A Place To Stand
THE PLACE TO STAND PRODUCTIONS PROGRAM WILL BE HELD THIS THURSDAY, APRIL 19TH, AT 6 PM AT THE KELLY WRITERS HOUSE. THE EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, AND RECIPIENTS ARE ASKED TO BRING THEIR RECREATION AND READ IT AT THE PROGRAM. THANK YOU.
Greetings, and welcome to the homepage for A Place To Stand Productions.
Since you're at this Web site, one of two things has happened:
1. You're an excellent internet sleuth, or
2. More likely, you're a recipient of A Place To Stand Productions mailing.
Thank you for taking the time to read the mail, and for visiting our Web site. You are the recipient of a one-of-a-kind reproduction, an important (or provocative or interesting or silly or however you would like to define it) text recreated for you and only you.
A Place To Stand Productions is run by University of Pennsylvania graduate John Carroll and funded by the Kelly Writers House Junior Fellows project, which was established in 1998 by Kelly Writers House supporters Ralph Saul, a Penn alumnus and a life-long Philadelphian, and his wife Bette Saul.
John selects each work himself and recreates it on a typewriter. The idea for the project came from John's time in the Kelly Writers House Fellows course in the spring of 2006. The basic idea behind the project -- that literature can and should inspire, inform and motivate its readers -- came in response to a Richard Ford op-ed piece titled "Our Moments Have All Been Seized," which appeared in The New York Times on December 27, 1998.
The project came full circle after the next two Fellows visited -- Cynthia Ozick and Ian Frazier. The character of Rupert in Ozick's The Puttermesser Papers inspired John to recreate the great works that Ford urged his readers to seek out, which Frazier's choice to still work on a typewriter provided John the unique aesthetic that he sought, as well an answer to Ford's challenge to resist progress.
This project, though, extends beyond John's work at the typewriter. While this project will technically end with a program at the Kelly Writers House on April 19, 2007, John wants it to extend well beyond then. That's why he's inviting each recipient -- that's you, the person visting this page -- to start recretaing their own works and mailing them out to others in the city of Philadelphia, the nation, and the world. While John adheres to the rule of recreating at least one work a day, on a typewriter, and then randomly selecting a person from the phonebook, these are not strict rules. Instead, those interested in participating in the project should make it their own, but still follow the basic guidelines -- to speak to a person one-on-one, to resist progress, and to motivate our audience.
A list of works recreated by John will appear at the bottom of this page, and will be updated frequently. Meanwhile, if you have any questions or comments, general feedback, or a request to participate in the April 19 program, please contact John via e-mail.
1. Wallace Stevens' "The Plain Sense of Things"
2. John Ashbery's "Some Trees"
3. Rae Armantrout's "Here"
4. Imamu Amiri Baraka's "Incident"
5. "It only a coincidence" chapter of Lyn Hejinian's "My Life"
6. "Canopy of useful postulates" passage from Richard Ford's "Independence Day
7. An excerpt from Ian Frazier's "Typewriter Man" essay
8. Emily Dickinson poem No. 214
9. William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just to Say"
10. Opening passage of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five"
11. Radiohead's "Myxomatosis"
12. "America is a leap of the imagination" passage of Ian Frazier's "On The Rez"
13. H.D.'s "Sea Rose"
14. Frank O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died"
15. Claude McKay's "If We Must Die"
16. Phoenix and Mirror Factory passage from Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451"
17. Robert Frost's "Mending Wall"
18. William Carlos Williams' "Portrait of a Lady"
19. Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro"
20. Edna St. Vincent Millay's "First Fig"
21. John Ashbery's "The One Thing That Can Save America"
22-27. Excerpts from Richard Ford's "Our Moments Have All Been Seized"
28. An excerpt from Primo Levi's "The Periodic Table"
29. John Ashbery's "The Grapevine"
30. Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art"
31. Robert Creeley's "I Know A Man"
32. Allen Ginsberg's "Ode to Failure"
33. Donald Hall's "Digging"
34. Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not A Painter"
35. Frank O'Hara's "Poem"
36. Sylvia Plath's "Stillborn"
37. Adrienne Rich's "Power"
38. Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "A Dark Portrait"
39. Jackson Mac Low's "Trope Market"
40. "127th Chorus" from Jack Kerouac's "Mexico City Blues"
41. Robert Creeley's "The Language"
42. John Ashbery's "Paradoxes and Oxymorons"
43. Alice Notley's "Poem"
44. Bernadette Mayer's "Sonnet"
45. Charles Bernstein's "Whose Language?"
46. Sam Donsky's "June"
47. Pia Aliperti's "The Lost Art"
48. Charles Bernstein's "Let's Just Say"
49. Gertrude Stein's "Susie Asado"
50. Sarah N. Cleghorn's "The Golf Links Lie So Near The Mill"
51. Carl Sandburg's "Mag"
52. Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man"
53. William Carlos Williams' "The Young Housewife"
54. Ezra Pound's "A Pact"
55. H.D.'s "The Pool"
56. T.S. Eliot's "The Boston Evening Transcript"
57. Claude McKay's "If We Must Die"
58. An excerpt from Lyn Hejinian's "The Fatalist"
59. An excerpt from Walt Whitman's "Sony of Myself"
60. Emily Dickinson's #1129
61. Wallace Stevens' "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"
62. James Joyce's "Ecce Puer"
63. William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow"
64. William Carlos Williams' "The Great Figure"
65. D.H. Lawrence's "You"
66. Claude McKay's "America"
67. e.e. cummings' "[the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls]"
68. Frank O'Hara's "A Warm Day for December"
69. Frank O'Hara's "Poem"
70-72. Excerpts from Richard Ford's "The Lay of the Land"
73. Lilith Lorraine's "To the Practical Man"
74. Louis Ginsberg's "Waterfalls of Stone"
75. Catherine French's "Alphabet"
76. Cathleen Calbert's "Listening to My Mother in the Alzheimer's Wing"
77. Emily Dickinson's #657
78. Emily Dickinson's #556
79. An excerpt from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"
80. Allen Ginsberg's "Sphincter"
81. William Carlos Williams' "Danse Russe"
82. William Carlos Williams' "Smell!"
83. Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer"
84. Walt Whitman's "To a Pupil" from "Leaves of Grass"
85. Emily Dickinson's #1695
86. Emily Dickinson's #1705
87. Emily Dickinson's #1052
88. Emily Dickinson's #632
89. Emily Dickinson's #1129
90. Lorine Niedecker's "[A country's economics sick]"
91. Lorine Niedecker's "You are my friend"
92. Lorine Niedecker's "[Grandfather advised me]"
93. Lorine Niedecker's "I rose from marsh mud"
94. Lorine Niedecker's "Don't tell me property is sacred!"
95. H.D.'s "Red Rose and a Beggar"
96. Rae Armantrout's "About"
97. Cid Corman's "It isn't for want"
98. Cid Corman's "Assistant"
99. Ezra Pound's "The Encounter"
100. Wallace Stevens' "Gray Room"
101. Richard Aldington's "Daisy"
102. Williams Carlos Williams' "Lines"
103. William Carlos Williams' "Between Walls"
104. Carl Rakosi's "ZZZZZ"
105. William Carlos Williams' "Young Woman at a Window" (Version 1)
106. William Carlos Williams' "Young Woman at a Window" (Version 2)
107-108. Excerpts from Gertrude Stein's "A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson"
109-110. An excerpt from Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons"
111. Gertrude Stein's "Readings"
112. Gertrude Stein's "Any one doing something and standing"
113. Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven's "A Dozen Cocktails--Please"
114. Tristan Tzara's How To Make a Dadaist Poem
115. Genevieve Taggard's "Interior"
116. David Greenhood's "Bread Winners"
117. Ruth Lechlitner's "Lines for an Abortionist's Office"
118. William Carlos Williams' "Late for Summer Weather"
119. Carl Rakosi's "Oh Sestina"
120. George Hitchcock's "War"
121. Claude McKay's "The Tropics of New York
122. Claude McKay's "The Harlem Dancer"
123. Langston Hughes' "Morning After"
124. William Jay Smith's "Epigrams"
125. X.J. Kennedy's "Nude Descending a Staircase"
126. Alison Lurie's "Trees, Being Neighbors"
127. Adrienne Rich's "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"
128. Anne Waldman's "Number Song"
129. Jack Kerouac's "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose"
130. Gregory Corso's "The Mad Yak"
131. Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter"
132. John Yau's "830 Fireplace Road"
133. Frank O'Hara's "Like"
134. Frank O'Hara's "At the Old Place"
135. Kenneth Koch's "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams"
136. Kenneth Koch's "Mending Sump"
137. Robert Creeley's "I Know a Man"
138. John Ashbery's "What is Poetry"
139. John Ashbery's Hard Times"
140. John Ashbery's "The Grapevine"
141. Gary Soto's "How Things Work"
142. Allen Ginsberg's "Is About"
143. Walt Whitman's "A Hand Mirror"
144. Emily Dickinson's # 49
145. Emily Dickinson's # 249
146. Emily Dickinson's # 303
147. Emily Dickinson's # 341
148. Emily Dickinson's # 435
149. Emily Dickinson's # 1732
150. William Butler Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
151. William Butler Yeats' "Politics"
152. Edwin Arlington Robinson's "The Dark Hills"
153. Gertrude Stein's "Guillaume Apollinaire"
154. Amy Lowell's "Venus Transiens"
155. Amy Lowell's "A Decade"
156. Amy Lowell's "Shore Grass"
157. Carl Sandburg's "The Harbor"
158. Carl Sandburg's "Subway"
159. Carl Sandburg's "Grass"
160. Wallace Stevens' "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"
161. Wallace Stevens' "The Death of a Soldier"
162. Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar"
163. Wallace Stevens' "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon"
164. Mina Loy's "Gertrude Stein"
165. William Carlos Williams' "The Young Housewife"
166. William Carlos Williams' "Queen-Ann's-Lace"
167. William Carlos Williams' "Spring and All"
168. William Carlos Williams' "Flowers by the Sea"
169. Ezra Pound's "A Pact"
170. Siegfried Sassoon's "'Blighters'"
171. Siegfried Sassoon's "Everyone Sang"
172. H.D.'s "Oread"
173. H.D.'s "The Pool"
174. H.D.'s "Epitaph"
175. Marianne Moore's "To a Snail"
176. Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Grown-Up"
177. Dorothy Parker's "Resume"
178. Dorothy Parker's "Observation"
179. Dorothy Parker's "Oscar Wilde"
180. Dorothy Parker's "George Sand"
181. Charles Reznikoff's "[On Brooklyn Bridge I Saw a Man Drop Dead]"
182. Charles Reznikoff's "[The Shopgirls Leave Their Work]"
183. Charles Reznikoff's "[I Walked through the Lonely Marsh]"
184. Charles Reznikoff's "[Walk about the Subway Station]"
185. e.e. cummings' "["next to of course god america i]"
186. Laura Riding's "The Map of Places"
187. Langston Hughes' "Suicide's Note"
188. Langston Hughes' "Cross"
189. Langston Hughes' "Motto"
190. Langston Hughes' "125th Street"
191. Langston Hughes' "Boogie: 1 A.M."
192. Langston Hughes' "Nightmare Boogie"
193. Langston Hughes' "Dream Boogie: Variation"
194. C. Day Lewis' "Where Are the War Poets?"
195. Stanley Kunitz's "The Portrait"
196. Stanley Kunitz's "The Catch"
197. Stanley Kunitz's "Day of Foreboding"
198. George Oppen's "Solution"
199. George Oppen's "From Disaster"
200. George Oppen's "From Disaster"
201. George Oppen's "Pedestrian"
202. Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art"
203. May Swenson's "Question"
204. Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California"
205. May Senson's "A Couple"
206. May Swenson's "Last Day"
207. Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays"
208. Karl Shapiro's "Manhole Covers"
209. William Stafford's "At the Bomb Testing Site"
210. Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
211. Dylan Thomas' "The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower"
212. Dylan Thomas' "When All My Five and Country Senses See"
213. Dylan Thomas' "Twenty-Four Years"
214. Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Rites for Cousin Vit"
215. Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Bean Eaters"
216. Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool"
217. Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till"
218. Howard Nemerov's "Snowflakes"
219. Howard Nemerov's "Gyroscope"
220. Richard Wilbur's "Ceremony"
221. Philip Larkin's "Water"
222. Philip Larkin's "Solar"
223. Philip Larkin's "Forget What Did"
224. Louis Simpson's "American Poetry"
225. Denise Levertov's "The Dog of Art"
226. Denise Levertov's "Song for Ishtar"
227. Denise Levertov's "The Ache of Marriage"
228. Denise Levertov's "Celebration"
229. Denise Levertov's "[Scraps of Moon]"
230. Donald Justice's "On the Death of Friends in Childhood"
231. Donald Justice's "The Grandfathers"
232. Donald Justice's "After a Phrase Abandoned by Wallace Stevens"
233. David Wagoner's "A Young Girl with a Pitcher Full of Water"
234. A.R. Ammons' "Love Song"
235. A.R. Ammons' "Small Song"
236. Robert Creeley's "Naughty Boy"
237. Robert Creeley's "I Keep to Myself Such Measures"
238. Robert Creeley's "Again"
239. Robert Creeley's "Mother's Voice"
240. David Wagoner's "By a Waterfall"
241. Frank O'Hara's "Poem"
242. Robert Bly's "The Great Society"
243. Robert Bly's "A Week after Your Death"
244. Charles Tomlinson's "Cezanne at Aix"
245. Charles Tomlinson's "Snapshot"
246. Galway Kinnell's "First Song"
247. W.S. Merwin's "For the Anniversary of My Death"
248. James Wright's "Saint Judas"
249. James Wright's "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio"
250. James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"
251. Thomas Kinsella's "Je t'adore"
252. A.K. Ramanujan's "Self-Portrait"
253. A.K. Ramanujan's "Alien"
254. Thom Gunn's "My Sad Captains"
255. Thom Gunn's "Still Life"
256. Gary Snyder's "Burning the Small Dead"
257. Kamau Brathwaite's "Trane"
258. Sylvia Plath's "Metaphors"
259. Sylvia Plath's "Poppies in October"
260. Audre Lorde's "A Question of Climate"
261. Mark Strand's "Keeping Things Whole"
262. Mark Strand's "Eating Poetry"
263. Mark Strand's "The Prediction"
264. Amiri Baraka's "A Poem for Speculative Hipsters"
265. Amiri Baraka's "Legacy"
266. Amiri Baraka's "Wise I"
267. Amiri Baraka's "Y The Link Will Not Always Be 'Missing' #40"
268. Amiri Baraka's 'In the Funk World"
269. Lucille Clifton's "cutting greens"
270. Lucille Clifton's "homage to my hips"
271. Lucille Clifton's [i am accused of tending to the past]
272. Lucille Clifton's "poem to my uterus"
273. Lucille Clifton's "to my last period"
274. Lucille Clifton's "cain"
275. Tony Harrison's "Heredity"
276. Michael S. Harper's "American History"
277. Michael S. Harper's "Reuben, Reuben"
278. Charles Simic's "Fork"
279. Charles Simic's "Classic Ballroom Dances"
280. Charles Simic's "Head of a Doll"
281. Les Murray's "On Removing Spiderweb"
282. Michael Longley's "The Comber"
283. Michael Longley's "Death of a Horse"
284. Margaret Atwood's [You Fit into Me]
285. Eunice de Souza's "Sweet Sixteen"
286. Eunice de Souza's "Conversation Piece"
287. Eunice de Souza's "Women in Dutch Painting"
288. Eunice de Souza's "For Rita's Daughter, Just Born"
289. Robert Pinsky's "ABC"
290. Lyn Hejinian's "Forty Something"
291. Lyn Hejinian's "Sonnet"
292. Sharon Olds' "Photograph of the Girl"
293. Sharon Olds' "The Pope's Penis"
294. Michael Ondaatje's "Biography"
295. Michael Ondaatje's "Driving with Dominic in the Southern Province We See Hints of the Circus"
296. Ai's "Twenty-Year Marriage"
297. Agha Shahid Ali's "Postcard from Kashmir"
298. Grace Nichols' "Epilogue"
299. Charles Bernstein's "Autonomy Is Jeopardy"
300. Charles Bernstein's "The Kiwi Bird in the Kiwi Tree"
301. Charles Bernstein's "Have Pen, Will Travel"
302. Medbg McGuckian's "The War Ending"
303. Mebh McGuckian's "Captain Lavender"
304. Paul Muldoon's "Why Brownlee Left"
305. Paul Muldoon's "Quoof"
306. Rita Dove's "Geometry"
307. Lorna Dee Cervantes' "The Body as Braille"
308. Lorna Dee Cervantes' "Refugee Ship"
309. Henri Cole's "White Spine"
310. Henri Cole's "Childlessness"
311. Li-Young Lee's "Eating Together"
312. John Ashbery's "Two Scenes"
313. John Ashbery's "Glazunoviana"
314. John Ashbery's "Sonnet"
315. John Ashbery's "Errors"
316. John Ashbery's "The Pied Piper"
317. John Ashbery's "Thoughts of a Young Girl"
318. John Ashbery's "White Roses"
319. John Ashbery's "An Additional Poem"
320. John Ashbery's "Last Month"
321. John Ashbery's "The Recent Past"
322. John Ashbery's "The Task"
323. John Ashbery's "Street Musicians"
324. John Ashbery's "Variant"
325. John Ashbery's "Wooden Buildings"
326. John Ashbery's "The Couple in the Next Room"
327. John Ashbery's "Crazy Weather"
328. John Ashbery's "Many Wagons Ago"
329. John Ashbery's "Otherwise"
330. John Ashbery's "Late Echo"
331. John Ashbery's "A Love Poem"
332. John Ashbery's "A Tone Poem"
333. John Ashbery's "The Pursuit of Happiness"
334. John Ashbery's "The Absence of a Noble Presence"
335. John Ashbery's "Here Everything Is Still Floating"
336. John Ashbery's "We Hesitate"
337. John Ashbery's "Frontispiece"
338. John Ashbery's "The Vegetarians"
339. John Ashbery's "At North Farm"
340. An excerpt from Jack Kerouac's "On The Road"
341. An excerpt from Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation"
342-4. Excerpts from Ian Frazier's "Great Plains"
345. An excerpt from "In the Brain" from Ian Frazier's "The Fish's Eye"
346. "(Tourette Dreams)" from Jonathan Lethem's "Motherless Brooklyn"
347. An excerpt from Jonathan Lethem's "Motherless Brooklyn"
348. An excerpt from Richard Ford's "The Sportswriter"
349. Peter Gizzi's "How to care for a small bird"
350. Peter Gizzi's "To his wife far off in a time of war"
351. Peter Gizzi's "Coda"
352. Peter Gizzi's "Bolshevescent"
353. Peter Gizzi's "It Was Raining In Delft"
354. Jessica Lowenthal's "Personal Poem"
355. Jessica Lowenthal's "Boredom Song"
356-8. Selections from Julia Bloch's "Letters to Kelly Clarkson"
359. Thomas Devaney's "Quick Bear Poem"
360. Thomas Devaney's "No Such Poem"
361. Thomas Devaney's "The 1,000-Year Storm"
362. Thomas Devaney's "The rat and the flower pot"
363. Jerome Rothenberg's "Twentieth Century Unlimited"
364-5. Excerpts from Jerome Rothenberg's "Three Paris Elegies"
366. Jerome Rothenberg's "The Case for Memory"
367. Jerome Rothenberg's "I Prefer a Poem with Spaces"
368. Rae Armantrout's "Form"
369. Rae Armantrout's "The Fit"
370. Dodie Bellamy's "Post-It"
371. Nick Montfort's "The Exhaustion of Libraries"
372. Gregory Djanikian's "Sonnet Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of Kelly Writers House"
373. Bob Perelman's "Trees"
374. Bob Perelman's "Pastoral"
375. Bob Perelman's "Musik"
376. Gregory Djanikian's "So I Will Till the Ground"
377. Gregory Djanikian's "The Day My Grandfather Died"
378. Gregory Djanikian's "July 20, 1969"
379. Gregory Djanikian's "How My Grandfather Escaped"
380. Gregory Djanikian's "Dark Wings"
381. Donald Hall's "Usage"
382. Donald Hall's "Revisions"
383. Donald Hall's "Ox Cart Man"
384. Donald Hall's "White Apples"
385. Donald Hall's "Barber"
386. Donald Hall's "Folding Chair"
387. Donald Hall's "Her Intent"
388. Donald Hall's "Retriever"
389. Donald Hall's "The Painted Bed"
390. Donald Hall's "After Homer"
391. Donald Hall's "Hours Hourse"
392. Donald Hall's "Sweater"
393. Donald Hall's "Razor"
394. Donald Hall's "Love Poem"
395. Donald Hall's "We Bring Democracy to the Fish"
396. Donald Hall's "The Hunkering"
397-403. Excerpts from Cynthia Ozick's "The Puttermesser Papers"
404. Charles Bernstein's "These Horses Do Not Move Up and Down"
405. Robert Grenier's "But"
406. Dick Higgins' "New Song in an Old Style"
407. Ken Friedman's "Renter's Orchestra"
408. Ken Friedman's "Card Trace"
409. Nick Montfort's "Top Row Retort"
410. Jena Osman's "Flag of my Disposition"
411. An excerpt from the introduction to Jamaica Kincaid's "Talk Stories"
412. Robert Creeley's "Return"
413. Robert Creeley's "Love"
414. Robert Creeley's "Canzone"
415. Robert Creeley's "The Festival"
416. Robert Creeley's "The Drums"
417. Robert Creeley's "A Ballad"
418. Robert Creeley's "I Am Held by My Fear of Death"
419. Robert Creeley's "An Obscene Poem"
420. Robert Creeley's "Hi There!"
421. Robert Creeley's "The Changes"
422. Robert Creeley's "All That Is Lovely in Men"
423. Robert Creeley's "Goodbye"
424. Robert Creeley's "The Tunnel"
425. Robert Creeley's "For W.C.W."
426. Robert Creeley's "The Chance"
427. Robert Creeley's "Hello"
428. William Carlos Williams' "To Flossie"
429. William Carlos Williams' "To Be Recited To Flossie On Her Birthday"
430. William Carlos Williams' "Twelve Line Poem"
431. William Carlos Williams' "Turkey in the Straw"
432. William Carlos Williams' "This Is Pioneer Weather"
433. William Carlos Williams' "The Dish of Fruit"
434. William Carlos Williams' "April Is The Saddest Month"
435. William Carlos Williams' "The Counter"
436. William Carlos Williams' "In Chains"
437. William Carlos Williams' "A Sort of a Song"
438. William Carlos Williams' "The Flower"
439. William Carlos Williams' "The Brilliance"
440. William Carlos Williams' "Portrait of a Woman at Her Bath"
441-2. Excerpts from Russell Banks' "Affliction"
443. Wallace Stevens' "Man Carrying Thing"
444. Wallace Stevens' "Poem Written at Morning"
445. Wallace Stevens' "Flyer's Fall"
446. Frank O'Hara's "Newsboy"
447. Frank O'Hara's "Hunting Horns"
448. Frank O'Hara's "Tonight at the Versailles, Or Another Card Another Cabaret"
449. Frank O'Hara's "As Planned"
450. Bob Dylan's "Bob Dylan's Dream"