========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 14:00:17 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: thinking about translation, re:Lorca (long) A week or so back, Ernesto Grosman sent the RIF/T questionnaire about translation to the list, shortly after I'd sent a translation of the opening speech of Lorca's first play Bad Dream of the Butterflies. My head has been absolutely buzzing with ideas since starting the Lorca translation, and so I'm going to be arrogant enough to attempt a public reply to the questions on Ernesto's questionnaire, with mostly specific respect to this Lorca translation. Do, please, everyone, leave this message here if this seems to you as arrogant a presumption on my part as it seems to me, but I do want to answer: > "QUESTIONNAIRE/CUESTIONARIO *How would you define translation? As a process or as product?" I am writing the Lorca very much for an ordinary theatre audience, going on my feelings for what audiences around me have responded to in theatre I've seen. I don't expect a very active audience, which for me is required when I do what I think of as process work. For example, as part of my long poem DISABUSE, I translate the opening pages of Foucault's History of Sexuality - precisely as a *close reading*, giving me the opportunity to offer frequent footnotes on what I think is going on, where I differ as a thinker etc. In other words, I do the Foucault translation as something to be read as part of the debate on how readers *construct* and *write* what they think they're reading, in other words a *process* that *appropriates* the original writing. In a similar way, in the same long poem, I "translate" a new story, set on a journey around the world by airplane from New Zealand to England, pretty much line for line on top of the first Canto of the _Cantos of Ezra Pound_. But this translation from Pound is much less antagonistic, much more a way of saying that Pound has got at some essence of the pain of travelling to and from loved ones, finding one's shipmates and so on. My Lorca is much more a *product*, something vying to be published as an official translation, not as a response of mine to Lorca but as helping Lorca speak to the English-speaking. >"*Who is translating?" I was drawing especially on the persona of Joel Grey in _Cabaret_. My first master of translation, Donald Davie, very much inspired me to choose an existing English-speaking model - or preferably fuse two or more. Nevertheless these are more like flavourings, the approach to language, I think, remains very consistent from translation to translation of mine, very mandarin and autocratic - when translating Foucault or Lorca or Beckett or Mallarme or Rainault. In some ways I am attracted to translating them because I have trouble being authoritative, governmental, about my own themes and concerns, having gravitas, and want to learn how. My own work is more process-like, written for other artists (not by utter choice, but artists are who respond best to it, unlike the Lorca or others, who I've shown to lots of appreciative people). My one exception is the Pound, which struck a real chord of vulnerability and stoic suffering for me, but then I wasn't having to be so close word-by-word. > "*What is being translated?" For me, something is being presented. It must be interesting to people who only speak English, and it must be as interesting as work written in English first. It's a lot like the problem with academic critical essays; it mustn't be worthy and cold, so you have to work really hard to read it; it must have joi de vivre, like Davie's essays or Marjorie Perloff's. > "*Do you consider some texts to be untranslatable? If so, how would you describe the obstacle?" Very pun-laden work seems hard, which I myself do; though my Foucault was done precisely to rescue him, like a lot of the post-structuralists, from readers (and his official translator) who were missing all his puns. I translated him with lots of 1990s pop culture references, to try to put his work back into a leather jacket not a dust jacket! > "*Isn't the idea of "version" a funny place for the translator to be left in?" My Pound was a version, and the Lorca and the French poets a translation; I don't like Robert Lowell's "versions" of poems at all; they're so muscle bound and over-rich. As I say above, I think of the work as first of all a rival for original poetry; the technical question of how close the version is only interests me if I like it; I'm not a *translator*, or a versioner; I *use* translation, like I *use* other forms, and get *used* by them; lots of the writers who I know who are *translators*, who do whole books of versions or translations, are awful. >"*When see some of your own texts translated into a different language from the one you wrote them in, what kind of relation would you established between the two of them?" I've had my writing set to music once; because I couldn't sing it, it was too personal; the singer who set and sang it sang it from my heart. "*Is it true that today there are fewer people translating? If so, why?" I suspect there is just the same ratio of people doing good translations to people doing bad work as there always was. > "*What does it say about our present situation that translation seems to occur almost only when the "original" material is has been canonized within its own culture?" This is a big one for me. I tend to re-translate, with the exception of the Beckett, from bi-lingual editions, when the existing translation really bums me out. I hate the fact that, like so many authors, they are read badly; are in the public or canonical space but are not really understood (like Pound's Selected Poems being bought only for the imagist work, which is then travestied by admirers). The Lorca play I'm doing has only been translated once, by Gwyn Edwards, who translates Lorca wholesale - albeit from a deep love of Lorca - and seems to have rushed over this one for comprehensive coverage at the cost of specificity. Most translations are "canonised" oddly; my favourite approach would be to have anthologies of translations of Lorca, or Mallarme, or Baudelaire, collecting all the best translations of individual poems in magazines or the translator's collected works, eg Davie's Collected Poems has several marvellous individual translations, and he has many uncollected. My Lorca would have the Station Hill translations, Langston Hughes' Blood Wedding, very little by Gwyn Edwards. I'd ask the question: why do people feel safer reading one foreign poet exclusively translated by one translator? I like the Picador collected Rilke, and Michael Hamburger's Celan, Stephen Rodefer's Villon, but few others on this model. I'm raising here the question of collected work from a foreign writer writing in discrete different forms, eg Lorca's many different types of play, or a lyric poet's different poems. >"*And what would be the possible relation between this kind of selection and that other relationship between imperialism & translation?" Lowell seems very imperialist, decadent and loud; my favourite translations however make the English accomodate the other culture, the feel and the facts, and send me to the culture; then it is up to *me*, as a person, not to be imperialist; I think there are no signs of imperialist *writing* or *translating*, though there may be larger effects, and the work may be used as part of or to justify an imperialist strategy. > "*Are you ready to accept translation as another way of writing?" If there's time. "*When you or somebody else refers to a text as illegible, what do you does she/he mean by that? Do you see any connection between the notion of a text being illegible and the task of translation?" Most illegible things are illegible in their own way, a different way from the way any other illegible thing is illegible. That different way can be emulated in a translation. "*Do you think of some texts as more worthy of a translation than others? Could you elaborate on it?" I do think people go for comfort too easily, and I do think some work is more complex, and sometimes more true, than others; but I just want to tell someone to stop, not make them. Then maybe they might teach me something in their response. "*Would you say that you translate a text or a person?" In the Lorca, I did try to produce effects that would perturb a gay separatist, or a homophobe; that would make a reader wonder where I stand, and to emphasise an inwardness, a belonging, with both cruising on the heath and living a regular life in the suburbs; trying to speak the lingo, the parlance, of disparate groups; and to use nineties' references, and to be a little brazen or shocking now, as I think Lorca was then, while not losing a sense of it being a play from the 20s altogether. I tried to avoid being one thing and not the other, as I think that's what resonates for me in Lorca's vision of love. To learn from, to be intimate, to steal, to go undercover, and to speak out from within, a community, a friend, a text. I'd also emphasise how much for me metaphor came up as a big issue when translating Foucault and Lorca - so much so, that I was making copious observations in a notebook about metaphor as a route to everything; the Lorca really got me writing my own work again, a sequence about metaphor, which I'll backchannel anyone who wants to see it. It was the best way of reconciling the critical act of reading as a trained critic, and the creative act of translation. By which I mean, I would think of four or more sentences to translate one sentence of the Lorca and then be able to discard them by alluding to it in a metaphor. For example, the Lorca I sent has a second half which begins, in paraphrase, a wood sylph who walks with the aid of crutches, and who came from a Shakespeare play, met the poet one day after all the cattle had been penned in, and gave the poet this story. I worked for *hours* on this line; I was so interested that the sylph had come from a Shakespeare play, I thought of Ariel as much as Titania, so interested that a fictional character was talked about as living, so interested in the fact that a fictional character had given a real author a play, and so on. I really liked making the sylph a "veteran Shakesperean fairy" as it could be an actor or a character, conjured up Gielgud and Wilde and other queer men who are allowed to be fey and feminine and powerful (which I want to be); I liked giving him a cane, rather than crutches, for elegance and dignity in the advantage of being old enough to have a cane where it's too much in a young man. I started out with a line not in the Spanish at all; "so many are dying to get out of books", but then just worked it in to "escaped to the living wood pulp of a real heath" which is a pretty close if colourful periphrasis for Lorca's own emphasis throughout the piece on how things usually get simplified by the way they're put, in holy books and folk legends, and in the line on the fact that the sylph comes from a *real* wood (there's that word *real* again!). I really enjoyed the fact that the expression "gave him the plot" popped into my head for "gave the poet this story"; like a lot of my translation this carries a perfectly workable simple meaning, but also means "clued him in", "wised up the dodo" etc. > "*Do you consider yourself a translation?" Not simply. > "*Could you imagine life without translation?" Yeah, I'd just live, others would just live. Unmanageable population growth, and the fact that one of the major population killers, AIDS, is killing off our world's best people, oppressed from birth and who sees the world in more detail than a survivor who has to, would mean we'd succumb to thoughtless regulation and regression. To fight for translation, we must do much more than fight for words; luckily, translation will be a luxury we'll have if we make the more basic simple changes. Sorry to go on and on and on, Ira Lightman I.LIGHTMAN@UEA.AC.UK P.S. I only have French, from classes between 11 and 18 years old, and Latin. I worked through the Spanish of the Lorca by my French, by intuition, by hard work, and with the existing Gwyn Edwards translation. I didn't work with a Spanish dictionary or a Spanish speaker. P.P.S. I think of translation as emotional and cultural rather than trying to match language to language - though as I've tried to show above, I find all the responses that explode *out* of a reading of the original find themselves folded back in, usually using metaphor, in very similar word order in the translation. P.P.P.S Further thoughts since writing the above two days ago. I've since read the whole play through in the not so bad Gwyn Edwards version - perhaps he sped through the intro speech and worked hard on the play proper? It seems spooky, yet part of the kind of psychic atmosphere that leads me to find works to read or translate in my path at crucial times, that I finished my questionnaire with a reference to AIDS, which has been much on my mind lately, and then found so much anticipated in Lorca's play. I'd just read an Aaron Shurin piece on AIDS in the mag ACTS 10, which I've had on my bedroom floor for a while but felt an urge to pick up yesterday; then read the whole of the Bad Dream of the Butterflies, then came onto campus today and found the recent New Republic issue on AIDS - at no point did I do an archive search, or consciously purposed to research AIDS more, it's just happened this way. Things to translate fall into my path in the same way. I don't know how I'm going to make the rest of my Lorca translation accomodate all these contexts of reading, especially concerning AIDS, that are, it seems to me, coming in in the exact space between reading and reformulating-as-new-writing. One needs a politically and experientially mature audience, as opposed to a stylistically or formalism-experienced audience, to be able to do what I want. Once again, as in the veteran fairy with the cane, there is a wounded butterfly, who the characters often call a fairy, in the play, who is the wisest and most utopian soul. The characters around the butterfly very simply, or synchronically one might say, equate the butterfly's poorliness with what they see as the misguided quest for a radical love/freedom/society; they don't see the butterfly as a pioneer on a quest, as the pioneer of a future line, heroically putting everything into the quest. Nor do they see the wounds as in any way their fault, as something inflicted by the world they make, that the butterfly strives through. I don't know. I don't know now whether to write this translation as a process work of reading, grounded on my assumption that it is impossible to stage it, because there isn't a mature audience, one that won't, as Lorca's introduction says, recoil or titter. What Aaron Shurin writes about is a private, rejected world of heroes, extraordinary courage, people made experts in sensitivity and powerful emotion. If I turned my translation into a book, it would be a process work, for other vanguardists to read and collaborate in - process as an act of community, not creating a process in *any* reader, but a communique between reader/writers who *are* in process already. The opening speech that I've already done was designed to intrigue, haunt and stir up; to unsettle. I can't see a way right now to do that with the whole play. For me, to make a product out of the Lorca would be to make something opaque yet compelling - which I could do out of the opening speech but not out of the play. P.P.P.P.S AS I seem to be connecting translation with the questions of health and dis-ease, and also fortuitious, oracular, "coincidence", I'll mention too that I also found to hand a translation *from* English, of a far from publically canonical figure, the English poet Tom Raworth, by the French poet Pierre Alferi. This is in the bilingual pamphlet, _The Mosquito and the Moon_, by Tom Raworth, Ankle Press, 1994, available from 153 Gwydir Street, Cambridge - the publisher, Luke Youngman, is also on e-mail, and anyone who mails me I'll forward e-mail to him. The Mosquito and the Moon seems to me to be partly about how, if you cannot maintain enough health, or you need a quicker cure because you can't afford to take time off work, you can't avoid hospitals and medical services, and you need in some way to surrender agency. Yet the extent and the quality of the surrender affects how the bones set, and the soul is affected. I quote the opening page: c'est assez dur comme ca it is hard enough plus qu'une affaire de croyance not merely a matter of belief le bruit est un autre probleme noise is another problem de limiter encore continuing yet to confine le grand tas de depouilles the great heap of spoils tourne a gauche dans la boutique turn left through the shop ca cloche, une erreur de calcul something wrong, miscalculated demolit les cellules breaking cells completely mesurer n'est qu'un aspect measuring is an aspect survivre pour produire surviving to produce donner sur un chemin fini ending on a defined route dispose en anneau arranged in a ring petits trous ponctuels small localised holes de reflexion profonde of intellectual depth bariolee d'allusions heavily coloured by allusions conduisit la voiture au parking brought the car to the kerb parlant depuis un seuil speaking across a threshold des signes au fusain pointent charcoal marks indicate pierre alferi tom raworth I'll start by saying I think this is great translation, great bilingual work, where it is hard to see which is the original and which the translation, line by line, as each manages either a more simple plangency or a more haunting cadence of the "image"/"sense". Reading through the whole book I notice, not as an iron rule, that the more ironic and clipped the one side the more sobbing and heartwrenching the other. The subject matter is *always* heartwrenching, but Raworth's opening here (I think) is curt and almost spitting, where Alferi's column is more sonorous and like a stately threnody. Yet, on the next page, Raworth gets more sonorous and stately, Alferi gets more clipped (to my ear): vers la tete du lit towards the front of the bed tragique mais respirant encore tragic but still breathing ils portent les anciennes they carry the old lettres couvrant des decennies letters running through decades trouvant l'experience affective find emotional experience pleine de mots filled with words porteurs d'aleas bearers of randomness heurtant et bousculant bumping and pushing des signes intimement connus intimately familiar signs (It's like all these terms - lettres, mots, porteurs, connus - are familiarly treacherous to the wise French, language or person, yet freshly and surprisingly treacherous to the more trusting naif English). Last reflections then (anyone still reading?): is it because both figures are currently non-canonical that the translator can be so equal with the poet, or should that be the mark of all translation - while the mark of all bad translation is that the original is like safe collateral to draw on, dead and still fetching a good price, a possession passed around but never understood, including by the translator, who doesn't wish to suggest to the reader that the canonical figure may ever have been *alive*, being treated as badly as the heroes of our day are being treated by most readers, while they promote bad contemporary writers in emulation of what they think the dead would have been to us now? Two, is using biography to translate both (an idea of) the person and the person's text *allowed* when the poets are contemporaries, have met each other, speak each other's languages, have seen each other perform at readings? Anyone who knows Tom at all knows that he has had many setbacks to his health and medical interventions of a crass sort - can one posit an Alferi showing he's taking the throwaway self-deprecations with the pain they hide, as the currently more healthy do with stricken loved ones? Certainly his care with mimicking Tom's reading style is amazing. I recommend one way of reading this translation is listen to anyone's recording of one of Tom's rapid-fire deliveries of his poems; Alferi has really *got* the overall rhythm of heavily stressing the opening word of a line then letting the cadence fall and quieten. The funny thing is that I'm not even sure that that *performance rhythm* of Tom's is *in* the English on the page; though it's something to keep in the ear if you go back to the books after hearing him, he has other rhythms on the page too, thought rhythms, paradoxes (what does a paradox *sound* like, say, in a score?). Pierre Alferi's translation is also thus, for me, a reading, a transcription foregrounding an aspect, so that one can go back to the Raworth and fold that back in. Reading the columns together, for me, is *like* reading Tom while hearing him, on tape, or at a reading, but not *set in time*, as that would be. Even if I lose all Tom's recordings, and can never find another, reading this bilingual edition will always galvanise my memory again. Maybe this is not translation. Maybe this is love not killing the author. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 14:07:13 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: writing about the body Hi POETICS people I was sent the following poem backchannel after I posted a message about writing and the body, and absolutely love it, so obtained the writer's permission to forward it to the list. As I've said to the writer backchannel, this poem brilliantly outmanoeuvred my own message's attempt at critic's proscription: I was teasing Jackson MacLow for using metaphors of penetration without really examining them, ie using them as realist transparent language, and called for a poetry questioning and denying itself metaphors of penetration; the poem I'm forwarding however does not deny itself metaphors of penetration, but uses them with an uncommon urgency and relish in an unexpected direction that just as or in fact more accurately does what I was hoping for. Sorry it's so late. ******************************************************** sonnets to bodily love if my tongue were long enough i'd let it drop down your throat and push all the way to the inner curl of your testicles, then scoop it slowly around and up, collecting all the warm bodies of your insides in my tongue's cradle, and draw it to my mouth and swallow the life of you, then i'd crawl my whole insides into your waiting torso and remain there, containing in my belly your whole vitality, and being the vitality of you. or else i'd slip my two hands under the invitations of your skin and reach once more down this time to the inside bottoms of your feet to grasp the flesh and pull up in a sacred rupture until your body was all inside out, and then i'd put my feet against the inside flesh of yours and slowly mold your skin to me like the visible clay of love, pulling it right side out again over the skin of me so that not missing anything i'd be inside the container of you. "little nell" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 11:26:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: writing about the body I presume that the "backchannel" communication regarding the bacchanalian poem (lovely) "sonnets to bodily love" is an intentional pun? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 15:45:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: Sentimentality and contempt Ed Foster, and Poetics, >Ed wrote: What do we mean when we call someone's work sentimental? that it refers to that which it does not/cannot contain. i.e., it lies. Doesn't it limit poetry too much to give up lies? Was Blake telling the truth? Was Milton? Was Susan Howe? Was Ron Padgett? [Were poets only "containers" between Whitman and Stevens?] And what exactly did Jackson mean by "sentimental" when he said he stopped using a certain device because he found he was generating sentimental works? Is this from Hume, or James Whitcomb Riley? Anyway, thanks, Ed, Dodie Bellamy, Carl Peters, Jim Rosenberg, Charles Alexander, Marisa Januzzi and Alan Sondheim, for talking a little bit about sentimentality. I wonder if any so-called G2 writers could write something here about contempt and its uses in poetry. (G1 writers and others with special knowledge on the topic are also welcome to comment.) Listening, Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 08:56:37 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Actually actual? The old Man etc.: Hassan is Abba(toir) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 18:52:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Sentimentality and contempt In message <2fce402c3de4002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Ed Foster, and Poetics, > > >Ed wrote: > What do we mean when we call someone's work sentimental? that it refers to > that > which it does not/cannot contain. i.e., it lies. > > Doesn't it limit poetry too much to give up lies? Was Blake telling the > truth? Was Milton? Was Susan Howe? Was Ron Padgett? [Were poets only > "containers" between Whitman and Stevens?] And what exactly did Jackson mean > by "sentimental" when he said he stopped using a certain device because he > found he was generating sentimental works? Is this from Hume, or James > Whitcomb Riley? > > Anyway, thanks, Ed, Dodie Bellamy, Carl Peters, Jim Rosenberg, Charles > Alexander, Marisa Januzzi and Alan Sondheim, for talking a little bit about > sentimentality. > > I wonder if any so-called G2 writers could write something here about > contempt and its uses in poetry. (G1 writers and others with special > knowledge on the topic are also welcome to comment.) > > Listening, > Jordan Davis what's g1? what's g2? spicer cd be considered contemptuous, but it's an effect of his desire for authenticity. impatient may be a kinder word. there's a book called simply "Humiliation" by a medievalist at ? UWisc-Madison or Milwaukee? or is it UMich? that might have something to do with the micropolitics (social dynamics) of contempt...--maria ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 20:15:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Scroggins Subject: Meet the G that killed me In-Reply-To: <199506012357.TAA20654@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> Maria: G1 & G2 are generational handles _someone_ on the list dreamed up to designate "older" & "younger" generation poets on the innovative side of the equation: G1--Bernstein, Silliman, Hejinian, Scalapino, Watten, usw. G2--Liz Willis, Juliana Spahr, Andy Levy, Melanie Nielsen, Jessica Grim,usw. Shorthand wd. say _In the American Tree_=G1 and the O-blek "New Coast" issue = G2. Gets kind of complicated when you have not-so-young poets emerging late--is Cecil Giscombe (say) G1 or 2? He's about the same age as Ted Pearson, but has only really hit the fan in the last five years or so (after many moons in the vineyard of course). It all reminds me of the "Baby Boomer"/"Generation X" thing--Dad insists I'm a boomer, but is my only alternative to be a slacker? Mark Scroggins ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 00:01:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum Subject: Re: art after art after art Dear Tony Green, Thank you for your recent message. In 1979 I sat at my father's death bed. He couldn't speak. When I tried to give him an awkward kiss, our glasses collided. Then I left him and my mother to go back to work in another city several hundred miles away where I lived (and still do). Then he died and I wasn't there. Then I went back for the funeral. Now my mother is living in our city and has lost most of her memory. I take care of her as best I can. Now also I am sitting at the death bed of my marriage, which my conflicted desires poisoned. It is hard to imagine ever feeling at peace again. These are all real to me. Thanks for sharing your real. Best to you all, John Byrum ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 04:05:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: thinking about translation Ira's wonderful post on translation reminded me of a story that Lydia Davis tells. When she was translating Sartre's Life/Situations, she brought the manuscript into the publisher in person (Viking? I forget). The receptionist buzzed her editor on the intercom and said, "The typist is here." Ron Silliman Rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 08:15:55 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" Organization: University of NC at Greensboro Subject: sentimentality Sentimentality consists of experiencing or evoking emotion for something which does not deserve the emotion. Most commonly the inappropriate emotion is sympathetic to its object: pity, love, affection, admiration, adoration. But there are other kinds of sentimentality. For example, inappropriate kinds of emotion. Adoration of George Patton, for example, would seem to me sentimental (or worse). Admiration for certain traits in Patton, perhaps not. It also seems to me that a bug accidentally flushed down a toilet deserves a certain degree of sympathy, but protracted mourning would seem sentimental to me, not to say pathological. There is also a kind of inverted sentimentality--a sentimentality of understatement. Hemingway tried so hard to be unsentimental that at times he is worse than the Poe of "Annabel Lee." But there is an enormous problem in deciding what is sentimental and what is not, especially if we are not going to allow the cumulative wisdom and judgment of generations and multitudes of others to affect how we view things. For the Nazi camp guard, pity for a Jewish child was sentimentality. The Nazis didn't last long. I have several pairs of socks that have lasted twice as long as the Third Reich did. Unsound judgments about human things, though they can always recur, tend not to hold up very well, especially when they are shared only by groups or persons who consider themselves specially elected and chosen--set above or apart from other human beings. In such a context contempt for everything beyond the pale is concomitant with sentimental adulation. Catullus's poem about the death of his girl friend's pet bird balances a delicate cynicism against the intrinsic sentimentality of its subject. Even the monks through whose hands the manuscripts passed must have liked the poem, and people still read it. It escapes sentimentality. Boorish and ill-tempered readers, of course, can find reasons to dislike almost anything. Williams's famous plums are full of affection, both for the plums and for Floss. Crabby people might find his poem sentimental. But people go on reading and liking that poem. For really bad sentimental poetry, take a look at a lot of what Yeats included in the 1936 OXFORD BOOK OF MODERN POETRY. It is common to say of someone, "She (usually he) is a terrible poet but a great anthologist (editor)," and I suppose the reverse can be true, too. Tom Kirby-Smith ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 13:43:06 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: thinking about translation Thanks for the message, Ron ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 13:49:05 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: thinking about translation Oh, I was signed off the list for a while, then got to look through the May digest just now, and saw the questions about "sweet fumes of grass" in the Lorca. Hur hur, that was cool, seems to be the tone. Lorca has words to the effect "perfume of the grass", but I wanted to include a contemporary allusion (as I explained in my long note yesterday), in order to characterise another kind of mindless pleasure community, as mindless as a straight community that has a "natural love, only concerned with how to love". A kind of pastoral stupidity in an urban community. Having said which, I emphasise that I say it all with Lorca's own sense of love - that mindless pleasure is not easily dismissed, but nor are the arguments against it. I do hate drugs myself, though, and my Lorca would consider them an enemy of poetry, the way they're normally done, Ira ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 11:45:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me It's interesting that scroggins names as g2ers the most derivative poets of the gi styles in the New Coast anthology....just an onservation (i mean observation).... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 10:25:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me In-Reply-To: <199506020121.SAA14373@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Mark Scroggins" at Jun 1, 95 08:15:57 pm Well, according to one writer on this list, those of us in our early twenties (hi lindz) aren't quite developed enough to be a generation. We're merely "Tads", which is an ol' guy term, i suppose. Mind you, he says things like "hou's your ol' straw hat " too. Now there's a reason for feeling the anxiety of influence. By the by, some of us tads would like to know what "pataphysical" means. Ryan (p.s. if anyone is in vancouver after the Blaser conference or is here anyway, Lindz and I are reading at the Vancouver Press Club on June 14--you can backchannel me for more info if it tickles your fancy) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 10:41:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: sentimentality In-Reply-To: <199506021224.FAA10552@whistler.sfu.ca> from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Jun 2, 95 08:15:55 am It seems to me that this issue of sentimentality has everything to do with the hallmark discussion which floated around this list when I first signed on. I think the sentimentality being picked on here is tha hallmark of hallmark. But what about sentimentality in music or painting? Is it less problematic then? I find whitman extremely sentimental, but it works for me. Same with Vivaldi. I think Nichol tried to publish poetry's obituary in the Toronto Star (?), which is very touching. So, i suppose my question really is are we quick to think of sentimentality as graceless because it is more common to the grocery store library? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 17:43:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Sentimentality and contempt jordan, you miss the point, i think. there's no reason not to work from/with lies, but there's all the difference between that and the work that insists that it contains x and in fact only refers to it. and that's not poetry but rhetoric. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 19:39:36 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me >some of us tads would like to know what "pataphysical" means... a term coined by Alfred Jarry in _Ubu Roi_, originally being a transrational system in which opposites are seen as neither contradicting each other nor resolving, but as coexisting as an open-ended, continually variable system, irrational and energy-producing... carried forward by the "college de 'pataphysicque", whose "members" included Raymond Queneau, who later was associated w/ OuLiPo... (this lifted & badly paraphrased frm the introduction to _Pataphysical Poems_ by Queneau, translated by Teo Savory) cheers lbd ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 18:37:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me In-Reply-To: <199506022155.OAA02092@unixg.ubc.ca> On Fri, 2 Jun 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote: > Well, according to one writer on this list, those of us in our early > twenties (hi lindz) aren't quite developed enough to be a generation. > We're merely "Tads", which is an ol' guy term, i suppose. Mind you, > he says things like "hou's your ol' straw hat " too. Now there's > a reason for feeling the anxiety of influence. > > By the by, some of us tads would like to know what "pataphysical" means. > > Ryan > I too was offended by the bubblegum attack on our generation, but I've been too tired and lacking wit to reply. I guess its partly that I lack a work ethic that some of our seniors have had installed in them when they were tads. I'm also bored with defending our generation, I'm painfully aware that everything has been done before. I'm a lyrical vulture, A scavenger of verse. I don't pick bones, I pick words. Ryan, thanks for the free pubilicity, see you at the reading on Sunday. I hope Bowering is feeling (seeing) better. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 22:12:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: sentimentality "Sentimentality is a failure of feeling"--Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 19:50:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me In-Reply-To: <199506030138.SAA19157@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson" at Jun 2, 95 06:37:47 pm > > On Fri, 2 Jun 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote: > > > Well, according to one writer on this list, those of us in our early > > twenties (hi lindz) aren't quite developed enough to be a generation. > > We're merely "Tads", which is an ol' guy term, i suppose. Mind you, > > he says things like "hou's your ol' straw hat " too. Now there's > > a reason for feeling the anxiety of influence. > > > > By the by, some of us tads would like to know what "pataphysical" means. > > > > Ryan > > > I too was offended by the bubblegum attack on our generation, but I've > been too tired and lacking wit to reply. I guess its partly that I lack > a work ethic that some of our seniors have had installed in them when they > were tads. I'm also bored with defending our generation, I'm painfully > aware that everything has been done before. > > > > I'm a lyrical vulture, > A scavenger of verse. > I don't pick bones, > I pick words. > > > Ryan, thanks for the free pubilicity, see you at the reading on Sunday. > > I hope Bowering is feeling (seeing) better. > > > > Lindz > hell, anything they can -- we can do better! c ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 00:32:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me In a recent post, Ryan Knighton asked what pataphysical means. It means if you can pat it, its physical. John ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 09:27:13 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" Organization: University of NC at Greensboro Subject: pataphysics If I remember correctly one of the arguments of pataphysics was that to have a body was a good thing because if you have a body you can wear clothes, and clothes have pockets, and pockets are extremely useful. I believe that was a contention of Doctor Faustroll, Jarry's Professor of Pataphysics, whose eyeballs were vessels of India ink in which swam golden spermatozoans. Merdre! Tom Kirby-Smith ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 09:03:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me In message <2fcfce1715d7002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > > > > On Fri, 2 Jun 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote: > > > > > Well, according to one writer on this list, those of us in our early > > > twenties (hi lindz) aren't quite developed enough to be a generation. > > > We're merely "Tads", which is an ol' guy term, i suppose. Mind you, > > > he says things like "hou's your ol' straw hat " too. Now there's > > > a reason for feeling the anxiety of influence. > > > > > > By the by, some of us tads would like to know what "pataphysical" means. > > > > > > Ryan > > > > > I too was offended by the bubblegum attack on our generation, but I've > > been too tired and lacking wit to reply. I guess its partly that I lack > > a work ethic that some of our seniors have had installed in them when they > > were tads. I'm also bored with defending our generation, I'm painfully > > aware that everything has been done before. > > > > > > > > I'm a lyrical vulture, > > A scavenger of verse. > > I don't pick bones, > > I pick words. > > > > > > Ryan, thanks for the free pubilicity, see you at the reading on Sunday. > > > > I hope Bowering is feeling (seeing) better. > > > > > > > > Lindz > > > > > hell, anything they can -- we can do better! > c come on guys, chill in this generational warfare, i certainly can't tell what age anyone is from their posts (except, i must say, lindz, when you got into the i'm white and sick of kissing ass routine --that sounded kinda young, too much like my students resentful of their compulsory "cultural pluralism" classes) --many of us 30 and 40 somethings never developed a work ethic either --which is why we have teaching positions that allow us to play around on the e-nets provided by our employers.--md ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 10:14:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: sentimentality there are two very distinct definitions of "sentimentality" floating here: the hallmark variety, which is the conventional, more limited use of the word, and the eighteenth-century's distinction, which is close to 60's discussions of authenticity. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 07:25:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Rothenberg's Gematria --picked this up at the blaser fest. what a wonder-full bk! --gematria as concrete poetry! --just a thot... interesting, tho: my receipt -- the invoice they gave me when i bought the book is number "33" -- christ's age when he was crucified. my bill came to $26.43: that works out to 6 33 works out to 6; hence: with that other 6 i get: 66 so my invoice as ready-made, comprised of both sacred and profane aspects Donne Donn e Donne Donn e Donne Donn e Donne c ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 09:54:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: missing mail Poetics List -- Just back from several weeks out of the country to find that weeks of my e-mail have disappeared (from about May 10 to the end of May). I'm sorry to have missed the poetics discussions -- but if there's anyone out there who sent a personal message, please resend. Sandra Braman s-braman@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 11:14:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: speaking of blaser conf. speaking of the blaser conference, cd someone --or several of you --so we can compile a composite profile --give us a report over the net for those of us who are interested but unable to attend? hi pts, lo pts, entertaining anecdotes, and overall vibe-picture? how's he doing anyway? descriptions, poems, riffs, meditations and reminiscences? thanks in advance! --maria d ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 13:52:28 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me In-Reply-To: <199506030437.VAA08469@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at Jun 3, 95 00:32:26 am I originally asumed it had something to do with my dad getting a check-up (cymbal clash please) John B. wrote: > > In a recent post, Ryan Knighton asked what pataphysical means. It means if > you can pat it, its physical. > > John > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 13:57:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me In-Reply-To: <199506031406.HAA06643@whistler.sfu.ca> from "maria damon" at Jun 3, 95 09:03:43 am Maria daemon: I can't speak fo rLindz or Carl, but I didn't mean to pitch a post about "generational warfare". I still can't figure out which one is mine. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Jun 1995 16:27:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: Meet the G that killed me In-Reply-To: <199506032058.NAA05568@unixg.ubc.ca> On Sat, 3 Jun 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote: > > I can't speak fo rLindz or Carl, but I didn't mean to pitch a post > about "generational warfare". I still can't figure out which one is mine. > My intention isn't warfare either, just mild reactive annoyance. And ryan it seems to me that you straddle genertions. And on the "apology" thing that stirred up so much hot water awhile ago I have had some new experiences. I recently spent several hours at Chicago airport and was amazed that every worker in the service industry was of a non-white ethnic background. This is something I had never experience before as the tertiary economy is the basis of most economic activity in Vancouver. I'm used to a melting pot, where I work seven different languages are being spoken at all times. Race or ethnic background has never inhibited anyone that I know from moving up in the world, but obviously that is not the case elsewhere. Therefore my rant was more self indulgent than analytical of a whole system. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Jun 1995 10:57:06 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: articles of (praps) interest in jPMC saw a coupla pieces in the latest jrnl of postmodern culture that might be of interest to folks here; & so this forward of abstracts & instructions... lbd POSTMODERNCULTUREPOSTMODERNCULTURE P RNCU REPO ODER E P O S T M O D E R N P TMOD RNCU U EP S ODER ULTU E C U L T U R E P RNCU UR OS ODER ULTURE P TMODERNCU UREPOS ODER ULTU E an electronic journal P TMODERNCU UREPOS ODER E of interdisciplinary POSTMODERNCULTUREPOSTMODERNCULTURE criticism ----------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 5, Number 3 (May, 1995) ISSN: 1053-1920 ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- ABSTRACTS Paul Naylor, "The 'Mired Sublime' of Nathaniel Mackey's _Song of the Andoumboulou_" ABSTRACT: This essay situates Nathaniel Mackey's ongoing serial poem, _Song of the Andoumboulou_, in the tradition of the American "world-poem" begun in _The Cantos_ of Ezra pound and continued in Louis Zukofsky's _A_, H.D.'s _Trilogy_, and Robert Duncan's _Passages_. Each of these works, in their own distinct way, holds out the possibility of a utopian vision created in and by poetry. Yet these previous instances of the world-poem often have the unfortunate effects of reducing cultural diversity to a transcendent sameness in the service of an all-encompassing view of world history, in effect all too evident in parts of _The Cantos_. Mackey's _Song of the Andoumboulou_ not only extends the genre's range of cultural references by bringing together the traditions of African-American music, Caribbean and Arabic poetry, and West African mythology, among others, with the Western traditions of philosophy, poetry, and music; it also attempts to cure us of the desire to reduce the representation of diversity and difference to the kind of all-encompassing sameness that compromises some of the initial instances of the American world-poem. --PN Elisabeth A. Frost, "Signifyin(g) on Stein: The Revisionist Poetics of Harryette Mullen and Leslie Scalapino ABSTRACT: This article takes Stein as one (if not the only) source for feminist avant-garde poetry--writing that uses experimental language to distinctly feminist ends. A number of recent feminist poets owe a debt to _Tender Buttons_, and Stein's work remains a subject of homage. But, changes working their way through feminist thought appear in some feminist avant-garde writing that doesn't simply acknowledge Stein's language experiments but contests them as well. I examine the influence of, and divergence from, Steinian poetics in Harryette Mullen and Stein's "modern" vision by merging "public" speech and "private" experience--the language of the public spheres of the street and the marketplace with the experiences of intimacy and the erotic. Mullen and Scalapino blur the border between public and private discourse that Stein relied upon in order to reveal (and, paradoxically, *not* reveal) her lesbian sexuality in a revolution of ordinary domestic language. In response in part to Stein, each poet illuminates language as a locus of the political and the erotic, altering both eroticized and "public" language as signs of a culture in need of a fundamental awareness about the relationships between our most private and public acts. --EF ----------------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO GET PMC BY ANONYMOUS FTP: All PMC files are available via anonymous ftp; to retrieve items in this way, ftp to: ftp jefferson.village.virginia.edu Log in as "anonymous" or "ftp" using your email userid as a password. When you have logged in, type: cd pub/pubs/pmc/issue.595 ----- HOW TO GET PMC BY GOPHER: PMC's gopher server is at: jefferson.village.virginia.edu Once you've connected, choose "Publications of the Institute" and then choose "Postmodern Culture": you will find a menu listing all published issues of the journal, and within each issue, full text of all the issue's contents. ----- HOW TO GET PMC BY WORLD-WIDE WEB: If you have access to a World-Wide Web client, you will find the hypermedia version of PMC at: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/contents.all.html Once you've connected, you will find all back issues arranged by volume and issue, but also arranged by category (all the reviews, all the popular culture columns, all the creative works, etc.). ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Jun 1995 19:09:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: "pataphysics additional note to ryan re "pataphysics: --be interested in hearing what you think abt bp's essay: "The Pata of Letter Feet, or, The English Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" (_open letter_1985 [or 86?]), which i consider the best and most direct article on the subject. mccaffery, at the blaser conference yesterday, was introduced as north america's leading "pataphysician [the word is supposed to be written with the double _"_ in front of the p, and left open], but i disagree with that completely. north america's leading, most outstanding, poet of this other dimension is _bpNichol_ -- but you knew i was going to say that... ...the blaser fest was outstanding. i'm exhausted! take care, c ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 17:13:10 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: sentimentality I saw Benjamin Britten's _War Requiem_ this weekend, and it seemed to me to be a sentimental *event*. Some lovely atonal music, and some lovely vocal arrangments, but the atheism in Britten seemed puerile, the parts mimicking the sound of war excruciating, and above all, the dumbheaded applause - as if here we are attending a piece of work that has to thoroughly and cathartically (and popularly) tackled war that there will never be war again, ho ho. People clapping themselves for coming. No room for saying, I liked that bit, but I didn't like this bit, because that would be to be pro-war, to make a technical criticism of a piece that is anti-war. And what I would say was sentimental was the way that, as a narrative, a kind of modernist opera rather than a collection of songs, the piece did nothing to attack British culture, and actually revelled in the possibility of *emotional release only in extremity* (you can care, and love, in warfare); having said that, it is the *framing* which I find sentimental, the actual moments of release were often gorgeous, and I would happily make myself a tape of my favourite bits and play them out of context. I spoke to several music students who didn't care about the overall framing, don't have any feel for musical narratives, but just see the narrative as an arbitrary structure for some lovely music. I think that attitude is sentimental, and that actually most of these music students are profoundly conservative and reactionary politically, and happy to be British. On the other hand, maybe someone was there who would have been frightened off if the piece had been more holistically exciting and challenging (it sets Wilfred Owen's poetry, which I think is often also enjoyed sentimentally and not holistically); maybe that person is now "sentimental* but got off on the "non-sentimental* fragments, would have been frightened off *if* the whole piece had been "non-sentimental* ie maybe sentimentality exists in time, as part of process; or maybe a person might attend "sentimental" art and live a non-sentimental life, so is the art sentimental? Ira ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 17:45:21 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: I wannabe a G1-abee As Ron Silliman says in the introduction to In The American Tree, one will often find that the younger poets are often truer to the theory of earlier practitioners than the earlier (now older) practitioners is; one will find too that one of the most exciting thing about the Language Writers was that they went back to the last two turning points, of projective verse and modernism, and included back in all the things the prjectivists and modernists left out, like stein and the futurists. As Ron also said, generations tend to pull in the more marginal figures from an older group and make them central ancestors; he also said that generations tend to hit a critical mass; I, for one, see this happening and would be happy to put a list of ten names in a sealed envelope to be opened in ten years' time when they've all redrawn the map. Anyway, a decent open interest and respect for each other would be healthy, especially since, as I for one have said before, it sticks in the craw to be told that us poets in our twenties are doing work derivative of others, only nostalgic and plagiaristic, when that is very clearly what many from G1 have been doing for ten years! At least our work is going to change! Ira ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 09:56:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: Re: sentimentality I liked what you said, Ira, concerning the Britten experience. And am reminded that the construct of an audience is putty in the hands (that is, a laboratory) of/for anyone wanting to play the buttons, construct an imagined harmony that matches something sought in mind. Pseudo "faiths" seem to grow out of an assemblage of people. In which reacting to this or that would be to violate the "agreed upon" (although it's really forced) the reigning sentiment. Overall, sentimentality is a cheap replacement for honesty. Something truly felt tends to be individual. It would be too coincidental for hoards of people to feel in unison; my own feelings seem so specific (It would be hypocrisy for me to presume to presume use of the plural!). A side note: isn't it frustrating when the textual component is there to prop up or otherwise not disturb a centrally musical event? Happy Monday! Sheila ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 10:10:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: adios muchachos In-Reply-To: <9506051618.AA17732@hub.ubc.ca> Went to the last reading of the conference last night, Bowering was his usual "kid in a candy store" charming, Ondaatje was enthralling, and here's to Sharon Thesen's latest work *Aurora*, everyone must get this book. I'm running out of email time so I have to combine messages. Kevin Ryan, passed on the message, sorry I didn't meet you, but I'll see what I can put together. He tells me you don't get enough Canadian stuff and we'll be pleased to supply, but not represent the whole as the Conference was a "western" affair. Lots of Toronto bashing was in the air. Chris S. GOt the book today, I'll get back to you after I have a chance to look at it for a bit. Welcome home to everyone else, it will be good to get some action on the line again. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 19:34:36 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: sentimentality Thanks for what you posted, Sheila. Is it a pop vs classical thing, I wonder... er, no, I answer myself, but the sweeping statement says something: like the way I've never been to a Dylan concert that wasn't totally exciting *for nearly everyone in the room* for a few minutes, part of a song, or a whole song. And, of course, being a fan of a new band and seeing them when they're fresh, tends to unite the room in a way that's not phony. Or (but this is where the pop vs classical thing breaks down) being at a new composition by a groundbreaker, like maybe at a New Music concert in the fifties, or at a Judith Weir concert when she was just starting - when you know the normal classical audience is going to hate it (though they'll later swallow and assimilate it). My flatmate, Mike Higgins, does this pieces with two or three sustained chords filling the room, and they always unite everyone who goes - it's so strong an experience, requiring such endurance (for maybe an hour), that you bump into another of the, usually no more than forty-strong, audience, and you kind of feel like you've shared a big experience. I also went to the Beethoven symphony that was written after Napoleon's return(?) at the same cathedral where the Britten was played, and it *did* seem to be about war and excite the audience, and yet the Beethoven didn't seem as sentimental as the Britten was. I'd love to know the specific examples you were thinking of, of words being used incidentally to the music. Mike says, after living with me, he's really embarrassed by all the titles he used to give to his pieces! I was commissioned to write words for an electro-acoustic piece by a friend here, and I wanted to get past the usual "musician's use of words, which for me was either didactic romanticism, like Owen, or fragmentary modernism, using words for the sound but in a really word-hating "words can't move one like music" kind of way.... So I wrote something, as asked, with lots of onomatopeia, but threaded them slyly into a Basil Bunting-like narrative. Ira ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 11:53:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Kevin or Dodie In-Reply-To: <199506051618.JAA02564@whistler.sfu.ca> from "I.LIGHTMAN" at Jun 5, 95 05:13:10 pm Hi. It was wonderful to have finally met some efaces. I said i would send some schtuff to you, however Mirage doesn't have an address. Could you forward me one? You can backchannel me at knighton@sfu.ca Best, Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 14:58:58 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: adios muchachos Thanks, Lindz, for agreeing to supply "canadian stuff" to Ryan and others of us who might want it. I was particularly glad to hear your enthusiasm for Sharon Thesen's book, as I've always found her work courageous and dynamic, altogether its own, and altogether unknown any place I've lived. But when you say, "He tells me you don't get enough Canadian stuff and we'll be pleased to supply, but not represent the whole as the Conference was a "western" affair. Lots of Toronto bashing was in the air." -- I'm not certain what you mean, or if you are just replying to Ryan in some personal way I don't get. Just know that not all tuned to this list have loyalties to Toronto or Vancouver or Buffalo or any particular place. My own are curiously displaced toward the Arizona desert, where there are a few people who are on this poetics list as well. charles charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 16:25:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: message fr criss cheek cris, hi: are you out there? --just wanted to know if you received my last post re the visual poetries loop? experiencing some challenges here trying to work the cc and alias functions, and understand there are some alternatives which we could discuss look forward to hearing from you, carl ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 22:43:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Poetics List Reviews Poetics List Reviews from Loss Glazier --------------------------------------------------------------------- Charles Bernstein, _The Subject_. 1995. Handsomely-produced booklet from Meow Press containing the libretto of _The Subject_ from a scenario conceived with Ben Yarmolinski and as produced in NYC in 1992. But a person who calls himself a psychologist is in a peculiar position these days. Experiments show that Norway rats die quickly if their whiskers are clipped and they are thrown into tanks of water. This libretto now in print. Edition of 300, available from SPD. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth Sherwood, _Text Squared_. 1995. A tactile relation to the text as this book unfolds into juxtaposed folds. To a pattern of textual variants and overstrikes and pattern: "loosened there began to try save words bring back to turn there is nothing more in beginning than say return seems less..." Edition of 100, a Tailspin Chapbook, where the writer is sculptor. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 22:09:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: speaking of blaser conf. In-Reply-To: <199506031617.JAA09433@whistler.sfu.ca> from "maria damon" at Jun 3, 95 11:14:56 am Well, for me the lowest point of the Blaser conference was when my wife fell head over heels over Pierre Joris! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 01:19:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: speaking of blaser conf. In-Reply-To: <199506060509.BAA10694@sarah.albany.edu> from "George Bowering" at Jun 5, 95 10:09:03 pm > > Well, for me the lowest point of the Blaser conference was when my > wife fell head over heels over Pierre Joris! > Shucks honey, for me the lowest moment was when one George Bowering introduced me as being from Belgium! ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | He who wants to escape the world, translates it. Dept. of English | --Henri Michaux SUNY Albany | Albany NY 12222 | "Herman has taken to writing poetry. You tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | need not tell anyone, for you know how email: | such things get around." joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| --Mrs. Melville in a letter to her mother. ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 23:29:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: adios muchachos In-Reply-To: <199506060009.RAA06943@unixg.ubc.ca> But when you say, "He tells me you don't get enough Canadian stuff and we'll be pleased to supply, but not represent the whole as the Conference was a "western" affair. Lots of Toronto bashing was in the air." -- I'm not certain what you mean, or if you are just replying to Ryan in some personal way I don't get. Just know that not all tuned to this list have loyalties to Toronto or Vancouver or Buffalo or any particular place. My own are curiously displaced toward the Arizona desert, where there are a few people who are on this poetics list as well. Charles, I wasn't replying to Ryan, rather Ryan was approached by Kevin Killian at the reading last night and I accompanied Ryan to the reading along with Reg ( new to the list). Kevin expressed an interest in receiving new Canadian poetry from Ryan and I and any others we knew because he had little except from established writers. The western reference is just part of the continuing war amongst East and West in Canada. We the west ( Granola Heads) enjoy poking at the Snobs with snow in the east. As far as I know Ondaatje was the only Eastern based writer at the reading last night. It's all part of the Canadian mentality, if you say you're driving across Canada it means you're either going east to Toronto or Montreal, or west to Vancouver. The prairies and the maritimes although great sources of Canadian culture are not included in the concept of the civilized world. They are a source of great insecurity and pride. My Mom's a maritimer (Newfie) which puts me at the but of several jokes. I'll leave you with one (note my Mom has seven brothers) How does a Newfie girl stay a virgin? Run faster than her brothers. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 13:18:38 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: sentimentality Some questions: *Does* music move more than poetry - or does the average musical concert move more than the average (avant-garde or otherwise) poetry gig? Is this because of the ways music and poetry are being written; the physicality of playing (what about concerts with taped material?)? Do poets rehearse as much as musicians, or at all, for a gig? Is professionalism and/or discipline uncool in a poet? Ira ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 14:28:17 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: message fr criss cheek X-cc: Kenneth Goldsmith , braman sandra , "I.LIGHTMAN" , Caroline Bergvall , Erik Belgum , Gary Sullivan , John Cayley , Robert A Harrison , "Sheila E. Murphy" , John Byrum , Mn Center For Book Arts , w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz, Blair Seagram , selby@slip.net Hi - posting this broad - it's still the mechanics of construction discussion. >cris, hi: are you out there? --just wanted to know if you received my >last post re the visual poetries loop? experiencing some challenges here >trying to work the cc and alias functions, and understand there are some >alternatives which we could discuss > >look forward to hearing from you, >carl hi carl I am here and listening. Just soaked in exams this couple of weeks and reeling from a conference as you must also be. >Hi, >My name is Jody and I'm helping Carl with this. We tried to create a >private group with aliases here to simplify this, but our software won't >let us put outside addresses in alias groups. The easiest way to do this >would be for you to use a programme called majordomo which is quite >common at unix sites, or perhaps you have access to listserver software. >These sorts of programmes are really the only reliable way to manage >lists. Without them your group will probably be unmnageable in any >practical sense. Contact your system/mail administrator(s) and see if >they can help. > >Jody >gilbert@sfu.ca I'm aware of the majordomo system and no i don't have access to that listserv software. It's how I get info on Chiapas through Harry Cleaver at Texas for example. I wanted to do it like Funkhauser's d i u and that's the system i was trying. But i categorically don't want to 'run a list' or become any kind of surrogate sysop. It just seemed that there were areas of discussion, particularly in respect of visual and performance poetries that could be a thread running parallel to but not clog into the main 'poetics' list. I'd hoped to kickstart something that would grow organically and be de-centred and self-generative. What next? love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 09:32:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: a=a is sentimentality Ed, Okay, but what's poetry got to do with truth value? And what thing doesn't exactly fill the container of itself? Sounds. Sounds like. Sounds like teen spirit. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 09:57:47 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: a=a is sentimentality Jordan, It seems to me that if you are going to move from "sentimentality" to the question of "truth value" then you are now in the realm of subjectivity-objectivity, and in this realm it seems to me that either kind of language approaches "truth" though in different ways. Moreover, poetic Objectivism, for instance, is at heart, perhaps, grounded in subjectivity, whereas philosophical objectivism is grounded in . . . ?--that is, say, Quine versus Heidegger. As Rorty wrote some time ago already, "Non-Kantian philosophers like Heidegger and Derrida [versus Neo-Kantians like Putnam, Strawson, and Rawls] are emblematic figures who not only do not solve problems, they do not *have* arguments or theses." Rorty continues: Derrida is the latest in a line of philosophers who attempt "to shatter the Kantians' ingenuous image of themselves as accurately representing how things really are." Burt Kimmelman kimmelman@admin.njit.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 11:58:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: a=a is sentimentality tho liking teen spirit, it's a problem. sounds=true, well, the greeks undid that, i mean c. 5th cent. b.c.e., that'll do for a date as well as any. and, ah, what doesn't fill the container of itself? well, whatever PROPOSES to be, tho on 3rd thought ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 09:35:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: WITZ ANNOUNCEMENT The new issue of _Witz_, a journal of contemporary poetics, is now available. This issue (volume III, number 2) contains essays by Mark Wallace ("On The Lyric As Experimental Possibility") and Karl Young ("Roman Reading"). There are two reviews of Don Byrd's _The Poetics of the Common Knowledge_, one by Robert Grenier and one by Chris Stroffolino. Daniel Barbiero reviews _The Art of Practice_; and Harry Polkinhorn reviews a number of books from Left Hand Press. _Witz_ is published in a newsletter format (8-1/2" x 11"), sixteen to twenty pages per issue, stapled. A single copy is $4, but if you'd like a sample copy, send a 55-cent stamp to the address below. Individual subscriptions are $10 for three issues ($30 for institutions). Please make checks payable to Christopher Reiner and send them to: WITZ 10604 Whipple Street Toluca Lake, California 91602 If you have any questions about _Witz_, or if you'd like to send a review or essay, you can e-mail me (creiner@crl.com) or send it by regular post. Subjects and themes are always open (i.e., I don't do theme issues). ASCII files of previous issues (1.1 to 2.1) of _Witz_ can be downloaded from the Electronic Poetry Center. All back issues are available from me. I was going to include a list of back issues and their contents, but it ran a little long (about 75 lines). I'll e-mail it to anyone who wants it. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Reiner creiner@crl.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 12:40:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: New Releases From Hard Press/Lingo Date: 06 Jun 95 09:49:17 EDT From: Jonathan Gams <74014.1142@compuserve.com> Hard Press, Inc. P.O. Box 184 West Stockbridge, Ma., 01266 413-232-4690 email: Jonathan Gams <74014.1142@compuserve.com> New from Hard Press: ============================================================= lingo: A Journal of the Arts Issue # 4 featuring a 30-page music section including Mark Swed on new composers who incorporate pop elements into concert music and Peter Occhiogrosso's Highly Selective Guide to Recent Concert Music * Kent Jones on Abel Ferrara and his Films * Color Portfolio including Philip Guston, Anna Bialobroda, and Noel Dolla * Art essays by John Yau and Raphael Rubinstein * Hubert Selby Jr.'s short story A Christmas Tale * Photography by Judy Fiskin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Ben Watkins, and others * Keith & Rosmarie Waldrop Interview Claude Royet-Journoud * Chris Stroffolino reviews David Shapiro's After a Lost Original * Work by Bob Perelman, Dodie Bellamy, Lisa Jarnot, Will Alexander, Kevin Killian, Kim Lyons, Anselm Hollo and many more. $12.50 ============================================================ THE DESIRES OF MOTHERS TO PLEASE OTHERS IN LETTERS By Bernadette Mayer A monumental St. Bernadette to the initiates, this work has achieved something like the status of "Manuscript Classic." An epistolary text which takes as its formal parameters the nine months of Ms. Mayer's last pregnancy-an augury by bee sting- and writes the reader's psyche to the fences... $12.95 ============================================================ LOWELL CONNECTOR: LINES AND SHOTS FROM KEROUAC'S TOWN By Clark Coolidge, Michael Gizzi, and John Yau. Photographs by Bill Barrette and Celia Coolidge. As homage to a writing hero, and as catalyst for their own work, the authors of Lowell Connector made several trips to Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. The procedure was to visit specific sights described in Kerouac's work, taking in the homes, haunts, schools and literary memorials as a kind of memory protein in the activation of their own work. $12.95 ============================================================ New From HARD PRESS: House of Outside First Book Series Solow By Lynn Crawford Haven't wanted to read anything lately, certainly not any of the 500 manuscripts and galleys I get a year. However, I found Solow facinating. It reminds me of early John Hawkes which is still for me the best Hawkes. The whole dreamscape was especially vivid.- Jim Harrison $10.00 ============================================================ The Geographics By Albert Mobilio This impressive first book manages the double ground of a nightmarish surrealism and a dryly perceptive wit. It's as if Humphrey Bogart were taking a good, if final, look at what's called the world. These are poems of a survivor, urbane, intellegent, fact of hope and despair equally. The Geographics is an ultimate detox center for "reality" addicts as thinking becomes the only way out. - Robert Creeley $10.00 ============================================================ Hard Press, Inc. P.O. Box 184 West Stockbridge, Ma., 01266 413-232-4690 email: Jonathan Gams <74014.1142@compuserve.com> ============================================================================= Kenneth Goldsmith kgolds@panix.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 10:06:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: Re: sentimentality Ira asks: >*Does* music move more than poetry - or does the average musical concert >move more than the average (avant-garde or otherwise) poetry gig? It would appear that music DOES move more than poetry. The combination is even MORE potentially stirring than music independently. >Is this because of the ways music and poetry are being written; the >physicality of playing (what about concerts with taped material?)? I think that music is more closely connected to the core of us. That the materials being worked with are inherently capable of a generating a more powerful response. As one who made a conscious choice to replace musical composition and performance with poetry composition and performance, I actually felt I'd shifted over to a medium that is congenial to music in ways that some writers don't get into. Not that everyone should. It's just a auditory inclination. >Do poets rehearse as much as musicians, or at all, for a gig? Is >professionalism and/or discipline uncool in a poet? Most poets do not rehearse very much at all. Some sterling performers prepare the frame that allows the nuances to emerge and show in the actual performance. Discipline is at the core of any human competence. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 13:10:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi Subject: Re: a=a is sent In-Reply-To: <199506061334.AA26969@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu> Ira: Hey, put the names in an *electronic* envelope, how about! I don't think music moves more than poetry in performance, but then this might be a question of audience. I'm in New York City, where "concert" very often means $20/ 2 drink min., or else snoozing retirees on their regular matinee expedition. (On the other hand, the first time I saw "The Rites of Spring" performed by an orchestra was at Carnegie Hall, and there was a white-haired woman in front of me who came to life to the extent that she worked the brown velvet ribbon right off the back of her head, with all her air conducting and seated ballet twists.) I would love to reroute the sentimentality thread toward the question of beauty. (WAIT, don't hit the delete button yet...) In the past couple of yrs I've asked some people on this list the question "What about beauty," and interestingly I've found that while one might expect to be lectured on the institutional underpinnings of that construction, in fact I've been treated to just the opposite. One poet told me to read Sobin. A friend who used to help run the Kitchen told me to listen to Morton Feldman's THREE VOICES FOR JOAN LA BARBARA, a setting of a Frank OHara poem which sounds like a vocal snowfall. And I heard "beauty," and I am still wondering how it is that when you ask, people who one mght think would've discarded the word as too problematic in fact have a special category for it, a sort of unacknowledged one. Sentiment, Subjectivity, or something else? ------------------------Marisa ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 10:51:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: sentimentality In-Reply-To: <199506061221.FAA21148@whistler.sfu.ca> from "I.LIGHTMAN" at Jun 6, 95 01:18:38 pm > > Some questions: > > *Does* music move more than poetry - or does the average musical concert > move more than the average (avant-garde or otherwise) poetry gig? > > Is this because of the ways music and poetry are being written; the > physicality of playing (what about concerts with taped material?)? > > Do poets rehearse as much as musicians, or at all, for a gig? Is > professionalism and/or discipline uncool in a poet? > > Ira > ---what a wonderful series of questions. my first initial response is that rock, pop or whatever is the ultimate art form -- i can't qualify that -- i'm going on instinct, and that "rock stars" are the real _Shamans_ c --- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 11:09:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: message fr criss cheek In-Reply-To: <199506061333.GAA23982@whistler.sfu.ca> from "cris cheek" at Jun 6, 95 02:28:17 pm cris, hi: --with respect to what you noted regarding the formation of a list for visual/sound poetry, i'm told a list can be enacted here (at simon fraser univ. in vancouver), and if you wish to consider that i can get the ball rolling. but i know this is completely your baby, and it will remain so. like yourself, though, i have a serious interest in and love of "concrete," and want to do anything i can to re-invent the public for it. but it's your call look forward to hearing from you carl ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 13:10:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: discipline In-Reply-To: <199506061221.FAA21148@whistler.sfu.ca> from "I.LIGHTMAN" at Jun 6, 95 01:18:38 pm Ira asks in a recent post "is discipline uncool in a poet". A wonderful question, I think, being unestablished and undefined by a tradition or "school", as of yet. Reg and I were discussing this very problem recently, which is, in some respects, a source of great despair to us. My understanding is that Vancouver is not unlike many other cities in the dynamics of its younger poetry scene (I mean the scene freqented by G1'ers, or goners, if you like). REg teaches at Simon Fraser and I study there and perhaps for this reason our poetry is very aware of its historicity, of where matters of style and imagination come from, and that whole business of the anxiety of influence. When I look at some of my poems in a stack, it reminds me of little league and how you had to shake the hands of all the other team's players when the game was over:"Good game, good game, good game....". Each poem acknowledges with love who I've been playing with and against. And I think this is necessary and inevitable for a time. But there is an open-mike circuit in Vancouver which is not interested in "traditions" or the discipline which informs a work. Rather, it is a fast, aggressive and usually nihilistic crowd which resents academically informed work. I think Patrick Lane described this circuit of poets as wanting poems to work like t.v. chat shows: confessional, sensational, voyeuristic and quick. I suppose this is a tradition now, maybe cultivated from a media interpretation of the beats, on the surface. But it is very popular and what students and the like want to hear while they're drinking. I've written poems specifically for this kind of occasion with some success, and it was fun. But that was all it was about. So, my question is, how does tradition and its disciplines fit into a venue or readership where entertainment and mass production are the rules of the game? Perhaps I'm just whining out of personal taste, but this is not the league I want to play in, despite its growing popularity. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 17:34:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Warren Sonbert 1947-1995 Warren Sonbert died on Wednesday, at home and surrounded by friends. He was 47 years old. I got the news in a letters from Lyn Hejinian and Tom Mandel. Tom wrote: Charles, the news may have reached you already. Warren died yesterday (wednesday) at 10:30 am. In his bed, in his sleep, and with friends at his side. Beth and I had been in SF the whole weekend, left tuesday, and were with him daily. He was conscious on thursday when we arrived, tho in pain with organs failing and unable to speak or to move much, and would confirm requests by squeezing his hand around yours. We read to him, to a strong attention. Whitman. The days that followed he was agitated, feverish, only occasionally responsive (hands) and in much discomfort increasing. By sunday evening it had become obvious that fluids and pureed food only caused intense pain and prolonged it too, by whatever number of hours or few days, and the decision was taken to limit them severely and to up his morphine substantially. By monday afternoon, when I kissed him goodbye, he was fading and probably not conscious of one's presence or only fleetingly and as shallow this sense of any world as his breath, shallow, effortful, unsustaining. I will miss him, deeply and for a long time. tom * Lyn, after telling me the news, and remembering Warren, mentioned that there is to be a screening of his early films at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco on June 22. Carla Harryman will introduce. ********************************************************************** Warren's wonderful, poetic, films immeasurably enriched the art of cinema. His 15 films are: Amphetamine (1966). "First film, heavy influence by Goddard and Warhol -- designed to shock." (sound/10 min.) Where Did Our Love Go? (1966). "First pleasure romp: along the various venues of culture, circa 1966, New York." (sound/15 min.) Hall of Mirrors (1966) -- made while a student at NYU film school: `correcting' dailies from a 1947 murder film, with added sequences of Rene Ricard at home, Gerard Malanga at a show of Lucas Samaras's `Hall of Mirrors'. (sound/7 min) The Bad and the Beautiful (1967). "Mutual (I film them, they film each other) portraits of eight New York couples, mercifully, you'll be relieved to learn, only one pair of whom are still together. Editing in camera" (sound/30 min.) Holiday (1967). "High spirited glances (along with *Truth Serum*) at Coney Island, Appalachian Trail, New Jersey, the Janis Gallery." (silent/15 min.) Truth Serum (1967). (silent/12 min) Carriage Trade (1971) -- the first film of his most characteristic mode consisting of a procession of intercut images, an open-ended collage of shots taken in widely disparate locations. Warren himself wrote: "Magnum opus (and my first real silent) made up of section of [early films]. The strategies of combing `old' images with recent trips through Asia, North Africa, Europe and North America. I went to see this film with my daughter Emma (then 9) this past fall; it played as part of the Museum of Modern Art's October Sonbert retrospective. It is hard to believe that a film this stylistically commanding and elegant was made by Warren when he was in his early 20s. Like many of Warren's films, there is an elegiac quality to the passing of the images, of the evanescent quality of scenes screened, time slipping by. (silent / 61 min.) Rude Awakening (1972). "Tautening this silent period's approach." (silent/36 min) Divided Loyalties (1978). "Further development of editing concerns." (silent/22 min.) Noblesse Oblige (1981). "Furthest distillation (along with *The Cup and the Lip*) of later manner editing/dislocation approach." (silent/58 min.) A Woman's Touch (1983). "A backslide into earlier `personality' scheme." (silent/23 min.) The Cup and the Lip (1987). (silent/20 min.) Honor and Obey (1988). "Quick setting (two weeks?) of a film on a dare for the NY Film Festival." (silent/22 minutes.) Since Warren often worked for years on setting, eg cutting, his films, his comment is striking. It was fun to see Sonbert's film as among the few such works shown at the NY Film Festival. At this point, such films were shown as shorts, accompanying feature films, always provoking the ire of the "sophisticated" film festival audience. The running joke was that someone would yell out "SOUND!". Later, the festival grouped such films together under the title "avant garde visions" as I recall: they've got narrative we've got visions. Actually, Sonbert's films are a running revision of the possibility of narrative in the cinema. Friendly Witness (1989). NY Film Festival again with music/image interplay. (32 min.) Short Fuse (1991). "Last NY Film Festival music/image experiment." (37 min.) [All quotes from the flier for his October 1995 MoMA retrospective.] * Whiplash - According to Tom Mandel a rough cut of this film exists; hopefully, a version of this final film will one day be available. ((((()))))) "The body dies, the body's beauty lives" -- Wallace Stevens On the Poetics list there has been a recent discussion of sentimentality and I suppose it's in a notice like this that it is most difficult to find a balance between sentiment and substance. Because nothing you can say can account for the fact of Warren's death at 47 and because grief over Warren's dying also echos with that of many others of our generation who have died of AIDS. So there is a need to balance that hideous, unrepresentable, general fact with the specifics of this particular person. Warren had an extraordinary grace both in his films and in his life. Talking about this quality of Warren's with Abby Child yesterday she said "he was a `prince'". But only in the sense that he made you feel graceful too, to be with him, to talk of movies or poetry or music or gossip about friends. He seemed to live a charmed life -- travelling the world, attending operas in Europe and North American, having his work shown at Festivals and museums. But charms are haunted. As part of his MoMA retrospective, Warren got to pick four feature films that he particularly liked, and these were shown alongside his films. For those who can't get one of Warren's films, rent a video of one of these and watch it in his honor: Lubitsch's "The Man I Killed (Broken Lullaby)" (1932), Wilder's "Kiss Me Stupid" (1964), Preminger's "The Cardinal" (1963), and Vertov's "Man with a Movie Camera" (1929). Last night, AMC was playing one of the Sirk films that Warren loved: "Imitation of Life" (where early on the earnest young photographer tells of his implausible ambition to have his pictures shown at the Museum of Modern Art). When I mentioned this to Tom Mandel he pointed to Sirk's "Magnificent Obsession"; catch it, if you can, *tonight* on AMC. When Warren was visiting us in the Fall, Emma was taping interviews of friends, relatives, and neighbors. She asked Warren what his favorite holiday was. He said, "Halloween, because I like to dress up." This prince is dead. His films live to light up the shadow his death has cast. --Charles Bernstein ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 14:28:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark Subject: GIANTESS: the organ of the New Abjectionists In-Reply-To: <199506061820.LAA21712@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Christopher Reiner" at Jun 6, 95 09:35:17 am Dear All, The first issue of *GIANTESS : the organ of the New Abjectionists* -- an 18-page stapled object which opens to 28 cherry inches widthways -- is now available. We exhausted a first run, giving it away at the Blaserfest here, but will print further copies for those of you who have been waiting for your subscription copy (GIANTESS is the defunct *Q'ir'i* collapsed into the sadly defunct *Barscheit*), or for others who want to order copies or begin a subscription in the next couple of months (ie before the next issue). Please send $4 for an issue, postpaid. Or subscribe for $9 for three issues (or $5 with a subscription to RADDLE MOON). Single copy orders and subscriptions to : 2239 Stephens Street, Vancouver, BC, V6K 3W5 Canada. We can bank United Statesian money/cheques/money orders; please be tactful however and refrain from "converting" : $4 is $4, $9 is $9. The first issue has : the opening pages of *Phatic*, a novel in progress by Lisa Robertson; "Punctured," Dodie Bellamy's response to the fundamentalist comic artist, Jack Chick; Christine Stewart's "Classical Tragical Play," *DuRiving*; and Catriona Strang's poem, 'Gap' RADDLE MOON 14 (product description following in a day or two) is due from the printer this weeks. A good time to subscribe/support, with our thanks; it absolutely helps. (*Raddle Moon* subscriptions are $12 for two issues; $24 for four, etc.; single copies are $7, back list [various prices] is available.) My email is : clarkd@sfu.ca Good to meet and re-meet so many of you here. I wish we could do this -- I mean something like -- every year. good wishes, Susan Clark clarkd@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 15:21:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reginald Johanson Subject: discipline I like Ryan's move on the question of whether discipline is uncool, placing at the boundary between the university/small presses (often run by people trained in the university) and the open-mike scene which often expresses contempt for that poetry. It seems to be a question of whose camp one is in: the university has never recognized anything as poetry except that which it chooses to anthologize, and its anthologies reflect its concerns. The open mike business is anarchic, poet as punk, and doesn't leave a record of itself because it can't concentrate that long. Then there are people like me on the margins of both comfortable in neither. Now what, eh? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 21:04:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: discipline In-Reply-To: <199506070038.RAA22895@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "Reginald Johanson" at Jun 6, 95 03:21:03 pm The open mike scene is usually disappointing, isnt it, Reg? If it isnt, why isnt it? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 21:20:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sentimentality In-Reply-To: <199506062000.NAA04352@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Carl Lynden Peters" at Jun 6, 95 10:51:31 am Regarding Carl Peters' remark that rock stars are artists etc. I figure he is trying to be silly or maybe provocative. The electric guitar amped is easy to play, easy enough to do that strumming they do in them punky bands. I decicded to watch that band called "Hole" on TV. Ohhh, look at the funny clothes, that's got to be worth 1000 points. oooh look how she has her hair over her eyes, wow. Ooh look how she leans way back and strums, woopie. 2000 more points. That ought to tax the minds and souls of any 12-year-old. I am amused by the pathetic yearning after respect by thye industry. 3-chord strummers call themselves "artists" instead of children's music entertainers. They perform at "concerts" instead of shows. Etc. They usyally appeal to the kind of refined and complkicated miond that likes Charles Bukowski's poems. There are good musicians with some brain and chops, like Frank Zappa. "Hot Rats" is really good. It might be as good as Delibes. But Nine Centimeter nails, etc? So what if your friends think yr a goop for saying you doubt whether they are really good artists? Listen to a little Monk, for god's sake. And when the whang whang boys and girls arent taking words from serious adult music, they try to swipe it from jazz and blues, steal lingo from great 1940s Black artists. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 21:29:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: adios muchachos In-Reply-To: <199506060632.XAA11181@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson" at Jun 5, 95 11:29:16 pm I dont know where Lindz gets the idea about east-west bashing at the Blaserfest and readings. I was there all the way and didnt notice it. It is also not true that Ondaatje was the only eastern Canadian poet at the readings; there were plenty. McCaffery and Mac Cormack, Robt Hogg, Victor Coleman, for examples. Erin Moure was there. And we embraced all these people as ourselves. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 21:30:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: speaking of blaser conf. In-Reply-To: <199506060521.WAA07977@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Pierre Joris" at Jun 6, 95 01:19:25 am Yeah, Pierre, but I also introduced Eshleman as being from Kalamazoo. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 00:50:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: sentimentality In-Reply-To: <199506070427.AAA17780@panix4.panix.com> You're serious? You're really serious? You don't get Hole? If it's satire below, it's missing the point; if it's not, I'm scared... Alan On Tue, 6 Jun 1995, George Bowering wrote: > Regarding Carl Peters' remark that rock stars are artists etc. I > figure he is trying to be silly or maybe provocative. The electric > guitar amped is easy to play, easy enough to do that strumming they > do in them punky bands. I decicded to watch that band called "Hole" > on TV. Ohhh, look at the funny clothes, that's got to be worth 1000 > points. oooh look how she has her hair over her eyes, wow. Ooh look > how she leans way back and strums, woopie. 2000 more points. That > ought to tax the minds and souls of any 12-year-old. I am amused by > the pathetic yearning after respect by thye industry. 3-chord > strummers call themselves "artists" instead of children's music > entertainers. They perform at "concerts" instead of shows. Etc. They > usyally appeal to the kind of refined and complkicated miond that > likes Charles Bukowski's poems. There are good musicians with some > brain and chops, like Frank Zappa. "Hot Rats" is really good. It > might be as good as Delibes. But Nine Centimeter nails, etc? So what > if your friends think yr a goop for saying you doubt whether they are > really good artists? Listen to a little Monk, for god's sake. And > when the whang whang boys and girls arent taking words from serious > adult music, they try to swipe it from jazz and blues, steal lingo > from great 1940s Black artists. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 21:57:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sentimentality In-Reply-To: <199506070452.VAA17279@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Alan Sondheim" at Jun 7, 95 00:50:32 am Well, if "Hole" is satire, it's about as funny as Conan O'Brien. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 01:03:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: sentimentality In-Reply-To: <199506070458.AAA21783@panix4.panix.com> I was referring to your writing; I like Hole, a hell of a lot better than Nirvana for that matter, the energy, the edge, Love's writing on the Net which is some of the best and most intense stuff I've seen. I don't even think that Monk would figure music to be "about" technique, and I wouldn't care how many chords Hole does or doesn't use, any more than I care about the range of PJ Harvey's voice or Bratmobile's backup. It's like worrying Robert Frank's focusing and grey scale. It's about something else and you may not like it but you're missing it wide of the mark. Alan On Tue, 6 Jun 1995, George Bowering wrote: > Well, if "Hole" is satire, it's about as funny as Conan O'Brien. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 22:37:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Actually actual? In-Reply-To: <199505310325.UAA21811@whistler.sfu.ca> from "maria damon" at May 30, 95 10:23:56 pm Oh hell, ten or however many years ago people were telling me that ABBA was good, so I listened and it was crap, and now those people are making fun of it. Now they say listen to Hole, so I listen to Hole. It is crap. So I await another decade. I just dont get the withitness that intellectuals try to achieve by praising dumnWdumb children's music instead of getting up the nerve for hard stuff. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 22:46:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: art after art after art In-Reply-To: <199505261845.LAA23717@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Herb Levy" at May 26, 95 10:21:02 am I remember that some time in the 50s Marshall McLuhan said something to the effect that the artists are not ahead of their time, but that they are in the present, while most people are living in the past. He later used the trope of the rear view mirror. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 01:46:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: Actually actual? In-Reply-To: <199506070540.BAA26704@panix4.panix.com> It's probably hard for you to believe but the "withitness" is simply loving the music. And what constitutes children's music? And what's the waiting another decade bit? I still listen to the Sex Pistols and they're not exactly Monk-like; I listen to them more than Monk in fact. I'm not arguing taste with you, it's the blatant dismissal of stuff that's I find bizarre. So you don't like it? I don't like Monk. I don't remember Abba, but I listen to SPK, Albert Ayler, and Hole. And now that I think of it, thank God a lot of this stuff is children's music... Alan On Tue, 6 Jun 1995, George Bowering wrote: > Oh hell, ten or however many years ago people were telling me that > ABBA was good, so I listened and it was crap, and now those people > are making fun of it. Now they say listen to Hole, so I listen to > Hole. It is crap. So I await another decade. I just dont get the > withitness that intellectuals try to achieve by praising dumnWdumb > children's music instead of getting up the nerve for hard stuff. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 02:00:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: art after art after art In-Reply-To: <199506070549.BAA27731@panix4.panix.com> This brings up a constant argument I have here in NY in relation to the artworld; the Net itself seems to embody more interesting (no def. here) aesthetics than the artworks placed upon it or using it. As if artists are attempting to keep up with a culture that has by and large outstripped them. In this regard, I'm amazed at the inventiveness, say, of MOOs, of Usenet groups such as alt.destroy-the-internet and alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb. verb, alt.dirty-whores, or the Monster Truck Neutopians on alt.society. neutopia, of John December's Web Pages, and so forth. The mirror you mention may well be a computer screen, accessible to all, and "art" itself is becoming unclear, blurred, muddied. I'd say that most artists I know are living in the past in relation to the Net, and an awful lot of Net people are burning towards the future, artists or not. Sorry for the meandering reply. Alan On Tue, 6 Jun 1995, George Bowering wrote: > I remember that some time in the 50s Marshall McLuhan said something > to the effect that the artists are not ahead of their time, but that > they are in the present, while most people are living in the past. He > later used the trope of the rear view mirror. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 00:09:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: Re: discipline Ryan, I enjoyed your post about discipline (one of my favorite topics!). The short answer would be that for whatever level of intensity you choose for the discipline you want or need, there will be a venue. The bell curve is alive and well out there. No need to genuflect to any process that's not enough for you. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 10:43:51 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk" Subject: Sentimentality, music etc In-Reply-To: <199506070402.FAA12584@tucana.dur.ac.uk> Re: Britten's War Requiem: it's necessary for players and audience to make some attempt to think it back to its original context, or at least out of the rather sterile concert hall context. Written late 50s early 60s, (a time when the UK certainly did need refocussing on the wastage of war, which isn't to say that other places/times didn't/don't) for the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral (Coventry, you remember, was the city the Allies allowed to be destroyed rather than reveal to the Germans that they'd cracked their radio code) by a gay pacifist who was still (at that time) outside the UK establishment, its intention was to "reach" a lot of people. To do this, Britten opened out and simplified his style a lot (it's not atonal music in any sense) and chose "accessible" texts by Owen - to my mind, mistakenly (when Tippett came to write his polemic piece "A Child of Our Time" he wrote his own libretto). The key to it all is the Dies Irae: normally when composers set this they go for a big, wrath-filled, melodramatic sound - Britten's is the only setting I can think of which is tiny, guilt-ridden and fearful. The war music, likewise, should be clumsy and childish. The whole thing is stamped with the human and fallible, and a performance which doesn't respect this, I'd say, would fail. But there's a tendency these days in concert performances and recordings to go for "lovely sounds" in contexts where it's not appropriate (Gorecki suffers from this, to my ears) - as if we looked at those Goya execution scenes and said they had "lovely colours". This comes down to "dumbheaded" audiences and (in the case of music) insincere performances. And it suggests to me that sentimentality (if that's what this love of lushness is) is to do with audiences and consumers, rather than makers of things. Now (to take my own case) I freely confess to being both - and it's possible that if a consumer response slips into my poetry (and I don't cut it out) the result is sentimental poetry. In which case, let he/she who is without wotsit cast the first thingumy. Cards on the table: I was never a very good performing musician, and any explanation I give as to why I shifted from a formal musical training to poetry could be tempered with cries of "sour grapes". But it does seem to me that much of the music bizz is to do with consumerism ("giving the public what they want") rather than actually making anything. There are exceptions, of course. Equally, I'm often horrified by the amateurishness of many poets over their reading/performance practice (one UK poet who turned up to give a reading actually prefaced it with "I don't think I'm a very good reader, I think my poems are better studied on the page..." but he still claimed his fee). Uncool it may be, but (to the consternation of my family) I do indeed read work aloud during the composition process, and when preparing for a reading. I used at one stage to record myself, and play it back to myself, as part of this process. It was very instructive, and also very destructive. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x x x Richard Caddel, E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk x x Durham University Library, Phone: 0191 374 3044 x x Stockton Rd. Durham DH1 3LY Fax: 0191 374 7481 x x x x "Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write." x x - Basil Bunting x x x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 04:29:36 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: adios muchachos Thanks, Lindz. Being originally from Oklahoma, I think I understand. Although it should be noted that several of the second or third wave New York School poets (Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, and a couple of others) are actually from Oklahoma and followed Ted Berrigan from Tulsa to NY after he taught in Tulsa for one or two years. Me, I went west, and only recently ended up in this upper Midwestern place which is still foreign territory. But wasn't Steve McCaffery at the Vancouver reading? Is he considered Eastern Canadian, or as a migrant from England, is he altogether out of the Canadian east/west context? I'd be proud to be a Maritimer, too. all best, charles charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 09:39:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: speaking of blaser conf. In-Reply-To: <199506070434.AAA08366@sarah.albany.edu> from "George Bowering" at Jun 6, 95 09:30:39 pm > > Yeah, Pierre, but I also introduced Eshleman as being from Kalamazoo. Well, George, someone or other will have seent hat as the high or low point, as the case may be. But kidding aside, the high point of the conference was obviously Robin, & given that Robin was there all the time, the high point was all the time. I had a wonderful time, so, thank you Vancouver & -ites.> ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | He who wants to escape the world, translates it. Dept. of English | --Henri Michaux SUNY Albany | Albany NY 12222 | "Herman has taken to writing poetry. You tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | need not tell anyone, for you know how email: | such things get around." joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| --Mrs. Melville in a letter to her mother. ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 09:48:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Warren Sonbert 1947-1995 So--why doesn't somebody with money (like James $herry or somebody) put on a Warren Sonbert retrospective and film festival in some poetry/art space in NYC (and somebody else can do it on the west coast)--- The reason i ask is because there is so little crossover between genres these days---it seems the specialization of the art world is harder to overcome than it was 35 or even 20 years ago--Who are the young experiental filmakers of my generation? (or of LINDzzzzz's generation)? Are they too busy trying to get funding to come down and meet us poets? Are they working in video? Maybe I haven't looked around enough, so I'm trying to keep my eyes pried open. Chris (oh--I got off the point--the point is that for those of us who have only the vaguest memory of Sonbert from college experimental film shows-- it would be good for the poetry community to actually get out of its sick little "words words words" attitude at least for awhile and come together over (it))..... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 09:52:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: sentimentality Mr. Peters certainly sounds snooty today-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 10:03:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Actually actual? And george bowering also claims that intellectuals could only possibly like bands like Hole and not the "hard stuff" for spurious reasons of "hipness"---- When I worked on the editorial board of a poetry magazine in the late 80's--the editor made me listen to PARSIFAL (sp?) and if i seemed appreciative I was in (it was part of the screening process)--- Ironically, his love of OPERA--especially aryan opera--and other "difficult high culture"(and yes I know opera was ORIGINALLY low culture--like jazz before it was called "African American Classical") was not parelleled in his love of literature--he went for the Bly, Hugo,Logan nexus in poetry. I on the other hand preferred Ashbery, O'Hara, etc---but to "unwind" found myself listening more to rock and blues and reggae and stuff than classical and even jazz... I certainly do not want to be dogmatic about this, or eclectic-- but just who ARE these people to be so PRESCRIPTIVE about what music a good poet should listen to---it guarantees nothing, my friends, except perhaps a verbal sophistication when talking to someone like a famous poet who doesn't like talking about poetry at parties and so you gotta find something else to talk about (and "politics" gets boring--so it turns to music--but then there's these fights over music--I was a t a party once where one friend called another "a musical nazi")... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 10:06:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: a=a is what does bad poetry do Marisa, Okay, let's go the other way. Ed, Now don't you proposition me! Burt, Re truth: Ed started it! Question for the group--what harm does bad poetry do? Love, Jordan ("Sincerity is verbal etiquette--it works for some boys"--Barscheit Nation) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 15:51:59 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: Sentimentality, music etc Just to say I really found Ric's posting informative. Also want to support Alan (yeah a Bratmobile fan!): there is a way of looking a song that uses three chords as minimalist, a la Reich and Glass, as milking a small set of materials for all you can.