UNIT 1: COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION
 
Bring a favorite poem or memoir (full or selected). We'll use these for an in-class writing experiment.
 
READING:
--from "Composition as Explanation" by Gertrude Stein
--from Grapefruit by Yoko Ono
 
Yoko Ono's idea of license, the setting up of a situation where others could complete a work of art instead of the artist, was a radical departure from the existing concept of the role of the artist.

-Jon Hendricks
--from The Tapeworm Foundry by Darren Werschler Henry
 
WRITING:
--in class: we will write a series of at least 10 instructions, recipes or propositions for a poem
 
TERMS/ISSUES:
form, content, labor, process, instructional writing, authorship
 
"what is seen, said & made" (JR)
 
what can an inherited or tradition form do?
what can it not do?
what happens when we invent or imagine or propose new forms and new procedures?
 
 
Sept 7, nothing changes except composition
 
The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those who describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. Nothing changes from generation to generation except the thing seen and that makes a composition.
--Gertrude Stein (1925)
 
Bring a favorite poem or memoir (full or selected). We'll use these for an in-class writing experiment. READING: -- selected(Soma)tic poetry exercises by CA Conrad -- (Soma)tic poetry website --*listen to poems from (Soma)tic Midge via PennSound One form I have been working with, and sharing with others is (Soma)tic Poetics, a form of process which aids in breaking free from the stale whimper garnered out of demanding routines of work and modern life. 
CA Conrad from MACRO (Soma)tics:  an introductory note toward freedom I cannot stress enough how much this mechanistic world, as it becomes more and more efficient, resulting in ever increasing brutality, has required me to FIND MY BODY to FIND MY PLANET in order to find my poetry. -CA Conrad, introduction to Somatic Midge WRITING: --Write a (Soma)tic poetry exercise --Perform your exercise including the note taking (if it is a part of your exercise), and the poem --Include process note at top of assignment. TERMS/ISSUES: (Soma)tic poetry Where is the self? Where is the exercise? Where is the form? Are there rules? Is there freedom? http://writing.upenn.edu/%7Etaransky/somatic-exercises.pdfhttp://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/CAConrad.phphttp://www.nonsitecollective.org/book/export/html/734shapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3
Sept 14, (soma)tic poetry