as good. That's what he had to say about the works of Warhol, de Kooning, and O'Keefe. He may be right, but it sounded like this was a critical schtick that he happened upon and incorporated into his act. Steven of Vespucci-land __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 19:43:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Pie Barrage Comments: To: George Thompson In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hello George T, I fully agree. The study of schizophrenic language, especially with relation to contemporary poetry, is a rich and valuable area. I'm very much looking forward to receiving R. Archambeau's bibliography for his course on avant-garde writing mentioned in another post. In this regard, I'll mention Harold Searles' valuable discussions of schizophrenic language-see his Collected Papers. As I promised in my post on Jameson and Perelman,to be fair to their work, I will do my homework, and get back to you and the list, with some brief quotations, at a later time. Best wishes, Nick P. On Mon, 26 May 1997, George Thompson wrote: > In response to Nick P's observations: > > but as I > >remember it many poets I know were astonished some years back when Jameson > >wrote about postmodern poetry, citing Perelman's poetry as an example of > >deliberate attempts in poetry to imitate "schizophrenic language." In his > >recent book discussing so called "language poetry" (a context in which > >Perelman's mature work, and maybe even his immature work, as a poet > >emerged) he critiques both Andrews and > >Bernstein (here's where would be nicer to quote, and unfortunately > >I can't at the moment) for being less than coherent, let us say, orderly > >and meaningful in ways that might have significant and useful social > >value. > >In short, he apparently is accusing them of publishing works that have > >aspects of being nonsensical! > > Not having read Jameson's remarks I cannot say what he intended, but it > seems to me that an exploration of the language of schizophrenia would be a > good thing, an important thing, a meaningful thing, and full of useful > social value. > > Jakobson was fond of the slogan: > > Linguista sum; linguistici nihil a me alienum puto > [I am a linguist; I consider nothing foreign to me that has to do with language] > > If you replace "linguista" with "poeta", it works equally well for this > list, no? > > George Thompson > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 17:49:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: Re: who gets the prizes (wants them) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I would just hope that in 'helping their friends' poets like Bernstein and Graham et al would occasionally leave the door open for others who they hadnt taught or had direct connections with, but whose work still strikes them as interesting. Cronyism not only supports a narrow band of poets but also narrow bands of poetry. And remember that in supporting past students and current friends poets/judges are not being unselfish-- prizes and publications lead to teaching and editorial positions which then can often come back to benefit the mentor-poet (as in reading honoraria and publications.) Back to NEA (threads that wont die), and sillimans great example of how well he used his grant. While perhaps a majority of the list folk have managed to find teaching work, many other writers (m'self including) are grunting away at other jobs andd would relish the ability to buy some freedome (if not dental work.) One odd idea-- do blind screening to assure some level of 'quality,' then pick (37 or however many grants the budget permit) winners at random. And how about building some need criteria for (at least some of) these grants? dan "smash the symbols of the Empire in the name of nothing but the heart's longing for grace" Hakim Bey ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 22:35:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Book Contests/AN IDEA Perhaps like others, no matter how distinguished the organization or publisher, I have an instinctive wariness (weariness?) about book contests in which fifteen to twenty-five dollars are asked to accompany the enclosed manuscript. It's not that I necessarily distrust the need for the money. There are real labor costs involved in administering a contest in which probably an avalanche of manuscripts must be processed, promotion advertisements, readers and judges must be paid, etc. And it's highly unlikely that the sale of the winner's book will meet these costs. At best a book's sales will pay for printing, a bit of promotion to announce the winners and pay a prize amount. And I'm not disposed to think that the judges will be dishonest. At least I don't want to think that such a contest is just a charade, or a scrim, behind which a judge, or judges will pick one winner out of a preset possible five or six choices. I suspect Paul Hoover thought he was entering a crap-shoot in Georgia, didn't know that Marvin Bell was to be a judge, and it's gratifying to realize that Marvin Bell was "worldly" enough to see the worth of Hoover's work. At the same time. I've been around enough to know there are judges that work on a different set or lack of principles. That prejudice or curruption -- depending on the point of view -- can comes with any such territory. What does put me off about such contests, as such, is that I always sense that they are not particulary productive publishing adventures. The winning books, even with the prize sticker attached, fall into the same limited distribution work of any other book. How many of us, for example, will ever go into a local bookstore and find Paul Hoover's book. With luck, Borders or Barnes & Noble will pick it up and give it wide distribution. At best, the winner, and perhaps the press, receives name recognition. And perhaps there will be reviews. In the meantime, of the many of us who spent the $25 (I didn't) only a small fraction of us -- unless we expend real extra effort - will never see the book! On one hand, for those who paid and submitted their manuscripts, for many the primary experience and outcome of a contest will be feelings of rejection, anger, money mispent, and, at most extreme Kent Johnson style plots de paranoia. On the other hand, from the point of view of the winning poet and the publisher, there will be miminal publically critical or appreciative response from an actual readership to the actual book -- responses which could provide a confirmation that the winning book is well worth the prize, that the contest was decently judged etc. My IDEA is quite simple. I propose that when publisher's and/organizations host a book contest - particularly when there is a submission fee - that each entrant will recieve a copy of the winning book. The unit printing cost of a 72 to 96 page paperback poetry book probably varies between $1.50 and $2.50 at the maximum plus another buck for handling and fourth class postage. For 3 or 4 dollars of the manuscript submission fee, the book would acquire: 1) a real distribution to an audience of readers who -- in many cases -- would never see it. 2). This critical readership would potentially affirm or reject the credibility of the contest. (At least make it clear whether you want to try the particular contest again). 3). On a perhaps more profound level, both poet and publisher would achieve a much more valuable recognition in the poetry community for having made a genuine contribution to "the art" and and a develpment of a readership for the work. Otherwise, unless I've already over- stressed the point, "the losers" are most often left blind in the dark, full of one real or imaginary plaint, and the winner goes often unread, not known for the poems, but known for "winning." Perhaps publishers -- such as Doug Messerli at Sun and Moon -- could respond to this proposal. Essentially the idea is asking for a change from "submission" to "reciprocation" between poets (entrants) and publishers/or organizations. I think it would be to the profit of everyone involved. Cheers, Stephen Vincent . ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 22:14:12 -0700 Reply-To: balong@ipa.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Organization: Self Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Stephen Vincent wrote: > > Perhaps like others, no matter > how distinguished the organization > or publisher, I have an > instinctive wariness (weariness?) > about book contests in which > fifteen to twenty-five dollars > are asked to accompany the enclosed > manuscript. It's not that > I necessarily distrust the > need for the money. There > are real labor costs involved > in administering a contest > in which probably an avalanche > of manuscripts must > be processed, promotion > advertisements, readers and > judges must be paid, etc. > And it's highly unlikely that > the sale of the winner's book > will meet these costs. At best > a book's sales will pay for > printing, a bit of promotion > to announce the winners > and pay a prize amount. > > And I'm not disposed to think > that the judges will be dishonest. > At least I don't want to think that > such a contest is just a charade, > or a scrim, behind which a judge, or > judges will pick one winner out > of a preset possible five or six > choices. I suspect Paul Hoover thought > he was entering a crap-shoot in > Georgia, didn't know that Marvin Bell > was to be a judge, and it's gratifying > to realize that Marvin Bell was > "worldly" enough to see the worth > of Hoover's work. At the same time. > I've been around enough to know there > are judges that work on a different set > or lack of principles. That prejudice > or curruption -- depending on the > point of view -- can comes > with any such territory. > > What does put me off about such contests, > as such, is that I always sense that > they are not particulary productive > publishing adventures. The winning > books, even with the prize sticker > attached, fall into the same limited > distribution work of any other book. > How many of us, for example, will ever > go into a local bookstore and find > Paul Hoover's book. With luck, Borders > or Barnes & Noble will pick it up and > give it wide distribution. At best, the > winner, and perhaps the press, receives > name recognition. And perhaps there > will be reviews. In the meantime, of > the many of us who spent the $25 (I didn't) > only a small fraction of us -- > unless we expend real extra effort - > will never see the book! > On one hand, for those who paid > and submitted their manuscripts, > for many the primary experience > and outcome of a contest will be > feelings of rejection, anger, money > mispent, and, at most extreme Kent > Johnson style plots de paranoia. > On the other hand, from the > point of view of the winning poet > and the publisher, there will be > miminal publically critical or appreciative > response from an actual readership > to the actual book -- responses which > could provide a confirmation that > the winning book is well worth the > prize, that the contest was decently > judged etc. > > My IDEA is quite simple. I propose that > when publisher's and/organizations > host a book contest - particularly > when there is a submission fee - > that each entrant will recieve a > copy of the winning book. The unit > printing cost of a 72 to 96 page > paperback poetry book probably > varies between $1.50 and $2.50 > at the maximum plus another buck > for handling and fourth class postage. > For 3 or 4 dollars of the manuscript > submission fee, the book would > acquire: > 1) a real distribution to an audience > of readers who -- in many cases -- > would never see it. > > 2). This critical readership would > potentially affirm or reject the credibility > of the contest. (At least make it clear > whether you want to try the particular > contest again). > > 3). On a perhaps more profound level, > both poet and publisher would achieve > a much more valuable recognition in > the poetry community for having made > a genuine contribution to "the art" and > and a develpment of a readership for > the work. > > Otherwise, unless I've already over- > stressed the point, "the losers" are > most often left blind in the dark, > full of one real or imaginary plaint, > and the winner goes often unread, > not known for the poems, but known > for "winning." > > Perhaps publishers -- such as Doug Messerli > at Sun and Moon -- could respond to > this proposal. Essentially > the idea is asking for a change from "submission" > to "reciprocation" between poets (entrants) > and publishers/or organizations. > > I think it would be to the profit > of everyone involved. > > Cheers, > Stephen Vincent > > I agree wholeheartedly with Stephen's ideas concerning both these types of contests, and what can be done about it to ensure a feeling of legitimacy concerning them. I hope those who are sponsoring such contests will pay close attention to what Stephen has suggested. Brent Long ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 23:47:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: wittgenstein & blake Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Wittgenstein: "What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about." (_Tractatus_ 5.61) Blake: "Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth." (_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, quoted from memory) Opposing positions? Parallel? The same? -- __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 20:51:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Stephen--as your publisher I think it's a great idea, with one exception--the economics. It costs Junction Press about $2000 to typeset and print a run of 1000 copies of a 72 to 96 page book if I typeset and design myself without remuneration. That would come out to $2.00 per copy if all copies were for sale. But 1/10 of the run goes to the poet as royalty, and 100 to 150 go as review copies or freebies. That leaves, say, 750 copies. Perhaps fifty of those will be returned by bookstores damaged beyond salability. That leaves 700 copies which, at say $10.00 per, could net between $4,200 and $7,000 if every book were sold. But let's be real--to sell the entire run can take years if it ever comes to pass. So let's be optimistic and say that the run nets $3000-5000 dollars, which would be a profit of $1000-3000, except that other expenses--permissions for cover art, software, office supplies, storage, advertizing, and I've probably forgotten a few others--eat a big piece of that pie. What's left, one hopes, may offset part of the expenses for the next book. But not if a contest has acquired them for what is essentially fund-raising premiums at $2.00 a copy. If those who ran contests saw their goal as the support of publishers as well as writers they would buy the books at 40% bookstore discount. Of course this would cut into the take for the contest's expenses. But why not? Shouldn't an institution that touts its image with an eponymous contest pay something for the advertizing? Should they be exempt from the costs of the charitable efforts that both unpaid poets and publishers support? Should they be subsidized by publishers as well as by poets who pay for the privilege of having their work considered? For the record, I have never and probably never will submitted work to a contest that carries a price tag. I think that the practice is insulting, and the chances for gain are considerably less than say plunking the dough on double 0 in Vegas. > >My IDEA is quite simple. I propose that >when publisher's and/organizations >host a book contest - particularly >when there is a submission fee - >that each entrant will recieve a >copy of the winning book. The unit >printing cost of a 72 to 96 page >paperback poetry book probably >varies between $1.50 and $2.50 >at the maximum plus another buck >for handling and fourth class postage. >For 3 or 4 dollars of the manuscript >submission fee, the book would >acquire: >1) a real distribution to an audience >of readers who -- in many cases -- >would never see it. > >2). This critical readership would >potentially affirm or reject the credibility >of the contest. (At least make it clear >whether you want to try the particular >contest again). > >3). On a perhaps more profound level, >both poet and publisher would achieve >a much more valuable recognition in >the poetry community for having made >a genuine contribution to "the art" and >and a develpment of a readership for >the work. > >Otherwise, unless I've already over- >stressed the point, "the losers" are >most often left blind in the dark, >full of one real or imaginary plaint, >and the winner goes often unread, >not known for the poems, but known >for "winning." > >Perhaps publishers -- such as Doug Messerli >at Sun and Moon -- could respond to >this proposal. Essentially >the idea is asking for a change from "submission" >to "reciprocation" between poets (entrants) >and publishers/or organizations. > >I think it would be to the profit >of everyone involved. > >Cheers, >Stephen Vincent > > > > > > > > > >. > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 00:22:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Music & poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Who was it suggested the trivium of poetry / philosophy / music? A beautiful and resonant triangle (which instrument I played in my grammar school orchestra). Anyway, for an on-going bibliographic project, could people backchannel me with information on musical/text collaborations that have resulted in documented performances, books, scores, etc. Time period:1978-2001. Many thanks in advance. -- __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 21:24:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: <970526223527_405340970@emout01.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Perhaps like others, no matter >how distinguished the organization >or publisher, I have an >instinctive wariness (weariness?) >about book contests in which >fifteen to twenty-five dollars >are asked to accompany the enclosed >manuscript. It's not that >I necessarily distrust the >need for the money. There >are real labor costs involved >in administering a contest >in which probably an avalanche >of manuscripts must >be processed, promotion >advertisements, readers and >judges must be paid, etc. >And it's highly unlikely that >the sale of the winner's book >will meet these costs. At best >a book's sales will pay for >printing, a bit of promotion >to announce the winners >and pay a prize amount. > >And I'm not disposed to think >that the judges will be dishonest. >At least I don't want to think that >such a contest is just a charade, >or a scrim, behind which a judge, or >judges will pick one winner out >of a preset possible five or six >choices. Actually, when I sent my "novel," _The Letters of Mina Harker_, to Sun & Moon, DM informed me that it would have to be entered as part of the fiction contest, and that I should pay $25 to have it read, something I was resistant to. But he added something about how "excellent" my manuscript was and how there weren't that many entries and that it would be judged by an outside judge with aesthetics similar to mine. So, grudgingly, I sent in the money. Then, a while later, the winner of the "contest" was announced to the Poetics List--long before I received any notification (tacky?), and it was given to someone I never heard of--and DM HIMSELF was the judge. I feel that I should have had my $25 refunded since there was no outside judge and the "contest" was misrepresented to me. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 00:02:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm more than a little uncomfortable with accusations of fraud flying around on this public a forum. As a publisher I know that the best of intentions are often thwarted by circumstance, particularly by the pressures of scheduling, and I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. This feels like DM is being publicly challenged to justify his behavior; I'm not sure how, or if, I'd respond if I were in his place. But given the number of books he publishes a year this would be a surprising way to pick up small change. Be that as it may, it has occured to me that contests can be a dandy way for a press to raise funds. If only a hundred $25 submissions are received that's $2500. I could do a perfectly respectable edition of 1000 on lighter paper than I usually use and with a black and white cover for c. $1500. As to the labor of reading 100 ms., especially poetry, most submissions fall into the category of immediate dismissal, after the first half dozen lines, either because they're ghastly or because they're not to my taste. So a hundred submissions could probably be narrowed down very very quickly. 200 would take longer, but the swag would certainly be worth the trouble. Probably most contests are established and run ethically, whatever the use or merit of contests may be, but I have no doubt that other publishers less scrupulous than I am have figured out the above mathematics. Caveat emptor. >Actually, when I sent my "novel," _The Letters of Mina Harker_, to Sun & >Moon, DM informed me that it would have to be entered as part of the >fiction contest, and that I should pay $25 to have it read, something I was >resistant to. But he added something about how "excellent" my manuscript >was and how there weren't that many entries and that it would be judged by >an outside judge with aesthetics similar to mine. > >So, grudgingly, I sent in the money. > >Then, a while later, the winner of the "contest" was announced to the >Poetics List--long before I received any notification (tacky?), and it was >given to someone I never heard of--and DM HIMSELF was the judge. I feel >that I should have had my $25 refunded since there was no outside judge and >the "contest" was misrepresented to me. > >Dodie > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 00:28:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: shameless self-promotion... In-Reply-To: <3389D748.15C5@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >joe: > >5.31 is *your* b-day? Mine too. The synchronicity she is running high >today! Same name, we both teach at tech-colleges, same date, but I bet >I'm older (1951). Well, cheers! I'll raise a beer in your honor. > >jd >____ Hey, if 5.31 is what the rest of the world calls 31.5, well, that's my kid brother's birthday, too. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 00:38:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: shameless.... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" yeah, George, but is his name Joe? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 01:16:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: <199705270702.AAA21467@sweden.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:02 AM -0700 5/27/97, Mark Weiss wrote: >I'm more than a little uncomfortable with accusations of fraud flying around >on this public a forum. As a publisher I know that the best of intentions >are often thwarted by circumstance, particularly by the pressures of >scheduling, and I'm inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. This feels >like DM is being publicly challenged to justify his behavior; I'm not sure >how, or if, I'd respond if I were in his place. But given the number of >books he publishes a year this would be a surprising way to pick up small >change. No public challenge, just an accounting of what happened to *me*. I don't think "outside judge" means the press' publisher. And DM was very specific to me that he wouldn't be the one deciding. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 07:31:48 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joseph Duemer wrote: > > Wittgenstein: "What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about." > (_Tractatus_ 5.61) > > Blake: "Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth." (_The > Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, quoted from memory) > > Opposing positions? Parallel? The same? > -- > __________________________________________________________________ > > Joseph Duemer > School of Liberal Arts > Clarkson University > Potsdam NY 13699 > Phone: 315-262-2466 > Fax: 315-268-3983 > duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu > > "The honey of heaven may or may not come, > But that of earth both comes and goes at once." > Wallace Stevens Contraries. But what can one not imagine, or what imagination cannot insinuate itself into anyone? [A post facto, redundant point--i.e., like saying that if you imagined something you imagined it--though it seems to me that Blake's circumlocution suggests that one may see anything as an "image of truth."] Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 08:10:01 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Pie Barrage In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 25 May 1997 23:22:19 -0400 from Heard on a jazz interview over the weekend on the radio, a longtime professional bass player who said, "when you get to the point where it seems like you're about to lose your mind - that's when the playing gets good" - Henry G. furor poeticus[?] ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 08:40:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake In-Reply-To: <338A588F.6E4A@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII talking to find out what you think is not a new idea. they used to call it thinking out loud. freud called something else the talking cure. there is also the story that before god created the world he read the torah. this is a position? On Mon, 26 May 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote: > Wittgenstein: "What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about." > (_Tractatus_ 5.61) > > Blake: "Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth." (_The > Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, quoted from memory) > > Opposing positions? Parallel? The same? > -- > __________________________________________________________________ > > Joseph Duemer > School of Liberal Arts > Clarkson University > Potsdam NY 13699 > Phone: 315-262-2466 > Fax: 315-268-3983 > duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu > > "The honey of heaven may or may not come, > But that of earth both comes and goes at once." > Wallace Stevens > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 08:49:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Pie Barrage In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 25 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > Perelman's mature work, and maybe even his immature work, as a poet > emerged) he critiques both Andrews and > Bernstein (here's where would be nicer to quote, and unfortunately > I can't at the moment) for being less than coherent, let us say, orderly > and meaningful in ways that might have significant and useful social > value. > In short, he apparently is accusing them of publishing works that have > aspects of being nonsensical! Without intending to be overly flattering, > this is > like DeKooning accusing Pollack of being vague and ambiguous, pot accusing > the kettle, etc. So the I keep getting very weirded out by public comments on Perelman's Marginalization.....At first, I just thought it was a question of my own reading habits versus those of others...But now I think maybe something more important is going on...So, for what it's worth: Many responses to Perelman's book have said essentially the same as above: that his treatment of Andrews and (esp.'y) Bernstein is harsh, dismissive, highly unsympathetic. I don't get it. Personally I find this reading of the tone and substance of the passages in question mind-boggling...They are not that negative, to put it mildly..Since most of the principles in this case are hanging around the List, there's plenty of room for further input, from people much closer to this issue than me. I'll just point out what has come to really disturb me about this (so that I finally felt like putting in my $.02): I wonder whether reviewing and critical habits among many of us, have skewed our ability to read tone and intention in some poetry criticism. Most of us most of the time, concentrate on publishing or posting responses to poetry we **like** and want to support....There is an ethos of positive response, you could almost say (my background showing) solidarity, nonsectarian and generous, toward those poets we feel affinities with..This is very much the way it ought to be, not least because resources are scarce, and the path usually pretty tough for most poets trying to find enough support to just keep on...But have we blunted our tolerance for careful and specific criticism??? I find the treatment of Andrews and CB fair and sympathetic and very subtle, and not primarily dismissive or condemnatory of their poetry..Quite the contrary; but it certainly is about identifying tensions and contradictions in their work. I make public comments in print and in cyberspace about other poets, and start to feel a little anxious, if there is such a widespread perception that modulated discussions like BP's are attacks, just because they aren't entirely laudatory... Mark P. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 09:00:47 -0400 Reply-To: CHRIS MANN Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: Music & poetry In-Reply-To: <338A616E.1587@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i don't understand the project. how are these distinctions made? (poetry/philosophy/music/documented/performance/score/collaboration..(book i can just about cope with.)) (and to what purpose? (i thought this was why we paid the police.)) this i think is a sympathetic inquiry. On Tue, 27 May 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote: > Who was it suggested the trivium of poetry / philosophy / music? A > beautiful and resonant triangle (which instrument I played in my grammar > school orchestra). > > Anyway, for an on-going bibliographic project, could people backchannel > me with information on musical/text collaborations that have resulted in > documented performances, books, scores, etc. Time period:1978-2001. Many > thanks in advance. > -- > __________________________________________________________________ > > Joseph Duemer > School of Liberal Arts > Clarkson University > Potsdam NY 13699 > Phone: 315-262-2466 > Fax: 315-268-3983 > duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu > > "The honey of heaven may or may not come, > But that of earth both comes and goes at once." > Wallace Stevens > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 09:03:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Joseph Duemer wrote: > > > > Wittgenstein: "What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked > > about." (_Tractatus_ 5.61) > > > > Blake: "Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth." > > (_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, quoted from memory) > > > > Opposing positions? Parallel? The same? and Dan Zimmerman replied: > Contraries. But what can one not imagine, or what imagination cannot > insinuate itself into anyone? [A post facto, redundant point--i.e., > like saying that if you imagined something you imagined it--though > it seems to me that Blake's circumlocution suggests that one may see > anything as an "image of truth."] Blake's ~~Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth can be read, first as: ~~Everything that can be imagined is an image with "image of the truth" being Blake's slant on the nature of "image" per se. (I.e., he suggests, IF it's an image, THEN it's an image of the truth. Further, IF it can be imagined, THEN it's an image. Ergo -- the succinct sentence.) Wittgenstein's ~~What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about can be read as a statement regarding the relationship between word and image. (I.e., the priority of image -- or the imaginable -- to word -- or the discussable.) These might be construed as contraries, but I'd say they seem more like mappings along a continuum -- from word to imagination (W.) and then from imagination to image ["of the truth"] (B.) Of the two, Blake's invocation of "truth" may strike us, these days, as the more markedly problematical of the twain. d.i. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 09:07:12 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: hen Comments: Originally-From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" From: hen Subject: Re: bad writing MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I know I'm starting to sound like Allan Bloom on this list - kind of ridiculous. What I'm getting at is that the survival instinct that used to "salt" the work of the poet in olden days now goes into film & popular music. Poetry is a socio-verbal recovery & counseling retreat center in our culture, petted & patronized & very "special". Yeccchhh... But again we're talking about the social face of it (as with the awards biz) - not the "inside". And only one aspect of the social face, at that. - Henry ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- P.S. - what do you mean exactly by Ariosto singing for his supper? How does that differ from the institutional largesse which so many writers depend on today - unless you're talking about strictly "spiritual" dividends. Patrick Pritchett ---------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 09:14:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit They still call it thinking out loud. Are you implying that one needs a thesis before delivering oneself of a sentence? I like that bit about God reading the torah, didn't know that. CHRIS MANN wrote: > talking to find out what you think is not a new idea. they used to call it thinking out loud. freud called something else the talking cure. there is also the story that before god created the world he read the torah. this is a position? < > > On Mon, 26 May 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote: > > > Wittgenstein: "What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about." > > (_Tractatus_ 5.61) > > > > Blake: "Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth." (_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, quoted from memory) > > > > Opposing positions? Parallel? The same? > > -- > > __________________________________________________________________ > > > > Joseph Duemer > > School of Liberal Arts > > Clarkson University > > Potsdam NY 13699 > > Phone: 315-262-2466 > > Fax: 315-268-3983 > > duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu > > > > "The honey of heaven may or may not come, > > But that of earth both comes and goes at once." > > Wallace Stevens > > -- __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 10:24:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Pie Barrage Comments: To: Mark Prejsnar In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark P. I wonder how carefully you read what I wrote. I certainly didn't accuse Perelman of being condemnatory or any such thing. I'm afraid you found nothing subtle in my remarks- perhaps this is my fault- but you seem to take me dead seriously- in spite of my frequent caveats about not having the texts in front of me. My- now seemingly trivial point- was simply that Perelman seems to miss their "chops" - a word defined in a posting on here some time ago. What I found strange about Perelman's critique, again, had more to do with what it would sound like if Ornette Coleman commented on John Coltrane for being dissonant. Again, please let me come back with specific quotes. Maybe I'm completely off here. You have challenged me to clarify and defend my off the cuff remarks.By the way, if you think it is so useful to be confrontative, why are you so "wierded out" by my rather gentle critique of Perelman? After all, I do imply he's a pretty good poet by comparing him with DeKooning. Best wishes, Nick P.On Tue, 27 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > On Sun, 25 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > > > Perelman's mature work, and maybe even his immature work, as a poet > > emerged) he critiques both Andrews and > > Bernstein (here's where would be nicer to quote, and unfortunately > > I can't at the moment) for being less than coherent, let us say, orderly > > and meaningful in ways that might have significant and useful social > > value. > > In short, he apparently is accusing them of publishing works that have > > aspects of being nonsensical! Without intending to be overly flattering, > > this is > > like DeKooning accusing Pollack of being vague and ambiguous, pot accusing > > the kettle, etc. So the > > > I keep getting very weirded out by public comments on Perelman's > Marginalization.....At first, I just thought it was a question of my own > reading habits versus those of others...But now I think maybe something > more important is going on...So, for what it's worth: > > Many responses to Perelman's book have said essentially the same as above: > that his treatment of Andrews and (esp.'y) Bernstein is harsh, dismissive, > highly unsympathetic. I don't get it. Personally I find this reading of > the tone and substance of the passages in question mind-boggling...They > are not that negative, to put it mildly..Since most of the principles in > this case are hanging around the List, there's plenty of room for further > input, from people much closer to this issue than me. I'll just point out > what has come to really disturb me about this (so that I finally felt like > putting in my $.02): I wonder whether reviewing and critical habits among > many of us, have skewed our ability to read tone and intention in some > poetry criticism. Most of us most of the time, concentrate on publishing > or posting responses to poetry we **like** and want to support....There is > an ethos of positive response, you could almost say (my background > showing) solidarity, nonsectarian and generous, toward those poets we > feel affinities with..This is very much the way it ought to be, not least > because resources are scarce, and the path usually pretty tough for most > poets trying to find enough support to just keep on...But have we blunted > our tolerance for careful and specific criticism??? I find the treatment > of Andrews and CB fair and sympathetic and very subtle, and not primarily > dismissive or condemnatory of their poetry..Quite the contrary; but it > certainly is about identifying tensions and contradictions in their work. > I make public comments in print and in cyberspace about other poets, and > start to feel a little anxious, if there is such a widespread perception > that modulated discussions like BP's are attacks, just because they aren't > entirely laudatory... > > Mark P. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 08:41:23 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: western disaffection Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think Robert Archambeau hits a lot of nails right on their heads. We probably should get back to poetry (but politics is always there/in), & backchannel more on this rotten state topic (except that I read everything in the digest & enjoy the range). Andrew John Miller's latest post does make some necessary points; but: Yeah Reform has somehow taken the lead in representing western alienation, & done so by misrepresenting the politics of (dis) connection. It may do some good (it will elect quite a few people) waking Ottawa up to the fact that, as it has said, "The West wants in!" (but too many people arent seeing that they also want to destroy that which we apparently want in on). I still fear what they would do with power. The leader is a dogmatist (& the message, finally, is exclusive not inclusive [& Joe was dead on about all that]) & I always come back to bpNichol's palindrome on that -- "dogma I am god". I hope for a wider range of representation than we now have, but I aint holding my breath... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 11:33:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Actually, when I sent my "novel," _The Letters of Mina Harker_, to Sun & >Moon, DM informed me that it would have to be entered as part of the >fiction contest, and that I should pay $25 to have it read... >Dodie I sent a poetry ms. to this contest also. But -- at least in my understanding -- the entry fee doesn't go to the publisher as such, but to the Center for Contemporary Arts (?) in L.A. I guess I rationalize the high entry fee by assuming that at least part of it is helping a nonprofit arts organization that does all kinds of interesting, artsy things for the local community. (Uh-oh, I might be on the verge of suggesting that a percentage of contest fees go toward subsidizing the NEA, which could turn around and put some of the money into subsidizing presses, who could then sponsor more contests -- but no, it's just a case of attempted thread fusion.) Is my assumption here correct? Anyone know? -- Fred *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 11:53:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake In-Reply-To: <338ADE4C.5EC4@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i imply wittgenstein and grammar On Tue, 27 May 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote: > They still call it thinking out loud. Are you implying that one needs a > thesis before delivering oneself of a sentence? I like that bit about > God reading the torah, didn't know that. > > CHRIS MANN wrote: > > > talking to find out what you think is not a new idea. they used to call it thinking out loud. freud called something else the talking cure. there is also the story that before god created the world he read the torah. this is a position? < > > > > On Mon, 26 May 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote: > > > > > Wittgenstein: "What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about." > > > (_Tractatus_ 5.61) > > > > > > Blake: "Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth." (_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, quoted from memory) > > > > > > Opposing positions? Parallel? The same? > > > -- > > > __________________________________________________________________ > > > > > > Joseph Duemer > > > School of Liberal Arts > > > Clarkson University > > > Potsdam NY 13699 > > > Phone: 315-262-2466 > > > Fax: 315-268-3983 > > > duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu > > > > > > "The honey of heaven may or may not come, > > > But that of earth both comes and goes at once." > > > Wallace Stevens > > > > > -- > __________________________________________________________________ > > Joseph Duemer > School of Liberal Arts > Clarkson University > Potsdam NY 13699 > Phone: 315-262-2466 > Fax: 315-268-3983 > duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu > > "The honey of heaven may or may not come, > But that of earth both comes and goes at once." > Wallace Stevens > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 11:56:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Pie Barrage In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In what way Mark Baker is Federal Jameson supposed to be like Coleridge? C. obfuscates fudges diverges circumambulates etc _not_ in the service of a banal misunderstanding as it usually sounds to me Jameson does but rather avoids ever onward the lime tree bower his prison? Key is I think to sympathize. Jameson don't. Nor do Spivak. Ergo resentment and outsider therapy the which cures nothing for confirmed cases but there we are hopping among the hybrid later readers of which yes you seem to be a confederate. Is it true the Ear's over? K, J ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 10:53:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:33 AM -0400 5/27/97, Fred Muratori wrote: > >I sent a poetry ms. to this contest also. But -- at least in my >understanding -- the entry fee doesn't go to the publisher as such, but to >the Center for Contemporary Arts (?) in L.A. I guess I rationalize the >high entry fee by assuming that at least part of it is helping a nonprofit >arts organization that does all kinds of interesting, artsy things for the >local community. I think the question you should be asking here, Fred, is--what is the relationship between the Center for Contemporary Arts and DM and S&M. From what I've heard, the answer would surprise you. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 14:28:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 27 May 1997 dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: > I think the question you should be asking here, Fred, is--what is the > relationship between the Center for Contemporary Arts and DM and S&M. From > what I've heard, the answer would surprise you. Aren't they more or less the same thing? CCA and S&M I mean, not Doug himself. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 13:55:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" joe et al., thank you for the large amount of good writing occasioned by 'bad writing' (catching up with the weekend's posts bit by bit), espcially joe's pragmatism, >anyway, my point should be obvious enough: that "good" writing---like >"bad" writing---implies a moral-political judgment... now i'm not against >making such judgments---but they need to be understood as such... and when >you hear somebody running around using the term "bad writing" as though >style can be unproblematically separated from "content"---as though "bad" >is 'merely' a stylistic denotation---well that in itself should give one >reason to pause... which for me heads toward the heart of the matter; why should one be any more conservative (or narrowminded?) in determining the limits of good writing in any genre than they are in determining what makes good poetry? Clarity has its admirable qualities. Brevity, too. But applying any non-contextual standards (I mean grossly, across the boards) to a judgement of meaning fails to understand how linguistic meaning is made. And another thought: as joe mentioned, 'good' and 'bad' need to be underscored as relative--so too 'difficult'. What is 'difficult'? Is reading Jameson's sentence 'difficult'? Compared to...learning latin, reading a sentence in Japanese, etc.? Compared to chunks of P's Cantos, or Wyatt in the original? It is a challenge; often a pleasant one. Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 11:49:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Wittgenstein and Blake seemed related by contradiction. A relation that Blake would have understood, as he was always uniting contraries. Wittgenstein does seem rather a Urizenic figure in his relentless logic - possibly a redeemed Urizen who has picked up his compass and walked away - Puts me in mind of Jameson's sense of a contradiction as "a matter of partialities and aspects; only some of it is incompatible with the accompanying proposition; indeed, it may have more to do with forces, or the state of things, than with words or logical implications." (I love his sentences.) (That was from The Seeds of Time) Marjorie Perloff quoting Witt: "...to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life." (Philosophical Investigations) This seems not incompatible with the worlds Blake creates in the prophecies where imagining and being and the language of the poem are simultaneous - I must admit I was startled to see these two writers on the same line as I have just finished a book called The Case and have just published one called Symmetry and have been reading Blake and Wittgenstein in relation to these two projects (with a lot of Duchamp thrown in) - Laura Moriarty >i imply wittgenstein and grammar > >On Tue, 27 May 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote: > >> They still call it thinking out loud. Are you implying that one needs a >> thesis before delivering oneself of a sentence? I like that bit about >> God reading the torah, didn't know that. >> >> CHRIS MANN wrote: >> >> > talking to find out what you think is not a new idea. they used to >>call it thinking out loud. freud called something else the talking cure. >>there is also the story that before god created the world he read the >>torah. this is a position? < >> > >> > On Mon, 26 May 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote: >> > >> > > Wittgenstein: "What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about." >> > > (_Tractatus_ 5.61) >> > > >> > > Blake: "Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth." >>(_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_, quoted from memory) >> > > >> > > Opposing positions? Parallel? The same? >> > > -- >> > > __________________________________________________________________ >> > > >> > > Joseph Duemer >> > > School of Liberal Arts >> > > Clarkson University >> > > Potsdam NY 13699 >> > > Phone: 315-262-2466 >> > > Fax: 315-268-3983 >> > > duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu >> > > >> > > "The honey of heaven may or may not come, >> > > But that of earth both comes and goes at once." >> > > Wallace Stevens >> > > >> >> -- >> __________________________________________________________________ >> >> Joseph Duemer >> School of Liberal Arts >> Clarkson University >> Potsdam NY 13699 >> Phone: 315-262-2466 >> Fax: 315-268-3983 >> duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu >> >> "The honey of heaven may or may not come, >> But that of earth both comes and goes at once." >> Wallace Stevens >> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 14:54:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: Pie Barrage In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII that was extremely hot: let's talk about sympathy--the power of-- On Tue, 27 May 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > In what way Mark Baker is Federal Jameson > supposed to be like Coleridge? C. obfuscates > fudges diverges circumambulates etc _not_ > in the service of a banal misunderstanding > as it usually sounds to me Jameson does > but rather avoids ever onward the lime > tree bower his prison? Key is I think > to sympathize. Jameson don't. Nor do Spivak. > Ergo resentment and outsider therapy > the which cures nothing for confirmed cases > but there we are hopping among the hybrid > later readers of which yes you seem to be > a confederate. Is it true the Ear's over? > K, > J > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 15:31:35 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 27 May 1997 13:55:32 -0500 from On Tue, 27 May 1997 13:55:32 -0500 Matthias Regan said: > >which for me heads toward the heart of the matter; why should one be any >more conservative (or narrowminded?) in determining the limits of good >writing in any genre than they are in determining what makes good poetry? > Clarity has its admirable qualities. Brevity, too. But applying any >non-contextual standards (I mean grossly, across the boards) to a judgement >of meaning fails to understand how linguistic meaning is made. I'd like to go back to Valery's distinction between prose discourse and poetry (I'd like to, but I don't have it very secure in memory or in front of me on the page...). Prose does its job when the meaning is delivered; the language is functional. Poetry exhibits a pendulum effect - the mind absorbs the conceptual elements but swings back to the "unforgettable" surplus whole which is the poem itself. Seems to me he's onto something there. Sure we can talk about a philosopher or critic's style; style is like clothing - it's on the exact borderline between irrelevant and necessary for life; poetry, on the other hand, is a form of streaking. How's that for non-stylish discourse? - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 12:46:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" morte difficult than pound and wyatt, less so than learning latin or japanese. But maybe even the comparison with the latter makes the point: a sympathetic and educated reader shouldn't have to translate from his own language unless there's a damn good reason--a hard case to make for anyone's first sentence in any book. To the degree that the first sentence is opaque the writer must be limiting his audience to those who have learned his code from previous books. That can make for a cozy club, but why shouldn't a newcomer, rather than paying the entry fee, go somewhere else for his amusement? > And another thought: as joe mentioned, 'good' and 'bad' need to be >underscored as relative--so too 'difficult'. What is 'difficult'? Is reading >Jameson's sentence 'difficult'? Compared to...learning latin, reading a >sentence in Japanese, etc.? Compared to chunks of P's Cantos, or Wyatt in >the original? It is a challenge; often a pleasant one. > >Matthias > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 15:04:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Laura Moriarty wrote: >I must admit I was startled to see these two writers on the same line as I >have just finished a book called The Case and have just published one >called Symmetry and have been reading Blake and Wittgenstein in relation to >these two projects (with a lot of Duchamp thrown in) - Please elaborate: I would like to hear how Duchamp fits in. Regarding the Jameson you introduce: that is a great quote, and a beautiful sentence. Bakhtin replaces dialectic with dialogic, because there is no solution between such forces; as in dialog there is no guarantee they listen to or hear each other. Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 16:04:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA When I started this thread, I had no intention of seeing it become what might be currently interpreted as an attack etc. on Doug Messerli and/or Sun & Moon. My intention was to focus on making a more reciprocal relationship between publishers (particularly ones that mount contests) and the poets who pay entrance fees. My proposal was that a submission fees would entitle would also entitle all entering poets (or writers) to a copy of the winning book. If that were the case, for example, Dodie would have gotten a copy of the winning title in the S&M contest and she and other entrants would be given (if they can overcome the experience of rejection) an opportunity to objectively read the winner's actual work. Additionally the receipt of a book becomes a form of reciprocation for the submission fee. Not only do I think this process -- which provides the poet or writer to judge the material and see what he or she was "up against -- but, from a publisher's point of view, I think it will expand the credibility of the process, possibly increase the print run (and lower unit costs), but also get the winner's work (especially if he or she is a new kid on the block) out into a much greater public ciruclation than this country's bookstores will provide. Finally, I only know Doug M. personally as a friend and an occasional fellow publisher. I've never been published by Doug, but I have a great deal of respect for the books and contributions that Sun and Moon have made to honor the act of making new and innovative work. Given the enormous ambitions of the Press, and just the sheer bravado it takes to survive as a publsiher of any kind of new writing, I'm sure Doug has occasionally bitten off more than he can chew, as well as had chance to fall err or victim to mistakes in judgement or enthusiams. I would first give honor to what he's accomlished and then ask the respectful question. I think if we cleared that air first, then, if Doug wants, he can address this wicked seeming area of contests, publishers and poets. Cheers, Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 17:12:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing In-Reply-To: Henry "Re: Fwd: Bad Writing" (May 27, 3:31pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Henry wrote: >poetry, on the other hand, is a form of streaking. That's precious Henry! You mean runnin' nekked? Bill B. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 16:45:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry Gould nakedly mused: >Prose does its job when the meaning is delivered; >the language is functional. Poetry exhibits a pendulum effect - the mind >absorbs the conceptual elements but swings back to the "unforgettable" >surplus whole which is the poem itself. Seems to me he's onto something >there. Sure we can talk about a philosopher or critic's style; style is >like clothing - it's on the exact borderline between irrelevant and >necessary for life; poetry, on the other hand, is a form of streaking. >How's that for non-stylish discourse? - Henry Gould Valery (what little I recall clearly as well) was no doubt up to smart things, but what's wrong with "Poetry does its job when the meaning is delivered; the language is functional." In prose and poetry the functional parts of the language are many and complex: great & local context, etimology, spoken and thought sound, etc. But I don't like how poetry should be said to operate differently from prose--only that it often does-and perhaps this is (only?) because we often read it with different expectations. I can't think of how 'style' does not attach itself to every word, every utterance--when the signification is uncertain (as always), then the meaning is the style (as perhaps someone said already...) what Wittyguystein calls the "halo" of the word, what Bakhtin calls "heteroglossia" or "ideological meaning." I guess I think I'm saying I think style is necessary, never irrelevant to poetry or prose. As for the "unforgettable", that surplus: where does it reside? It can't have to do with length (when you say the whole) because short prose and long poems, but with the idea of what poetry is. What about Rimbaud's prose-poems? Or then, what about Hass's? As for streaking: what is the emporer doing in his new clothes? Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 14:53:28 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It is possible that, as you say, or as Baktin says, there may be no solution or resolution. The lack of resolution, as in the undoneness of the Zoas, has always attracted me to Blake. The resistance of these figure to each other may be absolute. Duchamp functions as something like a middle term for me between Wittgenstein and Blake. Witt's "everyday life being a puzzle of language" may be a term that could apply to any writer's project. But that sense added to the the sublime allegory of Blake or Duchamp - in both cases some sort of allegory of the garden or city or construction of the imagination. Witt's allegory, in these terms, is grammar and the iron book of this grammar is something that one can perceive Blake's entities stomping around in. Duchamp works in because of his emphasis on language and games (puns, chess, masquerade etc) as well as on mathematics and logic - These seem Wittgensteinian - And the sense of the feminine emanation or threatening and threatened "sexual machine" (in the Zoas and Jerusalem) are in both Blake and Duchamp. There is a sexual ambiguity to Witt and Duchamp. There is a linear, literary, sculptural aspect to the art of Blake and Duchamp. Laura >Laura Moriarty wrote: > >>I must admit I was startled to see these two writers on the same line as I >>have just finished a book called The Case and have just published one >>called Symmetry and have been reading Blake and Wittgenstein in relation to >>these two projects (with a lot of Duchamp thrown in) - > >Please elaborate: I would like to hear how Duchamp fits in. > >Regarding the Jameson you introduce: that is a great quote, and a beautiful >sentence. Bakhtin replaces dialectic with dialogic, because there is no >solution between such forces; as in dialog there is no guarantee they >listen to or hear each other. > >Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 17:00:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing In-Reply-To: <199705271946.MAA13363@sweden.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >a >sympathetic and educated reader shouldn't have to translate from his own >language unless there's a damn good reason--a hard case to make for anyone's >first sentence in any book. A "sympathetic" reader might not mind "translating", though I meant to suggest with that comparison, not that Jameson needed translating, but that we do all kinds of difficult things--what if it takes a couple years to "learn" how to read Jameson's prose? Why does his prose have to be "accessible" so quickly? To the degree that the first sentence is opaque >the writer must be limiting his audience to those who have learned his code >from previous books. Or to new-comers who are intrigued, or impressed by the complexity of the sentence, or who understand it off the bat from reading other long and complicated sentences, or because they are so familiar with the content. The audience is limited, after all, once anything is written or said. That can make for a cozy club, but why shouldn't a >newcomer, rather than paying the entry fee, go somewhere else for his amusement? Well, but why not? I think there are two different things going on. The complexity of Jameson's prose, and the hegemony that might or might not exist saying that this prose is "necessary" (for something), and _must_ be mastered despite the difficulty that that entails. Or the other answer would be: Jameson's prose is not here for entertainment ("cozy club") purposes (though puzzling through the long sentences is not nec. not entertaining), but to instruct; and one part of the instruction is to keep always in mind while reading it that language is most 'dangerous' (to something) when it is least visible. Jameson is working hard to avoid transparency in his prose. >> And another thought: as joe mentioned, 'good' and 'bad' need to be >>underscored as relative--so too 'difficult'. What is 'difficult'? Is reading >>Jameson's sentence 'difficult'? Compared to...learning latin, reading a >>sentence in Japanese, etc.? Compared to chunks of P's Cantos, or Wyatt in >>the original? It is a challenge; often a pleasant one. >> >>Matthias >> >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 15:50:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gee, thanks. I get so testy if I'm not patronized at least once a day. Look, part of my job as a writer is to educate my readers how to read me. To see oneself as above that is an act of narcissism. > > Or the other answer would be: Jameson's prose is not here for >entertainment ("cozy club") purposes (though puzzling through the long >sentences is not nec. not entertaining), but to instruct; and one part of >the instruction is to keep always in mind while reading it that language is >most 'dangerous' (to something) when it is least visible. Jameson is >working hard to avoid transparency in his prose. > >>> And another thought: as joe mentioned, 'good' and 'bad' need to be >>>underscored as relative--so too 'difficult'. What is 'difficult'? Is reading >>>Jameson's sentence 'difficult'? Compared to...learning latin, reading a >>>sentence in Japanese, etc.? Compared to chunks of P's Cantos, or Wyatt in >>>the original? It is a challenge; often a pleasant one. >>> >>>Matthias >>> >>> >> >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 19:45:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Laura Moriarty wrote: > > It is possible that, as you say, or as Baktin says, there may be no > solution or resolution. The lack of resolution, as in the undoneness of the > Zoas, has always attracted me to Blake. The resistance of these figure to > each other may be absolute. > > Duchamp functions as something like a middle term for me between > Wittgenstein and Blake. Witt's "everyday life being a puzzle of language" > may be a term that could apply to any writer's project. But that sense > added to the the sublime allegory of Blake or Duchamp - in both cases some > sort of allegory of the garden or city or construction of the imagination. > Witt's allegory, in these terms, is grammar and the iron book of this > grammar is something that one can perceive Blake's entities stomping around > in. > > Duchamp works in because of his emphasis on language and games (puns, > chess, masquerade etc) as well as on mathematics and logic - These seem > Wittgensteinian - And the sense of the feminine emanation or threatening > and threatened "sexual machine" (in the Zoas and Jerusalem) are in both > Blake and Duchamp. There is a sexual ambiguity to Witt and Duchamp. There > is a linear, literary, sculptural aspect to the art of Blake and Duchamp. > > Laura > > >Laura Moriarty wrote: > > > >>I must admit I was startled to see these two writers on the same line as I > >>have just finished a book called The Case and have just published one > >>called Symmetry and have been reading Blake and Wittgenstein in relation to > >>these two projects (with a lot of Duchamp thrown in) - Duemer, interjecting: I originally put Blake and Witt. together because they are both *interested* in the limits of language, with what in fact can be said, and what, famously, "we must pass over in silence." On a larger scale, I've been thinking through as best I can relationships between Romanticism, especially Brit., and the various things that get called postmodernism, with the sneaking suspicion that some of the same psychic sources are responsible. Which is fine by me. Blake, for all his proclaiming style, is at heart an aphorist, and so is Wittgenstein & there is something in the "propositional" style that unites them, though they would, could they meet, be invisible to one another. Wittgenstein says somewhere in the _Tractatus_ "The sense of the would lies outside the world," and that anti-essentialism shows up, I think, in Blake's anti-christian mythology, which as Laura rightly says, remains radically open. So: I see Blake and Witt. playing parallel games. Or the same game in separate dimensions. > >Please elaborate: I would like to hear how Duchamp fits in. > > > >Regarding the Jameson you introduce: that is a great quote, and a beautiful > >sentence. Bakhtin replaces dialectic with dialogic, because there is no > >solution between such forces; as in dialog there is no guarantee they > >listen to or hear each other. > > > >Matthias -- __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 23:27:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Pie Barrage Comments: To: Jordan Davis In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yes, very sadly true that the Ear Series, sponsored by the Segue Foundation, has ended its run of 18 years. The series is slated to continue, from what I hear, at the Here Cafe on Spring Street and 6th Avenue probably in October.Over the years, attendees have more and more complained about the acoustics, in every sense of that word. The series was invited in partly to pick up the bar and restaurant business on slow Saturday afternoons. What grew into a very workable symbiosis for many years,finally faded in its effectiveness when due to inceasing success of the restaurant and bar biz, the acoustic, attentional situation has become unworkable for vitually every poet who reads there. I can vouch for the fact that no stone was left unturned in trying to work things out with the Ear management, discussions that went on for many years. The finale included Leslie Scalapino and Steve Benson reading with sax sideman David Barrett, in a touching and thought provoking, personal yet linguistic and lyrical long wailin' improv which for me was a cosmic journey through an endless procession of Ear Inn mailers from Segue under magnets on the fridge starting in 1979 and continuing until Saturday, May 24, 1997. Best wishes, Nick P. On Tue, 27 May 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > In what way Mark Baker is Federal Jameson > supposed to be like Coleridge? C. obfuscates > fudges diverges circumambulates etc _not_ > in the service of a banal misunderstanding > as it usually sounds to me Jameson does > but rather avoids ever onward the lime > tree bower his prison? Key is I think > to sympathize. Jameson don't. Nor do Spivak. > Ergo resentment and outsider therapy > the which cures nothing for confirmed cases > but there we are hopping among the hybrid > later readers of which yes you seem to be > a confederate. Is it true the Ear's over? > K, > J > > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 19:56:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Baker Subject: Re: Pie Barrage MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A confederate, yes Jordan--no sound's dissonant which tells, in this our list-tree bower. I did too much for J, and too little for STC, putting one in place of the other. Gratuitous, like doing in an albatross. And an agony constraineth me to travel from post to post 'til you clear up my possibly banal misunderstanding of who's got the resentment and what the confirmed cases (J's readers?) reject cures for. Mark Baker Jordan Davis wrote: > > In what way Mark Baker is Federal Jameson > supposed to be like Coleridge? C. obfuscates > fudges diverges circumambulates etc _not_ > in the service of a banal misunderstanding > as it usually sounds to me Jameson does > but rather avoids ever onward the lime > tree bower his prison? Key is I think > to sympathize. Jameson don't. Nor do Spivak. > Ergo resentment and outsider therapy > the which cures nothing for confirmed cases > but there we are hopping among the hybrid > later readers of which yes you seem to be > a confederate. Is it true the Ear's over? > K, > J ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 21:42:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marjorie Perloff Subject: Re: Center for Contemporary Arts, Inc. In-Reply-To: <199705280403.VAA11901@leland.Stanford.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Center for Contemporary Arts IS Sun & Moon. There's no distinction. Marjorie Perloff ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 00:55:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Pie Barrage Comments: To: Jordan Davis In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sorry that I neglected to note in my previous post about the Ear Inn that it is located in Manhattan (New York, N.Y.) at 326 Spring Street. The Here Cafe,is located at Spring and Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue). ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 22:20:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: <970527160406_-464437244@emout05.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 4:04 PM -0400 5/27/97, Stephen Vincent wrote: >When I started this thread, >I had no intention of seeing >it become what might be >currently interpreted as an >attack etc. on Doug Messerli >and/or Sun & Moon. I don't see how my giving an accurate account of my personal experiences is construed as an attack by you, Mr. Vincent. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 02:24:14 -0400 Reply-To: "Thomas M. Orange" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: bad writing, voice, valery In-Reply-To: <199705280404.AAA14821@julian.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i'm uncertain of the terrain being staked here: where the poetry/prose distinctions come from in valery, poetry "doing its job" vis-a-vis prose, the locus of a "surplus," etc: a poem is a discourse that demands and induces a continuous connection between the voice that is and the voice that is coming and must come. and this voice must be such as to command a hearing, and call forth an emotional state of which the text is the sole verbal expression. take away the voice -- the right voice -- and the whole thing becomes arbitrary. (opening lecture of the course in poetics, 1937) tho as to style, i don't think valery wants to link it to meaning: thought has no style, or as he says further: what makes the style is not merely the mind applied to a particular action; it is the whole of a living system expended, imprinted, and made recognizable in expressions. it is compounded of consciousness and unconsciousness, of spontaneity and effort; and sometimes calcualtion enters in. ("style," 1945) not sure where to go hence... tom. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 02:14:29 -0700 Reply-To: balong@ipa.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Organization: Self Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: > > At 4:04 PM -0400 5/27/97, Stephen Vincent wrote: > >When I started this thread, > >I had no intention of seeing > >it become what might be > >currently interpreted as an > >attack etc. on Doug Messerli > >and/or Sun & Moon. > > I don't see how my giving an accurate account of my personal experiences is > construed as an attack by you, Mr. Vincent. > > Dodie well, maybe they just didn't like what you submitted. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 08:56:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Harsh words and marginalizations Comments: To: Piombino/Simon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Nick, everything you say is fair...Now I really didn't mean to be very attacking, using the term weirded out and all..But I accept all that you say below as pretty reasonable and fair; it seems to me (and it's far from the first time, for me!) that we've each slightly misheard the other's intended tone (..in both cases, taking it to be harsher than intended). To be quite frank, I was using you a little bit as a straw man (...straw poet? straw critic?..)--I was using the occasion of your post to respond to a general trend I thought I detected in several responses to Marginalization, which I've seen in print as well as in cyberspace. So...I still feel I've detected a trend which is really there, and that my comments may be apposite, in a general way...But I acknowledge that your point was more nuanced than I realized..And as a musician manque (a jazz bassist, in fact--Henry G!) who has always been maybe excessively responsive to aural swing, I'm ready to go along with your point about chops, very whole-heartedly..(whole-ear'd'ly).. regards, Mark On Tue, 27 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > Mark P. I wonder how carefully you read what I wrote. I certainly didn't > accuse Perelman of being condemnatory or any such thing. I'm afraid you > found nothing subtle in my remarks- perhaps this is my fault- but you > seem to take me dead seriously- in spite of my frequent caveats about > not having the texts in front of me. My- now seemingly trivial point- > was simply that Perelman seems to miss their "chops" - a word defined in > a posting on here some time ago. What I found strange about Perelman's > critique, > again, had more to do with what it would sound like if Ornette Coleman > commented on John Coltrane for being dissonant. Again, please let me > come back with specific quotes. Maybe I'm completely off here. You have > challenged me to clarify and defend my off the cuff remarks.By the > way, if you think it is so useful to be confrontative, why are you so > "wierded out" by my rather gentle critique of Perelman? After all, I do > imply he's a pretty good poet by comparing him with DeKooning. > Best > wishes, Nick P.On Tue, 27 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > > > On Sun, 25 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > > > > > Perelman's mature work, and maybe even his immature work, as a poet > > > emerged) he critiques both Andrews and > > > Bernstein (here's where would be nicer to quote, and unfortunately > > > I can't at the moment) for being less than coherent, let us say, orderly > > > and meaningful in ways that might have significant and useful social > > > value. > > > In short, he apparently is accusing them of publishing works that have > > > aspects of being nonsensical! Without intending to be overly flattering, > > > this is > > > like DeKooning accusing Pollack of being vague and ambiguous, pot accusing > > > the kettle, etc. So the > > > > > > I keep getting very weirded out by public comments on Perelman's > > Marginalization.....At first, I just thought it was a question of my own > > reading habits versus those of others...But now I think maybe something > > more important is going on...So, for what it's worth: > > > > Many responses to Perelman's book have said essentially the same as above: > > that his treatment of Andrews and (esp.'y) Bernstein is harsh, dismissive, > > highly unsympathetic. I don't get it. Personally I find this reading of > > the tone and substance of the passages in question mind-boggling...They > > are not that negative, to put it mildly..Since most of the principles in > > this case are hanging around the List, there's plenty of room for further > > input, from people much closer to this issue than me. I'll just point out > > what has come to really disturb me about this (so that I finally felt like > > putting in my $.02): I wonder whether reviewing and critical habits among > > many of us, have skewed our ability to read tone and intention in some > > poetry criticism. Most of us most of the time, concentrate on publishing > > or posting responses to poetry we **like** and want to support....There is > > an ethos of positive response, you could almost say (my background > > showing) solidarity, nonsectarian and generous, toward those poets we > > feel affinities with..This is very much the way it ought to be, not least > > because resources are scarce, and the path usually pretty tough for most > > poets trying to find enough support to just keep on...But have we blunted > > our tolerance for careful and specific criticism??? I find the treatment > > of Andrews and CB fair and sympathetic and very subtle, and not primarily > > dismissive or condemnatory of their poetry..Quite the contrary; but it > > certainly is about identifying tensions and contradictions in their work. > > I make public comments in print and in cyberspace about other poets, and > > start to feel a little anxious, if there is such a widespread perception > > that modulated discussions like BP's are attacks, just because they aren't > > entirely laudatory... > > > > Mark P. > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 09:09:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: North, left, and right of the border In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I should disapprove; in general on principle I like the list to stick to poetry-related topix...But as an activist I've found the Canada thread absolutely fascinating and very informative..Thanx folks... Mark P. Atlanta On Tue, 27 May 1997, Douglas Barbour wrote: > I think Robert Archambeau hits a lot of nails right on their heads. We > probably should get back to poetry (but politics is always there/in), & > backchannel more on this rotten state topic (except that I read everything > in the digest & enjoy the range). Andrew John Miller's latest post does > make some necessary points; but: > > Yeah Reform has somehow taken the lead in representing western alienation, > & done so by misrepresenting the politics of (dis) connection. It may do > some good (it will elect quite a few people) waking Ottawa up to the fact > that, as it has said, "The West wants in!" (but too many people arent > seeing that they also want to destroy that which we apparently want in on). > I still fear what they would do with power. The leader is a dogmatist (& > the message, finally, is exclusive not inclusive [& Joe was dead on about > all that]) & I always come back to bpNichol's palindrome on that -- "dogma > I am god". > > I hope for a wider range of representation than we now have, but I aint > holding my breath... > > ============================================================================== > Douglas Barbour I see > Department of English only > > University of Alberta through the touching of > Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light > (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray > H: 436 3320 > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 09:41:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Pie Barrage In-Reply-To: <338B9EF1.5940@bc.sympatico.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Fair use of form, Mark, and so please stay me a moment more from the stone church (mistaking agony for indifference Poe reviews himself). I had meant that species of thought poetry paranoia, a social block. Readers who feel it often write, opening new interiors occasionally, often though throwing only pies. J's book on Shklovsky's not so bad, eh? Is the blanket warm? Might as well ask anyone their motives in gossiping -- loshar haron. In brief, an essay called Stamina Linguist, a sympathetic appraisal appeared in Poetry Flap. In it Time Clock wrote excitedly of the possibilities of equalizing the mix so the lead singer's quieter. Everybody dreamed. Not far later Federal J evaluated Anonymous (or The Pearl Poet). Grunge sprung up from R.E.M. and the Pixies of which everybody spoke reverently (though only certain albums). For a while there was only grunge. The web is like four now. The earth cooled. Suddenly there were thousands of tiny writers crawling over the surface of the earth, and among them, glowing readers. Thank you, readers. J On Tue, 27 May 1997, Mark Baker wrote: > A confederate, yes Jordan--no sound's dissonant which > tells, in this our list-tree bower. I did too much > for J, and too little for STC, putting one in place > of the other. Gratuitous, like doing in an albatross. > And an agony constraineth me to travel from post to > post 'til you clear up my possibly banal > misunderstanding of who's got the resentment and > what the confirmed cases (J's readers?) reject cures for. > > Mark Baker > > > Jordan Davis wrote: > > > > In what way Mark Baker is Federal Jameson > > supposed to be like Coleridge? C. obfuscates > > fudges diverges circumambulates etc _not_ > > in the service of a banal misunderstanding > > as it usually sounds to me Jameson does > > but rather avoids ever onward the lime > > tree bower his prison? Key is I think > > to sympathize. Jameson don't. Nor do Spivak. > > Ergo resentment and outsider therapy > > the which cures nothing for confirmed cases > > but there we are hopping among the hybrid > > later readers of which yes you seem to be > > a confederate. Is it true the Ear's over? > > K, > > J > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 09:17:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Comments: To: Henry MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I think Valery's exact equation (in "Poetry & Abstract Thought") was: Prose : Walking : : Poetry : Dancing (or Streaking) But surely the prose he has in mind here is the prose of the daily paper, a technical manual, the racing form, or what have you. Not the prose of Melville or Sir Thomas Browne which we can and do re-read. We don't re-read our favorite novels simply to relish the hazards of a foregone plot, do we? Though that does play a role, to be sure (esp. the older one gets...). Dickens' first descriptions of Pip entering Miss Haversham's room will always stay with me and has, thus far, always been a pleasure to revisit as a kind of prose-poem of childhood terror. The meaning, or rather, the emotion of the scene, certainly can't be leeched away from a single reading. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Henry To: POETICS Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Date: Tuesday, May 27, 1997 3:47PM I'd like to go back to Valery's distinction between prose discourse and poetry (I'd like to, but I don't have it very secure in memory or in front of me on the page...). Prose does its job when the meaning is delivered; the language is functional. Poetry exhibits a pendulum effect - the mind absorbs the conceptual elements but swings back to the "unforgettable" surplus whole which is the poem itself. Seems to me he's onto something there. Sure we can talk about a philosopher or critic's style; style is like clothing - it's on the exact borderline between irrelevant and necessary for life; poetry, on the other hand, is a form of streaking. How's that for non-stylish discourse? - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 09:18:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Comments: To: Mark Weiss MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I'm all for the virtues of clarity, but I'm not sure I agree with this, Mark. It's always seemed to me that original or powerful or compelling writers force the reader to expand by learning how to read their work -- which often appears difficult at first, and perhaps is out of the need to break from what has proceeded it -- and that this, in part, constitutes what we mean by reading. Which is not to justify obscurantism or defend prolixity. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Mark Weiss To: POETICS Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Date: Tuesday, May 27, 1997 4:00PM morte difficult than pound and wyatt, less so than learning latin or japanese. But maybe even the comparison with the latter makes the point: a sympathetic and educated reader shouldn't have to translate from his own language unless there's a damn good reason--a hard case to make for anyone's first sentence in any book. To the degree that the first sentence is opaque the writer must be limiting his audience to those who have learned his code from previous books. That can make for a cozy club, but why shouldn't a newcomer, rather than paying the entry fee, go somewhere else for his amusement? > And another thought: as joe mentioned, 'good' and 'bad' need to be >underscored as relative--so too 'difficult'. What is 'difficult'? Is reading >Jameson's sentence 'difficult'? Compared to...learning latin, reading a >sentence in Japanese, etc.? Compared to chunks of P's Cantos, or Wyatt in >the original? It is a challenge; often a pleasant one. > >Matthias > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 10:36:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: world-egg salad MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Oh dear oh dear. Don't mean to be coming at you with hammer and tongs old fellow. More a case of your ruminations setting off ones of my own, not so much responses as tangential flights. I vaguely recall the pendulum effect - will have to dig up the info at home later. ANYHOW - I quite see YOUR distinction and am happy to say YES that seems about right. All of this reminds me of what Jung said about science and religiion - namely, that they are each in pursuit of the same thing - just different methods. To me, all philosophy begins with an intuition. It then proceeds to justify that intuition by analytical means. Whereas poesy ain't got no truck with those means - don't need it, never did. "There was a duality of which one member is called the ineffable and the other is called silence." - Valentinus (_The Gnostic Scriptures_, trans. Bentley Layton) Pass the pepper. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: henry To: Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing Date: Wednesday, May 28, 1997 10:00AM I don't seem to have the ammo today to defend this hopeless position! The prose/walk//poetry/dance equation wasn't the one I was thinking of, there's a particular passage somewhere on the pendulum effect... sorry folks, I'm at work, it ain't handy... But I don't even want to argue the prose poetry distinction... there's prose that acts like poetry (swinging us around) but it will never be as precise & nuanced...blah blah blah... we is the rational animal... the rational/animal... philosophy LEANS to the rational (the scientific demonstration), poetry LEANS to the animal (the ballet demonstration)... I LEAN over the bar Tennyson, anyone? - Henny Penny p.s. I love to sit by the hearth & read the _Philosophical Queries & Sundry Dry Goods_ of Elton S. Sandustmundt... keep coming back again and again to his Fourth Precept on the Ratiocinative World-Egg Salad... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 11:55:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Pie Barrage (Rough Margins) Comments: To: Mark Prejsnar In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks, Mark, for your thoughtful response to my last "Pie Barrage." Charles Bernstein mentioned to me regarding the issue of tone on the poetics list that "there have been studies" which demonstrate that there is an overall tendency to read posts on lists such as ours as more harsh than intended. I did see a review of Bob Perelman's "The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History" (Princeton University Press,$15.95) in Witz, Spring 1997,by Susan M. Schultz.This review, for me, does not at all put out a harsh tone, but it does take issue with Perelman's treatment of Bernstein's work, with many quotes. She makes a case for Perelman's setting up Bernstein and Silliman as antagonists noting "If Bernstein, then, is the primary contemporary fall guy, straw man, utopian paradoxicalist, Ron Silliman is the poet hero of Perelman's book...Perelman makes the point even more ascerbically when he maintains that Silliman does not 'attempt to highlight the pathos (and humor) of a separation of art from life,or poetry from philosophy,' which seems to me to be a direct dig at Bernstein's manic wit, though Perelman does prefer Bernstein's more recent work because he thinks that Bernstein is now committing himself more clearly to 'a poetics.'" The review concludes, however, with the statement "But whether or not one agrees with Perelman's specific arguments, the book marks an important moment in the literary history of contemporary poetry. it should open up much needed discussions between language writers about issues that are too often taken for granted-issues like how to build and extend community, and how to think about the relationship between poetic form and actual-not just theoretical-politics. Perelman will make some members of his audience angry, but that is a good thing, as any contentious academic will let you know." Witz may be reached at creiner@crl.com. Best wishes, Nick P.On Wed, 28 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > Nick, everything you say is fair...Now I really didn't mean to be very > attacking, using the term weirded out and all..But I accept all that you > say below as pretty reasonable and fair; it seems to me (and it's far from > the first time, for me!) that we've each slightly misheard the other's > intended tone (..in both cases, taking it to be harsher than intended). > To be quite frank, I was using you a little bit as a straw man (...straw > poet? straw critic?..)--I was using the occasion of your post to respond > to a general trend I thought I detected in several responses to > Marginalization, which I've seen in print as well as in cyberspace. > So...I still feel I've detected a trend which is really there, and that my > comments may be apposite, in a general way...But I acknowledge that your > point was more nuanced than I realized..And as a musician manque (a jazz > bassist, in fact--Henry G!) who has always been maybe excessively > responsive to aural swing, I'm ready to go along with your point about > chops, very whole-heartedly..(whole-ear'd'ly).. > > regards, Mark > > > On Tue, 27 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > > > Mark P. I wonder how carefully you read what I wrote. I certainly didn't > > accuse Perelman of being condemnatory or any such thing. I'm afraid you > > found nothing subtle in my remarks- perhaps this is my fault- but you > > seem to take me dead seriously- in spite of my frequent caveats about > > not having the texts in front of me. My- now seemingly trivial point- > > was simply that Perelman seems to miss their "chops" - a word defined in > > a posting on here some time ago. What I found strange about Perelman's > > critique, > > again, had more to do with what it would sound like if Ornette Coleman > > commented on John Coltrane for being dissonant. Again, please let me > > come back with specific quotes. Maybe I'm completely off here. You have > > challenged me to clarify and defend my off the cuff remarks.By the > > way, if you think it is so useful to be confrontative, why are you so > > "wierded out" by my rather gentle critique of Perelman? After all, I do > > imply he's a pretty good poet by comparing him with DeKooning. > > Best > > wishes, Nick P.On Tue, 27 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > > > > > On Sun, 25 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > > > > > > > Perelman's mature work, and maybe even his immature work, as a poet > > > > emerged) he critiques both Andrews and > > > > Bernstein (here's where would be nicer to quote, and unfortunately > > > > I can't at the moment) for being less than coherent, let us say, orderly > > > > and meaningful in ways that might have significant and useful social > > > > value. > > > > In short, he apparently is accusing them of publishing works that have > > > > aspects of being nonsensical! Without intending to be overly flattering, > > > > this is > > > > like DeKooning accusing Pollack of being vague and ambiguous, pot accusing > > > > the kettle, etc. So the > > > > > > > > > I keep getting very weirded out by public comments on Perelman's > > > Marginalization.....At first, I just thought it was a question of my own > > > reading habits versus those of others...But now I think maybe something > > > more important is going on...So, for what it's worth: > > > > > > Many responses to Perelman's book have said essentially the same as above: > > > that his treatment of Andrews and (esp.'y) Bernstein is harsh, dismissive, > > > highly unsympathetic. I don't get it. Personally I find this reading of > > > the tone and substance of the passages in question mind-boggling...They > > > are not that negative, to put it mildly..Since most of the principles in > > > this case are hanging around the List, there's plenty of room for further > > > input, from people much closer to this issue than me. I'll just point out > > > what has come to really disturb me about this (so that I finally felt like > > > putting in my $.02): I wonder whether reviewing and critical habits among > > > many of us, have skewed our ability to read tone and intention in some > > > poetry criticism. Most of us most of the time, concentrate on publishing > > > or posting responses to poetry we **like** and want to support....There is > > > an ethos of positive response, you could almost say (my background > > > showing) solidarity, nonsectarian and generous, toward those poets we > > > feel affinities with..This is very much the way it ought to be, not least > > > because resources are scarce, and the path usually pretty tough for most > > > poets trying to find enough support to just keep on...But have we blunted > > > our tolerance for careful and specific criticism??? I find the treatment > > > of Andrews and CB fair and sympathetic and very subtle, and not primarily > > > dismissive or condemnatory of their poetry..Quite the contrary; but it > > > certainly is about identifying tensions and contradictions in their work. > > > I make public comments in print and in cyberspace about other poets, and > > > start to feel a little anxious, if there is such a widespread perception > > > that modulated discussions like BP's are attacks, just because they aren't > > > entirely laudatory... > > > > > > Mark P. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 12:07:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Landers Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: <199705280403.AAA109184@node1.frontiernet.net> from "Automatic digest processor" at May 28, 97 00:03:10 am Content-Type: text Well, Dodie wants her money back. She sees plots. All I know is that we're better off with Sun & Moon Press and Douglas Messerli than without him. There were some really exciting ventures before it, mostly 'zines, but you have to put a perfect binding on the book to get people to buy it. That costs, and Dodie knows it. She works for a distributor (SPD). There were ventures... Grossinger published some good early work, and so did Quasha, but you should have seen some of the other books that were coming out, glue disintegrating on the shelf, rusty staples. It's good to have a nice cover and I think it's necessary to connect the present to the past. People who go there to find Djuna Barnes might discover Ron Silliman for the first time. Dodie, perhaps you can think of your $25 as upkeep for Djuna Barnes. I think the contest is a *good* way to make it work. Perhaps Messerli wasn't happy with the person he got to read the manuscripts. It's too bad there are ruffled feathers, but I still think the contest is a great idea. Pete Landers p.s. yeah, there was also Coach House up north... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 10:02:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: <199705281607.MAA52044@node5.frontiernet.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:07 PM -0400 5/28/97, Peter Landers wrote: >Well, Dodie wants her money back. She sees plots. All I know is that we're >better off with Sun & Moon Press and Douglas Messerli than without him. >There were some really exciting ventures before it, mostly 'zines, but you >have to put a perfect binding on the book to get people to buy it. That >costs, and Dodie knows it. She works for a distributor (SPD). This is false. I do not work for SPD. >Perhaps >Messerli wasn't happy with the person he got to read the manuscripts. It's >too bad there are ruffled feathers, but I still think the contest is a >great idea. This is so bogus, it's amazing. To advertise something one way, to urge somebody to send you money under one pretext and then to not follow through with what you announced--with no explanation given--this is a total lack of accountability, Djuna Barnes or no Djuna Barnes. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 12:14:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" aw shucks folks, and with due regard for everybody around here: if we can slam-dunk the awp-jorie graham situation, some of us anyway, i don't see why we should be any less tough on sun & moon... i too have a number of s & m editions lining my shelves (for which i am grateful), but when it comes to plunking down 25 bucks for a contest, i like to think that it's not an inside-job... now dodie didn't say that it was, and in fact i didn't hear 'sour grapes' in what she posted... though she did suggest that the contest was not handled as up-front as it might have been... i can already hear some folks saying, 'but you get what you pays for'---you come at poetry this way, it's already a compromise... still, none of this has to be reduced to name-calling, or rumor-mongering, or whatever... and it doesn't really matter how the thread began... we come to these spaces for all sortsa reasons, and airing difficulties wrt a poetry contest is, in my view, fair game... the point is that these spaces *can* open up helpful modulations of public to private, and this includes public contests, and personal experiences of same... (i might digress here wrt how such spaces can be used to inflect confidentiality in academe, which latter is supposed to "protect" people, yet in many cases does just the opposite---but not to worry, i won't!...)... you may recall, some of you, it was douglas messerli himself who, last year sometime, here on poetix, dismissed the choice of the nobel committee for the laureate in poetry... ok, so now it's his turn, not to defend his choice perhaps, but perhaps to make the s & m contest rules a bit clearer... and mebbe someday -- though i hope not! -- it'll be *my* turn... nothing holier-than-thou implied or intended, but what's good for the goose is good for the gander, no?... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 12:28:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: how lists work... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" for those so inclined, who care to pursue this matter of how these lists tend to work, here's an academic article/journal that i'd highly recommend: the journal _computers and composition_, vol. 13, no. 3 (1996), has an outstanding piece on the online list techwr-l, a tech writing list that serves both academics who teach tech writing and professional writers... the essay details how, over time, the discussion on that list was curtailed---very perceptive as to rhetorical effects and such like... entitled "policing ourselves: defining the boundaries of appropriate discussion in online forums," by johndan johnson-eilola and stuart a. selber... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 10:30:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: <199705281714.MAA15431@charlie.cns.iit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:14 PM -0500 5/28/97, amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote: > now dodie didn't say that it was, and in fact i didn't hear >'sour grapes' in what she posted... though she did suggest that the contest >was not handled as up-front as it might have been... Thanks for the support Joe. I was beginning to feel as dumped on as a Congressional babe who files sexual harrassment charges. The old boys' network exclaims, "He voted in favor of welfare reform! He would never stick his thing . . ." Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 13:47:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Pie Barrage Dear durables, in this this list is there not thinking at things thinned out around deceased possesion. what I mean to say is perishable already with a bold irksome cut. (chorous) but having should in which the spectator does has discovered the weird contrast on account of. itself in account of. a continuous mingled antithesis. needy. actually grunge sprung from husks & replacements, its enormous diffusion among all peoples "in morning's low-pitched beach" xes frm bs, r ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 14:00:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Pie Barrage (Rough Margins) Comments: To: Piombino/Simon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanx for the thoughtful reply...At this point we (you, I and Susan, in fact) may just have to agree to disagree. Susan's review was excellent, I thought, but I do indeed consider that review to be one of the treatments of BP I was responding to...That is to say, I definitely don't read Perelman's nuanced discussion of CB as being as critical as I hear her saying. Yes, there are quotations..We obviously disagree somewhat about just what those passages are saying (or implying..).. regards, Mark On Wed, 28 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > Thanks, Mark, for your thoughtful response to my last "Pie Barrage." > Charles Bernstein mentioned to me regarding the issue of tone on the > poetics list that "there have been > studies" which demonstrate that there is an overall tendency to read > posts on lists such as ours as more harsh than intended. > I did see a review of Bob Perelman's "The Marginalization of Poetry: > Language Writing and Literary History" (Princeton University > Press,$15.95) in Witz, Spring 1997,by Susan M. Schultz.This review, for > me, does not at all put out a harsh tone, but it does take issue with > Perelman's treatment of Bernstein's work, with many quotes. She makes a > case for Perelman's setting up Bernstein and Silliman as antagonists > noting "If Bernstein, then, is the primary contemporary fall guy, straw > man, utopian paradoxicalist, Ron Silliman is the poet hero of Perelman's > book...Perelman makes the point even more ascerbically when he maintains > that Silliman does not 'attempt to highlight the pathos (and humor) of a > separation of art from life,or poetry from philosophy,' which seems to me > to be a direct dig at Bernstein's manic wit, though Perelman does prefer > Bernstein's more recent work because he thinks that Bernstein is now > committing himself more clearly to 'a poetics.'" > The review concludes, however, with the statement "But whether or not one > agrees with Perelman's specific arguments, the book marks an important > moment in the literary history of contemporary poetry. it should open > up much needed discussions between language writers about issues that > are too often taken for granted-issues like how to build and extend > community, and how to think about the relationship between poetic form > and actual-not just theoretical-politics. Perelman will make some > members of his audience angry, but that is a good thing, as any > contentious academic will let you know." > Witz may be reached at creiner@crl.com. > Best wishes, > Nick P.On Wed, 28 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar > wrote: > > > Nick, everything you say is fair...Now I really didn't mean to be very > > attacking, using the term weirded out and all..But I accept all that you > > say below as pretty reasonable and fair; it seems to me (and it's far from > > the first time, for me!) that we've each slightly misheard the other's > > intended tone (..in both cases, taking it to be harsher than intended). > > To be quite frank, I was using you a little bit as a straw man (...straw > > poet? straw critic?..)--I was using the occasion of your post to respond > > to a general trend I thought I detected in several responses to > > Marginalization, which I've seen in print as well as in cyberspace. > > So...I still feel I've detected a trend which is really there, and that my > > comments may be apposite, in a general way...But I acknowledge that your > > point was more nuanced than I realized..And as a musician manque (a jazz > > bassist, in fact--Henry G!) who has always been maybe excessively > > responsive to aural swing, I'm ready to go along with your point about > > chops, very whole-heartedly..(whole-ear'd'ly).. > > > > regards, Mark > > > > > > On Tue, 27 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > > > > > Mark P. I wonder how carefully you read what I wrote. I certainly didn't > > > accuse Perelman of being condemnatory or any such thing. I'm afraid you > > > found nothing subtle in my remarks- perhaps this is my fault- but you > > > seem to take me dead seriously- in spite of my frequent caveats about > > > not having the texts in front of me. My- now seemingly trivial point- > > > was simply that Perelman seems to miss their "chops" - a word defined in > > > a posting on here some time ago. What I found strange about Perelman's > > > critique, > > > again, had more to do with what it would sound like if Ornette Coleman > > > commented on John Coltrane for being dissonant. Again, please let me > > > come back with specific quotes. Maybe I'm completely off here. You have > > > challenged me to clarify and defend my off the cuff remarks.By the > > > way, if you think it is so useful to be confrontative, why are you so > > > "wierded out" by my rather gentle critique of Perelman? After all, I do > > > imply he's a pretty good poet by comparing him with DeKooning. > > > Best > > > wishes, Nick P.On Tue, 27 May 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > > > > > > > On Sun, 25 May 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > > > > > > > > > Perelman's mature work, and maybe even his immature work, as a poet > > > > > emerged) he critiques both Andrews and > > > > > Bernstein (here's where would be nicer to quote, and unfortunately > > > > > I can't at the moment) for being less than coherent, let us say, orderly > > > > > and meaningful in ways that might have significant and useful social > > > > > value. > > > > > In short, he apparently is accusing them of publishing works that have > > > > > aspects of being nonsensical! Without intending to be overly flattering, > > > > > this is > > > > > like DeKooning accusing Pollack of being vague and ambiguous, pot accusing > > > > > the kettle, etc. So the > > > > > > > > > > > > I keep getting very weirded out by public comments on Perelman's > > > > Marginalization.....At first, I just thought it was a question of my own > > > > reading habits versus those of others...But now I think maybe something > > > > more important is going on...So, for what it's worth: > > > > > > > > Many responses to Perelman's book have said essentially the same as above: > > > > that his treatment of Andrews and (esp.'y) Bernstein is harsh, dismissive, > > > > highly unsympathetic. I don't get it. Personally I find this reading of > > > > the tone and substance of the passages in question mind-boggling...They > > > > are not that negative, to put it mildly..Since most of the principles in > > > > this case are hanging around the List, there's plenty of room for further > > > > input, from people much closer to this issue than me. I'll just point out > > > > what has come to really disturb me about this (so that I finally felt like > > > > putting in my $.02): I wonder whether reviewing and critical habits among > > > > many of us, have skewed our ability to read tone and intention in some > > > > poetry criticism. Most of us most of the time, concentrate on publishing > > > > or posting responses to poetry we **like** and want to support....There is > > > > an ethos of positive response, you could almost say (my background > > > > showing) solidarity, nonsectarian and generous, toward those poets we > > > > feel affinities with..This is very much the way it ought to be, not least > > > > because resources are scarce, and the path usually pretty tough for most > > > > poets trying to find enough support to just keep on...But have we blunted > > > > our tolerance for careful and specific criticism??? I find the treatment > > > > of Andrews and CB fair and sympathetic and very subtle, and not primarily > > > > dismissive or condemnatory of their poetry..Quite the contrary; but it > > > > certainly is about identifying tensions and contradictions in their work. > > > > I make public comments in print and in cyberspace about other poets, and > > > > start to feel a little anxious, if there is such a widespread perception > > > > that modulated discussions like BP's are attacks, just because they aren't > > > > entirely laudatory... > > > > > > > > Mark P. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 14:03:27 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Pie Barrage In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 28 May 1997 13:47:20 -0400 from If one of these pies hits home plate, is that pie squared? Do pigeons? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 13:21:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Grant Jenkins Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've been thinking about this quote from Blake recently as well, and I think that both quotes from Blake and Wittgenstein involve a relationship with Being. I read Blake as demanding an ontological "reality" for the objects of imagination, ie images, ie poetry. Things that can be imagined are real in their own right (which is what I think he means by "truth," that they are themselves. . .). He is battling the distinction between science (truth) and poetry (fiction, imagination). Wittgenstein, on the other hand, sees language and thought (inseperable for him) as the limit of Being. This seems to reduce the world to a totality of already existing, in his terms, language games, but I think it has the opposite effect. Such as statement leaves room for an Other which is, in Emmanuel Levinas's words, "beyond being." But as Dan Zimmerman suggested, the Other, the unimaginable, insinuates (great word) itself into Being, the realm of language. This is what Derrida and Levinas call the trace. Too much "philosophy" I think, but there are important coincidences in Joe Duemer's post which are important to considerations of poetics and their impact. Grant Jenkins University of Notre Dame ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 10:33:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: S & M, CHB Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Peter, what is the title of S & M's Silliman book? Or are you thinking of _The Other Side of the Century_ as where the Djuna Barnes-led reader might find Ron? Coach House : there was, and there is again: Coach House Books. Haven't the e-ddress in front of me, but your webcrawler should deliver. David ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 14:19:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Pie Barrage (Rough Margins) Nick, Mark, re tone. I hope that Nick is right that my tone in the Perelman review was not harsh; I think it important to distinguish between critical and harsh tones. Criticism respects the text, whereas harshness tends to go after the author. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that all the ideas discussed in Perelman's book and my review have names and personalities (that we know) attached to them. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 11:28:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" For the record, I like some of Sun&Moon's, Station Hill's and North Atlantic's books, but I think they'd be embarrassed to be credited with inventing the wheel. While there will always be a lot of fugitive presses with shoddy production values, for at least the last 25 years most presses that survive for more than two or three books print and bind professionally. Check out the annual poetry book show at New York's Poetry Center (or its permanent collection) to see what the production norms are. Or is this a matter of "the world began approximately when I was born"? >There were some really exciting ventures before it, mostly 'zines, but you >have to put a perfect binding on the book to get people to buy it. There were >ventures... Grossinger published some good early work, and so did Quasha, >but you should have seen some of the other books that were coming out, >glue disintegrating on the shelf, rusty staples. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 14:34:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Why Contests? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Given the unsavory experiences lately described here, several folks have questioned why anyone would send mss. to poetry contests at all. Well, for those of us not connected personally with editors, publishers, etc., it's just about the only avenue open for book publication. It's a natural desire for anyone who indulges in creative work to have others experience it, and in the literary world the primary means of presentation and distribution of a body of work-- aside from readings, which however gratifying are local and transitory -- is through a book, and given the realities of how acknowledgement and recognition (not to mention simple respect) is bestowed, preferably a book that isn't self-published (though we all know the rare, famous exceptions to this). And though the Web environment may eventually change this situation, right now it's still mostly self-publishing. When I plunk down $$ for reading fees and send my manilla envelopes out to PO boxes already crammed with about 50 other mss. received on any given day, I know it's a crapshoot. So what if a majority of individual pieces have already appeared in magazines? So have everyone else's. Most presses -- like Sun & Moon -- just don't read unsolicited mss. anymore, unless they're received as contest entries. The alternatives are (1) send a query with samples -- in my experience this is just begging for a form letter describing the press's insurmountable backlog and prior commitments, or (2) wait till a poem in a magazine catches a publisher's eye, and you're asked to submit a ms. -- also know as the "when hell freezes over" option. No, as infuriating and potentially unfair as contests can be, like LOTTO, they hold out some slim hope for the rest of us. *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 14:35:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: wittgenstein & blake -Reply Grant Jenkins -- enjoyed your reading (translation, almost) of those two succinct sentences (B & W's) & their respective intentions. Naturally, terminology at this level is spun out & used variously -- i.e., "Being" (or "truth" -- or even, to a lesser degree, "imagination") are given particular spin by the particular spinner. Thus (for instance), to construe "Being" as including only that which can be included within language, seems interesting though not without some problems. Imagination as a faculty that "processes material" that's felt to "well up" from subconscious regions of the psyche, is another (related) theme here. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 11:46:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: <199705281828.LAA07661@denmark.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:28 AM -0700 5/28/97, Mark Weiss wrote: >While there will always be a lot of fugitive presses >with shoddy production values, for at least the last 25 years most presses >that survive for more than two or three books print and bind professionally. Or the White Rabbit books from the 60s, those are quite handsome. I have those in mind since SPT's selling Spicer's _Language_. And, Mark, as it's been noted before and I'm sure you'll agree, a number of publications with shoddy production values have been very important--mimeographed, xeroxed, etc. In keeping with the Spicer theme, _Open Space_, for example. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 11:42:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: shoddy production _values_ Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Agreed, Dodie, & how vital they were in the 50s and 60s, those poorly mimeographed stonedly stapled non-acid-free paper zines! Not to take anything away from the high standards of Sun & Moon or Black Sparrow. But those raggedy mags were the best some of us deftness-challenged author/editors cd manage, by way of getting the word out. (And half the time the word didnt get out : distribution was dicey. Collating & stapling left some, too wiped out to mail out the library copies when the orders came in.) I have a bunch here, & when I pick up Wild Dog or The End or Tish I feel again the thrill of the authentic, which felt authentic, back then."Trace of/ something" as Creeley has it in a poem. Even today, Mirage, though a cleaner product than those I'm being maudlin over, has something of that old immediacy, esp. when handed to one at a reading, like the evening newspaper. I guess the sheer volume of sloppiness as the 60s became the 70s phased-out the aura of these olden goldies until what we needed were the production values of Boxcar, Temblor, Avec, or Conjunctions, to name just 4 to indicate far more. Something to say "I really mean this" because the quick-draw of those 60s classics started to look hamfistedly insincere. Or only sincere. An d of course, copy machines were taking over from mimeos. And University Departments were policing the use of their copy machines AND mimeos, more closely as budgets got cut. (The first thing Pat Nolan said to me when we were introduced to one another on the SSU campus: "Can you let me use the Dept mimeograph machine?" It must have been the good old days still, because evidence suggests that i could. Mind you, he had to enroll & study real hard in return.) David. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 12:25:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Why Contests? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Right, it's a difficult situation, but I can tell you that one of Junction's authors came to my attention for the first time when I heard him read and several of the others had become friends or acquaintances before the press existed because I liked their poetry, which I had first learned about at readings. Other books have come by way of recommendations. It's not quite as bad as getting an audience with the pope--the networks of most poetry publishers are informal and easily penetrated. How to put it? Contests that offer a big potential payback (major prize or major press publication) may be worth the outlay. At 02:34 PM 5/28/97 -0400, you wrote: >Given the unsavory experiences lately described here, several folks have >questioned why anyone would send mss. to poetry contests at all. Well, for >those of us not connected personally with editors, publishers, etc., it's >just about the only avenue open for book publication. It's a natural >desire for anyone who indulges in creative work to have others experience >it, and in the literary world the primary means of presentation and >distribution of a body of work-- aside from readings, which however >gratifying are local and transitory -- is through a book, and given the >realities of how acknowledgement and recognition (not to mention simple >respect) is bestowed, preferably a book that isn't self-published (though >we all know the rare, famous exceptions to this). And though the Web >environment may eventually change this situation, right now it's still >mostly self-publishing. > >When I plunk down $$ for reading fees and send my manilla envelopes out to >PO boxes already crammed with about 50 other mss. received on any given >day, I know it's a crapshoot. So what if a majority of individual pieces >have already appeared in magazines? So have everyone else's. Most presses >-- like Sun & Moon -- just don't read unsolicited mss. anymore, unless >they're received as contest entries. The alternatives are (1) send a query >with samples -- in my experience this is just begging for a form letter >describing the press's insurmountable backlog and prior commitments, or (2) >wait till a poem in a magazine catches a publisher's eye, and you're asked >to submit a ms. -- also know as the "when hell freezes over" option. No, >as infuriating and potentially unfair as contests can be, like LOTTO, they >hold out some slim hope for the rest of us. > >*********************** >Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep > >(fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more > >Reference Services Division important." >Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery >Cornell University >Ithaca, NY 14853 >WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html >*********************** > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 12:31:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Right you are--and a whole lot of smaller Duncan titles, and what is arguably Wieners' best poem, "We Were There," in its first and I think best version, produced by I forget who on stapled construction paper, heaven help us. Also "Asylum Poems." The list could go on for pages. But the general level of production quality has been amazingly high for a long time. At 11:46 AM 5/28/97 -0700, you wrote: >At 11:28 AM -0700 5/28/97, Mark Weiss wrote: >>While there will always be a lot of fugitive presses >>with shoddy production values, for at least the last 25 years most presses >>that survive for more than two or three books print and bind professionally. > >Or the White Rabbit books from the 60s, those are quite handsome. I have >those in mind since SPT's selling Spicer's _Language_. And, Mark, as it's >been noted before and I'm sure you'll agree, a number of publications with >shoddy production values have been very important--mimeographed, xeroxed, >etc. In keeping with the Spicer theme, _Open Space_, for example. > > >Dodie > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 16:21:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Why Contests? Fred -- << It's a natural desire for anyone who indulges in creative work to have others experience it, and in the literary world the primary means of presentation and distribution of a body of work. . . is through a book. . ." Last night I spent a while polishing out a (more anecdotal) response, the gist being along kindred lines to those you've sketched. As I finished the screed, a computer crash zapped it to the oblivion whence it had just arisen. Talk about nonbeing. [if that's possible, Mr. W.] Back when (not long ago) I mailed MSS to the Yale Series of Younger Poets (being then pre-40, I'd've been so construed by Yale's rules), I knew of these poets who'd (as jargon wd have it) "launched careers" via that same charmed portal: W.S. Merwin, John Ashbery, Robert Hass, Carolyn Forche -- estimable enough company (I felt). Having spent some years in the 80s "building a resume" as arts-journalist (w/ modest results), and having been hit hard[er] by the poetry bug into the early 90s, I was rather loathe to paper my walls w/ rejection slips from periodicals. Instead, I mainly tinkered out MSS, -- and I dare say that fanciful notion of publication by the Yalies afforded a frame for those secluded efforts. A happy exercise, not regretted (tho repeated receipt of those standard no-thanks letters tends to stifle enthusiasm). Point: majority of entrants in such MS contests are folk who've had zero poetry-books published (that's indeed Yale Series rule #1, #2 being their 40-year cutoff) -- or (for certain contests) a single vol. somewhere. Some series only accept MSS from those in category zero or category one (so to sprach); still other such series are more catholic in their tonnage. I recall getting a condolence note from the Nat'l Poetry Series, mentioning that they received, that year 1,200 manuscripts. (As a consortium of five decent poetry publishers, each branch juried by its own poet-judge, that Series holds especially broad allure.) So, yep: it's the great unwashed -- un- (or under)published hoi polloi of scribblers who keep those little water-wheels turning. If retrospectively the contest game looks ludicrous, that's perhaps a particular instance of a darn general phenomenon. Haven't looked at what Sun & Moon has issued in the brief span of its contest procedure, but no doubt Doug Messerli and his brood are up to some good. Surely the aim is to open a more experimentalist niche in the little wall of niches. As for allegations re: Jorie's recent (poss.) faux pas, while embarrassing, these needn't, meseems, be extrapolated out to the whole gameboard. d.i. p.s. to Mark Weiss -- it's hard to get thru to the Pope? (This deserves a proper Pope joke, but I lack the muster at the moment.) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 13:55:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jay Schwartz Organization: Salestar Subject: SF Writing Scene/ The Idiom Group Comments: cc: palu@adobe.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I want to put in a plug for a new, fantastic poetry website called Idiom. This is the URL: http://www.dnai.com/~idiom This site is the container for work by a group called Idiom, made up of mostly younger San Francisco poets clustered around New College, Berkeley, and New Langton Arts. Idiom is producing great chapbooks including work by Renee Gladman, Ed Berrigan, and Lauren Gudath, and has hosted workshops and reading events for the past few years. An incredible amount of energetic writing is happening in San Francisco right now, and Idiom is a great source for exploration. Thanks for listening. Enjoy the site. Jay Schwartz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 14:22:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Why Contests? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To paraphrase--the only pope is the pope of icecream--and you get a nifty stick for free! > >p.s. to Mark Weiss -- it's hard to get thru to the Pope? (This deserves a >proper Pope joke, but I lack the muster at the moment.) > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 17:53:48 +0000 Reply-To: dmachlin@flotsam.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Dan Machlin Subject: David Shapiro/Elaine Equi/Star Black DAVID SHAPIRO ELAINE EQUI reading Sunday, June 8th 6:00 P.M., Admission $5.00 SEGUE PERFORMANCE SPACE 303 East 8th Street, NY, NY (Between AVES B&C) As part of an installation of a series of works-on-paper/text studies by Star Black on the walls of the Performance Space, Installation Exhibited June 8th 3:00-6:00 PM, Reading 6:00 PM-8:00 PM A reception will follow the reading. THE SEGUE FOUNDATION 20th ANNIVERSARY (1977-1997) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 16:15:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Steinberg Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >At 11:28 AM -0700 5/28/97, Mark Weiss wrote: >>While there will always be a lot of fugitive presses >>with shoddy production values, for at least the last 25 years most presses >>that survive for more than two or three books print and bind professionally. > And Dodie responded: >Or the White Rabbit books from the 60s, those are quite handsome. I have >those in mind since SPT's selling Spicer's _Language_. And, Mark, as it's >been noted before and I'm sure you'll agree, a number of publications with >shoddy production values have been very important--mimeographed, xeroxed, >etc. In keeping with the Spicer theme, _Open Space_, for example. > > I have to agree. While we can worship production values, this is rapidly being checked by the sheer economic difficulty of producing those shiny perfect bound books at approximately 5K a pop. We produce JackLeg for $200 bucks, bind it with nuts and bolts, and it sells quite nicely, thank you very much. Even if it didn't, we're not going to lose sleep over the lost money. This lets us focus on what's really important, which is the writing. As for contests, Luis Rodriguez started Tia Chucha precisely because no one was willing to publish his book. After spending a lot of money on contests, he decided to publish the book himself, which went on to win the PEN/Josephine Miles award. Poetry often works best when it bubbles up, not when it trickles down. Hugh Steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 20:23:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: epic redux/etymology Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've been hitting up classicists for responses to my "epic" story. Maybe you know what that's like [mostly irrelevant advice, but there've been a few good comments]. In any case my view of "epic" still stands, and here is an attempt to summarize it more clearly [after that advice and some reflection], which Joe Safdie has coaxed out of me. By the way, you all might find it interesting to know that the "bad writing awards" have just found their way onto the Classics List... Gossip... rumor... epic... winged words... > >I don't remember everything I said last week [I said far too much]. But >basically what I meant was that the Greek term "epos" [from which we get >"epic"] covered a much wider range of meanings for the Greeks than our >term "epic" does for us. The Greeks used this word to refer not only to >Homer's "epics" but also to Hesiod's poetry, the Homeric hymns [many of >which are dedicated to goddesses], etc. These all have a common meter >[dactylic hexameter], which is what holds them together as a set. The >point is that there is *no thematic unity* that holds them together, but >rather this formal, metrical, one. Thus for the Greeks "epos" could be >about any number of things, including [I suggested in a kind of goading >way, I admit] gossip. > >Also, besides refering to a literary genre [defined by meter rather than >by theme], the term "epos" is just the blanket term for "utterance" in >Greek. Virtually any thing that might be said in a more or less formal way >could be called an "epos". > >When I was tossing around some late dates [say, post-Christian era] what I >was trying to say was that only relatively late in the tradition, if at >all, did the term become more restricted in sense. I am not positive about >this last point, but I think that the word "epic" as we use it now might >be something that we owe to Latin writers, who borrowed the term "epicus" >from the Greeks [this is something that I'm working on with some >clasicists; no verdict on that yet]. > >In any case, I don't think that the classical Greeks themselves would >recognize their own word in our word "epic". Our word "epic" actually may >be closer in meaning to their word "heroic" or "heroic epic." The cult of >heroes was a huge concern for the Greeks. I don't deny that at all. And >certainly that is what Homer is preoccupied with. > >Which brings us to Calliope ["she of the beautiful voice"]. Yes, they say >that she is the muse of epic poetry, but "epic" in the Greek sense, I >think -- the muse of the dactylic hexameter. She is never mentioned by >Homer, first appears in Hesiod's 'Theogony' and in a Homeric Hymn [there's >also a one-line fragment of Sappho that mentions her; too bad, because >this might suggest that Calliope wasn't *just* an "epic" muse -- Sappho >isn't "epic" in our sense!]. It is true, though, that Hesiod says she is >fond of kings. So she may have had a special relationship with "heroic >epic" in particular. More than that I couldn't say [I don't think very >much is said about her in the literature]. > >If the issue pops up again on the list, I might use some of this post to >clarify my point for others too [I haven't been as clear about all this as >I would have liked]. I'll delete any ref. or mention of you if you'd like >me to. > >Hope this is of some use to you. > >George > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 17:32:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Let me ascribe nobler motives to myself and other publishers for a moment. I'm interested in production (and design) values for four reasons--I can get the books more places, they're more durable, the poets like them better, and I think that the beauty of book-as-object is part of "what's really important." But do it however works for you. By the way, anyone who tells you it costs 5k to produce a book is a fool or a thief. While we can worship production values, this is rapidly >being checked by the sheer economic difficulty of producing those shiny >perfect bound books at approximately 5K a pop. We produce JackLeg for $200 >bucks, bind it with nuts and bolts, and it sells quite nicely, thank you >very much. Even if it didn't, we're not going to lose sleep over the lost >money. This lets us focus on what's really important, which is the >writing. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 20:24:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Poetry often works best when it bubbles up, not when it trickles down. > >Hugh Steinberg amen to that! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 21:55:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Dodie Bellamy wrote: "I don't see how my giving an accurate account of my personal experiences is construed as an attack by you, Mr. Vincent. Dodie" This was in response to a piece in my earlier post: >When I started this thread, >I had no intention of seeing >it become what might be >currently interpreted as an >attack etc. on Doug Messerli >and/or Sun & Moon. Dear Dodie: Perhaps my "attack" verb was too severe an interpetation? It was not my intent to cast doubt on your experience of the Sun & Moon contest. My concern would be whether not you initially queried Doug M. and let him you felt mislead, upset or whatever. (?) Without Doug's response to such a query, or his view of what happened, I feel like he's been tarred without a process that would have either: (1) confirmed your sense of being wronged or, at least, (2) cured the misunderstanding. Anyway I'm still curious if there is a way to cure my own gut dislike for contest entry fees. I don't know if I'm basically Scots(ch) -- tight -- or are the contest operators of America vacuming dry the witless pockets of American poets as "we" stream hat, wallet and manuscript in hand in search of a highly problematic and stingy grail(?). Contests aside (win or lose) I tend to believe good stuff utlimately wills (prints) out, aquires a public, etc. No matter, especially if you're on the margins, or still in the aura beyond the page or book, it's a long, sweaty haul. But maybe thatswhatsitabout. Cheers, Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 22:13:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In response to Dodie Stephen Vincent wrote: "Contests aside (win or lose) I tend to believe good stuff utlimately wills (prints) out, aquires a public, etc. No matter, especially if you're on the margins, or still in the aura beyond the page or book, it's a long, sweaty haul." This is a nice dream, but lots of stuff falls into the silence produced by the din of media-writing. Did you see the piece in the NY Times about ghost-writing? If you are a "big name," you're considered a shmuck if you write your own book. There are a lot of ghosts flickering around out there, eating up good poems. jd __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 22:21:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here's the URL for that NY Times piece, though I'm not sure everybody can get the Times--or they may make you sign up, though so far it's free on the web. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/25/home/ghost.html PS even the URL is spooky, like a sentence in some weird anti-poem! jd _________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 20:25:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: <970528215504_156483426@emout12.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:55 PM -0400 5/28/97, Stephen Vincent wrote: >My >concern would be whether >not you initially queried Doug M. >and let him you felt mislead, >upset or whatever. (?) I think you do have a valid point there, Stephen, but I guess the form letter I received from DM's assistant stunned me, the tackiness of that, not even a form letter from DM himself. And, besides, many women spend years and vast sums of money in therapy to be able to do just that, to directly confront shady treatment--when it happens, not waiting 2 years to bring it up. As far as contests go for writing, I think they're stupid and meaningless, and it's sad that poets in particular are reduced to having to go that route to break into publishing. But I wouldn't look down on somebody for entering a contest. I recently judged the Bay Guardian fiction contest, and so I've thought about this a lot lately. Though the $200 I received was nice, I did it mostly to get publicity for Small Press Traffic, having "Dodie Bellamy, director of Small Press Traffic," in the paper week after week. Basically, I don't think the contest represents The Best in Bay Area Fiction--what it represents is what three jugdes agreed upon one Friday afternnoon while eating pizza in the Bay Guardian offices. No more no less. The other two judges were a joy to work with, and even though the three of us had radically different aesthetics, the "winners" were remarkably easy to agree upon. As I was reading the 50 so manuscripts that had been weeded out previously by screeners, I felt a lot of sympathy and pain even for the losers, especially since so many of the most interesting pieces had flaws in them that could easily be rectified with the tiniest bit of feedback. I hated it that some of them might get discouraged. And then there were the ones whom I knew I wouldn't recommend and that the other judges wouldn't recommend, but which, because of their mystery or quirkiness or narrative drive, I read all the way to the end for the pure curiosity and pleasure I was receiving. In a way, I think those should have been the winners--to get me, with a stack of 50 manuscripts looming over me, to read their pieces all the way to the end, regardless. I think that submitting manuscripts to contests and getting form letters back is so dehumanizing compared to the "old" days of getting a personal, thoughful letter from the editor. Stories you hear about people forming relationships with editors over time, and eventually getting published that way. When I got rejected from Dalkey Archives, for instance, I got such a thoughful, encouraging letter from Stephen Moore that being rejected by Dalkey Archives was a good experience for me. And, I don't think one should be ashamed of one's rejections. Sarah Schulman proudly tells people how she submitted _After Dolores_ twenty-some times before it was accepted and her career was launched. I must admit, though, it's easier to talk about this now that my book *is* being published than before it found a home. And--I'm sick of talking about this. This is my last post on this subject. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 00:28:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Landers Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Content-Type: text Mark wrote: >For the record, I like some of Sun&Moon's, Station Hill's and North >Atlantic's books, but I think they'd be embarrassed to be credited with >inventing the wheel. While there will always be a lot of fugitive presses >with shoddy production values, for at least the last 25 years most >presses >that survive for more than two or three books print and bind >professionally. >Check out the annual poetry book show at New York's Poetry Center (or its >permanent collection) to see what the production norms are. >Or is this a matter of "the world began approximately when I was born"? I wrote: >>There were some really exciting ventures before it, mostly 'zines, but you >>have to put a perfect binding on the book to get people to buy it. There were >>ventures... Grossinger published some good early work, and so did Quasha, >>but you should have seen some of the other books that were coming out, >>glue disintegrating on the shelf, rusty staples. I'm talking about a different generation. Pete ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 21:16:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: book forms In-Reply-To: <199705290412.VAA24006@pantano.theriver.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Today I'm sorry I started getting the poetics list in digest form, as all these messages on book production values are coming at me all at once at the late end of the day. But, one thing I wonder about is the equation of 'high-end' production values with "professional" standards. It's just more complicated than that. Some of the highest production values (the mentioned White Rabbit, Toothpaste Press from the mid-70's to mid-80's, and others) were from people coming from a bookmaking/hand printing background, and the values were artisan/craftsperson values, sometimes transcended to become fine art values, as in the case of Johanna Drucker, who worked for a time at the West Coast Print Center but also began to make incredible limited edition handmade books. But some of the mimeo, photocopy, hand-collaged books, etc., with entirely different production values also helped spawn a whole movement in unique and limited artists' books of another kind. And I wonder, Hugh Steinberg, about your mention of perfect-bound books at 5K a pop, as you put it. Are you doing several thousand copies, or what? Chax has been making handmade books since 1984, but we've also been publishing trade paperbacks (almost all of them smyth-sewn rather than perfect-bound, and smyth-sewing is a bit more expensive) as well since 1989, and never have paid even as much as 2K to produce books in editions of 500 to 1000. But that's strictly printing/binding costs, not counting design which I generally do myself, and not counting the various things which go into overhead. charles charles alexander / chax press / chax@theriver.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 17:29:15 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: University of Auckland Subject: Re: S & M, CHB In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT >David (hi david) I know its Peter you wrote to but I just had to say WHAT is the title of S & M's Ron book I am thinking-- Wystan. > Peter, what is the title of S & M's Silliman book? Or are you thinking of > _The Other Side of the Century_ as where the Djuna Barnes-led reader might > find Ron? > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 05:19:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Dodie wrote -- << At 9:55 PM -0400 5/28/97, Stephen Vincent wrote: >My >concern would be whether >not you initially queried Doug M. >and let him you felt mislead, >upset or whatever. (?) I think you do have a valid point there, Stephen, but I guess the form letter I received from DM's assistant stunned me, the tackiness of that, not even a form letter from DM himself. And, besides, many women spend years and vast sums of money in therapy to be able to do just that, to directly confront shady treatment . . .>> I believe, Dodie, your reference is to a response to a submission for Sun & Moon's annual MS competition? While I don't know details, it strikes me as likely that the administration of such competitions is (I dare say) purposely (& correctly) somewhat removed & secluded from a style suggesting personal involvement (or control) by Douglas Messerli. Why? To strive for the sort of objectivity ("fairness"), the absense of which (or the absence of the appearance of which, at minimum) was so aptly bemoaned in the AWP / Jorie Graham instance recently cited. Do you see my point? I do know that Sun & Moon's judge of the competition is someone decidedly other than Doug M.; but beyond that, if Doug were to pen nice & agreeable personal chits here & there to his friends who apply, THIS could end up in the Po-world equivalent of the front pages at some point as suggestive of unfair favoritism. In short, that Messerli sees fit to have an assistant handle administrative aspects of that competition, seems rather like a (suitable) response to potential issues of ethical shadiness (or the appearance of same), rather than being a case of personal shadiness. Another question might involve how many MSS are submitted (also: whether the submissions themselves are "blind," i.e., without mention of authorship on the MS). If S&M received (say) 500 manuscripts, and if this was organized so that an assistant of Doug's were detailed to handle correspondence relating to the process, then there's no reason to assume that Doug was even made aware of those instances in which his friends & acquaintances happened to have work in the running. The competition process indeed operates under constraints that do not apply to the more free-form process of interaction with a publisher outside of the strictures of a competition. << As far as contests go for writing, I think they're stupid and meaningless, and it's sad that poets in particular are reduced to having to go that route to break into publishing. But I wouldn't look down on somebody for entering a contest. . . >> A week or two ago, the topic of entry-fees & competitions came up on another list that I read in digest (that of the Int'l Alliance for Women in Music, IAWM). There was a range of responses -- but many composers noted that they make a point of never participating in such. There was also a discussion of the economics of such competitions (which typically promise a cash award and performance of a winning composer's music). The results of analysis suggested the likelihood that, in some cases, not only were costs of competitions being covered by entry fees, but that some organizations seemed to subsidize their performance series via funds gathered thru competition entry fees. (The general response to this practice was that of being irked by it.) Interesting to note these fairly parallel discussions in the two media. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 08:26:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have to agree with Patrick: >>Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 09:18:00 -0500 From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN I'm all for the virtues of clarity, but I'm not sure I agree with this, Mark. It's always seemed to me that original or powerful or compelling writers force the reader to expand by learning how to read their work -- which often appears difficult at first, and perhaps is out of the need to break from what has proceeded it -- and that this, in part, constitutes what we mean by reading. Which is not to justify obscurantism or defend prolixity. Patrick Pritchett<< That's certainly how I came to enjoy Derrida, bit by bit & little by little, & then it was fun! Mind you I do read him more the way I read poetry than the way I (usually) read criticism etc. But then, I found that, in a different site, I read Guy Davenport's essays & stories with much the same sense of delight, & reread them for the pleasures of his text. But some 'difficult' prose styles are more fun than others. To me. Or to you, mon semblable... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 03:49:48 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? I have to say I agree, generally, with Douglas's agreement with Patrick, but would like also to point out the following: From time to time poets appear, who, if they are accepted at all, demand a radical revision of the existing conception of poetry. Of this sort are our modern poets, and herein lies the difficulty of accepting them, or, if they are accepted, the difficulty of accommodating them in the traditionally accepted pattern. Cleanth Brooks, Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) I don't recall the particular source(s) of these recent posts, and so am not implying any direct analogies, but it is worth noting (I think) that a large part of Brooks' and others' purpose at that time was to justify literary criticism as a university-worthy discipline by systematizing it. Any thoughts? DT ---------- From: Douglas Barbour[SMTP:doug.barbour@UALBERTA.CA] Sent: Thursday, May 29, 1997 11:26 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? I have to agree with Patrick: >>Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 09:18:00 -0500 From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN I'm all for the virtues of clarity, but I'm not sure I agree with this, Mark. It's always seemed to me that original or powerful or compelling writers force the reader to expand by learning how to read their work -- which often appears difficult at first, and perhaps is out of the need to break from what has proceeded it -- and that this, in part, constitutes what we mean by reading. Which is not to justify obscurantism or defend prolixity. Patrick Pritchett<< That's certainly how I came to enjoy Derrida, bit by bit & little by little, & then it was fun! Mind you I do read him more the way I read poetry than the way I (usually) read criticism etc. But then, I found that, in a different site, I read Guy Davenport's essays & stories with much the same sense of delight, & reread them for the pleasures of his text. But some 'difficult' prose styles are more fun than others. To me. Or to you, mon semblable... ======================================================================= ====== Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 04:01:30 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? my previous post's Brooks quote contains tab-spaces that don't belong. Sorry. DT ---------- From: Daniel Tessitore[SMTP:daniel@TIU.AC.JP] Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 1997 12:49 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? I have to say I agree, generally, with Douglas's agreement with Patrick, but would like also to point out the following: From time to time poets appear, who, if they are accepted at all, demand a radical revision of the existing conception of poetry. Of this sort are our modern poets, and herein lies the difficulty of accepting them, or, if they are accepted, the difficulty of accommodating them in the traditionally accepted pattern. Cleanth Brooks, Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939) I don't recall the particular source(s) of these recent posts, and so am not implying any direct analogies, but it is worth noting (I think) that a large part of Brooks' and others' purpose at that time was to justify literary criticism as a university-worthy discipline by systematizing it. Any thoughts? DT ---------- From: Douglas Barbour[SMTP:doug.barbour@UALBERTA.CA] Sent: Thursday, May 29, 1997 11:26 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? I have to agree with Patrick: >>Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 09:18:00 -0500 From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Fwd: Bad Writing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN I'm all for the virtues of clarity, but I'm not sure I agree with this, Mark. It's always seemed to me that original or powerful or compelling writers force the reader to expand by learning how to read their work -- which often appears difficult at first, and perhaps is out of the need to break from what has proceeded it -- and that this, in part, constitutes what we mean by reading. Which is not to justify obscurantism or defend prolixity. Patrick Pritchett<< That's certainly how I came to enjoy Derrida, bit by bit & little by little, & then it was fun! Mind you I do read him more the way I read poetry than the way I (usually) read criticism etc. But then, I found that, in a different site, I read Guy Davenport's essays & stories with much the same sense of delight, & reread them for the pleasures of his text. But some 'difficult' prose styles are more fun than others. To me. Or to you, mon semblable... ======================================================================= ====== Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:15:16 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 27 May 1997 03:49:48 +-900 from These days I am trying to read Ariosto's ORLANDO FURIOSO, with a prose crib and some literary crit alongside. One thing I've learned is that this clarity/obscurity debate goes a long way back, through a lot of variations. Back in them italian days it was between the civic engage humanists and the academic neo-Platonists. Everybody troubled by the crisis of the state, th crisis of the self, the crisis of language. Ariosto deals mysteriously with all this. One of the cruxes of ORLANDO is the limit of crisis - death & madness (or, scriptorial entombment & furor poeticus). The theme was, what's literature "for"... education? Along with, what the heck is it? ... a healing drug/poison? Evasion/madness/escape/closed circle? Pure wind verbiage, excess? Anyway, the New Critics didn't invent "difficulty" - in some ways, maybe, they domesticated it. What's difficult may not be the allusive, abstruse & innovative - what's truly hard to read might be the denotative & the engage. - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:31:43 EST Reply-To: rreynold@rci.rutgers.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Rebecca Reynolds Organization: Rutgers University Subject: Re: a writing utensil of one's own A tangential response to schizophrenia/language posts: My father, who worked at St. Elizabeth's, took a group of his schizophrenic patients to the Mormon Temple outside D.C. one day, and during the course of the visit one of the men peed on the light-blue wall-to-wall carpeting and said gleefully to the tour guide, "oh, look what I did!" Perhaps this is a case where the impulse and the necessity coincide? --Rebecca Reynolds ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 04:41:10 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? Henry Gould wrote: These days I am trying to read Ariosto's ORLANDO FURIOSO, with a prose crib and some literary crit alongside. One thing I've learned is that this clarity/obscurity debate goes a long way back, through a lot of variations. Back in them italian days it was between the civic engage humanists and the academic neo-Platonists. Everybody troubled by the crisis of the state, th crisis of the self, the crisis of language. Ariosto deals mysteriously with all this. One of the cruxes of ORLANDO is the limit of crisis - death & madness (or, scriptorial entombment & furor poeticus). The theme was, what's literature "for"... education? Along with, what the heck is it? ... a healing drug/poison? Evasion/madness/escape/closed circle? Pure wind verbiage, excess? Anyway, the New Critics didn't invent "difficulty" - in some ways, maybe, they domesticated it. What's difficult may not be the allusive, abstruse & innovative - what's truly hard to read might be the denotative & the engage. - Henry _________________ I agree that the NC's did not "invent" difficulty--but didn't they go a long way to invent themselves as the proper experts to 'explain' difficulty? --and not only the difficulty of the moderns, but the 'difficulty' of everyone prior to them, so that their exlpanation was, in a sense, retroactive? DT ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 09:17:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I hesitate to continue a discussion that's already been beaten into the ground, but David Israel's statement that >I do know that Sun & Moon's judge of the >competition is someone decidedly other than Doug M.; in the midst of an otherwise reasonable (in the abstract) presentation of why & how competitions should be fair, etc. didn't jibe with my memory, previously jogged by Dodie Bellamy's posts, of an earlier announcement by Douglas Messerli of winners and judges. So, having time on my hands this morning while waiting for Airborne Express to show up with my CPU upgrade today, I looked around at the EPC archives and found the post below, which I assume is the one to which Dodie refered to earlier. (This might be a good place to note once again that, although receipt of this e-mail discussion list in realtime is closed, secret, private, etc., all of the posts made to the list are quite easily available to anyone with Web access at the EPC.) Note the description, again reasonable in the abstract, of how manuscripts are judged, then note the judge of the final winner in fiction. Regardless of the circumstances that may explain the lack of an external judge, it seems there wasn't one in this instance. : >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 09:33:20 -0700 >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >Sender: UB Poetics discussion group >From: Douglas Messerli >Subject: Sun & Moon NAP and NAF competitions > >Now that the season has begun, I thought you might >want to be reminded for yourself, your students, and >for your friends that Sun & Moon Press is still reading >manuscripts for its 1996 New American Poetry (NAP) and >New American Fiction (NAF) competitions. > >The competitions are open from January 1 to December 30th >of each year. All manuscripts are read both in-house and >by an independent judge. > >Full length manuscripts of either poetry or fiction may be >entered. Please put your name and address on the title page >(but do not repeat it elsewhere, since the manuscripts out >of house are read blindly). > >There is a $25.00 entrance fee which is used toward the >publication of the books. > >If you wish your manuscript returned after the competition >, please enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. > >The award winners are announced each year in February. And >the books will be published within the next calendar year. > >This past year's (1995) winners were: > >Poetry: Rob Fitterman, METROPOLIS (chosen by Bruce Andrews) >Fiction: Eleana Greenspan, POSSESSED BY A DEMON (chose by > Douglas Messerli) > > >Douglas Messerli > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Back to: Top of message | Previous menu | Main POETICS menu Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 12:41:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: a writing utensil of one's own In-Reply-To: <199705291538.LAA10377@erebus.rutgers.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 29 May 1997, Rebecca Reynolds wrote: > A tangential response to schizophrenia/language posts: > > My father, who worked at St. Elizabeth's, took a group of his > schizophrenic patients to the Mormon Temple outside D.C. one day, and > during the course of the visit one of the men peed on the light-blue > wall-to-wall carpeting and said gleefully to the tour guide, > "oh, look what I did!" > > Perhaps this is a case where the impulse and the necessity coincide? A further tangent: driving by the Temple on the Beltway there is (or was for most of my childhood) my favorite grafitti ever. Just as the Temple looms overhead, SURRENDER DOROTHY is spray-painted on the side of an overpass. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 12:59:55 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: bad? writing? reading? In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 27 May 1997 04:41:10 +-900 from On Tue, 27 May 1997 04:41:10 +-900 Daniel Tessitore said: > >I agree that the NC's did not "invent" difficulty--but didn't they go a >long way to invent themselves as the proper experts to 'explain' >difficulty? --and not only the difficulty of the moderns, but the >'difficulty' of everyone prior to them, so that their exlpanation was, in a >sense, retroactive? I have no difficulty assenting to this - as long as we realize that Ariosto & his confreres & connoisoeurs pre-wrote the critics into their poems. Gave them their script, their opening. Encrypted. Did you ever take Advanced Literary Refrigeration as an undergrad? Those old Seers models were built to last. - Enrico Furioso ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 13:13:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: a writing utensil of one's own Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rebecca Reynolds wrote: > > A tangential response to schizophrenia/language posts: > > My father, who worked at St. Elizabeth's, took a group of his > schizophrenic patients to the Mormon Temple outside D.C. one day, and > during the course of the visit one of the men peed on the light-blue > wall-to-wall carpeting and said gleefully to the tour guide, > "oh, look what I did!" > > Perhaps this is a case where the impulse and the necessity coincide? > > --Rebecca Reynolds Sometimes, as Wittgenstein pointed out, language comes up against an ontological barrier, so that all that's left is the gesture. Now that's what I call a gesture toward meaning! jd -- __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 13:09:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Herb -- As yuppie lawyers were wont to say to we lowly word processors: good catch. -- >>> Herb Levy 05/29/97 01:17pm >>> I hesitate to continue a discussion that's already been beaten into the ground, but David Israel's statement that >I do know that Sun & Moon's judge of the >competition is someone decidedly other than Doug M.; >Poetry: Rob Fitterman, METROPOLIS (chosen by Bruce Andrews) >Fiction: Eleana Greenspan, POSSESSED BY A DEMON (chose by > Douglas Messerli) I was (however) only aware of the poetry prize and hadn't taken notice of the fiction prize at all. So, (anyway), seems my statement was only applicable to the part I was aware of . . . I guess Doug didn't recuse himself (as the yuppie . . .) from Category B-- maybe bec. he's not a fiction writer (??) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 13:13:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Gettysburg Review Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just happened across Ronald Wallace's poem "L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E" in the new (Summer '97) issue of _The Gettysburg Review_. Was this already discussed in this forum? (I've missed a number of posts lately.) If not, it's a grouchy, reductive little polemic against postmodernism as the poet understands it, which -- as I understand his understanding -- dismisses completely the personal, imagistic memory bank he claims as the true mine for poetry. It's an example of how non-Romantic (Modernist?) strains of and claims for poetry strike at the viscera of those who feel their very identities and integrities are at stake when the legitimacy of the domestic, autobiographical lyric is called into question. It reminds me of how angrily some "free verse" poets reacted when the New Formalists started publishing. Interesting, in a tsk-tsk kinda way. *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 11:20:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Steinberg Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark writes: >Let me ascribe nobler motives to myself and other publishers for a moment. >I'm interested in production (and design) values for four reasons--I can get >the books more places, they're more durable, the poets like them better, and >I think that the beauty of book-as-object is part of "what's really >important." But do it however works for you. >By the way, anyone who tells you it costs 5k to produce a book is a fool or >a thief. > Although my records are currently packed up (I leave Chicago in two days), here's a rough breakdown on how much it costs to produce a typical Tia Chucha Book, as we have budgeted for it. This is for a perfectbound book of about 55 pages with a print run of two thousand copies. Printing: $3,500 Honoraria: $500 Designer: $500 Promotion: $400 Postage: $100 That comes to about $5000. Granted, you can probably skimp on the designer fees (we think our designer is grossly underpaid for her services--one of the reasons Tia Chucha books sell is because they look great) and the honoraria (we are able to pay honoraria because we have a lannan grant (who really needs to pay poets?)). You can print fewer books. You can skip promotion costs and just pray the books will magically leave the trunk of your car (replaced with a wad of bucks, of course). But any way you slice, it's expensive and difficult. If any of you have advice as to how to do what we do for less money, I'd love to hear it. Hugh Steinberg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 13:12:42 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 29 May 1997 13:09:55 -0400 from Henry Gould said: >Then again, the "Doug Messerli" who was the independent judge who chose >fiction may actually be a heteronym of Jack Spandrift. Can you help us >here, Jack? Henry, this is really out of line considering that most people are set nomail this season. I suggest you project an thorough e-apology for such scurrilous & typical internet superhighway sort of cheese off the truck. - Eric Blarnes >>Who asked you, Blarnes? >>We have only memories of spiritual gates. Watergates, that is. >>- Spandrift, with apologies to Hart Crane who apologizes to Samuel Greenberg ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 13:50:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >If any of you have advice as to how to do what we do for less money, I'd >love to hear it. > >Hugh Steinberg Not being a publisher, I'm probably just blowing wind here, but I think DocuTech technology -- assuming a publisher or consortium of publishers could handle the initial capital outlay for the equipment, which is expensive -- might have quite an effect on niche-market publishing. The outfit that published my last book -- BASFAL Books -- started to do this. Once they've got the text in electronic form -- less and less of a problem since most poets use computers these days anyhow -- they print out however many copies they need without committing themselves to initial press runs of 1000 or whatever, which then need to be warehoused for eons. Since poetry volumes usually sell in quantities of one or two or three, printing on demand from disk is an attractive option. The big expense, I assume, is the cover. Of course, not every press would need to own the equipment; jobs could be sub-contracted, just as catalog printing is now. In some contexts this practice could enable a press to devote more resources to promotion. To a poet, getting the word out is probably more important than a token honorarium. In BASFAL's case, alas, poetry publishing proved not to be the profitable venture they'd (unrealistically) envisioned at the outset. The first five or six poetry titles were handsomely printed in runs of 1000 -- too many, really, for a fledgling press with no reputation and no really big names -- and when after a year or so they didn't sell out -- thanks mostly to an unfamiliarity with how literary presses find their readers -- the publisher got discouraged enough to get out of the po-biz. The last couple of titles were done using DocuTech, which proved to be better economically, but it was too little to late. Still, as the cost of digital technology drops over time, it could benefit poetry publishing. *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 14:29:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Gettysburg Review -Reply << . . . an example of how non-Romantic (Modernist?) strains of and claims for poetry strike at the viscera of those who feel their very identities and integrities are at stake when the legitimacy of the domestic, autobiographical lyric is called into question. It reminds me of how angrily some "free verse" poets reacted when the New Formalists started publishing. Interesting, in a tsk-tsk kinda way. *********************** Fred Muratori >> | half-interesting in a tsk-tsk kinda way | thin-curious in a tut-tut sorta fashion | we shuttle the splat circumference of the day | a passage with lotsa shun if short on passion | the fish long gone what lingered were idle frisson | some wishbone drawn from dream got in the way? | the lineback & the linebreak shared a mission | half-interesting in a tsk-tsk kinda way d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 10:01:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Book Contests Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 5/29/97 Dear Friends, Having just returned from a week and a half visit to Brazil this morning, I discover that the New American Poetry and Fiction competitions have been the subject of some confusion and con- troversy. My mail is towering against my desk, so I am going to attempt to answer the major questions, but I shall have to been somewhat brief. First of all, The Contemporary Arts Educational Project Inc is the nonprofit name of the organization of which Sun & Moon Press is a program, our major program in fact. We do have other programs, some of them linked to publishing others connected with support of readings, the bookstore, etc. But in reality, the two are entirely interlinked. As a publisher, one discovers over the years that--if one feels a commitment, as I do, to continue to publish authors whom we have previously published and promoted--it becomes more and more difficult to introduce newer unpublished authors into one's list. Each year we receive from 300-500 unsolicited manuscripts. What was happening before I began the New American Poetry and Fiction compe- titions, was that it became increasingly difficult simply to read these manuscripts and they were remaining for long periods of time in the office, with little chance of pub- lication. As an author, I shared the feeling of many of those who submitted: a frustration at having a manuscript sit on a publishers reading pile for four-eight months, only to be returned with a simple rejection. Yet, there was no other way to handle the volume of manuscripts we received; and there was no money to hire someone else to read them, even if I had highly trusted that reader's intuition. At the same time, there was little possibility that new authors could be introduced into our list. The competitions seemed a solution. By requiring a relatively inexpensive entry fee, the entrants themselves would help to pay for the publication of a selected manuscript that would represent someone outside of the group of American authors already published by the press. And--perhaps most importantly--all mansucripts would receive a true reading. In poetry indeed,this has worked very nicely. In fiction, however, it became apparent that it would be very difficult to find an outside reader. Indeed it became impossible to find a reader (whom we could not afford to pay) who would commit to reading 100+ manuscripts. I asked several ficiton writers who simply could not commit the time needed to read that many manuscipts. So, I became that reader. In all of this Dodie is, accordingly, quite accurate. She was encouraged to send an entry fee (without it, we could not have even considered publishing her work), and she was told that there would be an outside reader, and there was not. I feel, perhaps, that the only error I made was not notifying everyone who had entered that I indeed was the reader (although I would remind them, that had they submitted the manuscript in years earlier, I also would have been the only reader). As most of you know, this has not at all been the case in poetry, where it has been easier to find readers. I will try even harder this next year to find a qualified outside reader for the competition, and I am certainly open to suggestions. In fact, Dodie's reader (myself) was sympathetic to her work. It simply was not chosen. I do feel, however, that the competitions have allowed writers to be published that we could otherwise not have published. Even though the application fees do not pay for even 1/2 of the actual publication costs, it does help fund the books, and it does allow us to open Sun & Moon Press to American writers whose work would otherwise receive a cursory reading or be rejected out of hand for lack of funds. I have listed below the winners of the New American Poetry and Fiction competitions to date. 1995 (judges: Rae Armantrout and Charles Bernstein) Noon, by Cole Swensen Polyverse, by Lee Ann Brown [both of these titles will be published this summer] 1996 (judge: Bruce Andrews) Metropolis, by Rob Fitterman 1997 (judge: Dennis Phillips) Letters to Unifinsihed J., by Sheila Murphy FICTION 1996 Possessed by a Demon, by Elena Greenfield 1997 The Words, by Carla Harryman Douglas Messerli ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 15:05:31 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Book Contests In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 29 May 1997 10:01:04 -0700 from This is clearly a case in which epic list gossip has led to a possible improvement in the US literary scene.[1] Congratulations, Doug, for your publishing work over the years. Congratulations, Dodie, for speaking up. My suggestion for the problem of finding a fiction judge: initiate a Fiction Judge Contest, in which for a nominal entry fee of $45-50. people would have a chance to funnel out a historic player clothed with the moon & the sun. The fee would pay for the judge. Congratulations, Jack Spandrift, for this wonderful suggestion, which I pass along. - Henry Gould 1] see archive under "epic gossip". ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 15:27:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Ashton Subject: Asian-American poetry Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I am trying to put together a survey of 20th-century Asian-American lit, and while I have found many contemporary texts to teach, I am having trouble with finding texts from 1900 to about 1950. I have found some excellent autobiographical texts, but I am desperately in need of some ideas for poetry and fiction. Please copy any posts to me via backchannel. With Gratitude, Jennifer Ashton The Johns Hopkins University ashto_j@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 15:25:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Markus Foutu Subject: Re: Book Contests perhapse the facade of "objective" publishing shd be dropped if you can not read un solicited ms do not accept them Q: are the ratios of incoming ms to published ms different than the ratios of incoming contest ms/to winners? How can anyone ask poets of all artists- (a successful painter (rare) does make money... a successful poet (rarer) simply does not.... to then ask sd poet to PAY to be read is sinful.... Publish what YOU love. Drop the pretense of discovering the NEW GREAT LIT. then when you loose money it ant a waste of YOUR time and YOUR money. IF WE WANT THIS TYPE OF COMPETITION THEN WE SHOULD ALL GO INTO THE STOCK MARKET...NOT ART. Markus Foutu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 15:31:23 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: HENRY Subject: Re: Gettysburg Review -Reply In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 29 May 1997 14:29:10 -0400 from Half-hearted in a hole-wait kinda hokum hocus-pocus goes the biscuit-tasket train a-fattening up the tea-time of our slum (midway Midases' subway terrain or some Medusa's balding hairline in the rain) How come? The graves of Academe opine their coal-cars mix tsk-tsk a sexy rum - Eric Blarnes [from Eric's new volume of verse, VROOM WITH A VIEW, available soon from Univ. of Left Overbie Press] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 16:32:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: questions In-Reply-To: <970529152516_-764425793@emout03.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII What does "Foutu" mean in French? cd. somebody backchannel? What's wrong with going into the stock market AND art, save denting the myth of artist-as-special-chosen-soul? Without reading fees, how wd. one propose to pay those who read the submitted masterpieces to determine which is masterpieciest? What is, she said, employing a collage-type allusion to faintly musty popular culture, the average velocity of an unladen sparrow? Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 17:01:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: a writing utensil of one's own Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >Rebecca Reynolds wrote: >> >> A tangential response to schizophrenia/language posts: >> >> My father, who worked at St. Elizabeth's, took a group of his >> schizophrenic patients to the Mormon Temple outside D.C. one day, and >> during the course of the visit one of the men peed on the light-blue >> wall-to-wall carpeting and said gleefully to the tour guide, >> "oh, look what I did!" >> >> Perhaps this is a case where the impulse and the necessity coincide? >> >> --Rebecca Reynolds > > >Sometimes, as Wittgenstein pointed out, language >comes up against an ontological barrier, so that all >that's left is the gesture. Now that's what I call >a gesture toward meaning! > >jd > A tangent to a tangent: Ever since getting Robert Archambeau's interesting biblio. to the lang. of schizophrenia I've been digging around for an article by Roman Jakobson [with Grete L=FCbbe-Grothues]. I've finally found it. It's called "The Language of Schizophrenia: H=F6lderlin's Speech and Poetry" [in _Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time_, reprinted from _Poetics Today_ vol. 2, No. 1a (1980)]. Interesting stuff. Apparently, H's schizophrenia drove him to bizarre language behavior that scared off or overwhelmed most of his friends and relatives. Dialogue with him was hardly possible. Besides typical things like being unable to look people in the eye, and a strong desire to avoid saying 'yes' or 'no', H also had a habit of addressing his interlocutor as 'Yr Highness' or 'Yr Majesty', and and even 'Yr Grace' and 'Yr Holiness.' He refused any gifts of books, ate alone, etc. It gets more curious. He refused to acknowledge his own name [preferred 'Killalusimeno' or 'Scardanelli' or 'Scaliger Rosa' -- Jakobson sees anagrams of 'H=F6lderlin' in some of this], and essentially eliminated 'I' from his so-called conversations. This is what might interest poets: all the while that he was behaving like this, H could sit down, in the presence of visitors, and crank out exquisite, metrically perfect poems [he used to whip them off in minutes for his landlord, while never addressing him]. [Unfortunately the poems are not provided in the article, and I haven't read them]. Jakobson's analysis is fascinating but I won't go into details. Here's just one line that is briefly cited: "But what remains is brought about by poets" What interests me is the apparent autonomy of the poetic function from the social, from dialogue, etc. Any thoughts on this? George ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 17:07:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: questions footnote-queries anenet Gwyn McVay's Q.#4 -- > What is, she said, employing a collage-type allusion to faintly musty > popular culture, the average velocity of an unladen sparrow? 1. mightn't the po-folk at The New Yorker have an opinion on this? 2. I miss your allusion. (Do you catch mine?) 3. Not, I assume, as in "The Mighty ~" d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 16:48:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Landers Subject: Re: S & M, CHB In-Reply-To: <199705290412.AAA29268@node1.frontiernet.net> from "Automatic digest processor" at May 29, 97 00:12:08 am Content-Type: text I just picked Ron's name out of a hat, thinking of the anthology. My undelivered meaning was: If a reader goes there to find someone better known, like Djuna Barnes from the modernist era, and discovers a new young writer like James Sherry, then it's good. Ms. Bellamy, like myself, takes a special interest in writing by women, so I hoped that Djuna Barnes' SMOKE and Other Stories would remind her of what is good about Sun and Moon. Please remember, all, that most small presses operate in the red and any money you send them, be it for a contest or when buying a book, helps all of us. I feel defensive on behalf of small presses, and will usually jump into a fray if I think one is under fire. On the other hand, I don't enter contests because I never win. Pete Landers http://www.frontiernet.net/~landers/LF.html ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 09:47:30 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: questions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" isn't it a swallow? Swallow - followed by - African or European. I don't know At 05:07 PM 5/29/97 -0400, you wrote: >footnote-queries anenet Gwyn McVay's Q.#4 -- > >> What is, she said, employing a collage-type allusion to faintly musty >> popular culture, the average velocity of an unladen sparrow? > >1. mightn't the po-folk at The New Yorker have an opinion on this? >2. I miss your allusion. (Do you catch mine?) >3. Not, I assume, as in "The Mighty ~" > >d.i. > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 18:10:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: no man may him hyde MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN It may not be my place to post this information, but I feel compelled to in the interests of those who may care and who won't find out otherwise. I hope I'm not committing a violation of privacy. I've just learned that Ed Dorn has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has only a few months, so doctors think, to live. I know there are more than a few people on this list who have a legitimate bone to pick with Ed, and I don't mean to trivialize the issue by resorting to such a mild colloquialism. Despite all the acrimony that raged around his name on this list in the past, I found him, in my brief and quite insignificant association with him over the past semester, to be a gentle soul with a passionate love for poetry and a waggish bemusement at the endless disparities of humanity. "It is general to be mortal, I have well observed. No man may him hyde from deth hollow-eyed." - Skelton Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 19:33:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: questions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gwyn, I assume question 1. to be rhetorical, but maybe not. cf. Duncan's play "Faust Foutu," which translates, if you really want to do it, "Faust Fucked." As for back-channel, I don't know. I met Duncan, but never asked. Love all ways, sp What does "Foutu" mean in French? cd. somebody backchannel? > >What's wrong with going into the stock market AND art, save denting the >myth of artist-as-special-chosen-soul? > >Without reading fees, how wd. one propose to pay those who read the >submitted masterpieces to determine which is masterpieciest? > >What is, she said, employing a collage-type allusion to faintly musty >popular culture, the average velocity of an unladen sparrow? > > >Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 16:12:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: how to produce books w/o bellying-up Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The first instance in my awareness of the process Fred Muratori describes was e.g. press, in San francisco, then run by David Highsmith. (This is the process whereby as many copies are printed, 50 or 100 At a time, as there is demand for.) My book the press did was _You See, Parts I & II_, a collaboration with Opal Nations, in 1985. Highsmith did numerous titles before handing the press on to Gary Sullivan. I don't know if it has been allowed to go dormant. db ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 21:12:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: questions / sparrow story Well, not to be overly cryptic, here's an annotation to my annotation: >> What is. . . the average velocity of an unladen sparrow? > >1. mightn't the po-folk at The New Yorker have an opinion on this? Sparrow (as you mightn't know) is the name of a (as the argot has it) downtown poet in NYC who (along w/ a number of others) is said to have staged -- maybe 2 years ago? -- a daily sit-in-style protest at the offices of The New Yorker. The issue was what is (or more pointedly, isn't) included in said magazine's weekly poetry selection. Seems Sparrow somewhat prevailed (and/or was bought off -- depending on p.o.v.): the august zine agreed to publish a couple of his own poems. I recall reading one brief poem of his some time ago in there. [It concerned a snowman and paternity, I think.] There was also one of those quaint Talk Of The Town tales, giving the story of Sparrow's sit-in in some of its quaint particulars. (I'm acquainted w/ Sparrow on account of we both used to participate in the 200-copy xerox poets' circular *Tamarind* -- & I'd assume he still does). . . . end of footnote d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 18:27:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: S & M, CHB In-Reply-To: <199705292048.QAA02556@node5.frontiernet.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 4:48 PM -0400 5/29/97, Peter Landers wrote: >Ms. Bellamy, like myself, takes >a special interest in writing by women, so I hoped that Djuna Barnes' >SMOKE and Other Stories would remind her of what is good about Sun and >Moon. When did I say anything bad about Sun & Moon? All I talked about was one specific incident with one specific contest. You're the one who's shooting for the moon here. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 23:42:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Ganick Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA budget for a 100 page potes & poets press book 500 copies..... printing -- with mcnaughton-gunn, inc -- $1800 typesetting -- have 2 or 3 persons -- $300 cover art and design -- 2 colors on white -- $300 and that's it....not including advertising and postage, etc.... i'll be off the group until saturday...then will pick up this thread....unfortunately i won't be able to read mail between tomorrow morning and then... out.... peter ganick pganick@ibl.bm -- from june 1 to june 8th ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 01:04:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: another production idea Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Here's an inexpensive production alternative using binding machines that you can buy from your local stationery store. There are basically two types of machines. One punches a bunch of holes through the pages of your book and then threads a plastic comb through the holes. For about a dollar or less, you can buy the comb and a cover that you can run through a laser printer. So, if you have a way to do xeroxes cheaply, you can buy the machine and bind only as many books as you sell. The unit cost may be higher per book, but you can print and bind completely on demand. Instead of $2,000 to $5,000 upfront for a run plus inventory carrying costs, etc., you can do about 100 books for $500 and less if you have access to a copier. This includes an amorized cost for the binding machine which ranges from $400 to $600. An even cheaper binding system can be bought for $90 to $200 which uses a thermal system to bind sheets of paper between various types of covers. You stick the cover in the machine, put the sheets of your book in the cover and turn on the machine. It heats the glue in the cover's spine, the sheets of paper sink into the glue and the whole thing binds together when the machine cools down. It ain't fast, but it can make a very presentable binding. Either of the systems would seem to work quite well for poetry books since you will probably never have to make more than a few books at a time. The disadvantage is that the books are probably not of a sufficient quality to sell to libraries or to be handled by distributors, although it would be interesting if there is anybody with knowledge of Sm. Press Distr. who could say whether they would handle this type of book. The systems I'm talking about are made by GBC and Avery Dennison. Like I said, most decent sized stationers could order the machine for you. And, for those who don't have the money to buy the binder by themselves, you could certainly share the cost and machine with other nearby publishers. cheers, Steven p.s. I used to work in a stationery store (J. Solomon, Inc.). That's how I know about this stuff. __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 01:23:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA If we put the MBA analystical hat on for a moment -- do not include obvious vanity presses & magazines in which entry fees are practically automatic exchange for publication -- am I alone in thinking that application fees for consideration in book awards and various contests rose dramatically as a phenomen with the decline of NEA and States funding for small presses and magazines? From a publisher's point of view the entry fee became alternative way of raising production money, as well as a way to tighten the filter on the receipt of unmanagebly huge numbers of manuscripts. I think Doug Messerli's recent post suggests as much. Ironically what is healthy or makes sense for the publisher hardly coheres with the interest of the writer, particularly if he or she is unable to shed money into several contests. In Doug M's post I was curious about the choice of Carla Harryman for the winner of the fiction award. I'm both a friend and fan of Carla's work. At the same time I don't believe Doug needed a contest to discover and publish Carla -- at least I don't want to think so! It's my impression that she is quite well known in new &/or experimental writing circles. I do, however, think being a "winner" will help draw attention among main stream reviewers to her work - which is neither bad for Carla or Sun & Moon. But in terms of the contest's goal of seeking to uncover an unknown writer, I wd suspect "the unknown" participants are, at least, scratching their heads. I would have published Carla outright. On another note (back to the NBA thread as different from MBA or MFA threads) I don't think I like Utah's John Stockton but he played beautiful, incredible in the last quarter of tonight's game. I think Charles Barkley ruined Huston. Selfish to an enormous fault. Instead of baskets, he drained Akeem, and the rest of the Rockets, right out of the game. It was good that Barkley looked desperate and lost trying to block Stockton's winning shot. Court poetry. I say. Cheers, Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 00:21:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: questions In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >What does "Foutu" mean in French? cd. somebody backchannel? > It is rather rude. When you see that 5 bad guys are after you and you are in a box canyon, you say "Oh jeeze, I'm foutu!" George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 04:45:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Steven Marks -- a p.s. to your latest production-note -- >Here's an inexpensive production alternative using binding machines > that you can buy from your local stationery store. There are basically >two types of machines. . . both types of binding you describe ("Velo binding" and the glue-strip binding, not to mention a 3rd type: "spiral binding") are all available nation-wide (that's u.s.a. -- don't know abt. other lands), 24 hours per day, in (I expect) nearly every major metropolitan city, thanks to the good offices (commercial instincts) of a company known as KINKO'S. I've had occasion to do my own small-edition (e.g., 4 or 5 copies) self-productions of MSS at Kinko's, and find their copying & binding facilities decent & inexpensive. (Not to mention convenience of being able to show up at 4 a.m., or whenever.) Never considered (conceptualized) publication via that route, but it could certainly be done . . . d.i. (or course, those in Berkeley may favor [e.g.] Krishna Copy -- & those elsewhere may find the same technology at other outfits . . .; Kinko's has simply established the most pervasive commercial presence, seems) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 11:30:48 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MARK LEAHY Organization: University of Leeds Subject: Re: WRITING UTENSIL -- HOLDERLIN MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT "but what remains is brought about by poets" the line from Holderlin is discussed by Gianni Vattimo in one of the essays in _The End of Modernity_ ; he goes on to discuss a notion of monumentality The monument bears traces of the past into the future, for others; it does not defeat time but endures in time, bearing the marks of time. A poem is a monument by virtue of its having been worked, refined, eroded; the evidence it presents, its relation to truth, is that of the trace of an event, and not the authoritarian truth of metaphysics (Vattimo, 1988, p. 74-75) [my paraphrase] in the same essay he discusses Heidegger's writings on poetry; I've been listening in for a while and have been enjoying a lot of what comes up on this list; Mark Leahy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 08:03:48 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: a writing utensil of one's own In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 29 May 1997 17:01:24 -0400 from The answer is simple (as usual with me, it always is, heh heh). Holderlin was a coyote. - H ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 08:24:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: questions In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII George B.--box canyon? is this also true of 4 guys attempting to share a box lunch? Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 08:52:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re: >In Doug M's post I was curious about >the choice of Carla Harryman for the >winner of the fiction award. I'm both >a friend and fan of Carla's work. At the >same time I don't believe Doug needed >a contest to discover and publish >Carla -- at least I don't want to think so! >It's my impression that she is quite >well known in new &/or experimental >writing circles. >Cheers, >Stephen Vincent And the same is true of the '95 poetry winner, Cole Swensen (whose work I admire, by the way), who was a National Poetry Series winner in the late-1980s and already quite well-known and respected, having had books issued by Quill and Burning Deck. No doubt the manuscript she submitted to the S&M contest would have been published gratefully by someone else -- no "discovery"-via-contest necessary here, either. Still, the selection of already-established writers from large contest pools suggests at least two obvious conclusions: (1) even established poets and fiction writers feel compelled to enter contests (which unfortunately elbows out the just-as-worthy but no-name small fry), and (2) even with the likely prospect of publishing their work with another press, well-known (relatively speaking) writers still want to publish with Sun & Moon. Who wouldn't? -- FM *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 08:55:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: a writing utensil of one's own Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >The answer is simple (as usual with me, it always is, heh heh). > >Holderlin was a coyote. > >- H Yes he *really* was! Well before his "madness" he had produced a translation of Pindar that was so idiosyncratic [and so faithful to the Grk] that a good portion of his audience thought he was mad even then. And what did the good doctors think of him? Well, one called his late poetry "a catatonic form of imbecility", whereas another called him "the greatest of the schizophrenics." I don't think that they've figured him out even now. G. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 08:58:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: no man may him hyde In-Reply-To: <01IJG8XZFO1I9BZLWM@iix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks for the news, pat. i don't think that there was much personal acrimony in that skirmish a few months ago. people didn't like some of the things dorn had said and done, and we said so. not liking what someone has said and done does not prevent one from feeling the basic sympathy when that someone is terminally ill. sometimes i feel that our discussions get way too colored by personal loyalties that obscure the intellectual issues at hand. --md At 6:10 PM -0500 5/29/97, Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote: >It may not be my place to post this information, but I feel compelled to in >the interests of those who may care and who won't find out otherwise. I hope >I'm not committing a violation of privacy. I've just learned that Ed Dorn >has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has only a few months, so >doctors think, to live. > >I know there are more than a few people on this list who have a legitimate >bone to pick with Ed, and I don't mean to trivialize the issue by resorting >to such a mild colloquialism. Despite all the acrimony that raged around his >name on this list in the past, I found him, in my brief and quite >insignificant association with him over the past semester, to be a gentle >soul with a passionate love for poetry and a waggish bemusement at the >endless disparities of humanity. > > "It is general to be mortal, > I have well observed. > No man may him hyde > from deth hollow-eyed." > - Skelton > >Patrick Pritchett ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:42:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: WRITING UTENSIL -- HOLDERLIN In-Reply-To: <2145BA51370@arts-01.novell.leeds.ac.uk> from "MARK LEAHY" at May 30, 97 11:30:48 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just want to chime in that I read Vattimo's book, I guess almost 2 yrs ago now, and its very good, worth checking out for anyone interested in post-Nietzschean philosophy, etc. -Mike. According to MARK LEAHY: > > "but what remains is brought about by poets" > > the line from Holderlin is discussed by Gianni Vattimo in one of the > essays in _The End of Modernity_ ; > he goes on to discuss a notion of > monumentality > The monument bears traces of the past into the future, for others; it > does not defeat time but endures in time, bearing the marks of time. A > poem is a monument by virtue of its having been worked, refined, > eroded; the evidence it presents, its relation to truth, is that of > the trace of an event, and not the authoritarian truth of metaphysics > (Vattimo, 1988, p. 74-75) [my paraphrase] > > in the same essay he discusses Heidegger's writings on poetry; > > I've been listening in for a while and have been enjoying a lot of > what comes up on this list; > > Mark Leahy > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 11:26:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Hyde and seek Comments: To: Maria Damon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Maria, I'm interested in your point about discussions and personal loyalties. Someone suggested, on the Pie Barrage thread that we discuss the issue of sympathy. I remember reading an article recently bitterly complaining about writers who reciprocate positive blurbs on each others books. I've often had the notion that writers emerge into the public eye by means of a circle of supporters who either urge them on or egg them on. My specific historical examples are the Max Brod/Kafka relationship, I can't remember at the moment Thomas Wolfe's friend who edited his works, then there's Walter Benjamin/Gershom Scholem, among more recent poets Ted Berrigan/Ron Padgett, Carla Harryman/Barrett Watten,Michael Palmer/Michael Davidson,Clark Coolidge/Bernadette Mayer,the terrific Washington D.C. circle of poets including Joan Retallack, Lynne Dreyer, Mark Wallace, Rod Smith our own David Bromige and George Bowering, and then there's the phenomenon of circles of friends, the Dadaists, surrealists, New York School poets, L=A school poets, etc, even the circle of discussants emerging on this list.Often, to follow up your point about basic sympathy, such sympathies can allow space for types of collaboration and exchange that otherwise couldn't exist, including publication cooperatives. Literary groups and circles-think of the surrealists!- are replete with examples of confrontation with and without acrimony.While I agree that discussions are slanted by personal loyalties, on the other hand such close relationships seem to be an important aspect of the dynamic that causes "intellectual issues" to exist at all. What are these issues aside from the relationships within which they emerge and which so much concern other relationships?Historically, thinking of such cases as the Dreyfus case, Genet, etc, it is the only power writers have at all, especially now in the face of the philistines who take away our NEA's. Right now, in my opinion, our writerly circles may be one of our most valuable assets, well worth whatever risk to objectivity. The key question, I feel, is how to exploit them communally to our best common advantage.Too often, I feel, "objectivity" is used to bludgeon any space for subjectivity, especially in literary activities. Perhaps in literary terms "objectivity" is a tone, like any other. Cordially, Nick P.On Fri, 30 May 1997, Maria Damon wrote: > thanks for the news, pat. i don't think that there was much personal > acrimony in that skirmish a few months ago. people didn't like some of the > things dorn had said and done, and we said so. not liking what someone has > said and done does not prevent one from feeling the basic sympathy when > that someone is terminally ill. > > sometimes i feel that our discussions get way too colored by personal > loyalties that obscure the intellectual issues at hand. --md > > At 6:10 PM -0500 5/29/97, Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote: > >It may not be my place to post this information, but I feel compelled to in > >the interests of those who may care and who won't find out otherwise. I hope > >I'm not committing a violation of privacy. I've just learned that Ed Dorn > >has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and has only a few months, so > >doctors think, to live. > > > >I know there are more than a few people on this list who have a legitimate > >bone to pick with Ed, and I don't mean to trivialize the issue by resorting > >to such a mild colloquialism. Despite all the acrimony that raged around his > >name on this list in the past, I found him, in my brief and quite > >insignificant association with him over the past semester, to be a gentle > >soul with a passionate love for poetry and a waggish bemusement at the > >endless disparities of humanity. > > > > "It is general to be mortal, > > I have well observed. > > No man may him hyde > > from deth hollow-eyed." > > - Skelton > > > >Patrick Pritchett > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:36:09 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: how to produce books w/o bellying-up MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Xexoxial which started out as Xerox Sutra in 1980 was founded on the idea of books produced in unlimited small editions based on demand. In 1980 when xerox machines (or copiers as we now call them) were clunky low res simulations of printing machines there was almost no one in the small press world going this route because the stigma of the time was that unless a title had been printed offset in huge quanities, or letterpressed with utmost care there were no other recognizably valid ways of printing books. Keep in mind that the punk/zine world had already discovered copiers & much of these publications were in circulation, but at that time I encounter endless resistence to the idea of xerox books. & strangely the resistence from other publishers seemed to be more about the fact that a book was not published until you had your closet full of 100s of copies even tho there was no one to buy them or even stores to place them in. Because we never printed huge editions XE has published over a 150 titles over the years, all are still available, still "in print" & have lessened to some degree the glut of unwanted poetry. On a separate thread, XE has always side stapled its xerox book & glued covers around them. Our hard cover are old book with the insides ripped out, handpainted & our titles bound to the inside. Not fine book making by any means but Ive seen 10 year old books that are still in good shape & certainly readable. Just a few notes in the margins Miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 11:55:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: the fence-sit and the Po Biz you must all be SO SICK of my eternal on the one hand and on the others... but here i go anyway: i recall when i first moved to boston-- young, fresh, hearty, very naive (in retrospect, though then one always thinks one has the wisdom of methusaleh). didn't know anyone. was writing like blazes. and could NOT get a hearing -- i was doing good, not great but good work and with encouragement could have done better work. but all i got was yucky passes, brushoffs, and ignored because i didn't KNOW people and i was too young and female and not imposing enough. it sucked. yes. i found my way around it. am older now, fatter, snarlier. write better (we can only hope). and now, whenever i can, if i see a nice young person, or even a creepy young person, or even creepy older person, who writes well and is getting dissed, i try and go the extra bit, go beyond that, and do what i can for them and their work. cliques suck. but, BUT, i recall when i finally started tapping into a net of writers, it was lovely. rich stream of data, experience. ideas. advice. people whose arms i wouldn't HAVE to twist off to get to a poetry reading... i recall the excitement of seeing marjorie perloff's article on yasusada and realizing i saw it on poetics first! (YEAH! i bad, i'm wired!!). i just want the same chances for everybody. i want to make the work, not who can introduce me to Mr. Famous or Ms. Infuential, to be what matters. i want world peace. i want to be miss america (if only to stop smiling and refuse to kiss bob barker on public television, or private t.v.!). i want everything. but mostly, i just want a little more fairness and a little less self-interest nad clique-i-ness in writing process... e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 11:48:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: the fence-sit and the Po Biz Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" e, speaking personally now, if idiosyncratically, i think to some extent that what you seek is *precisely* what a list like this can give, at its best... on the one hand, i feel very much a part of this network community... speaking personally now!... on the other, even if i do feel as though i'm not straddling any fences with folks, i also feel as though i've got only one foot in... that is, there is some degree of fairness possible hereabouts... "objectivity" (nick, i think so!)---IF by "objectivity" is meant a personal pov with an eye toward accuracy and being fair (i don't accept "objectivity" as value neutral, or unopined)... at least, i feel there is this possibility---i feel we can help one another, and i feel of course (as is always the case) closer to some (of you!) than others... but i feel that the distance that comes along with this particular form of proximity permits for support of one another's work, by which i mean to include informed criteek, on the basis of what we say, not some imagistic 'who'... of course there are "who's" here... but they're not quite the same, *here*, as they might be elsewhere... e.g., in the pages of so many print journals, which can ossify personality and polarize dialogue... but i don't wish to polarize print either!---i only mean to suggest that the flows here are more quotidian, and helpful in this regard... at least, the potential exists for 'personality' to function more constructively hereabouts... i think in fact it often has... at the same time, i don't want simply to trumpet these spaces as not having their own peculiar conflictual problems... once a flame ignites, it's tough to put out w/o a simply hug or handshake or what have you... anyway, random noninklings... yes, to fairness, and to honesty that isn't hurtful/// best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 12:54:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: the fence-sit and the Po Biz Comments: To: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest In-Reply-To: <199705301555.LAA20981@toast.ai.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII E.M., I understand how you feel about cliques. I'll never forget how excluded I felt as a young writer.What I have noticed is that poets who spend time helping other writers, whether by reviewing, publishing, setting up reading series, etc, eventually tend be included more in whatever literary activity is taking place. I think the idea of literary excellence alone as deserving of literary reception is an ideal that has become outmoded by the hostility and manipulative quality of the current marketplace. While it may be unfortunate that a period of apprenticeship that might include hard work in forming new literary circles and communities that work together (like the early labor unions, perhaps?) the idea that there is or could be a "fair" and "objective" selection committee is naive and perhaps even dangerous in the current environment.Perhaps we have to learn and teach literary organizing as much as we teach the classics and moderns...But maybe the weather is getting too hot to think about all this so hard. I don't know- are we heading for the netherlands of nomail for the summer? I'd like to know more about your writing. If you can get with "shameless self promotion" (a necessary adjunct, perhaps, to freeing ourselves from the committees and anxiety of influence theories of the world) perhaps sometime(maybe when there are more people reading it again) you might post a sample of your available literary publications on the LIST. But if everybody else knows your work already, I'd appreciate it if you would backchannel to me with some of this info.I'm concerned that in the current literary environment without self(and other) interest there is too often no interest. Cordially, Nick P.On Fri, 30 May 1997, Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest wrote: > you must all be SO SICK of my eternal on the one hand and on the others... > but here i go anyway: > > i recall when i first moved to boston-- young, fresh, hearty, very naive > (in retrospect, though then one always thinks one has the wisdom of > methusaleh). didn't know anyone. was writing like blazes. and could > NOT get a hearing -- i was doing good, not great but good work and with > encouragement could have done better work. but all i got was yucky passes, > brushoffs, and ignored because i didn't KNOW people and i was too young > and female and not imposing enough. it sucked. > > yes. i found my way around it. am older now, fatter, snarlier. write > better (we can only hope). and now, whenever i can, if i see a nice young > person, or even a creepy young person, or even creepy older person, who > writes well and is getting dissed, i try and go the extra bit, go beyond > that, and do what i can for them and their work. cliques suck. > > but, BUT, i recall when i finally started tapping into a net of writers, > it was lovely. rich stream of data, experience. ideas. advice. people > whose arms i wouldn't HAVE to twist off to get to a poetry reading... i > recall the excitement of seeing marjorie perloff's article on yasusada > and realizing i saw it on poetics first! (YEAH! i bad, i'm wired!!). > > i just want the same chances for everybody. i want to make the work, not > who can introduce me to Mr. Famous or Ms. Infuential, to be what matters. > > i want world peace. i want to be miss america (if only to stop smiling > and refuse to kiss bob barker on public television, or private t.v.!). > i want everything. but mostly, i just want a little more fairness and > a little less self-interest nad clique-i-ness in writing process... > > e > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 13:06:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: the fence-sit and the Po Biz Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >of course there are "who's" here... but they're not quite the same, *here*, >as they might be elsewhere... e.g., in the pages of so many print journals, >which can ossify personality and polarize dialogue... > >joe ...assuming there even is dialogue. I've wondered why so many lit journals lack letters columns, editorials, -- even book reviews! -- etc.: the unruly stuff that at least opens some kind of communication channel -- now matter how severely delayed or narrow -- and imparts a personality to the journal itself. The effect of having so many poems, stories, reviews and essays just stuck there immutably in print without any comment or follow up is indeed ossifying, though some would call it simply dignified. Marginal as the editorial flotsam may be, I often find myself reading this material first in whatever kind of magazine I happen to pick up. At least I don't feel like I'm the only human being besides the editor who reads the mag, which -- ridiculous as it sounds -- sometimes happens. - FM *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 13:22:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Hyde and seek In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Nick--I think your meditation about circles of writers is on-target...They are indeed the primary way poets (poets especially, I think) flower outward and come into contact with the world. I think this is only going to continue to increase as a phenomenon, because of A. the cutting of support by right-wing forces who wish to eliminate as much public cultural space as possible, leaving the organization of venues and contacts and publishing in our own hands; and B. an increasing homogenization of all culture and art, as a general trend growing out of the shape of economic life: whatever can be marketed, and helps to reproduce both profit and business-class sensibility, will be given room and resources (e.g., stuff that gets reviewed in the Sunday NYT book review section). Things that stand on their own will have wealth and institutional support increasingly withdrawn. So, circles of poets are both (as you say) a long-standing fact of how people grow and prosper, and also something that will increase in importance becasue of specific historical forces. The one thing in all this, which informed the previous "cronyism" thread, and which will continue to evoke lots of resentment and outrage is: some groups of poets are always going to have **more** access to money and institutional resources than others. The tension here isn't going to go away, because the difference between groupings isn't going to..Much of the anger about poets feathering their own (and their friends, and students, and spouses) beds, has to do with the fact that **those poets have some feathers!!**....most of us don't. The best thing is to avoid the temptation to spend much energy on such resentment, and concentrate on cultivating our own networks, and using them to make the worthwhile work we care about more accessible. (I'm not under the misapprehension anyone on the List needs lectures like that last sentence, really..Just sort of thinking out loud....) Mark Prejsnar Atlanta ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 09:49:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Pie Barrage Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Agreed, Nick, & I'm glad you added to "urge them on," "egg them on." Bowering eggs me rather than urges me. He tries to get it on my face. You have to move fast around him. David ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 13:38:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: Book Contests/AN IDEA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Carla Harryman (fiction - current) and Cole Swenson (poetry - '95) as solar-lunar laureates, elicits a line of inference from Fred Muratori: > . . . . Still, the selection of already-established writers > from large contest pools suggests at least two obvious conclusions: > (1) even established poets and fiction writers feel compelled to > enter contests (which unfortunately elbows out the just-as-worthy > but no-name small fry), and (2) even with the likely prospect of > publishing their work with another press, well-known (relatively > speaking) writers still want to publish with Sun & Moon. Who > wouldn't? And another: (3) the judge/readers won't *disqualify* an entrant on the basis of that writer being already known & established. I.e., could Sun & Moon take Carla's book and say -- Gee, this is great, we'd love to publish it. But since you're already famous among our esoteric cove, ergo we can't let you win the contest, Carla. How about if we just publish this on its own . . . ? I suppose not. A flawless approach to this good-purposed procedure is not easy to tool; -- but I guess backseat driverism has its limits (too). d.i. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 13:38:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: a writing utensil / Holderlin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Holderlin was a coyote. - Henry Gould > Yes he *really* was! - George Thompson Incidentally, in the past couple years, Brooklynite Vyt Bakaitis has been working away on some new translations of Holderlin. Perhaps I'll give a few details (or examples) later. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 16:15:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: the fence-sit and the Po Biz In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 30 May 1997, Fred Muratori wrote: > > ...assuming there even is dialogue. I've wondered why so many lit journals > lack letters columns, editorials, -- even book reviews! -- etc.: the unruly > stuff that at least opens some kind of communication channel -- now matter > how severely delayed or narrow -- and imparts a personality to the journal > itself. I couldn't agree more. So many litmag pages look like tombstones in a white field. I'm all for white space but what if it was literally filled with marginalia. That would be visually and intellectually exciting! Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 15:21:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Landers Subject: Re: book forms In-Reply-To: <199705300403.AAA82094@node1.frontiernet.net> from "Automatic digest processor" at May 30, 97 00:03:49 am Content-Type: text There's a difference here between what I was saying about adding a layer of professional bookmaking to the publishing of poetry and the extremely fancy stuff like White Rabbit and Toothpaste. I just think that most book buyers, including me, react better to perfect bound trade editions with at least a two-color cover. It doesn't change the content, of course, but it tells people that the publisher takes the work very seriously. Some really cool stuff exists in xerograph only, but almost nobody buys it. I'm trying to recall if CB & BA even trimmed the edges of those folded stapled legal size sheets when they started, but I think it was the book from Southern Illinois that caught enough attention to increase the sales of their other books, and that's what it's all about. Sales, sales, sales! Market share. Stock Markets. Welcome to the 20th c. Poets don't get subsidized until after their established, and vice-versa. Ye can weep, but it won't change. So put on a stalwart face and give those books some glossy covers. Personally, I'd like to dream of an internet utopia where publishers aren't needed, but people use the opinions of publishers and editors to gauge a writer without reading on their own. Plus, like Sanders says, a big meteor could come along and wipe it all out. It's gotta be paper. It has to have market share. It has to slip into libraries. It has to be disputed among dull theoreticians. Otherwise it will all get lost with the sunday paper, put down for puppy-poo. And it's all so far from the real situation. We write as we eat, breathe, sleep. We speak. We arrange the words as gifts for friends or as part of arguments. Some say they desire to take posession of the language, but for my it's all one. Eat/shit, listen/talk, read/write, wake/sleep. All having nothing to do with being published or being remembered. That comes after, but it comes with a vengeance. Hard work wants appreciation. So bind 'em up, glue em, and slap on a glossy cover. I don't need any fancy letterpress editions, just a regular old book. When our 'zine comes out, that's the way it will be. Fred said we don't need honorariums, but really, what other art goes so unpaid?! In the end, we only want some R.E.S.P.E.C.T. (just a little bit) When I was enslaved by a literary arts center, we had readings given for free. The state arts agency told us they required that we charge a fee for the readings, so we changed our policy. We got four times as many people. It's all a matter of perception. Gotta be perfect bound, gotta have some color on the cover. That's all. Pete Landers ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 18:59:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: AWP/a relief In-Reply-To: <9705231136.AA31141@is.nyu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For those of you who were still following this thread: We did some rather extensive digging into files and archives, and discovered some very important facts: 1) Michelle Glazer's ms. was sent to Jorie Graham by way of screener Kathleen Peirce. 2) When Ms. Graham requested the manuscripts, she did so by *log number*, according to our intern's notes; in other words, every ms. that she did end up picking arrived at her through regular channels. As well, at least one of the mss. she requested did *not* become either a finalist or the winner. I am glad to discover that regular procedure was followed. I'd like to apologize for any confusion or concern that may have been raised by previous discussion on this topic. Gwyn McVay ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 19:28:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Bookss Groommed For The Big One (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Bookss Groommed For The Big One (fwd) We want to look disspassssionately at the dissorder upon the ssurface of thiss planet, and the fasst-foward excessssess of the humman sspeciess - fromm the disstance of a ssolar ssysstemm or two - it mmight be evident that the ssurface iss doing nothing mmore than a temmporary cleanup; mme- teorss, assteroidss, commetss, ssolar flaress sspitting around the atmmo- ssphere for a few thoussand yearss, give or take a mmillion. The sslight advantage of a potential well here ssuddenly lock-sstock-and-barrel a three or four mmillion year intelligence throughput, ssommething to count on (nummberss develop). Lotss of ssex and inhalationss, pond-sslurp. Crassh, another big one. Now three to four sspeciess an hour dissappear, each with dissappointingly long hisstoriess. A big boomm and it'ss all gone! What'ss to do, ssays the high commmmissssioner; by the timme that'ss done, crackss appear. Lava, the sstuffing'ss out, worldly cusshion gone awry. High comm jennifer grabss the leftoverss, typess of fliess, viral reproductionss gone mmad, nemmatode inssanity. Run cumm jummp jerussalemm. What'ss that er sayss. Cracked place, reply, there'ss no mmap, no ssoap radio. What'ss that er sayss. Jen'ss gone an other fasst-foward slammmmed to sstop. Rewind er ssayss. Tape'ss broke Jen'ss gone with er vialss. SShe'ss jusst fun, firsst big-pie planet piece boommss in upper sspace. Whew-bang! __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 20:00:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: AWP/a relief Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I, too, am relieved that the AWP Award Series seems to have been conducted according to the written guidelines. We can argue forever, of course, about whether Graham should have picked her own recent student. As someone who years ago had a famous mentor name him third in a first book competiion to avoid the charge of favoritism, well. . . I have mixed feelings on this. But those conflicts have been aired already in this forum. Two important points: 1) AWP seems to have done nothing outside its own guidelines; 2) Michelle Glazer is in no way responsible for the actions of Jorie Graham. I have not read Ms. Glazer's book, but I think it is very important that we, as readers, not allow ourselves to be swayed by the controversy surrounding its selection, but try to read it on its own terms. __________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 20:41:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: AWP/a relief In-Reply-To: <338F6A1A.611@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Joseph Duemer wrote: > Two important points: 1) AWP seems to have done nothing outside its own > guidelines; 2) Michelle Glazer is in no way responsible for the actions > of Jorie Graham. I have not read Ms. Glazer's book, but I think it is > very important that we, as readers, not allow ourselves to be swayed by > the controversy surrounding its selection, but try to read it on its own > terms. Bravo -- good damn points. As for the second: HAS anybody read the book? I'd like to know if Graham picked a loser (as she sure did with Mark Levine's DEBT, a National Poetry series winner I believe, picked by Graham, who was Levine's teacher.) Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 01:24:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Jennifer Turns Julu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII /* current program output tables as julu expands */ Jennifer turns Julu truth:tense:pills:jen:true:349:6:julu:jen:tense cap:inal:inate:s:term:all_right:164:2:juli!:term:cap yorlrm:yorlmount:yorlrev:yorl:thru!:322:6:julo:yorl:yorlrev hole:she:he:id:lu:her:ah, true:247:6:lulu:her:id dark:thick:acidic:brown:verily:636:7:yellow:brown:acidic tip:spit:spat:iron:silence:quietly:674:3:meek:silence:spat needle:heroin:frozen:cold:ice:silver:710:6:gold:ice:frozen Would gold mind you partying ice head:tail:Dog:burnout:mad!:721:4:crazed:burnout:tail Would crazed mind you partying burnout Come home with me julu-of-the-fast-crowd Ah, my breasts eaten by julu-of-the-open-arms and julu-depressed Come home with me julu-of-the-fast-crowd Ah, your makeup eaten by julu-of-the-open-arms and julu-depressed Nothing:Death-Knob:Broken-Hole:301:6:Dry:Death-Knob:Nothing Come home with me julu-of-the-fast-crowd Ah, your masquerade eaten by julu-of-the-open-arms and julu-depressed space:sign:fat:me:flat:anorexic:334:6:thin:flat:sign Your penetrating the Thing is in my open arms melt-body:cold-body:gone-body:suck:wayward:345:6:dog-girl:suck:gone-body Your forgiving love is in my open arms ________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 06:57:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 29 May 1997 to 30 May 1997 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" David Kellogg wrote: >HAS anybody read the book? I'd like to know if Graham picked a loser (as >she sure did with Mark Levine's DEBT, a National Poetry series winner I >believe, picked by Graham, who was Levine's teacher.) > Hey, I thought DEBT was a terrific book . SWheeler Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 07:32:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: credit & debt MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT David Kellogg uttered: > HAS anybody read the book? I'd like to know if Graham picked a > loser (as she sure did with Mark Levine's DEBT, a National Poetry > series winner I believe, picked by Graham, who was Levine's > teacher.) and Susan Wheeler countered: > Hey, I thought DEBT was a terrific book . well here are the dichots du jour: winner / loser credit / debt if debt is a "loser" yet it's a "winner" how do you credit that? (what are your charges?) one recalls a bestseller of bygone years entitled emphatically "Steal This Book!" perhaps I'd buy me a copy of "debt" soon as I'm out of it (so I can get into it) if you liked debt, you could try the sequel: Chapter XI (only in hardback) d.i. (w/ apology to Mark Levine whose writing I've yet to espy) . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ======================= | Many cities of men he saw | and learned their minds, | many pains he suffered, heartsick | on the open sea, | fighting to save his life and bring | his comrades home. . . . | Launch out on his story, Muse, | daughter of Zeus, | start from where you will . . . ////////////////////////////////////////////////// Homer, The Odyssey Book 1: Athena Inspires the Prince trans. Robert Fagles (1996) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ svaha ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 08:54:38 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Mottram Conference MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Eric Mottram Conference Friday 19th September 1997 Probable venue: Centre for English Studies, University of London, Senate House, Malet St., London WC1 The aim of the Conference is to explore and extend the field in which Eric Mottram was working; in particular to take up the recurrent concerns and urgencies which run through the wide range of materials he handled. This is envisaged as the beginning of a series of conferences, which would allow for preparation and concentration on particular areas of concern. The occasion can be used to begin to define these. The following people have so far agreed to contribute: Jerome Rothenberg Pierre Joris Allen Fisher John Kenny Loss Glazier Dale Carter Organizing Committee: Will Rowe (coordinator) W.ROWE@KCL.AC.UK Allen Fisher KAA45@DIAL.PIPEX.COM Robert Hampson R.HAMPSON@RHBNC.AC.UK Peterjon and Yasmin Skelt PSKELT@IMS-GLOBAL.COM -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 09:52:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: procedures in literary space Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Talk about litpolice! 1. I'm not -- *NOT* -- a fan of Jorie Graham's work, but I hope she picks whomever she chooses to give whatever prize she has to give, and procedures be foutu. Ditto Doug Messerli, and anyone else I know or don't. Does anyone in her right mind become a poet to follow procedures? "Fairness" is not -- *NOT* -- a feature of any world or ecology. It's an enlightenment construct and a weak concept. It turns the set of activities it polices into a game. Literally. Poetry is not a game. People must believe deeply in their activities and the position they create, the world they create, and in groups believe deeply in each other and push each other forward -- work and human being (how are they different?). I want each of you to do that too. 2. Literary space has no border nor inside/outside distinction. It's additive: doing the work creates the space. When you're young and just getting started you think you occupy no literary space, you can't get inside the one you see. People don't seem to want to let you in. Later, after you've made some work, you find that the literary space seems to include you in some way (never satisfactorily, of course). All that means is you've given something, done something, created some space. Why is it never satisfactory? The conception you have of who you are as a writer, a poet, extends forward beyond what you've written, includes the arc of your writerly intentions as you understand them. But the space is one of work done. There's a gap. It's a good gap. It's called ambition. Ambition is good. Ambition to do work is good, that is. It makes you put your work forward and put forward the work of those who occupy your social mirror. It forces you to formulate and understand, and extend and refine, that arc of intention that is the to-come part, the most interesting part, of who you are as a writer. 3. The entire function of procedures is to normalize a world whose existence and flourishing depends on being un-normalized. Do anything you can to resist procedure. 4. (snipping threads) Speaking for myself, I'd be real interested to see Vyt's new Holderlin translations, to discuss Dorn's poetry, to consider why one poses Ron Silliman in opposition to Charles Bernstein yes or no?, to talk more about French argot phrases based on the word foutre, to talk about why poets like to be in groups, how/why the community of poets can subsist globally and over generations of time so that I for example (you too, I hope) feel in a community with Arnaut Daniel (it's the first virtual community), to talk about the ways literary and scholarly criticism intersect new poetry (see above, under "normalization"), even to discuss non-rusting staples, or Web publishing. You name it. Anything but how to form into a fairer and better committee to reform the procedures committee. Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 09:57:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: procedures in literary space Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" tom, i get the spirit of what you say, and i understand only too well how the letter kills... and i'm not wedded to the term "fair," either, but just so we understand ourselves: if i say i'm going to "judge" such & such, and that i will as judge pick what i like best, then that's that... and if i erect a procedure for doing so, and don't follow that procedure, and somebody calls me on it---well hey, then, i think that anything less than responding to same is unfair, you bet i do!... but let's be a bit more subtle: whence the impulse to advocate *anything*, if that impulse is not thoroughly (as in 'always already') saturated with moral-political-yeah-ecological-if-you-like longings/aspirations/beliefs?... personally, i don't hold poetry-as-a-set-of-practices unaccountable to same, even if i don't think "accountability" as an accountant might... and i'm adamantly in favor of working *not* to be programmatic... but here: even this list, technically speaking and as you know, requires programmatic thinking in order to function as such... and it bugs me to have to say that i've never been associated with an institution didn't grate on me b/c of its programmatic stipulations... so one bind today, in being creative in a creative being in living so etc, is in trying to find some space (incl. that arc of intention to which you refer) in which we aren't reduced to programmatic insistence of ______... but i take this latter as fully moral-ethical-political-blah blah blah as possible... meaning, once i lay claim *mself* to acting in ostensibly programmatic ways, b/c let's say i *did* join the club, it strikes me as my obligation to respond in accordance with what i've laid claim to---or, to change same to make it less programmatic, more hospitable, fair-er!... and in fact, in advocating anything at all, though again this may not be a matter of any but *self*-legislation, i would say that there is a concept of 'fairness' thereabouts, therein, at stake... but that's between or among us on this list, say... perhaps "fairness" suggests a 'balancing' act that is just not applicable to the arts... as in rendering a decision wrt a courtroom hearing... but once you enter into the public domain advocating that this is the way things will or should work, why then you're all bound up with what's fair---in coping with conflicts of interest and such, even in being self-consistent with what you advocate... one of the reasons that politics per se is such a hassle... fair enough?... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 11:09:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Finnegan Subject: Re: procedures in literary space In a message dated 97-05-31 09:58:21 EDT, you write: >I'm not -- *NOT* -- a fan of Jorie Graham's work, but I hope she picks >whomever she chooses to give whatever prize she has to give, and procedures >be foutu. Ditto Doug Messerli, and anyone else I know or don't. > >Does anyone in her right mind become a poet to follow procedures? > >"Fairness" is not -- *NOT* -- a feature of any world or ecology. It's an >enlightenment construct and a weak concept. It turns the set of activities >it polices into a game. Literally. > > The Machiavellian poet writes. But I'm not so sure. I think proper disclosure is required when a publisher runs a "competition" (requiring an entry fee). The form of disclosure should be a simple statement in the guidelines: The contest judge will have the right to solicit manuscripts not selected by the screeners as finalists. Caveat emptor. (I know of a case where a judge asked to select her own screeners. If that was allowed, it should too have been disclosed in the guidelines.) Finnegan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 13:37:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: book forms In-Reply-To: <199705301921.PAA65768@node6.frontiernet.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII As a person who made and sold hundreds of xerox or what i call "XOLLAGE" booklets and broadsheets and so on--I think Pete Landers may have missed one of the points of this kind of activity. It is precisely that it might have as among its intentions ephemerality. The ephermeral can be a way of presenting that which is fugitive and resistant to capture by standardization. A constantly shifting and elusive language that refuses to be turned in to a glossary. A way of looking at --seeing and reading--things that doesn't want the panoptican of normalized publication and reception. The pieces I made in XOLLAGE sold for what it cost to print them. From seven cents to 70 cents. The money involved was ephemeral--whatever sold just paid for more copies. You were always bascially a couple of dollars behind. The effect of the work was that it got others doing it. There's always the hope that if a number of people are doing it--there's a bit less normalization in the world. It may come with the dust and be gone with the wind--but then the intention may be to not draw attention, to keep moving, to be mobile-- Camouflage--now you see it now you don't-- Deleuze and Guattari have something of this in mind when they write of Nomadism. But their nomadism is installed now in univerisities and large tomes from presses with two tone glossy covers. This is ever the way of things perhaps as Pete Landers notes. But there's a difference between "getting ahead in the world" and keeping on going-- and it is ever the way of things that there as well things made and done without any interest in creating monuments-- of hundreds of xollage things made--a few may be here and there--unsigned to be sure--but for the most part long gone-- depending on which syllayble you stress in its prononciation, this word indicates two aspects of xollage work: REFUSE !!!!! --dave baptiste chirot On Fri, 30 May 1997, Peter Landers wrote: > There's a difference here between what I was saying about adding a layer > of professional bookmaking to the publishing of poetry and the extremely > fancy stuff like White Rabbit and Toothpaste. I just think that most book > buyers, including me, react better to perfect bound trade editions with at > least a two-color cover. It doesn't change the content, of course, but it > tells people that the publisher takes the work very seriously. Some really > cool stuff exists in xerograph only, but almost nobody buys it. I'm trying > to recall if CB & BA even trimmed the edges of those folded stapled legal > size sheets when they started, but I think it was the book from Southern > Illinois that caught enough attention to increase the sales of their other > books, and that's what it's all about. > > Sales, sales, sales! Market share. Stock Markets. Welcome to the 20th c. > Poets don't get subsidized until after their established, and vice-versa. > Ye can weep, but it won't change. So put on a stalwart face and give those > books some glossy covers. > > Personally, I'd like to dream of an internet utopia where publishers > aren't needed, but people use the opinions of publishers and editors to > gauge a writer without reading on their own. Plus, like Sanders says, a > big meteor could come along and wipe it all out. It's gotta be paper. It > has to have market share. It has to slip into libraries. It has to be > disputed among dull theoreticians. Otherwise it will all get lost with the > sunday paper, put down for puppy-poo. > > And it's all so far from the real situation. We write as we eat, breathe, > sleep. We speak. We arrange the words as gifts for friends or as part of > arguments. Some say they desire to take posession of the language, but for > my it's all one. Eat/shit, listen/talk, read/write, wake/sleep. All having > nothing to do with being published or being remembered. That comes after, > but it comes with a vengeance. Hard work wants appreciation. So bind 'em > up, glue em, and slap on a glossy cover. I don't need any fancy > letterpress editions, just a regular old book. When our 'zine comes out, > that's the way it will be. Fred said we don't need honorariums, but > really, what other art goes so unpaid?! In the end, we only want some > R.E.S.P.E.C.T. (just a little bit) > > When I was enslaved by a literary arts center, we had readings given for > free. The state arts agency told us they required that we charge a fee for > the readings, so we changed our policy. We got four times as many people. > It's all a matter of perception. Gotta be perfect bound, gotta have some > color on the cover. That's all. > > Pete Landers > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 15:05:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: book forms / & Holderlin update MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT dave baptiste chirot: > It may come with the dust and be gone with the wind-- "we come like water and like wind we go" - Khayyam d.i. p.s., Tom & all, spoke w/ Vyt on phone (he's managed to avoid the online universe so far); he'll send me some of his Holderlin holdings & I'll example some of same here. He also mentioned, in passing, an early, epistolary novel that H. wrote, *Hyperion*, which I'm now curious to look at. Another remark of Vyt's: that some of his sense of Holderlin was spurred on by readings in Maurice Blanchot's essays (wherein H.'s poetry makes periodic appearance). . , ......., 1.................., \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/\0/\/////////////////////...' .o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o....' ///\\\\\\/////////\/\\\o///\/\\\\\\\\\//////\\\...' .David..........Raphael..........Israel...' [ &/or.office......disrael@skgf.com ] {telephonic.location.202/882-1179} |"...sleuthing out all clues, blues & news"| \\\//////\\\\\\\\\/\///&\\\/\/////////\\\\\\///..' ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 15:40:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Fwd: How to read a tesla coil --------------------- Forwarded message: From: mka@ARCHIVE.ORG (Mary Katherine Austin) Sender: LETPRESS@hermes.csd.unb.ca (Letterpress Discussion List) Reply-to: LETPRESS@hermes.csd.unb.ca (Letterpress Discussion List) To: LETPRESS@hermes.csd.unb.ca Date: 97-05-30 07:18:23 EDT HOW TO READ A TESLA COIL a tour of the show of artists' books "You Call That a Book?" San Francisco Center for the Book 300 de Haro at 16th Street, San Francisco Saturday May 31, at 2 pm free to the public Info: 415 565 0545, info@sfcb.org The exhibition "You Call That a Book?" continuing through June 14, features the work of 34 artists who incorporate materials ranging from paper bags to condoms to Tesla coils in their imaginative and technically superb constructions. This is a selection of some of the most inventive and accomplished work yet produced in an art form most people are still unaware of. The tour will include informal talks by curator Steve Woodall, artist and critic Frances Butler, and Mills College Special Collections librarian Janice Braun. Several artists represented in the show will also be on hand to discuss their work. With roots going back to William Blake and beyond, the artist's book emerged in the 1970's as a newly recognized genre in the world of visual art. The form continues to grow exponentially, abetted by art school and university programs, and the appearance of centers for the study and promotion of the form, such as the San Francisco Center for the Book. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 18:12:17 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: A List of Poetry Schools MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Long convinced that some people (including more than one on this list) don't have as broad a sense of what's going on in contemporary American poetry as they might, and that no one is familiar with *everything* that's out there, I've decided to post my own (definitely flawed) impression of the scene. My hope is that a few of you will augment and adjust that impression, and we can arrive at some kind of intelligent, non-hierarchical, informal Master-List of Schools of American Poetry. This isn't my first try at this. A few years ago Len Fulton printed a list of mine in *Small Press Review* as a guest editorial. Alas, it generated next to no interest, only two people writing me about it. Poets and poetry-readers obviously have a prejudice against pigeon- holing. I keep at it, anyway, not only because I'm a taxonoholic, but because one of my dreams is that someday someone will publish a truly catholic anthology of current American poetry, which can't happen unless some sort of list is available. Such a list would also prove helpful for indexing all the poetry that is now on the Internet, or soon will be, possibly an even higher priority. In any event, here's what I've ocme up with: MAINSTREAM POETRY What's in all the standard anthologies; Vendler-certified; many sub-schools, some of which are: 1. Iowa-Workshop Poetry (e.g., Bell) 2. Surrealist Poetry (e.g., Bly) 3. Ecological Poetry (e.g., Snyder) 4. Jump-Cut Poetry (e.g., Ashbery) EASY-STREAM POETRY A variety of poetry that, based on its popularity, ought to be mainstream but is shut out of the major anthologies because academics look down on it. 1. Light Verse 2. Haiku LANGUAGE POETRY The poetry in *In the American Tree*, the Messerli anthology, etc.; Perloff-certified; several sub-schools that I lack the knowledge to untangle CONTRA-GENTEEL POETRY All the 'unrefined" plain-writing poets inspired by W.C. Williams, Frank O'Hara, the Beats, Bukowski. (Note: I include the ethnic poets in this school--but, of course, many poets, particularly the ethnic poets, are in more than one group--Maya Angelou, for instance, seems to me at times Mainstream, and at times Contra-Genteel.) The main sub-schools I know of are: 1. Conversationalist Poetry (e.g., O'Hara) 2. Beat Poetry (e.g., Corso, Bukowski), with several sub- divisions 3. Ethnic Poetry (e.g., Wanda Coleman) 4. Pop-Rhyme, which sudivides into Rap and the Neo-James- Whitcomb-Reilly School (yes, I need a less condescending name for this group--and probably for the Iowa-Workshop school) 5. Wild-Woman Poetry (e.g., Townsend) NEOFORMALIST POETRY Poetry continuing the techniques of traditional English poetry, especially meter. PLURAESTHETIC POETRY Any poetry that mixes expressive modalities: 1. Visio-Textual Poetry (e.g., Kempton), with three major and many smaller sub-divisions 2. Audio-Textual Poetry (e.g., McCaffery), also with three major and many smaller sub-divisions 3. Performance Poetry (e.g., Jack Foley) 4. Mathematical Poetry (e.g., LeRoy Gorman) 5. Flow-Chart Poetry (I've seen some but don't remember the name of anyone who does it) INFRA-VERBAL POETRY Poetry whose focus is the inside of words. Taxonomically, I consider this school a sub-group of Language Poetry, but it seems sufficiently off on its own to rank as a separate school for the purposes of this list (which is not intended as a formal taxonomy); Joyce and Carroll are infra-verbal poetry's chief forebears--and Cummings, whom I've come to consider more an infra-verbal than a visual poetry HYPERTEXTUAL POETRY I know almost nothing about this. It might just be pluraesthetic poetry in a new medium. There they are, the eight main schools of poetry I'm aware of (or remember). Any additions, corrections, comments? Bob Grumman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 16:16:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: oh those contests, theyre everywhere Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re: Stephen Vincent's Book Contests/AN IDEA & its comments on the growth of contests as funding has been cut. It certainly is true up here, although it has not happened so much with publishers as with organizations (The League of Canadian Poets) & journals: almost all of the well-known Canadian ones have contests in at least one area, some in many, as Malahat Review's long poem & novella contests. At least with magazines, they do include a year's subscription as automatically part of youre return on the fee (but the fee is much larger than a sub would be). Funding has gone down; contests have gone up. ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour I see Department of English only University of Alberta through the touching of Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 the light (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Luce Irigaray H: 436 3320 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 18:26:11 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: list of poetry school Interesting idea, Bob, but clearly you left out a few, such as: the Jacqueline Spandrift School of Disinclined, Dissenting & Dissin' Coyote Poetry The Providence School of Noisy Metaphysical Claptrap Anti-Non-Traditionalist Old White Guy Poetry the milieu forming like a tepid pool around the aura of the legend of the soi-disant Tulsa-Wye-on-Hay-w/mustard matrix of Erica Blarnes and her proteges - just thought this might help... - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 19:39:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Re: A List of Poetry Schools Comments: To: Bob Grumman In-Reply-To: <3390A241.EC0@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sat, 31 May 1997, Bob Grumman wrote: > > There they are, the eight main schools of poetry I'm aware of (or > remember). Any additions, corrections, comments? > > Bob Grumman I'm never sure of the point of taxonomies (re: Foucault) , but in any case you've left out poetry which is ab nihilo performative - for example www.jodi.com, my own stuff, the "Perl Poetry" in Programming Perl, and even the material in alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb, which isn't per- formative, but references protocol. And as the Net grows, this will swamp. Alan > ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ and Javascripted text/webpages -- Tel. 718-857-3671, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY 11217 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 20:24:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: oh those contests, theyre everywhere MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Douglas Barbour notes, > Re: Stephen Vincent's Book Contests/AN IDEA & its comments on the > growth of contests as funding has been cut. It certainly is true up > here, although it has not happened so much with publishers as with > organizations (The League of Canadian Poets) & journals: almost all > of the well-known Canadian ones have contests in at least one area, > some in many,. . . Funding has gone down; contests have gone up. interesting. I wonder what proportion of the readership of these (contest-offering) lit journals consists of those who're (at some level or other) "trying to break into" the po-publishing game? I'd guess a rather large number. So this amounts to a sort of (optional) dues-pay for those [trying to] join the club? Seem to be losing my interest in contests. the more the contestants the fewer Countessas the more the confessants the less one confesses? Tom M.'s points were pretty good, with the slight caveat that those who're encourage to send in $25 (or whatever) presumably shouln't be misled into thinking their work will be considered if it won't. But at this point I don't see that such was (nec.) the case in either instance lately mentioned. Too, I don't know that Jorie G. shd. nec. be limited to the opinions of "readers". (When I was sending stuff to such contests, I felt more distrustful of anonymous readers than I did of the known judges, must say. I tended to feel, if the MS could but reach the eyes of the Judge, surely its merits . . . [etc.] . . ) best, d.i. . , ......., 1.................., \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/\0/\/////////////////////...' .o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o....' ///\\\\\\/////////\/\\\o///\/\\\\\\\\\//////\\\...' .David..........Raphael..........Israel...' [&/or.office......disrael@skgf.com] {telephonic.location.202/882-1179} | "...honk if you believe in geese" | \\\//////\\\\\\\\\/\///&\\\/\/////////\\\\\\///..' ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 20:56:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: agony of procedure Seems like a kind of romantic idea that poets are on one side, struggling with their buddies to build a space for themselves, and the procedural accountants are on the other. There's a poetry of procedure, a poetry of exactitude, a poetry of rectitude and precision, a poetry of fair play and just dealing, a poetry of the equitable person as opposed to the righteous or self-righteous person - the equitable person who doesn't demand even his or her fair share, who gives way, who turns the other cheek - not out of timidity or cowardice but in the knowledge that nothing under the moon is quite right - and to give way is to perfect the slight or gross injustice of relations with awareness & generosity - this is maybe the Tao of peace or whatever. There's a poetry of that - but it is based on a clear-eyed awareness of promises, covenants, fair dealing. There's a poetry in all this - maybe a romantic poetry - but only to the extent that all poetry is romantic. Or maybe English, I should say (what ho, not quite cricket, old chap - not quite fair play, eh?) - Eric Blarnes ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 23:17:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: list of poetry school Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Henry, finally, thanks to you I have a place to hang my hat! viz. "The Providence School of Noisy Metaphysical Claptrap anti-Non-Traditionalist Old White Guy Poetry." What a great birthday present. Sincerely, Joe -- __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens