========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 07:26:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Maria, but what if you DID encounter such students? Is it a one-way street? Like can one eat one's "avant-garde" desert before? I mean dessert.... Or is it possible that a poet who comes to the avant-garde stuff without ever having access to, or interest in, the mainstream tradition (western) (dying?), will have been spared an un-necessary immersion in stuffy stuff ? That "experiment" includes "tradition" more than vice versa--- I'm surprised you haven't encountered such students... I wonder what you would have done with me had I been your student.... cs ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 04:14:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. From: Ron Silliman Subject: Authors & Publishers Fight Photocopy Ruling The Authors Guild American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) Text and Academic Authors Association (TAAA) The Authors Registry FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 28, 1996 AUTHORS' GROUPS BACK PUBLISHERS IN FIGHTING RULING THAT `COURSEPACK' PHOTOCOPYING NEEDS NO PERMISSION In a rare instance of partnership, authors and publishers, who frequently face off in angry disputes about who owns what, this week joined forces to call for the overturn of a federal court decision permitting unrestricted photocopying of portions of books and articles for university "coursepacks" without payment to copyright holders. Authors' organizations representing tens of thousands of writers filed a "friend of the court" brief in support of publishers seeking a rehearing of what the authors termed a "dangerous" copyright decision handed down February 12 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The authors took particular issue with the court's finding, in a 2-to-1 decision, that the standard practice of paying for licenses to make such photocopies is not an incentive for authors to write. The organizations involved are three national writers' groups--the Authors Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), and the Text and Academic Authors Association (TAAA)--and the Authors Registry, the new royalty collection and licensing agency endorsed by more than 30 writers' groups and 95 literary agencies. At issue is a case in which Princeton University Press, Macmillan and St. Martin's Press sued Michigan Document Services, a copyshop specializing in coursepacks--professors' custom-ordered anthologies of excerpts from published works, which are increasingly taking the place of textbooks for college courses. Copyshops regularly obtain permissions and pay fees to reproduce copyrighted works, but the Michigan shop boasted to professors that it would make coursepacks with "No Delays Waiting for Permission." The appeals court majority, reversing a lower court ruling, declared the permissionless photocopying legal. The "friend of the court" brief, prepared by Authors Guild attorneys, assured the court that compensation is indeed an incentive to writers, and that depriving publishers of their share of permissions income would also hurt writers by leading to fewer published works. The authors' groups pointed to their long efforts to stop uncompensated photocopying and asked the court, "What else could account for the immediate impact of the Authors Registry, in which over 50,000 authors are registered for collection, accounting and payment of royalties and fees?" A decision on rehearing the case is expected in March. ### Contacts: Authors Guild - Kay Murray, 212-563-5904 ASJA - Dan Carlinsky, 212-861-2526 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 03:06:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Emily, I wonder (really--not being facetious) why the poetry & poets that are least accepted (promoted, hired, what-have-you) by the academe are the ones whose work can rarely be discussed w/o using "academic" language or fully appreciated w/o having a theory background? It seems off to call L=Apo "outsider" poetry, kind of, don't it? Isn't it, relative to the masses (some cartoon vision of an audience-at-large), more insider than insider? More academe than academe?" It's historical. In the 1950s when the New Critics consolidated their control over the English curriculum, the creative writing movement grew up as a place where poets (and fiction writers) did not have to pretend to be new critics (especially true in Iowa, which had some heavy N. Crit. faculty as I dimly recall). Once the theory wave hit (two decades later), it really became a bastion of reaction to the rest of the department. In Syracuse they wanted to make theory an undergrad requirement several years ago and had to do something like make creative writing its own separate dept in order to get the votes to do so. The idea of langpo as "insider" writing extends a critique that goes back as far as the troubadors, who composed their "trobar clus" as poetry for their fellow poets rather than the works they intended for larger audiences. I fear that writing that requires writers and readers both to be on their toes will always be considered such. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 02:58:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: College fetish DiPalma taught there in the late 1960s, early '70s. Howard McCord ran the writing program there then and may still for all I know. McCord was a fairly interesting poet whose work seems to have disappeared entirely from print over the past two decades. No school can touch Reed back when it produced, at once, Whalen, Snyder and Welch, for poets-to-total-class-size. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 22:07:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Spring issue of SPT newsletter This is Dodie Bellamy again. The Spring, 1996 (#17) issue of the Small Press Traffic newsletter will be printed this weekend and bulk-mailed next week. This is your last chance to sign up for a free copy of the newsletter, cunningly called _Traffic_. Though the newsletter is for members I've decided that due to our expanded reviews section, to offer subscriptions to people living outside the San Francisco Bay area. This first issue is free to anyone who asks--the next three issues can be had at the low subscription rate of $10. Make checks payable to Small Press Traffic and send to: Small Press Traffic at New College 741 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 This issue features reviews from many people on the Poetics List, plus a couple non-high tech types: Jonathan Brannen on Gil Ott Louis Cabri on Lyn Hejinian and Kit Robinson David Clippinger on William Bronk Lisa Cooper on Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge Maria Damon on Kathleen Fraser and Bev Dahlen Ben Friedlander on Gerrit Lansing Loss Glazier on Karen MacCormack Janet Gray on Sheila Murphy Marisa Januzzi on Ed Foster's _Postmodern Poetry_ and _Primary Trouble_ Kevin Magee on Dodie Bellamy (me!) and Sam D'Allesandro Ange Mlinko on Alice Notley and Stephen Jonas Albert Mobilio on Joseph Donahue Mark Scroggins on Nathaniel Mackey and Jack Spicer Tom Vogler on Ron Silliman I just read the whole issue from cover to cover. It's a Good Read. And reviewers: thanks a million for all your hard work. You'll be getting your copies soon. Those of you who have inquired about, or signed up for reviewing books for the Summer issue of _Traffic_, I'll be getting in touch with you next week. I appreciate your patience. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 16:54:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: sciku In-Reply-To: <199602290503.AAA19813@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Automatic digest processor" at Feb 29, 96 00:01:13 am Since i started the whole damn renga thing once upon a time (Yup--check the archives--that first books/dreams line is my most famous flicker in posey's eternal flame) i consider myself the list's godfather of bastard imperialist forms. So here's something i wrote sort of in accordance with the guidelines of the SciFaiku Manifesto (http://www.crew.umich.edu/ ~brink/poetry/haikuhabitat.html) and sort of thinking about my post on scanning brains/scanning poems. But really it's more a sciku or tekku: slow modem brain slow like last leaf tentative fall of seventeen bits Let the craze begin! steve ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 21:19:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: scanning brains/ scanning poems In-Reply-To: <199602292051.PAA63239@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> YES, exactly, but why is no one saying or thinking this outside of this list and a few obscure corners. The media and the academy and the drug companies (and the drug companies) certainly don't. 90% of people who feel bad ask for and get a pill, Part of the information gap might be the silence of those who hold an opposing view? Thanks for starting the renga BTW. It has been an experience. best, tom bell On Thu, 29 Feb 1996, Steven Howard Shoemaker wrote: > Tom Bell writes: > > Does this mean that poetry can change the way a reader > or writer's brain works?" > > > Sure it can, and i'm a bit surprised by the question, by the tentativeness > of that groping for "scientific" confirmation of what we know to be true. > No question that reading all that poetry makes us different people, changes > the kinds of organisms we are. But to stick with "science" or "biology," > the question arises from a persistent reification, common to popular > discourse, of the "biological" as a kind of lumpy given. In fact, we > ... > steve shoemaker > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:57:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Samuels Subject: Re: Adorno In-Reply-To: <199602281612.LAA25832@mail.erols.com> from "Emily Lloyd" at Feb 28, 96 11:12:19 am according to Emily Lloyd: > > "I do not doubt the egos of sports stars who discourage newspaper boys from > asking questions about the sport." > > --E(xtra!Extra!) > > > Maybe the potential for being bashed, silenced, or "publicly humiliated" > keeps some women from joining the list. > (from one who joined the list but rarely posts) it's more like wanting to write only when i feel i have something real to say. figuring out the positions of various groups and individuals seems an ongoing (not to say futile, for it's interesting to watch the shifts) exercise in establishing and overthrowing and re-establishing what's important (at least for that particular discursive moment). i have no insistent stance to promote, nobody to persuade, *here*. so i just listen. also, new to this world (no silliman i), i feel a bit like the betrothed sitting in the living room with the beloved's family. you'd better believe i'm just going to listen and figure out how all these people manage to get along. lisa samuels ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 20:09:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Foley Subject: none I wrote a longish note after reading Don Byrd's comments, and all of today's back & forth about academic poetry, but all I really want to say is this: the differences among poets are small, so far as they all are poets. That you write poems must matter more than what school (of thought) you are affiliated with, what college you attended, what year you were born in. From Shakespeare to Keats is a breath, from Keats to us another, that is all. It is all poetry. Poets must write all of it. I am embarassed to have let myself fall into the usual polemics, the pastime of "cheering" for one team or another, as Don Byrd wisely puts it. I do want to understand the poems, the poetries I cannot yet, but I have gone about it clumsily. I do hope to be able to contribute something to this discussion, but I for one will amend my tone. Pat Foley ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 13:48:17 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Dear Emily, I have a friend accessible only on snail-mail who finds that Shaks sonnets have been emended and emended without just cause in academia for a long time, & that the way that they are printed in first( early ?) edition suggests a structuring of the sequence that all the academics he knows want to ignore. I'll try get some statement out of him for you on this to put on the e sometime fairly soon. But in his experience the one thing you won't get from academia is a good intro to Shaks sonnets. So he tells me, at length, in conversation. This puts a long bony finger into the ribs. best Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 10:03:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 29 Feb 1996 18:12:40 -0500 from David Kellogg writes: "I know why I read poetry, but I know plenty of people who don't read any, and they don't seem to be deprived. It's damned presumptuous to write as though they are, or to suggest that the reasons why poetry is important to ME will be important to anybody else." When you're writing on Foucault and BH Smith and Bourdieu, David, aren't you trying to convince your potential readers that it might be a good thing to pay attention to what you're saying and what (in your view) they're saying-- about "taste," about contingencies of value, etc.? What makes that writing less presumptuous? Isn't the real problem here not the professing of taste per se but the authoritativeness of tone used to profess? I'm not *really* surprised that people want to know who you read--are you? I mean, to follow this logic to its endpoint, it's presumptuous to write at all, or to breathe-- you're grabbing some oxygen others clearly have their own use for. Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 09:39:12 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories david kellogg has glossed this issue of academic theorizing wisely... yes---the irony of rejecting theoretically-inclined poets (or intellectuals, for that matter) in the academic meat market on the basis of what don byrd has identified as "taste" is that it is precisely the category of the "poetic" that is thereby accorded primacy in literary (-historical) studies... and again, as don indicates, this includes taste-driven views of theory (theory, that is, as anything but practice---let's call it a connoisseurship of theory), and is often accomplished w/o any critical intervention at all vis-a-vis those for whom the term has a direct resonance---poets, poetry theorists, etc... at the same time, creative writers thus safeguard their status as ultimate legislators of taste... i would hasten to add that, though the national book circle critics award will most certainly attract more academic acclaim than most scholarly awards, the stipulation in mla job ads of "national publications required" is ONLY used for creative writing positions... that is, creative writers are in this regard working under much more exclusionary criteria.. i could make a list of critical works that riff on things poetic but never, never mention poetry... in any case it's damned difficult, as david sez, even to *talk* poetry with most of my colleagues, and methinks this is less a matter of their willful resistance than of their preparation in grad. school, the emphasis in those quarters... now it's worth pointing out here that there *is*, within composition studies (as opposed to literary studies per se), a growing constituency of folks for whom poetry and poetics means just that... i'm thinking, for example, of wendy bishop, derek owens (whose book was cited on this list a couple of weeks back), and eve shelnutt... what's interesting here is that these latter three scholars foreground the *teaching* of writing as opposed to the study of literature... hence the institutional status of creative writing is something about which each is well-informed... and note that jed rasula's _the american poetry wax museum_ is itself on the ncte (that's 'national council of teachers of english') series, "refiguring english studies," whose series editor is none other than steve north (whose _the making of knowledge in composition: portrait of an emerging field_ (boynton-cook) had a rather profound effect on composition studies)... joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 11:17:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Five Get Overexcited "Well Chris I think it would be wise for a poet to write in as many of the different affects that show up during the day.. to look as much as possible like a normal person, eventually.. viz your shakespeare or my breathing keats.." --from Tony Adorno's first novel, _Deipnosophistry_, republished last year by Red & Blue.. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 11:43:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Donald J. Byrd" Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Comments: To: Ron Silliman In-Reply-To: <199603011106.DAA12072@ix2.ix.netcom.com> Ron's account of the anti-intellectualism of the Iowa- inspired creative writing programs (which is to say nearly all creative writing programs) is quite correct. Basically, the maker of new critical objects (poems, stories, whatever) was supposed to be a kind of idiot savant. The primary qualifications were an unhappy childhood, binge drinking, and impeccable taste. It was the critic's task to do the socially responsible task of explaining how this genius adolescent was performing as an emotional lightning rod for the otherwise responsible adults of a demanding society. The underlying assumption that has been in many of the postings--academic=difficult or requiring a significant amount of information not provide by the text itself, non-academic= easy to read--simply has it backwards. The function of the American academy is not to be in the vanguard of learning. It's functions are (1) for the sciences to do research that is necessary but not related to immediate profits and (2) to instruct the undergraduates in the prevailing values. The whole idea is to make it all as simple as possible for young people, who really aren't very interested (and rightly so, as what they are typically asked to learn is an attack on their vitality). Early on in the move to theory, Robert Scholes argued that since we cannot get our students to read as many books as we would like, we will teach them the theory.... If they can get the general theory, they won't have to know so damned many examples. It all backfired in a way that is somewhat amusing. Theory turned out to be a kind of tar baby, and the academic hands got stuck to it. It's not a matter of knowing the theory (the academic thing), it is a matter of_ using_ the theory. Consider the way, Gertrude Stein used William James and Alfred North Whitehead (she was a student of one and friend of the other) or the way Proust used Bergson, or Olson used Whitehead, or even the way Eliot used F.H. Bradley. In fact, most of the theories in academia are (appropriately enough) theories of reading (i.e. consumption) or they are made into theories of reading. These are really of no use for writer's. A writer's reading is a whole other matter. Don Byrd ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 12:32:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories In-Reply-To: On Fri, 1 Mar 1996, Keith Tuma wrote: > When you're writing on Foucault and BH Smith and Bourdieu, David, aren't you > trying to convince your potential readers that it might be a good thing to > pay attention to what you're saying and what (in your view) they're saying-- > about "taste," about contingencies of value, etc.? What makes that writing > less presumptuous? Isn't the real problem here not the professing of taste > per se but the authoritativeness of tone used to profess? I'm not *really* > surprised that people want to know who you read--are you? I mean, to follow > this logic to its endpoint, it's presumptuous to write at all, or to breathe-- > you're grabbing some oxygen others clearly have their own use for. Dear Keith, You're right: the presumptousness lies in the mode of address, not in the idea of preference as such. I wasn't making myself clear. But I'm sticking to my relativist guns. We all have tastes, sure, they're all socially & historically constructed ("all the way down," as it were), and of course I prefer it if other people's values correspond *at some level* to my own. (Though this can be boring also). So yes, I think that, as you nicely put it, "it might be a good thing if" etc. etc. What I was trying to address, perhaps not very well, was the network of expectation in the academy about contemporary poetry, a network of expectation that ASSUMES that if you're in contemporary poetry well of COURSE you're going to confirm or challenge people's tastes -- that's what academics in poetry DO, isn't it? In other words, enter the taste-making game of poetry or bail. Moreover, do it on absolutist terms. In my experience, it's more or less assumed that the theoretical work you do will have some direct relation to this, that the final mission of theory in contemporary poetry is to say, "Poet A is the bee's knees," or Poet X beats Poet Y, or Poetry is better than television because _________. And not theorize it, not say, "I seem to choose poet A over poet B because of certain elements in my own history and construction as a subject. This may not work for you." My current work is precisely about the forms of evaluation current in the poetry biz, and I think it sometimes -- not always, I'm admittedly overstating it a bit -- freaks people out some for those reasons. I could think of other kinds of work that would be equally or more estranged, most of it falling under the rubric of some form or another of cultural studies or ethnographic writing. (Like Maria D's book). Such works are piss people off not because they express opinions, but because they situate their own position in the field of socially constructed taste. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 11:50:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher J. Beach" Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories In-Reply-To: <960228032425_433549859@emout08.mail.aol.com> Ron--Good clarifications on the complexities of class. Rod--I like you idea of "synchronicity" rather than simply class having to do with why so many poets were at a particular institution at a particular time. Harvard, in particular, has a history of having students who are intellectually inclined but not at all from privileged backgrounds. (My father-in-law was one). There is a lure about places like Harvard and Berkeley that is not merely class-defined. Perhaps it's historical, perhaps its literary or poetic. This would be a very interesting book, actually (the history of Harvard and twentieth century American poetry). Why has Princeton, to use your example, produced so many fewer poets. Did Palmer, Hejinian and Bernstein know about the poetic tradition of Harvard before deciding to go there? Did it play a role in their decision? Does Harvard's admissions policy place more of an emphasis on poetic talent in admitting students than, say, Princeton's? Perhaps--I don't know. But all of these would be relevant questions, as would questions of how different institutions are perceived within different communities: ie. Jewish, African-American, gay, poetic, intellectual. Chris B On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Rod Smith wrote: > NEW Ziolkowski, Moxley, & Davies YES! > > Ron-- > Liked yr post on class very much. Two of my heroes, Cage & Oppen, were > college drop outs. > > Chris B-- > As I said, the Harvard thing isn't something I wld overemphasize, however, > you asked who among G1 went there -- Bernstein, Hejinian, & Palmer all went > there. > Possibly the three biggest name language poets (I know I know Michael's not a > language poet). Andrews > was there as a grad student. & Susan Howe's father taught there, was head of > the Eng Dept. for a number of years I believe. Aside from Olson, Ashbery, > O'Hara, Creeley was also there during WWII. & Burroghs I think dropped out? > Pretty good school I'd say. Any "major poets" go to Princeton? Actually, the > question falls somewhere between "privilege" & some kind of odd > synchronicity-- Providence & the Bay area being two other places that seem to > have harbored more than any reasonably expected share of poetic talent. > Actually, a populace flows through the yard. . . > > Chris S-- > I think the question of why L-poets were more politically radical, at least > overtly, than NYS (other than just "sensibility") had to do with what was > going on in the universities generally in the seventies/early eighties-- > "theory" was taking over, so it was something they engaged & did it quite > well I believe. But as I think has been sd here before, it, theory, means > something quite different now. > > I'm sorry if I seemed too dismissive of the M, Chris. But I think my > statement of the general reaction to their first few manifestoes was > accurate. I also said I thought a number of the poems they published were > good. & I've said I like Pam R's work, 'specially the Burning Deck book. & I > also think Lew D's poem in oblek 12 is interesting. I understand concerns abt > divisiveness > but it shouldn't stop one from stating opinions, should it? OK, maybe some > opinions some of the time. . . > > Maybe we can't do what the Allen did because they already did it for us, but > you can be sure that if we stop for even a short while it wld have to be done > all over again. & good point you made abt the beats, someone sd somewhere > "they weren't high school drop outs, they were grad school drop outs!" > > --Rod > > PS-- the term "biggest name" above being based on my perception of who's > known, & even occasionally read, outside of their respective communities. > Armantrout, Silliman, Scalapino being examples of "big names" that didn't go > to Harvard. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 13:51:40 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Spring issue of SPT newsletter Congratulations on the issue, Dodie. I look forward to seeing the issue, and of course the chax press reviews. Will I receive a few? Will there be extras I can buy? Also, would it be permissible (and I could do this later, say after a month or so) to put some or all reviews on a chax press web site? Also, did you get plenty of reviewers for the next newsletter? I know I volunteered to review something if you wished, but I didn't hear back from you, so I assumed you already had everything covered. love to you, charles ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 13:53:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Spring issue of SPT newsletter I did it again, and hit reply to send a message a second ago (and one which sounds very silly) to the poetics list, when I meant to send it directly to dodie bellamy. very sorry, charles ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 15:52:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories As much as it pains a Columbia grad to say so, Princeton produced some fine poets.. John Koethe, John Godfrey, Lewis MacAdams.. in addition to those already mentioned.. of course it pleases a CU grad to note that Galway Kinnell, W. S. Merwin and others dealt with odd verbs like "bicker" on a regular basis.. jd ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 16:23:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: academic poet/ry chris s: hypothetically, of course there are students who know the avantgarde and not the more conventional. i just haven't encountered them. except for maybe one, who teaches me more than i teach him. he joined the POETRIX list for a while, then discovered Zizek and unsubbed.--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 16:24:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: dead horses, live theories, bodies trans sending academic poet/ry >Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 13:03:25 -0800 >To: jdavis@panix.com >From: Steve Carll >Subject: dead horses, live theories, bodies trans sending academic > poet/ry Chris Stroffolino's post on this topic hit the nail on the head for me, with the clarification made by Rod and Mark that critique need not be a divisive tactic (and I know you knew that, Chris). There are all kinds of ways aesthetic positions might possibly interact with political ones. One of the things that cracks me up about reading avant-garde manifestos is how they're always calling for these radical changes in the way we look at art, and when you get further down into the specifics, they're not saying anything that different than the last manifesto that came down the pike from the last avant-garde group that's now considered an abhorrent sell-out for whatever reason. (I'm thinking of a book by Herschel Chipp called _Theories of Modern Art_, which concentrates on 20th-century painting mostly, but the idea is the same.) But these small differences are defended to the hilt by people who've made their pet theory inextricable from their identity, and who therefore can't admit that there's room for any other perspective. Talk about "totalization"! This is by no means some oblique attack on anyone, either, so no jumping to conclusions out there! Emily, Why is needing to slow down and read carefully a sign that there's something wrong? I'm not sure if an academic background is as necessary as an attentive eye and ear. Certainly whatever intelligence you do have and have developed, whether through schooling or other means, is going to be challenged by experimental poetry; I think that's what the experiment is about--taking language deeper than intelligence, into consciousness or the psyche or whatever you might call it. My own experience as a reader is that I'm more interested in poetry which challenges me to become a better reader, a better thinker, a better listener. If it only reinforces preexisting brain patterns (which might make it easy to understand and "identify with") then it's ultimately disposable. Of course, if there's no point of entry into the poem whatsoever, that's a problem too--the challenge becomes a threat (sort of.) Tom, could you elaborate on your intriguing, provocative Levinas quote a bit? How is the body manifest as a contestation of the attribution of meaning? And is this contestation unique to the body? The body seems to me to ground meaning as much as defy it, and it seems to me that similar claims could be made for any phenomenon. Maybe I should just read the Levinas: feel free to tell me so. At 08:26 PM 2/27/96 -0500, Patrick Foley wrote: >I will even try >to go along with the poem not being about anything at all --- which I suspect >is the secret handshake on this list. It's not exactly that it's about "nothing at all", really. It's just that usually when we ask "what's this poem "about", we're looking for a single thing that the poem's reducible to, and that's what I think most folks on this list would resist. The poem's "aboutness" flies off in a million different directions in the face of attempts to seize it thus. >But I'm going to have trouble if the poem's language >is not, in those circumstances, expected to do everything language does, and >that includes reference, boys. What Wittgenstein called how language & the >world _fit_. Granted. But again, the fit's not always comfortable. The coat of language is reversible, for example. One-to-one reference is not a given; and in this circumstance-- > --- it is natural to assume the poet is in his own head, or at least >that he is caressing and not grasping the things of the world (Kafka's >distinction, and Rilke's too, I think). --not necessarily. Would it be unnatural to make no assumption at all, or to assume that there's been a typographical error or a pun we don't get but might or a deliberate joke played on us by the poet? This is what leading the reader into an experience with language is about. > I just don't want to hear a lot of talk >about "ontological" this and that, when we could be talking about the poem. Does the poem not partake of ontology? Steve ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 17:16:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith Subject: Re: Oppen Rod Smith wrote: "Off the global politics of wittle poets topic-- re Oppen-- there seems to me a fairly large shift in his work after _Of Being Numerous_ -- I love all his work, but the late books particularly -- he seems, perhaps, to have let go of a certain kind of sense in favor of another. Reminiscent perhaps of the first book, but possibly effected by Duncan's ear? An even further opening of the open text? That kind of fluidity." I'm not sure I understand what you mean here by a letting go "of a certain kind of sense in favor of another." The late work seems an intensification of the previous. Though Oppen admired & read Duncan with interest, I think the syntactic & rhythmic innovations in the late work were result of further refinement & development of all that had gone before. Oppen certainly wasn't after what he referred to as RD's "honey." Your suggestion is interesting though as to what Oppen might have appropriated from RD as his work was changing during the period following _Of Being Numerous_. He did make contact with contact Duncan when they moved back to SF. You're probably aware of these, but for anyone here who isn't, there are a few essays on Oppen that deal with the late work & ground it usefully in the earlier: John Taggart's "Deep Jewels: Oppen's _Seascape: Needle's Eye_" (Ironwood 26) & one of the best pieces written on GO, Taggart's "To Go Down To Go Into" (Ironwood 31/32); Ron Silliman's (in more general terms) "The Shipwreck Of The Singular" (Temblor 5) & Ron's remarks on Oppen's techniques in "Third phase Objectivism" (Paideuma 10.1) are very useful in examining the late work. (Sure wish someone would print Rachel duPlessis' piece on the function of the 'gaps' in Oppen & Blaser that she read at the Blaser conference last year.) Charles Smith ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 16:28:45 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: Re: dead classes It might be useful to note that Ashbery, O'Hara, Creeley, Hall, etc. were attending Harvard in a post-WWII context. O'Hara, and I think Hall, were able to go to Harvard because, as veterans, the GI Bill picked up the tuition. An influx of GI Bill students had an impact on Harvard at that time. They were older and tended to be from less priviledged backgrounds. I suspect that Yale during this period was more reticent about admitting GI Bill students. Nor, do I sense that O'Hara and Creeley had a particularly high opinion of Harvard. That there were a number of interesting people there is as much an accident of time as an accident of place. >sure, it probably is dopey to compare poets on the basis of what college >they went to. it is sort of like saying, well, that one's from alabama >and this one from mississippi, what's the difference. the distinctions >fuzz up the further away you are. nonetheless, it seems interesting to >me that at the same time harvard students included poets ashbery, o'hara, >creeley, donald hall, robert bly, the yale university english department >was producing a steady stream of future cia types. james angleton, >one-time editor of furioso and crazed mole-hunter, being only the most >famous. the institutions' sensibilities have to affected these outcomes. > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 16:28:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: Re: academic poet/ry >& there's no excuse for the way derrida writes when his central ideas could be >articulated in a pamphlet. > >Em > Em, I've been enjoying your comments, so I don't want you to feel unwelcomed when I say that your statement re: Derrida reminds me of someone saying that Cliff Notes are preferable to the actual book. There is an excuse for the way Derrida wrote, it's called style. Best, jb ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 22:08:50 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: real dead bugs There is no excuse for Derrida's style, he was shot for it in Mexico in 1837, escaped death only because the spectacular one-eyed Robert Creeley spoke up about Harvard professor #16 (Rasmussen : "Intro to Realism in Russian Folksong"). And I was with them, I suffered, I was the man oh man those chairs were made of plastic blue cheese. - Elron Hubbub ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 01:02:40 +1030 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carol or Jeremy Close Subject: Why is all this poetry stuff so damned popular, anyway. Why is all this poetry stuff so very popular, anyway? Or not? "helped before" Carol ------------------------------ sig of shame http://206.26.158.13/free/apronoffate.html ------------------------------ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 09:39:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: real dead bugs Henry Gould wrote: >There is no excuse for Derrida's style, >he was shot for it in Mexico in 1837, I thought it was, "he shot his wife for it in Tijuana/in 1969, aiming for her apple-shaped head," &c, &c -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 10:35:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian McHale Subject: Re: Oppen In-Reply-To: Message of 03/01/96 at 17:16:17 from CharSSmith@AOL.COM Charles Smith said he wished someone wd publish Rachel duPlessis' piece on gaps. I too admire it -- heard it in an earlier/different version at the Cornell conference last spring -- tried to get it from RAchel for "Poetics To- day," but it turns out there's meant to be some publication of materials from the BC conference, & it will appear there, though I don't know how soon. But it really is a splendid essay. Brian McHale ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 10:16:57 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: Oppen To follow up on Charles Smith's helpful info on essays regarding Oppen's later work: several of Taggart's essays on Oppen (and others on Zukofsky, Bronk, Andrews, Susan Howe, Duncan, Olson, Enslin...) are collected in _Songs of Degrees: Essays on Contemporary Poetry and Poetics_ (1994, U of Alabama Press, intro by Marjorie Perloff). Personally, I have found Taggart's essays, especially on Oppen and Zukofsky, to be very fine readings. I highly recommend _Songs of Degrees_. William Martin has a good review of _Songs of Degrees_ in the current _Taproot_. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 10:19:55 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: real dead bugs Actually, Jacques Derrida was aboard the Challenger & died in the explosion. I'm not sure who was here in Tuscaloosa this past Fall as Derrida as part of a celebration of his 65th birthday..... Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 12:02:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Dear Tony Green--- In reference to the Shakespeare Sonnet thing--- Well, that was Laura Riding's argument in 1926. See her essay in "Survey Of Modernist Poetry" (a book co-authored with Graves). --in which she compares a Shakes sonnet (the lust one) to eecummings.... the essay has been an oft unacknowledged source for New Criticism (of course the NC's perverted it and institutionalized) and has been attacked by such as Jakobson and Shakespearean Stepehn Booth... I also detect its "influence" in Zukofsky's BOTTOM: ON SHAKES (though again unacknowledged).......best, chris stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 13:30:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith Subject: Re: Oppen Thanks for reminding me of another really expensive book I'd like to have! Taggart on LZ is always useful. One of my favorites is "Come Shadow Come..." that appeared in American Poetry (I think?). I trust that's included in _Songs..._? ________________________ To follow up on Charles Smith's helpful info on essays regarding Oppen's later work: several of Taggart's essays on Oppen (and others on Zukofsky, Bronk, Andrews, Susan Howe, Duncan, Olson, Enslin...) are collected in _Songs of Degrees: Essays on Contemporary Poetry and Poetics_ (1994, U of Alabama Press, intro by Marjorie Perloff). Personally, I have found Taggart's essays, especially on Oppen and Zukofsky, to be very fine readings. I highly recommend _Songs of Degrees_. William Martin has a good review of _Songs of Degrees_ in the current _Taproot_. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 11:23:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: message in a bottle In-Reply-To: <199603020511.AAA04117@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> . . . along the trail left by the dream of power --Ingeborg Bachman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 11:30:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: G.I. Bill (gastro-intestinal) In-Reply-To: <199603020511.AAA04117@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> much has been written about effect of returning GIs on college & poetry in U.S. -- There's a curious phenomenon at the other end of that cycle -- Many of us who were drafted during the late sixties and early seventies (I did alternative service, which meant no GI benefits upon eventual release, by the way), have discovered the plum jobs in English Departments occupied by men who were not drafted -- This is one aspect of the lottery that wasn't immediately evident when we drew our lots back in sixty-whatever -- sort of an anti-GI-BILL for the anti-GIs, or we might call it General Hershey's revenge! I do not mention this as some seething resentnik (having, after all, a tenured job when many others do not) -- but as indication that there are many aspects of post-Viet Nam war academia that are not immediately apparent in discussions of the profession's history -- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 12:08:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: ron silliman, Re: academic poet/ry I had ray dipalma (himself a grad of iowa) as a teacher at bowling green, and he exposed me to writers like stein, the ny york school, and the core language folks like yourself, people i had heard nothing of as an undergrad at cornell (presided over by a r ammons, w/ wm matthews and robert morgan) . another of ray's students was phil demise, who i havent heard from in years. mccords leadership of the program lasted a couple more years, then, tired of academic battling, he got into a less stressful spot at BG. his workcontinues to be published, but by smaller presses than before. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 15:49:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "David W. Clippinger" Subject: Re: Creative Writing at Syracuse In-Reply-To: <199603020508.AAA25854@mailbox.syr.edu> As per Ron Silliman's note about the split at Syracuse University into a Creative Writing Department and the ETS (English and Textual Studies Department), it's true that the split was indeed a reaction to theory. Although, it is to the point now where the theory students do not read literature and the creative writers read nothing but a particular sect of poetry or fiction. A rather exacerbating morass. Most interestingly, John Taggart, who has been trying to get a job at Syracuse for years, has been abruptly passed over again and again because he was the poet on an MLA panel a few years ago encouraging other poets and creative writers that they should read theory. The crowd, composed of mostly creative writers, reacted with scorn. David Clippinger ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 15:52:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Oppen Guess what I'd say I was hinting at in my Oppen question-- seems there's less of an interest in direct statement in the later work, more of an interest in movement/flow. Of course these are always side by side but I think at times one is more emphatic. I'd point to a poem like "Animula" or "The Book of Job &..." as examples of what I'm talking abt, & the last pg of "A Narrative" as possibly the first occurence of this in his work after returning to poetry. Poems like "The Hills" or basically all of "The Materials" is _saying_ something, working out a philosophical question or making an observation/description-- "Of Being Numerous" perhaps the most concerted attempt at this & the place where he begins to leave it off somewhat. The practice of quoting himself which shows up so strongly in _Primitive_ also causes this to happen for me-- the reiteration even at a distance seems to be saying "this is what I've come to know & largely what I can make with it is (a) music." The disappearance of punctuation in much of the later work & the increasing use of gaps within the line also point in this direction. I wouldn't call it an interest in nonsense, this emphasis I'm talking about, but rather an acceptance, perhaps, of the sense already made, & an opening out into music with it. But just now reading through _The Materials_ a bit, seems I may be wrong, that ear's there too. . . Rod ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 15:49:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Creative Writing at Syracuse > Most interestingly, John Taggart, who has >been trying to get a job at Syracuse for years, has been abruptly passed >over again and again because he was the poet on an MLA panel a few years >ago encouraging other poets and creative writers that they should read >theory. Sorry to continue this thread, as I think the work of Taggart's poetry, as well as his essays, such as those on Oppen, are considerably more important and interesting than whether or not he or anyone else has an academic job (except where that discussion gets into the historical ramifications of the GI Bill & the draft & class privelege, as in various recent posts) -- but this particular job note is rather shocking. If true, it demands that there were Syracuse writer/teachers on the MLA panel, or that the network of writers who would communicate with Syracuse writer/teachers to blackball a Taggart is extensive & devious beyond what I might have imagined, and I have imagined it as potentially quite extensive & devious. charles ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 20:14:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith There has been something bothering me lately. What are those black things under seals eyes--could they be hairs? ============================================================================= Kenneth Goldsmith http://wfmu.org/~kennyg kgolds@panix.com kennyg@wfmu.org kgoldsmith@hardpress.com v. 212.260.4081 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 17:32:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope Subject: Re: Oppen C. Smith writes: Thanks for reminding me of another really expensive book I'd like to have! Taggart on LZ is always useful. One of my favorites is "Come Shadow Come..." that appeared in American Poetry (I think?). I trust that's included in _Songs..._? Yes, it's in there -- and I add another high recommendation for Taggart's book. I just picked it up from the library a couple of days ago (coincidentally) -- in paperback, so it shouldn't be _too_ expensive... Also, I take it most here are familiar with duPlessis' essay in the "Man and Poet" volume dedicated to Oppen. I don't know that she explicitly engages any significant differences between earlier and later Oppen, but she does (if I remember correctly - I don't have the book and its been awhile) read Oppen with/against Pound with an ear to Oppen's fluidity in contrast to Pound's relative density. Very edifying, as I recall... Stephen Cope ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 10:59:07 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: G. S. Giscombe Can anyone help me out with an address (preferably e-mail) and maybe phone number for G. S. Giscombe? I'd like to contact him regarding his piece in the recent issue of ABR, "Maroons: Postmodernist Black Poetry." Thanks, Burt Kimmelman kimmelman@admin.njit.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 08:18:15 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Dear Chris, Thanks for the Riding note. I'll make sure my friend gets onto that. Even so he's reading the sonnets in groups in interesting ways as far as I know independent of Riding. And tells me that all the local Shaks specialists he's approached insist that the emended Sonnets hold. My point was that our academies are not always the best places to get introduced to old arts (let alone new ones). Over three decades and more I've witnessed often enough the perpetuation of views that evaporate on close inspection, accompanied by appeals to the authority of a consensus in the academy and derision for any would-be corrections. Is this something to do with the seemingly gang-like organization of academic institutions, that are particularly effective at exclusion of persons and especially of "new ideas"? re- the "works or acts of merit towards learning": "The works pertaining to the persons of learned men...are two: the reward and designation of readers in sciences alread extant and invented; and the reward and designation of writers and inquirers concerning any parts of learning not sufficiently laboured and prosecuted." Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. The Advancement of Learning. BkII,6. (Everyman ed. p.63) Elsehwere he notices that the latter often get short shrift. (He has some interesting comments on the debate over theory in section 8 -- as on many of the issues that are under discussion here often.) He can be usefully consulted even now for "the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation." Likewise Shaks, but renovation is not necessarily accomplished by holding to old emendations. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 08:29:53 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories Don't tastes change? Aren't they (socially constructed) unexamined prejudices, because of an assumption that they are beyond examination? When that assumption is in place, learning tends not to proceed. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 14:41:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: Riding Shakespeare Tony, I'm not sure about the politics of the Riding/Booth controversy, but Booth's edition of the Sonnets (U California P??) contains a facsimile of the first edition alongside a "modernized" edition. Margreta de Grazia's SHAKESPEARE VERBATIM (Cambridge UP) is a book-length treatise, coolly theoretical, on the eighteenth-century origins of the Shakespearean sequence and how different what we "have" is from what was first published as that work. It also contains references to a number of other recent critics who have torn to shreds our notion of the canonical Shakespeare, including the Sonnets; de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass have an essay about two years ago in Shakespeare Quarterly called "The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text" that provides a good overview of this work as well. Where I come from, revisting the publication and editing history of these texts is all the rage -- I have sympathy for your friend if he/she can't get access to people who know about this work (if, that is, I've correctly understood his/her interests). -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 08:58:12 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Riding Shakespeare Thanks David Golumbia re Shaks info . Message will be passed on to my non-e-mail friend. He need encouragement you rightly might guess. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 13:59:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: G.I. Bill (gastro-intestinal) aldon, i've heard others detail this phenomenon, except in harsher, more specifically pejorative terms... i.e., that english depts. are now populated in many cases by those unwilling to 'face the music,' either wrt combat or jail... i hasten to add that i'm not taking sides here at all, not least b/c i was young enough not to bother registering and not to worry about my complacency (turned 18 in '72)... i mean, i wasn't pushed to the edge (not that way, anyway)... i wonder what others feel about this... one individual once confided in me that english depts. were filled with "cowards" (again---non-combat and non-c.o. status, "draft dodgers") and that this was in fact an aspect of the general lassitude evinced by english profs. wrt serious work issues such as collective bargaining, faculty rights, etc... doesn't entirely wash, given that i've known a number of the (much) older set who were ww ii vets and who were/are similarly opposed to (for one) unionizing... but i still wonder what others think about this, the general trauma of america's involvement in viet nam and the current shape of literary studies---not theoretically, but in terms of the institutional realities... joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 15:05:50 -0500 Reply-To: John_Lavagnino@Brown.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Lavagnino Subject: Re: Riding Shakespeare There's a lot of good stuff on the relationship between the physical book and the text in Randall McLeod's writings; with respect to Shaksper's sonnets, in "Spellbound: Typography and the Concept of Old-Spelling Editions" (in *Renaissance and Reformation* NS 3:1 (1979), 50-65) and "Unemending Shakespeare's Sonnet 111" (in *Studies in English Literature* 21 (1981), 75-96). I think his finest work is in "Information upon Information" (in *Text* 5 (1991), 241-281, published under the name "Random Clod"). The particular value of these essays comes from the way they bring together the perspectives of two subdisciplines that normally have no connection whatsoever: physical bibliography and literary criticism of the close-reading sort. McLeod seen solely as a bibliographer or solely as a critic isn't doing anything revolutionary, though he is quite good at both; it's the combination that's really remarkable. Where an edition of Shakespeare will typically have a note of a line or two about difficult readings or emendations, McLeod has written essays of ten or twenty pages which set forth more clearly than any other source what is known about the production process that created the book and how that affects the likelihood of particular emendations, as well as providing close readings of the resulting texts. Even if you're not convinced about the reading he happens to favor (as I am not by the second of these essays, which proposes a change in the usual emendation made to a single word in Sonnet 111), you will understand much better what you are looking at when you go back to the work. John Lavagnino Women Writers Project, Brown University ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 10:12:46 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: Pound translation In-Reply-To: <199603031935.OAA02190@orion.sas.upenn.edu> I got such a kick out of the following translation of Pound's "The Return" into pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English) that I thought it might bring a smile to other faces, as well. Here goes (by one of my students): Stay Come Spock em, dey stay come; auwe, spock da scayed Movaments, and da luau feet, Stay all twist an' kooked Walkin' all jag! Spock em, dey stay come, one, afta da udda Scayed, ha moe moe-haf not Wen even spook da snow all white lidat An soun' stay in da bareeze An haf stay turn da udda way; Was da "kooks-wit-wings," Safe! Kahunas wit da flyin' kine Nikes! Dey get de silva dogs Smellin' da hauna eya! Ai sos! Ai sos! Dey was da fas' mokes Dose da shaap-smellin'; Dose was da obake of blood Cruisin' on da leash, Shmoke dose leash-buggas ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 09:57:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: AWOL's web page (Forwarded on behalf of AWOL) >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 17:23:20 +1000 >To: awol@ozemail.com.au >From: awol@ozemail.com.au (awol) >Subject: AWOL's web page > >Australian Writing On Line now has its own web page at >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol > >The monthly HAPPENINGS list can be accessed at >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol/Happenings.html > >Over the coming weeks AWOL will upload its small press Virtual Bookshop. >Stay tuned. > > > > > >AWOL >Australian Writing On Line >awol@ozemail.com.au >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol/ >PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia >Phone 61 2 7475667 >Fax 61 2 7472802 > __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 15:42:49 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: Pound translation Susan -- Thank you for "the return" in pidgin, which for the moment makes that old one new. It raises a question in my mind, of whether there's been any attempt at a deep or thorough use of Hawaiian pidgin in contemporary poem-making -- not spicing up the English poem with a little of the flavor but going all the way as here. I know of that kind of thing from other places but don't know if similar activity is present in Hawaii. Anyway, just asking. JERRY ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 14:24:45 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: Pound translation In-Reply-To: <9603032342.AA11756@carla.UCSD.EDU> Jerry--There are some serious writers of pidgin in Hawai'i; the best are Lois-Ann Yamanaka, whose book of poems, _Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre_ (Bamboo Ridge Press) is much more radical than her new Farrar, Straus & Giroux novel, _Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers_, which has a standard English narrator. And there's Joe Balaz, whose mock epic about the discovery of Japan by Polynesians is in the new TINFISH (shameless shameless self-promotion on my part!), along with a couple of poems in pidgin by Eric Chock. Darrell Lum is a fine short story writer and playwright. Other writers, such as Marie Hara, Rodney Morales, and Juliet Kono Lee, use pidgin, but not exclusively. The Millenium anthology is working well in my creative writing class. I guess the funny thing is how little resistance there is to avant-garde writing among the students. I mean it's almost disappointing sometimes! Susan On Sun, 3 Mar 1996, Jerry Rothenberg wrote: > Susan -- > > Thank you for "the return" in pidgin, which for the moment makes that old one > new. It raises a question in my mind, of whether there's been any attempt > at a deep or thorough use of Hawaiian pidgin in contemporary poem-making -- > not spicing up the English poem with a little of the flavor but going all the > way as here. I know of that kind of thing from other places but don't know > if similar activity is present in Hawaii. > > Anyway, just asking. > > JERRY > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 12:55:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: AWOL: XAVIER HERBERT HOME FACES DEVELOPMENT AXE (forwarded) >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 17:28:14 +1000 >To: awol@ozemail.com.au >From: awol@ozemail.com.au (awol) >Subject: AWOL: XAVIER HERBERT HOME FACES DEVELOPMENT AXE > >The following message has been posted by AWOL on behalf of the campaign to >save Xavier Herbert's home. > >****************************************************** > >ATTENTION - HELP NEEDED > >XAVIER HERBERT HOME FACES DEVELOPMENT AXE > >The home of Xavier Herbert, located in the once quite Cairns suburb of >Redlynch in far north Queensland, is threatened with being demolished for >unit development. > >This is the home where Xavier Herbert wrote the 1975 Miles Franklin award >winner, Poor Fellow, My Country. > >The Xavier Herbert Cottage Preservation Committee has been established with >the aim of preserving the house. The options for this are still being >developed. A submission to the Cairns City Council to purchase the home has >been rejected. > >The home is for sale at $123,000. > >If anyone is interested in lending support to this campaign please contact the: > >Xavier Herbert Cottage Preservation Committee > >Cairns Ross Parisi 015163313 fax 070 314529 > >Brisbane Kevin Guy phone/fax 07 3844 5629 email cycad@peg.apc.org > > > > > > >AWOL >Australian Writing On Line >awol@ozemail.com.au >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol/ >PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia >Phone 61 2 7475667 >Fax 61 2 7472802 > __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 21:39:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: Riding Shakespeare Just want to second John Lavagnino's endorsement of Randall McLeod's work -- he's not well known outside the Renaissance but within it occupies a place of high regard -- as one pop god puts it, apropos of something else I'm sure, "not the stuff for the tourists/But the stuff for the purists." The de Grazia/Stallybrass essay I mentioned in my previous post was written as an introduction to a collection of McLeod that, so far as I know, has not in fact appeared and may not be appearing. He deserves a wider audience -- but I suspect he's too smart to get one. -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 22:05:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Dear Tony Green---I don't know if Chris Reiner is still on this list, but WITZ published an article just recently by Mark DuCharme on a Clark Coolidge and a Shakespeare sonnet...recognizing the syntactical ambiguity and all that in the S as well as C (though I don't know if he deals with the BOOK KNOWN AS Q punctuation and spellings.....cs ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 21:39:31 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Resent-From: "Hank Lazer" Comments: Originally-From: Emily Lloyd From: Hank Lazer Subject: spoken through a medium Hank, could you forward this to the list for me? I ask you because I just read one of your posts so I had your address handy. ______________________________________________ [THE FOLLOWING POST DOES NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF HANK LAZER, so far as I know. They're mine. Emily Lloyd] Not not speaking; something's wrong w/my listserv app. I can receive Poetics messages but am being prevented from responding. I've saved the responses I've tried to send & will fwd. them to the list if they're relevant by the time this (rather metaphorical) problem is solved... But briefly--re:derrida--NOT pro-Cliff notes. My problem w/JD (& others) is his audience. In choosing a style, you're often choosing (whether purposefully or not) an audience. & excluding another. And yes, this applies to poets & other kinds of writers, too. I was (unfashionably) making a distinction between theoreticians & poets---feeling the first have a "responsibility" to [what word to use here? clarity?] by nature of their work trying to "assert" "convince" "change" or "expose." Of course, some poets do this too (no one need remind me). So---who reads and who doesn't Derrida--& should this be a [concern, question, issue] (of mine, of his, of anyone who likes his "central ideas," which no, I will NOT attempt to articulate here). Also--I must be living in a different academic universe from most posters. I drank theory for breakfast & lunch (with a sensible dinner). I've not been encouraged to think for a second of poets as savants or poems as anything but meticulously constructed. And yes, I AM grateful for this. --E ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 23:56:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: Pound translation Hi, this is the real Kevin Killian. Susan Schultz & Jerome Rothenberg, you 2 were talking about the Hawaiian writers of Pidgin English. Well have I got a name for you!! Susan, you probably know all about this guy, R. Zamora Linmark. he came to San Francisco last week and I got to meet him after his reading. He is fantastic. He has a book out from Kaya Production called Rolling the R's. I have not been so impressed with a book in eternity. It's kind of a novel and all the characters are gay youngsters in a Filipino section of Hawaii during the late 70s, they are 10 or 12 years old and all of them want to be like the US stars they watch on TV-Farrah Fawcett, Scott Baio, Matt Dillon, Kate Jackson, Donna Summer etc. It has to be read to be believed. It was great to meet him and hear him read. Susan, you should arrange for him to come to your classes at the University where you teach. But you probably have already! He is also in new anthology "Premonitions." XXX Kevin ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 00:01:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Trivia question about Henry James Hello gang, it's Kevin Killian again. I can't think of anybody to ask who would be sure to know, except Raymond Pettibon, and he's too far away, but I need to know the answer by tomorrow morning!!! It's about Henry James' Portrait of a Lady. What is the name of the man whom Isabel Archer marries; and b) what is his relation to that sinister Madame Merle, is she his sister, mistress, both or what? I forget. And I don't have a copy of the book in the house. I could probably download it from somewhere, but duh. Also what is the name of his daughter the one who's in the convent? First person to write in gets a free copy of this month's issue of Mirage (Larry Kearney, Ed Morris Jr, Hoa Nguyen, Rosmarie Waldrop, cover by Claude Royet-Journoud). Thank you everyone!!! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 02:42:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Chris, Maria, > > Maria, but what if you DID encounter such students? Is it a one-way > street? Like can one eat one's "avant-garde" desert before? > I mean dessert.... > Or is it possible that a poet who comes to the avant-garde stuff without > ever having access to, or interest in, the mainstream tradition (western) > (dying?), will have been spared an un-necessary immersion in stuffy stuff > ? That "experiment" includes "tradition" more than vice versa--- > I'm surprised you haven't encountered such students... > I wonder what you would have done with me had I been your student.... > cs > A test case of this might be Bruce Andrews. He is the one poet who seems never to have had a "conventionalist" early period. Even back in 1971-72, when he was a grad student at Harvard having come from Michael Lally's workshop in the Baltimore/DC area that proved so fruitful to so many poets, his work had that atomized "anti-narrative" feel to it. He once told me that his early listening to jazz as a youngster had led him to believe that the very same Iowa School poetics that had, for example, been the site where Lally had gone to school struck him as an equivalent to, say, Dixieland when he knew there was going to be some equivalent to an Albert Ayler (or whatever) and he just set his sites on that, day one, even though at the time he didn't know exactly where to find it. Ron silliman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 06:01:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: real dead bugs In-Reply-To: <8758D10EF5@as.ua.edu> On Sat, 2 Mar 1996, Hank Lazer wrote: > Actually, Jacques Derrida was aboard the Challenger & died in the > explosion. Ronald Reagan, when he heard of the explosion, is reported to have said, "Is that the one with the philosopher?" Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 04:09:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jack Mahan Subject: Re: Challenging academic poet/ry In-Reply-To: <199603041042.CAA15550@ix10.ix.netcom.com> On Mon, 4 Mar 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: >....he just set his sites on that, day one, even though at the time he >didn't know exactly where > to find it. Ron, some of us are young, some came in blind; some were pushed in... For one, N. Mackey streched my pupils and laughed heh heh heh heh-- saying- "No." "But I Can Point You to Some Trees in the Forest..." * Face it y'all, Langpo gets/got somefolks _HIGH_ like nothin' else... * Anyone here could run for office and get elected on a platform exclaiming the addictive, brain-damaging effects of Langpo on the youth of today... It'd be much easier for me to run that campaign, than to arrange an academic contract in non-discursive analysis... (even at The Evergreen State College, where there are no Departments)... I've seen one logger, and I feel like I've seen 'em all. Point being, teachers, it's all fun and good, until somebody gets hurt... "LP-- Not Just a Way With Words." Very Vichy, (unemployed again) jack ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 07:38:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: Trivia question about Henry James At 12:01 AM 3/4/96 -0800, Kevin Killian wrote: What is the name of the man whom Isabel Archer >marries Gilbert Osmond b) what is his relation to that sinister Madame Merle, is she >his sister, mistress, both or what? *Former* mistress, person who knows him better than anyone else in the world, and mother of his daughter, the one in the convent, Pansy Osmond You know they're making a movie of this starring Nicole Kidman? Emily ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 08:11:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Mr. Gould re-blasing (twinkling) A member of the list in a private communique has convinced me that, in my enthusiasm for the Blasing book (POLITICS OF FORM etc.), I may have misrepresented the aims and positions of the Langposse. I went back and had a second look at the book; while she does raise some important & provocative questions about rhetoric & technique / technique & politics in 20th cent. poetry, she doesn't examine Lanpo very closely. In fact one could argue that it was the mainstream free verse of the 70s, which langpo reacted against, which maintained a kind of anti-critical anti-rhetorical "natural" rhetoric - the kind of political assumption Blasing claims Pound/Olson modernism & by extension Lanpo maintained. I won't gab any further along these lines until I've read a little more of the writings. As I think I pointed out in my first couple of posts on this subject, my own reading in Language poetry is pretty slim, so my provocations should be taken with a grain of salt (& 2 teaspoons of cough syrup). Language poetry's own truly anti-rhetorical rhetoric - breaking down the "speaking subject" into constituent parts & erratic orbits & word clusters - was a real political move. Speaking as a blind & semi-comatose litwerary historian, it may not have produced meisterpieces, but it opened some doors. Hear, hear. Righto, Mr. Chips. Further groundsmashing pronunciamentos on this and other subjects are available from Pluto & Uranus Press in a collection titled: "Pot-shots and Potheads : Contemporary Poetry and the Incline of the Triangle", ed. by...yours truly. Available from P-U Press - just send the gold plate. p.s. ladies & gentlemen: I advise no further discussion on this or any other subject. Thank you. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 09:45:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Mr. Gould re-blasing (twinkling) henry, don't worry about being language-ishly correct just cuz yr on this list. yr allowed to like stuff that's critical of langpo. i've found the "language people" very nice, and open to my ideas, although i never saw myself as "one of them."--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 07:05:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Pound translation Uh, I'm not a teacher, so this is quite literally not my business, & I certainly don't claim to know the protocol about something like this, but ... Am I really the only one to be a little put off by the fact that the translator is not credited by name? I mean, if I were a student & I knew that my writing was going to be shown, and praised, to more than 350 poets, editors, translators, critics, readers, etc. from around the (English-speaking) world, I would 1) want a choice in the matter and 2) if I wanted them to read it, I'd damn well want them to know who I was, too. This e-mail list is a kind of publishing &, even without considering any people who look through the archives at the EPC, quite possibly has a larger circulation than, say, TinFish (for which my check is in the mail, Susan). Just checking. Bests, Herb > I got such a kick out of the following translation of Pound's >"The Return" into pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English) that I thought it >might bring a smile to other faces, as well. Here goes (by one of my >students): Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 10:15:05 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Mr. Gould re-blasing (twinkling) >p.s. ladies & gentlemen: whew! that leaves _me_ out... >I advise no further discussion on this or any other subject... consider the subject, closed. but may we open the object? lbd ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 10:25:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Bradley bugs At 6:01 AM 3/4/96, David Kellogg wrote: >On Sat, 2 Mar 1996, Hank Lazer wrote: > >> Actually, Jacques Derrida was aboard the Challenger & died in the >> explosion. > >Ronald Reagan, when he heard of the explosion, is reported to have >said, "Is that the one with the philosopher?" > Sunday NY Times: American Book Foundation event, Bill Bradley explains difference between his book and Colin Powell's--Powell received $6 million, Bradley received $1 dollar. Bradley quotes from Derrida. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 13:02:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KUSZAI Subject: info request does anyone out there have Stephen Ratcliffe's e-mail address. I don't believe he is a subscriber to Poetics list. thanks, Joel Kuszai please reply to me backchannel, "if you can" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 13:09:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Foley Subject: Re: Silliman et al. on JAZZ, &c. Re: Chris, Maria & Ron On the possibility, raised here, of experimental poetry proceeding without a traditional background, with a suggested analogy from the history of jazz: Albert Ayler, to take Ron's example, immersed himself in the jazz tradition just as much as every jazz great. I don't expect you could get him to say we shouldn't bother listening to Louis Armstrong anymore, or that history begins with Ornette Coleman. Bruce Andrews may never have written what you call "conventionalist" verse, but he did read it, I suppose, as an undergraduate, and as a graduate student at Harvard. Maybe he was never "interested in" --- one side of the question --- but he did have "access to" the traditions of poetry. Is the idea here that he learned NOTHING? That his reading was just so much time wasted before he could do his own thang? Pat ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 07:38:54 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: Pound translation In-Reply-To: Kevin--so glad you got to hear and meet Zack Linmark. At the reading here for his book, which had an audience of 200(?) people, he had actors perform chapters (some are letters, some poems, some dialogues) from it. The drag queen was especially good. He's writing a mixture of pidgin, standard American, and increasingly adding Filipino languages to his work. I also recommend the book highly. Susan On Sun, 3 Mar 1996, Kevin Killian wrote: > Hi, this is the real Kevin Killian. > > Susan Schultz & Jerome Rothenberg, you 2 were talking about the Hawaiian > writers of Pidgin English. Well have I got a name for you!! > > Susan, you probably know all about this guy, R. Zamora Linmark. he came to > San Francisco last week and I got to meet him after his reading. He is > fantastic. He has a book out from Kaya Production called Rolling the R's. > I have not been so impressed with a book in eternity. It's kind of a novel > and all the characters are gay youngsters in a Filipino section of Hawaii > during the late 70s, they are 10 or 12 years old and all of them want to be > like the US stars they watch on TV-Farrah Fawcett, Scott Baio, Matt Dillon, > Kate Jackson, Donna Summer etc. It has to be read to be believed. It was > great to meet him and hear him read. Susan, you should arrange for him to > come to your classes at the University where you teach. But you probably > have already! He is also in new anthology "Premonitions." XXX Kevin > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 18:15:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: NEW TALISMAN! the new talisman is here: new poems by William Bronk, conversations with Bronk and Henry Lyman, major essay on Bronk by David Clippinger; totally big and terrific section of Turkish poetry translated, and introduced by Murat Nemet-Nejat: Cemal Sureya, Ece Ayhan, Ilhan Berk, Behcet Necatigil, Ozdemir Ince, Nilgun Marmara, Mustafa Ziyalan, and Melisa Gurpinar; and then: William Walsh on Oppen, Susan Schultz on Bernstein, Guest, Lauterbach, Palmer, Revell, and Selby, Keith Tuma on Eshleman, Stephen Fredman on Einzig, Susan Smith Nash on Scalapino, plus huge poetics section: Susan Smith Nash, John Noto, Patrick Philips, Daniel Barbiero; plus major essay by W. Scott Howard on Susan Howe. And it's still just $6, yr. subscription. $11. And even if we sell what we print, we barely pay the printer. Please buy/subscribe: Talisman, P.O. Box 3157, Jersey City, NJ 07303-3157. The next Talisman, #15, the Gerrit Lansing issue, should be here next month, and #16 (Boston/Britain) is being fine tuned for summer publication, but we need yr. subscription dollars, please. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 13:43:20 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: Pound translation In-Reply-To: Thanks, Herb, for saying what you said. I had a strange feeling about it, too. The student's name is Nathan Kagayama, and I told him I was sharing his work. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 19:27:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Silliman et al. on JAZZ, &c. Pat, Ron, anyone-- Is Bruce really "reading" Dante? chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 19:40:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: Re: Oppen In-Reply-To: <199603030509.AAA00466@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Automatic digest processor" at Mar 3, 96 00:06:38 am I'm always glad when Oppen comes up because I think he's really on of our great poets, despite the deceptive lack of *bulk* in the output. His poetic project seems to me to engage, with remarkable depth, some of the more crucial questions of this century's history. So, even tho i'm used to the poets i like most not being very widely recognized, i'm always just a bit surprised & disappointed in his case--and susceptible, i guess, to a utopian dream that some where some day his worth will be acknowledged... Ah, enough of that. I guess it's enough to see folks like Rod Smith engaging so seriously and interestingly with the poems. It's *always* fascinating to consider the relations among Oppen's books, in a way that just isn't true of many or most poets. That's partly because they're so much like units, each one self-contained and discrete, but also extending the project of what has gone before. But as true as this is, it's also possible to forget about the apparently linear movement from one book to the next, to think and read instead by attending to recurrences and anticipations and reversions that weave strange patterns throughout the work as a whole. I like Rod's comments on the late poetry--the move into or immersion in flow and fluidity and music. This makes sense to me, or feels good in terms of my own reading. But in terms of O's late habit of quoting himself, i'm especially struck by how strongly the last book, Primitive, loops back to the first, Discrete Series. Strangely moving (moving strangely?) how that last last poem, "Till Other Voices Wake Us," flows back to wash over with watery music the scene of O.'s writing the first book... steve Rod Smith writes: "Guess what I'd say I was hinting at in my Oppen question-- seems there's less of an interest in direct statement in the later work, more of an interest in movement/flow. Of course these are always side by side but I think at times one is more emphatic. I'd point to a poem like "Animula" or "The Book of Job &..." as examples of what I'm talking abt, & the last pg of "A Narrative" as possibly the first occurence of this in his work after returning to poetry. Poems like "The Hills" or basically all of "The Materials" is _saying_ something, working out a philosophical question or making an observation/description-- "Of Being Numerous" perhaps the most concerted attempt at this & the place where he begins to leave it off somewhat. The practice of quoting himself which shows up so strongly in _Primitive_ also causes this to happen for me-- the reiteration even at a distance seems to be saying "this is what I've come to know & largely what I can make with it is (a) music." The disappearance of punctuation in much of the later work & the increasing use of gaps within the line also point in this direction. I wouldn't call it an interest in nonsense, this emphasis I'm talking about, but rather an acceptance, perhaps, of the sense already made, & an opening out into music with it. But just now reading through _The Materials_ a bit, seems I may be wrong, that ear's there too. . . Rod" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 17:42:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: GI Tract In-Reply-To: <199603040513.AAA29362@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Mine less harsh because I do not for a minute buy reactionary crap about universities being filled with cowards who wouldn't serve -- partly because, being of that generation, I know what some of us had to face when resisting the draft. Those of us who were serving COs were confronted with what General Hershey like to call a policy of "maximum possible disruption," which policy was patently intended to see to it that nobody in his right mind would seek CO status. On the other side, the majority of draftees never in fact faced combat. My brother-in-law, drafted the year before me, spent his two years typing in Germany. What I was getting at was just that there are many factors operating in the English Dept. job market of the past decades that have neverbeen much discussed and, this a bit harsher, that some among those who had uninterrupted university education and progress towards career have not always given thought to how they got there and to how others were siphoned away, no matter how briefly. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 17:54:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Tuma's Blues In-Reply-To: <199603040513.AAA29362@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Direct to Keith + any other interested readers of his review in current _ABR_ The first publication of Brathwaite's _Black + Blues_ that I know of was published in 1976 by Cuba's _Casa de las Americas_, which would likely explain why you've never seen a copy. (Ain't the embargo grand!) Your review mentions a 1979 original. Is that yet another edition? Does the new version (I haven't seen one yet) indicate a '79 edition from an English-speaking country? The "76 version is in English, and has a rather televsiual cover (a sort of music of the spheres effect), which is continued into the title page. The typography is pretty much like Brathwaite's other 70s works. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 21:02:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: Tuma's Blues In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 4 Mar 1996 17:54:05 -0800 from Aldon, No other edition--that was my error, likely the product of inscrutable handwriting, no proofs from ABR, + something like 2 days to write the thing. Not my title either--and I'm less than pleased with what ABR called the thing. best, Keith ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 13:59:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: Tuma's Blues >Aldon, > >No other edition--that was my error, likely the product of inscrutable >handwriting, no proofs from ABR, + something like 2 days to write the thing. > >Not my title either--and I'm less than pleased with what ABR called the thing. > >best, > >Keith Pardon my ignorance but what is ABR? In Australia it is the AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW. __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 22:27:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Silliman et al. on JAZZ, &c. i thot chris's q to me was abt having students experimentally oriented who then got turned on to traditional stuff --i haven't had that experience --but now folks are talking about people who have only and experimental "bildungs"apprenticeship, yes i know many such, who have never taken a poetry class where they read the "classics," at Naropa, say, or some of my u-grads who have never studied poetry at all til they walked into my class. but i can certainly imagine such a thing, and do have a friend who dropped out of the punk/ poetry/zine performance/ poststructuralist theory scene to study medieval provencal and sicilian poetry --what she loves about it is the formalism... more power to her; with her background she can do anything!--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 20:57:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Need Korean bone marrow - Save a Life (fwd) one more forward, one more apology for being off topic. Tenney >Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 18:52:48 -0700 >Reply-To: English Graduate Literature Program >Sender: English Graduate Literature Program >From: LZ >Subject: Need Korean bone marrow - Save a Life (fwd) >Comments: To: english@listserv.arizona.edu >To: Multiple recipients of list EGL >Content-Length: 2717 > >I know this is off all of our usual topics, but I figured somebody might >eventually forward this to someone who can help. > >LYnda > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Mon, 4 Mar 96 15:23:44 PST >From: Barbara W. Langstaff >To: a-parents-china@shore.net >Subject: Need Korean bone marrow - Save a Life > >Forgive me for being off-topic, (pardon my netiquette) but someone out there >may be able to save a life. This was forwarded by a friend (headers >deleted), so I know it's real. His sister appears to have been adopted, so >maybe it's not too far off-topic. > >Please forward as appropriate. Thanks. > > >>>From: Brantley Thompson >>> >>>Subject: Re: Waste time helping someone >>> >>> >>> >>>Author: mdoyle@cosmix.com (Mike Doyle) at nylanr01 Date: 2/4/96 8:10 >>> >>> >>> >>>Friends, >>> >>> >>> >>>My twelve year old sister has Leukemia and needs a bone marrow >>> >>>transplant to survive, but has no blood-related siblings. Her name is >>> >>>Karen, and she is 1/2 Korean and 1/2 North American (European >>> >>>descendants). Finding out whether or not one is an appropriate donor >>> >>>requires only a blood test. All expenses for the donor will of course be >>> >>>paid. If you are or know anyone who is of like origin, please email me >>> >>>as soon as possible at . I would also appreciate your >>> >>>sharing this message with the people you know. Karen's doctors are >>> >>>searching through the registered donor list, and haven't had much luck. >>> >>>Our best bet is to find someone who is not yet registered as a donor. I >>> >>>welcome any suggestions you have, and appreciate your concern. >>> >>> >>> >>>Thank you, >>> >>>Mike >>> >>> >>> >> >>Alana O'Reilly >>Laboratory of Ben Neel >>Beth Israel Hospital Boston >>RW663 >>330 Brookline Avenue >>Boston, MA 02215 >>phone: (617) 667-2901 >>fax: (617) 667-2913 >> >> >> >> >>Received: from geoworks.com by ccmail.geoworks.com (SMTPLINK V2.11 >PreRelease 4) >> ; Sun, 03 Mar 96 21:20:00 PST >>Return-Path: >>Received: from water.geoworks.com.geoworks by geoworks.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) >> id AA07005; Sun, 3 Mar 96 21:22:34 PST >>Received: by water.geoworks.com.geoworks (4.1/SMI-4.1) >> id AA24994; Sun, 3 Mar 96 21:22:34 PST >>Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 21:22:33 -0800 (PST) >>From: Peter Trinh >>To: junkmail@geoworks.com >>Subject: looking for help (fwd) >>Message-Id: >>Mime-Version: 1.0 >>Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >> >> >> > >______________________________________________________________ >Barbara W. Langstaff >Forte Technical Support Dispatcher >Support Hotline: 510-451-5400 >Tel: 510 869 2047 >Fax: 510 869 2010 > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 03:02:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Silliman et al. on JAZZ, &c. "Bruce Andrews may never have written what you call "conventionalist" verse, but he did read it, I suppose, as an undergraduate, and as a graduate student at Harvard. Maybe he was never "interested in" --- one side of the question --- but he did have "access to" the traditions of poetry. "Is the idea here that he learned NOTHING? That his reading was just so much time wasted before he could do his own thang?" Bruce got his Ph.D. in political science, not English (and got the BA and masters at Johns Hopkins before going to Harvard). No, the idea is not that he learned nothing, but rather (perhaps) that the irrelevance of what was generally being taught as literature was immediately visible. Haven't spoken with Bruce about this in at least a decade (and he's not online, alas), but as I recall, he took some lit and/or writing courses and noted liking some from Eliot Coleman, some of whose work (such as the book _Mocking Birds at Fort McHenry_) was itself fairly innovative for the time and context. (That is, formally innovative but completely outside of the context of the New American poetics.) Bruce also was present at the big Languages of Criticism and Sciences of Man (sic) conference at Johns Hopkins in 1966 (he was 18 at the time) that was, for some, the first big brouhaha of poststructuralism in the US -- and that seems to have made some impact. But Bruce has always spoken very highly of Michael Lally's community oriented workshop(s) as a/the key introduction for him, as they seem to have been also for Peter Inman, Tina Darragh, Lynne Dreyer and so many other members of the DC/Baltimore scene of that period. Lord knows, at Berkeley, you needed special dispensation to study any poetry after 1940. I was able to get a course on Zukofsky (a tutorial) only by explaining that he was a key figure in the Williams scene and even then only two faculty members at the time had claimed ever to have read him. The only one who was willing to teach such a course was Grenier. I never had a course in school in which reading Ginsberg or Olson was even a possibility, with the sole exception of a linguistics class at SF State taught by Ed Van Aelstyn, who'd been a founding editor of Coyote's Journal (the mag that Clayton modeled Caterpillar after). What you studied in the 1960s were not the poetics of that decade... Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 03:53:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: War Resisters as Vets Aldon, I always thought there ought to be a "veterans" (or otherwise alumni) org for war resisters and conscientious objectors. Certainly, there are lots of us out here, but characteristically we've been separated from that experience by the fact that very seldom did many of us do our "time" in any one concentrated numbers. I was one of two in the prison movement group I worked with (which got approval only because John Tunney, US Senator, and Leo Ryan, the congressman killed at Jonestown, served as paper members on its board). Paul Hoover is the one whose written in most detail of his experiences. (Hi Paul) Ron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 07:28:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: War Resisters as Vets In-Reply-To: <199603051153.DAA16913@ix2.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at Mar 5, 96 03:53:39 am Those interested in the experience of Viet Nam war resisters in Canada should get ahold of _Hell No We Won't Go: Vietnam Draft Resisters in Canada_ by Alan Haig-Brown, just out from Raincoast Books (8680 Cambie St. Vancouver, BC V6P 6M9, Canada, phone: 604-323-7100) at $18.95 CAN $13.50 US (ISBN 1-55192-011-5). The book consists of interviews with 18 men and 2 women who came to Canada because of the war. Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 09:27:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: GI Tract aldon, i don't buy the "coward" line either, meant to pass (again) no judgment on what anybody did wrt the draft... like you, i'm interested simply in the what's and why's of those who managed to profit from what you call the "anti-G.I. bill"... i wonder how in fact such a "factor" operates in the current industry, as it were... i wonder what it means to argue, in effect, that there are academics who have never been self-critical in this regard... and i wonder just how many (male) academics we're talking about... i guess i'm asking for more specifics to try to get a handle on this so very sensitive issue... joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 11:09:31 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Artists Statement on the Economy (long!!) Going to try an experiment here. As mentioned in previous post, I'm meeting with a few writers to talk politics on a weekly basis. The following is my own sketchy draft of an "Artists' Statement on the Economy" loosely modelled (but not echoing) the Catholic Bishops' Statement of a few years back. It is only an outline - mostly just topic headings. I would welcome any comments on the whole endeavor - or suggested topics or comments on the topics below. Please send to Henry_Gould@brown.edu; I will print them out & bring to the meeting - can't promise anything beyond that. Thanks in advance. PLEASE send direct to me - do not hit reply button. This should NOT be a general poetics discussion, in my opinion. I. POLITICAL ROLE OF ARTS & ARTISTS - Current drift of US society is inimical to arts & artists. Aspects: 1. economy is inimical to majority of people in general (job loss, insecurity, overwork, pressure on families; focus on profits, power & technological consumerism; racism & underclass) 2. Society in general is inimical to arts (pervasive commercial media; mandarin, splintered academy; divided ethnic cultures) - Current drift also offers opportunities - time of questioning & change; drive to re-formulate basic values. - Responsibilities of artist to society are the same, on a personal level, as those of any human being. However, art is an activity, a process, a function of culture with its own particularity. Very rudimentarily, this can be defined as the creation of forms & images of order, harmony & discovery. Vital forms which incorporate both real and imaginary experience. The power animating this activity can be defined very simply as the _sympathetic imagination_. - Imagination informs all human activities, as a power of empathy, understanding, criticism and creativity. In the arts, ideally, this comes to focus - consciousness - and fruition, giving back to culture a free image of its common life. A culture without imagination is quite simply a dead culture. It lives off dead images, and persists through inertia & repression. If culture is becoming inimical not only to the arts, but to the majority of people in their common life, then our aim as artists ought to be to turn the imaginative powers toward our common life & the common good. It is not a time to make special demands for artists per se, but a time to address imaginatively the roots of our common problems. This is the rationale for the following analysis. II. PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDWORK 1. Common good and common life. Perennial realities, social utopias. Peace and equity as standards. Global standards of human rights. 2. Philosophy of government. Democracy - gov't as expression of will of people. Social contract, traditions of social covenant (Biblical, Native American, other). Politics as creative social bond; polis as arena of definition & fulfillment. Gov't as mediator of private rights and common good. 3. Economic philosophy. Community as source of value. Neither private property nor collectivity are absolute values - both entail individual rights and stewardship. Universal human rights as standard for economic organization. III. CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN & GLOBAL ECONOMIC REALITIES IV. CRITIQUE OF CURRENT POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, PARTIES, PLATFORMS V. ACHIEVABLE STANDARDS FOR AMERICAN ECONOMY VI. SPECIFIC POLICY GOALS VII. INDIVIDUAL AS PARTICIPANT IN LOCAL AND GLOBAL COMMUNITIES (fill in the blanks if you can!!) - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 12:48:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: Re: GI Tract Joe, I don't know anyone (self-included) who was politically engaged during the Vietnam period whose life was not somehow disrupted. C.O. status was not granted for the asking. Unless one was raised in a pacifist religion, it was next to impossible to acquire in certain regions. Exemptions from the draft, for any reason, were not casually granted. Draft resistance was a political act and often resulted in exodus or imprisonment. I'm not an academician, in part because of the circumstances of those times, but I will not fault someone for having been fortunate enough to get on with their lives. Nor do I feel they should fault themselves. If you're interested in the factors at work in the "current industry" of academe, I think you'd find it more "profitable" to examine the very active roles that racism and sexism continue to play in the academic environment rather than moralizing about the draft status of your professional colleagues 25 to 30 years ago. Jonathan Brannen >aldon, i don't buy the "coward" line either, meant to pass (again) no >judgment on what anybody did wrt the draft... > >like you, i'm interested simply in the what's and why's of those who >managed to profit from what you call the "anti-G.I. bill"... i wonder how >in fact such a "factor" operates in the current industry, as it were... i >wonder what it means to argue, in effect, that there are academics who have >never been self-critical in this regard... and i wonder just how many >(male) academics we're talking about... > >i guess i'm asking for more specifics to try to get a handle on this so >very sensitive issue... > >joe > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 12:58:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: GI Tract on a related note, i'm just now noticing a piece in this week's _chronicle_ entitled "fighting over the killing fields: a new book ignites old debates over pol pot and his brutality" by scott jaschik (p. a8)... it concludes with this observation by one douglas pike, director of the indochina studies program at uc/berkeley: "we have a bunch of scholars who are still walking wounded from the war, because of things they said and did at that time. i think we may need a whole new generation of cambodia watchers---people who won't have to deal with the guilt trip about what they said or did." joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 13:03:52 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Paul Naylor Subject: River City The new issue of _River City: A Journal of Contemporary Culture_ is out and available. This is the first issue to come out since I've been a member of the poetics list, so I thought I'd give a brief description of it. Each issue focuses on a special topic -- our Summer 1995 issue was devoted to the Blues and the current issue is devoted to contemporary representations of China -- but each issue also includes material unrelated to the special topic. The new issue features a selection of poetry from writers based in Taiwan and mainland China, an interview with Bei Dao, and essay on cinema in Hong Kong, an essay by Yunte Huang on translating Chinese poetry, an essay by Will Alexander, and a short story by Brain Russo. The issue also includes a fine essay by Amiri Baraka on Thelonious Monk, three poems by Charles Bernstein, and "Carnal Knowledge," a long, meditative poem on the body by Beverly Dahlen.SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" Our next issue, Summer 1996, will focus on the Caribbean and will feature work by, among others, Kamau Brathwaite, M. Nourbese Philip, and our own Aldon Nielson. If any of you have any work that deals with the Caribbean, I'd like to see it. Subscriptions are $7 per issue or $12 for two issues. Checks and submissions should be sent to: Paul Naylor 463 Patterson Building Department of English The University of Memphis Memphis, TN 38152 MAIL SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 14:35:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: ossian Never mind the straw polls of form, is there any work on recent prosodies? Anybody whose music's shocking? March Hare ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 14:52:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: War Resisters as Vets another good upcoming read: by Michael Bibby, working title Hearts and Minds: Resistance Poetry of the Vietnam era, rutgers press, he deals extensively with g.i. resistance and g.i. poetry. --maria d ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 11:53:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: war resisters In-Reply-To: <199603051153.DAA16913@ix2.ix.netcom.com> Hi, Ron. I'm not sure of the context here. Maxine saw the message and I thought I'd reply briefly. Apparently someone has asserted that English Departments consist of war resisters rather than vets. I was a conscientious objector from 1968-1970, working in a Chicago hospital. My experiences are related as fiction in my novel SAIGON, ILLINOIS. As far as I know, this is the only novel of the dozens of Vietnam-era books to take the CO point of view. My friend and office mate, Larry Heinemann, drove a tank in Vietnam and won the National Book Award for his second Vietnam novel, PACO'S STORY. Most war stories will appear to be more dramatic to the public taste than the adventures of a war resister. The truth of it is that conscientious objectors are not generally respected for their actions. No matter how moral in motivation, they are deemed unpatriotic. Schwartzkopf and Colin Powell are national heroes. A conscientious objector is a cultural outsider that most people don't want to hear about. Being a Vietnam vet gives you a box to check on academic hiring surveys; being a CO doesn't. Paul Hoover On Tue, 5 Mar 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: > Aldon, > > I always thought there ought to be a "veterans" (or otherwise alumni) > org for war resisters and conscientious objectors. Certainly, there are > lots of us out here, but characteristically we've been separated from > that experience by the fact that very seldom did many of us do our > "time" in any one concentrated numbers. I was one of two in the prison > movement group I worked with (which got approval only because John > Tunney, US Senator, and Leo Ryan, the congressman killed at Jonestown, > served as paper members on its board). Paul Hoover is the one whose > written in most detail of his experiences. (Hi Paul) > > Ron > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 14:02:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: GI Tract jonathan, i'm not interested in "moralizing," either... and i *do* in fact think that racism and sexism are the sorts of things academics should be attending to, along with class bias etc etc etc... yknow, i don't think kali tal is signed on to this list at the moment... a book of my poetry came out last year under the "viet nam generation" imprint, and kali is the publisher as well as editor of the related journal... so i've had occasion not only to read much of the literature published by viet nam generation, but to talk with folks (like kali, and poet w. d. ehrhart, and in fact the entire sixties-l list to which i was subbed to for a while) for whom this question of literary studies----for example, through what some call the "literature of trauma"---is very much inflected by viet nam experience of one sort or the other... just as mccarthyism ostracized and traumatized a lot of folks and, as some would have it, shaped the hollywood films of the 50s and beyond, perhaps a reaction to (or perhaps this latter is too strong?) u.s. involvement in viet nam speaks to the world of letters in ways that are difficult to unravel?... or at least difficult for me to unravel... anyway... this started in response to aldon's observation---and i'm not pointing my finger at aldon 'cept to say that he's not alone in observing so, and that i'm just wondering---actively, in public---what to make of this... the _chronicle_ excerpt i just posted may be wrongheaded, but it nonetheless indicates that there are some general feelings here which may not be all that well understood or articulated... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 15:12:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Robert Duncan Fesitval ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 12:48:39 -0500 (EST) From: Kristin S Prevallet ROBERT DUNCAN CONFERENCE "The Opening of the Field" April 18-20, 1996 This Wednesdays at Four Plus Special Event is sponsored by the Poetics Program, the English Department, The Poetry/Rare Books Collection, and the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities. All panels and the lecture will take place in the Poetry/Rare Books Collection, 420 Capen Hall. The readings will be held at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, 2495 Main Street. For maps, hotel reservation information, and updates, check the Poetry Collection Home Page at: http://wings.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/pl/duncanco.html The Schedule: Thursday, April 18 Lecture: Robert J. Bertholf (2:30-3:30 pm) Dramatic Reading: "Adams Way" (4:00-5:00 pm) Poetry Reading: Susan Howe and Nathaniel Mackey (7:30-10:00 pm) Friday, April 19 Panel: Marjorie Perloff, Nathaniel Mackey and Joseph Conte (10:00-12:30) Panel: Robin Blaser, Susan Howe and Jerome McGann (2:30-5:00 pm) Poetry Reading: Michele Leggott and Robin Blaser (7:30 - 10:00 pm) Saturday, April 20 Panel: Peter Quartermain, Michele Leggott and David Levi Strauss (10:30-1:00) Reception: 5:00-8:00 pm, 64 Amherst Street Hotel reservations are being accepted at the University Manor Hotel. The hotel is in walking distance to a shuttle which goes to the university, and a subway that goes to Hallwalls. Special room rates are as follows: $41.95 for one room, two people. Each additional person costs only $5. $36.95 for one room, one person. Call them at 837-3344 for more information. Persons requesting more information on the conference can call (716) 634-3810 or (716) 645-2917, or e-mail ksp2@acsu.buffalo.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 12:50:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: Re: academic poet/ry In-Reply-To: <01I1X1E57WR68Y72HV@cnsvax.albany.edu> On Sun, 3 Mar 1996, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > Dear Tony Green---I don't know if Chris Reiner is still on this list, > but WITZ published an article just recently by Mark DuCharme on a > Clark Coolidge and a Shakespeare sonnet... Yes, I'm still on the list, but unable to spend as much time as I'd like with all the threads. The issue with Mark DuCharme's article is Fall 1995 (the most recent, though a new one will be out shortly). Single issues are $4. Back issues more than a year old can be found in ascii files at the Electronic Poetry Center. The address for WITZ is 12071 Woodbridge Street Studio City, CA 91604 Upcoming spring issue has articles by Stephen Ratcliffe (on Robert Grenier's new work) and Carl Peters (on bpNichol), along with reviews...also a new format...but I'll do a separate post about that when the issue comes out. Thanks, Chris S. for the mention. --------------------- Christopher Reiner creiner@crl.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 15:20:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: ossian >Never mind the straw polls of form, >is there any work on recent prosodies? >Anybody whose music's shocking? > >March Hare Dear March Hare I too would be interested in such work. And I don't know about "shocking," but for "stunning" I might nominate Bruce Andrews, whose sense of prosody, to me, always partakes of a certain kind of maelstrom. I know prosody is always at the forefront in my own work, but I don't think of it so much as prosody as simply the sound/sounding of the poem. And I must admit that for that real bumping, enlivened sound I still sometimes go back to Beowulf and other Old English works. And I do like to read Dickinson aloud, and Stein, and Mac Low (I nominate him for music as well). but so many . . . charles ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 13:48:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: SPT mailing address This is Dodie Bellamy, I spent the morning with Marvin and Michael, the building managers of New College (nice guys) and they advised giving the following address as our mailing address: Small Press Traffic at New College 766 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 If any of you have already sent stuff to the 741 Valencia address, that will probably be okay, but it's not the best address to use (that's where we're located but the mail is delivered across the street). Should have a phone number by next week. Thanks for all the response on the SPT newsletter. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 14:09:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Filkins Subject: Re: GI Tract & CO's Comments: cc: Jonathan Brannen >Jonathan, > >This difficulty arose in great part because of the peace churches. During >WWII the peace churches ran, with the blessing of the US government, a >rather extensive CO program which broke up in rancor near the end of the >war because of numerous difficulties which arose between the churches and >the feds. At that point the churches declared they would no longer become >involved in that capacity again. So whereas you needed "merely" to >convince the authorities of your pacifist convictions to be designated CO >during WWII. This quite often consisted of essays with supporting letters >from friends, relatives, and clergy. In the Vietnam era you "had" to be >raised within one of the peace churches for your CO status to stick >because otherwise the peace churches would not stand by your side in a >show of support like they did in the WWII era. If there are any "Friends" >on this list who could go into more detail I'd love to hear it. > >Of course in WWII CO status virtually always guaranteed both exodus and >imprisonment. > >I am doing research on CO writers and artists from the WWII era. If >anyone has anything to share concerning that subject I would love to hear >from you backchannel (or on the list if it is relevant to the discussion >at hand). > >Thank you. > >Christopher > >Jonathan Brannen wrote: > >>I don't know anyone (self-included) who was politically engaged during the >>Vietnam period whose life was not somehow disrupted. C.O. status was not >>granted for the asking. Unless one was raised in a pacifist religion, it >>was next to impossible to acquire in certain regions. Exemptions from the >>draft, for any reason, were not casually granted. Draft resistance was a >>political act and often resulted in exodus or imprisonment. >> > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 14:18:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Filkins Subject: Nuns Anyone who is interested in the Nun study mentioned several threads ago can find the study in question at http://www.coa.uky.edu/nunnet/ christopher ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 16:24:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jackie Rosenfeld Subject: New here Hi! New to the list and wanted to say hello and ask if there is anything I should know? ie rules, threads, etc. Thanks Jackie ------------------------------------------------------------------ Jackie A. Rosenfeld monkee@eramp.net http://eramp.net/jackie "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution!" ---Emma Goldman ------------------------------------------------------------------ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 12:12:50 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: Trivia question about Henry James Comments: To: emilyl@MAIL.EROLS.COM Dear Emily, Maybe not so eek, in as much as 'they' making--leastways directing-- the movie is I believe, Jane Campion, of The Piano fame. Lets hope. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 13:23:46 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: peace churches In-Reply-To: I'm concerned about this right now because I have a small son. I'd love to know whatever I can, whatever anyone can tell about the situation now. Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 20:44:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Re: Seals Eyes Comments: To: Marisa Januzzi In-Reply-To: On Tue, 5 Mar 1996, Marisa Januzzi wrote: > > On Sat, 2 Mar 1996, Kenneth Goldsmith wrote: > > > There has been something bothering me lately. What are those black > > things under seals eyes--could they be hairs? > > Well, I just cannotbelieve no one's framed an authoritative response to > this! I hope you've had better backchannel mssgs than this one, too. > > Anyway my guess wld be they are a formerly vestigial pathos-inducing pattern > (aka "poetry") > marissa-- gosh, nobody's replied to my query. you'd think with such a brilliant group, one of 'em would've come up with something rather poetic. i like your idea the best so far peace, kenny g ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 17:49:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Watts Subject: Re: Oppen (Rachel Blau DuPlessis' essay) Just to respond to Brian McHale's mention a couple of days ago of Rachel Blau DuPlessis' essay on Oppen's and Robin Blaser's work: yes, it is to be included in the collection of essays from the Blaser conference of last June, which will probably be titled "The Recovery of the Public World: Essays in Honour of Robin Blaser's Poetry and Poetics." We don't have a publication date for it yet, but it may appear as early as the fall of this year. On this same topic, Alan Golding: please send me a line or two backchannel re/ your paper. Charles Watts cwatts@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 01:33:35 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Artists Statement on the Economy (long!!) etc > >III. CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN & GLOBAL ECONOMIC REALITIES > >IV. CRITIQUE OF CURRENT POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, PARTIES, PLATFORMS > >V. ACHIEVABLE STANDARDS FOR AMERICAN ECONOMY > for American substitute what? Are u really still thinking America? love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 19:22:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Fwd: Communications Decency Act Dear union members: When we start up a newsletter, it will feature articles like the following. Until then, I'll just past them on individually... John John Feffer Philadelphia sublocal of the National Writers Union 519 S. Melville St. Philadelphia, PA 19143 215-386-5538 e-mail: nwuphil@libertynet.org ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 14:36:36 -0800 (PST) From: Alice Sunshine To: Newsletter Editors -- Alec Dubro <72614.1375@compuserve.com>, BJ Novitski , Bob Chatelle , Ann Cefola , Cheryl Peck , chris@netcom.com, Dan McCrory <71363.1722@compuserve.com>, elinor631@AOL.com, Judy Brandes , Karen Sandrick <103254.2507@compuserve.com>, mpritchard@amherst.edu, Paul Becker <74404.1524@compuserve.com>, Peter Friederici , Sublocal Philadelphia , Rob Ramer <103222.1636@compuserve.com>, Susan Heinlein , Susan Mitchell Subject: Item for Newsletters Dear Newsletter Editors, The following is a report on the Communications Decency Act and the ACLU lawsuit against it. The National Writers Union is a plaintiff in this suit. Bob Chatelle, who wrote the item, says you may cut it down as needed to fit into your newsletter. The entire text will appear in the next issue of the Political Issues Newsletter, but only those who request it receive that one. Best to all. Alice Sunshine, NWU organizer asun@netcom.com ***** NWU Sues to Preserve Free Speech in Cyberspace By Bob Chatelle, Chair, NWU Political Issues Committee On February 8, President Bill Clinton hosted a gala televised celebration at the White House, which included a joint performance by Vice President Gore and Lily Tomlin as Ernestine. The occasion: Clinton's signing of the Telecommunications Bill, which claims to remove barriers to competition, but in fact sweeps away most remaining legal obstacles to the media oligopoly's ever expanding power. On the same day, in Philadelphia, lawyers representing the ACLU, the National Writers Union, and 18 other plaintiffs (including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and Planned Parenthood) filed suit in US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania to invalidate the provisions of part of the Telecomm bill, the so-called Communications Decency Act (CDA). The CDA was introduced over a year ago by Sen. James Exon (D-NE). As passed, one provision imposes criminal penalties for "indecent" but constitutionally protected telecommunications to individuals under the age of 18; another criminalizes the use of any "interactive computer service" to "send" or "display in a manner available" to a person under 18 any communication that "depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." Another provision, added to the bill by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL), criminalizes the distribution or reception of any information via "any express company or other common carrier, or interactive computer service" of "information... where, how, or of whom, or by what means any" "drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion may be obtained or made." The NWU is the only writers organization represented in the lawsuit. We were first approached by the ACLU as a possible plaintiff late in August, just a few weeks after the NWU Delegates Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution affirming free speech and privacy rights in cyberspace. The ACLU asked from us no commitment of financial or legal resources. A preliminary okay was given by the NWU Executive Committee, and the matter was discussed by email by the National Executive Board (NEB) in November. All NEB members supported the suit on principle, but some raised legitimate concerns whether the discovery process could require a significant amount of staff time. Fortunately, NWU staff is not much involved in our online activity and the board concluded that there was little danger of them becoming unduly burdened. As Political Issues Chair, I signed and filed the affidavit on behalf of the NWU, but the affidavit was prepared by the ACLU and based on questionnaire answers provided by myself, NWU President Jonathan Tasini, Secretary-Treasurer Bruce Hartford, and New Technologies Cochair Vicki Richman. On February 8, Judge Ronald Buckwalter gave the Justice Department one week to respond to the complaint. The Justice Department agreed for seven days not to investigate or prosecute either the "indecency" or "patently offensive" provisions, but reserved the right ultimately to prosecute for material available during this time should our legal challenge fail. The Justice Department also conceded that the anti-abortion provision was patently unconstitutional and announced they had no intention of enforcing this provision at all. On February 15, the Justice Department responded, claiming "the governmental interests at stake here in controlling access by minors of indecent sexually explicit materials is compelling." To bolster their case, the government appended the widely discredited study on computer pornography by Martin Rimm. Judge Buckwalter issued a temporary restraining order against the "indecency" provisions. The next phase of the challenge will be a hearing before a three-judge panel: Judge Buckwalter, Judge Stuart Dalzell, and Judge Delores K. Sloviter. We will present our case on March 21-22. The Justice Department will present theirs on April 11-12. April 1 is also reserved, should the extra day be needed. The government may take depositions from some plaintiffs and I may have to go to Washington DC for deposition during the week of March 11-15. On February 26, the Justice Department agreed not to investigate or prosecute any of the CDA provisions, pending legal resolution. (Again, should the government win, they reserve the right to prosecute retroactively material posted before the final decision.) Also on February 26, a second lawsuit was filed challenging the CDA. The lead plaintiff was the American Library Association, and other plaintiffs include America Online; American Booksellers Ass'n; American Society of newspaper Editors; Apple Computer; Ass'n of American Publishers; Ass'n of Publishers, Editors, and Writers; Compuserve; Microsoft; Netcom; Newspaper Ass'n of America; Prodigy; Society of Professional Journalists; and the Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition. On February 27, this suit was consolidated with ours. Also on February 26, Playboy filed separate suit in Delaware against the CDA. Regardless how the three-judge panel rules, the losing side will appeal and the case will ultimately be decided by the US Supreme Court. _ACLU v. Reno_ will be a landmark First Amendment case, and the outcome will determine how cyberspace evolves for decades to come. The NWU would have every reason to be proud of participating in this historic defense of free speech, even if we had not been the first writers organization to join this essential battle. END ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 20:55:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: william elliott vidaver Subject: Rachel Blau DuPlessis paper If anyone would like an audio recording of the talk Rachel Blau DuPlessis presented at The Recovery of the Public World conference/festival last year in Vancouver, please send a message with your name & address to: Aaron Vidaver c/o wvidaver@direct.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 22:22:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: ABR In-Reply-To: <199603060514.AAA03428@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> I was off-line for a bit, so may have missed if somebody already answered our friend's question -- but in case it wasn't answered -- the _ABR_ containing Keith Tuma's review is the _American Book Review_, which name, I suppose, distinguishes it from the _North American Review_, etc. and by the way -- now that I've seen the New Directions edition of _Black + Blues_ I see that the confusion about dates was caused by, surprise, New Directions. Though the copyright page indicates that Brathwaite's book was first published in 1976, the jacket copy says 1979 -- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 22:34:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: What if they had a poetry reading and nobdoy came? In-Reply-To: <199603060514.AAA03428@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> That will select all the sixties types who remember those damned posters! Resisters' reunion a good idea -- What was truly strange, to me at any rate, was the number of formerly antiwar folk I knew who were deliriously happy about the Persian Gulf War, as we call it here in the U.S. My original musing came from the observation over the years that I had never once met an English professor around my age who had been drafted -- This was not because they were all actively resisting (keep in mind that student deferments continued through the mid-sixties) -- It just seemed an interesting contrast to me, and I was curious that none of the professors I mentioned this to had ever noticed the fact -- (Though let me hasten to add that there are a number of both vets. of the war and vets of the resistance I have met more recently) The experience of the war tremendously affected the affected and the more sincere alike in academia -- look back to the rumblings in the MLA during those years for a sense of just how strong feelings were at the time -- It would be horribly reductive to do as those who claim that all post-structuralism flows from snits after Paris '68 (this usually said by thems who, unlike Bruce A., don't remember when that Johns Hopkins confab happened) -- and lay all PC wars to lingering aftereffects of agent orange and its inventors -- but there was something of the ol' epistemic break going on there -- and back to my first musing, I would moralize -- I think that those who fail to learn the lessons of job market history are doomed to force their younger colleagues to repeat them, perhaps as underpaid farce -- (sure are a lot of temporary postdocs on the scene these days,,,, huuummmm) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 08:39:54 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ada Aharoni Subject: Re: Veterans for Peace & GI Tract In-Reply-To: <199603051527.JAA04217@charlie.acc.iit.edu> Hi, If you are interested in the "Veterans for Peace" address, here it is: Peter B. Shaw shaw@phys.psu.edu They're doing a good job. Best, Ada Aharoni ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 23:39:51 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: ossian >Never mind the straw polls of form, >is there any work on recent prosodies? >Anybody whose music's shocking? > >March Hare first --- new here, so am unaware of back-ramifications of this thread. forgive any redundancy dear march hare re shocking music if i may stretch the term to include play of thought and not limit myself to contemporaneity will alexander jake berry paul celan john donne susan howe macdiarmid re contemp prosodics: no idea. wld truly like to know if anybody's working in that area, tho myself am strictly dumbfounded by the enormity of the task if said work even attempts inclusiveness. later --- chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 05:29:35 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: FWD: Mexican workers seeking support (fwd) Sending this because I think it worth knowing that workers in the low-wage countries that industries are fleeing to are beginning to protest. Gab. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Mexican Ford workers solicit your support in their battle against > low wages. > > 1996 is a negotiations year between Ford Motor Co. and its workers > in three plants; Chihuahua, Hermosillo and Cuautitlan. > > THIS IS AN ACTION CALL TO SUPPORT THEIR FIGHT AGAINST LOW WAGES > > Presently, wage negotiations are taking place in Mexico for the > Chihuahua and Hermosillo plants. Cuautitlan plant negotiations are > scheduled for the month of March. > > The negotiations in Chihuahua scheduled to be resolved by the end > of January, concluded on Tuesday, February 27, after two > extensions. while negotiations are taking place concurrently with > the Hermosillo plant workers representatives. > > The negotiations for Chihuahua got idled when FORD offered a total > of 15% wage increase against the workers demand of 30%. > > In the last five years, thousands of Brazilian auto workers were > forced to strike twice in order to obtain higher wage increases > than what FORD offered. The FORD workers in England recently came > out of a bitter strike where the main issue was a wage increase > compatible to England's current cost of living. > > Labor leaders in Chihuahua say they were ready to strike if the > gap did not narrow. The final compromise was of a 25% wage > increase. Mexico suffers presently from a 50% average inflation > rate. The price of the basic goods basket is predicted to rise by > over 74%. The basic goods basket includes consumer goods and > services that are all but indispensable to most of the population. > > > The UAW in the United States and the CAW in Canada, are scheduled > to hold wage and contract negotiations with Ford and the other two > auto makers this year as well. > > Although Ford has increased its investment in Mexican facilities > in recent years resulting in sizable profits due to cheaper cost > of labor and production, it consistently follows the Mexican > government austerity program by keeping wages way bellow current > cost of living. > > "FORD" is a four letter word: The feelings of Ford workers in > several countries have been clearly expressed against their > employer by rewriting the company's logo illustrating Ford's place > in their communities. > > Workers in Brazil rewrote the Ford logo to "FOME" which means > "hunger" in portuguese, when in 1991 fought against an 11% > increase proposal at a time when the country suffered an inflation > rate of 1000% plus. English Ford workers have spelled out their > anger by writing "F---" within the famous blue and silver oval. In > the United States, Ford auto workers have qualified their > company's standing in their communities by replacing "FRAUD" for > the company's name. Santos Martinez, from the Cleto Nigmo Urbina > committee spearheading the democratization movement in > Cuautitlan/Ford, says that although they may think of stronger > words, they may not fit in the small oval space, so they have to > settle for FEOS or FUCHI, which means ugly and disgusting in > spanish to depict the company and the labor relations atmosphere > Ford has created in their plant. > > As it has been expressed during the anti-NAFTA activism, the > interests of the workers in the U.S. and Canada in term of better > wages and job security, are directly related to those of the > Mexican workers. > > We ask you to Contact as many of the people listed below and > insist that FORD respect the human dignity of its workers by > affording them just and fair wages. > > C. T. M. > C. Fidel Velazquez, Presidente Vallarta No. 8 Mexico DF. C.P. > 06030 Ph-011-525-703-3112 > > Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Ford Motor Co. Seccion > Cuautitlan M. Juarez Eudonio, Sec. Gral KM. 36.5 Autopista > Queretaro- Cuautitlan, Edo de Mexico Vallarta 8 2ndo piso Mexico, > 4 DF. Ph- 011-525-326-7212, 7375, 7550, 7573 fx-011-525-326-7476 > > Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Ford Motor Co. Juan J. > Sosa, Sec. Gral. Ncl. Kilometro 36 1/2 Carretera Mexico-Queretaro > Col. Lomas del Salitre Cuautitlan, Ixcala Edo. de Mexico > CP. 54750 > ph-011-525-326-7630, 7232 fx-011-525-326-7476 > > Alex Trotman, CEO. Ford World Headquarters The American Road PO > Box. 1899 Dearborn, MI.48121-1899 Ph-313-322-3000 fx-313-396-2927 > > Ford Motors de Mexico Phillippe Mellier, Pres. Reforma 333 Sexto > Piso Col Cuauhtemoc Mexico, DF. 06500 Ph-011-525-326-6230 > fx-011-525-533-3693 > > President Bill Clinton White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. > Washington, DC. 20500 Ph-202 456-1111 Fx-202 456-2461 > > Lic. Ernesto Zedillo Presidente de la Republica Palacio Nacional > 06067 Mexico, DF. ph-011-525-515-3717 fx-011-525-515-8005, 5729 > Fax confirmation numbers: 011-525-515-9829, 8256 > > NAFTA Officers: Robert Reich U.S. Sec. of Labor 200 Constitution > Ave. N.W. Washington, DC. 20210 Ph-202-219-5000 fx-202-219-7312 > > Lic. Javier Bonilla Garcia Sec. Fed. de Trabajo Anillo Periferico > Sur 4271 Piso 4 Fuentes del Pedregal Delegacion Tlalpan Mexico. > 14140 Ph-011-525-645-9638 fx-011-525-645-5594 > > For more information contact > TIE-US. > Julio Cesar Guerrero, MSW 7435 Michigan Ave Detroit, MI. 48210 Ph > 313-842-6262 px313-842-0227 > > NOTE: > > You may use this letter or write your own. Please send copies to: > TIE.US > 7435 Michigan Ave, Detroit, MI. 48210 Fx-313-842-0227 > > I support Ford Workers fair wages: > > Wage negotiations between Ford Motor Co. and its workers are > taking place in Mexico and will take place in the US and Canada > this year also. > > Despite the huge profits that Ford has accrued by increasing > operations in Mexico, the company disregards the economic and most > basic needs of workers by keeping their wages low. > > Ford workers in Chihuahua, Hermosillo and Cuautitlan plants more > than need, deserve your support to gain the respect from their > employer in the form of fair wages, hence dignity and decent > living for their families. > > Recent strikes in Brazil and England over wages are a > manifestation of the company's insensitivity to the problem of the > real wages' actual buying power. > > I urge you to use the authority in your capacity to promote fair > wages for Ford workers. It's the just thing to do!!! > ------------------------------ End of forwarded message 1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 08:42:21 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: FW: Re: Seals Eyes --- On Tue, 5 Mar 1996 20:44:06 -0500 Kenneth Goldsmith wrote: >On Tue, 5 Mar 1996, Marisa Januzzi wrote: > >> >> On Sat, 2 Mar 1996, Kenneth Goldsmith wrote: >> >> > There has been something bothering me lately. What are those black >> > things under seals eyes--could they be hairs? >> >> Well, I just cannotbelieve no one's framed an authoritative response to >> this! I hope you've had better backchannel mssgs than this one, too. >> >> Anyway my guess wld be they are a formerly vestigial pathos-inducing pattern >> (aka "poetry") >> > >marissa-- > >gosh, nobody's replied to my query. you'd think with such a brilliant >group, one of 'em would've come up with something rather poetic. > >i like your idea the best so far > >peace, > >kenny g > kenny g --- the tear ducts of persian cats are situated at such a spot that their lacrimations leave a stain below the eyes only perceptible when the cats are white. cld be the same w/ seals. tho wldnt water wash off the stains? specialized organs for piercing the vasty deep's primordial gloom and meditating upon submarine perseity is my guess... yrs --- chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.6.96 8:28:58 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 12:51:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Fwd: Communications Decency Act thanks ron, as a member of the National writers' union, i am pleased that my organization is involved. i noticed that there's a judge buckwalter involved: could he be a former mr. phone-booth from boonesville?--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 13:51:12 GMT-5 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Peters Organization: Indiana State University Subject: John Cage if anybody still has the address to order the john cage cds and other groovy music, could you please back-channel it to me? thanks, mark ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 14:20:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Phillip McCrum Subject: BOO Magazine now available BOO #6 Includes: Interview with Bob Perelman Poetry by: Bob Perelman Dorothy Truillo Lusk Kevin Davies Louis Cabri Articles by: Zainub Verjee Peter Culley Clint Burnham Dan Farrell Subsriptions are $6, $12(institutions) BOO Magazine 1895 Commercial Drive, Box 116 Vancouver, B.C. V5N 4A6 CANADA for info. contact me, Deanna Ferguson, at pmccrum@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 20:15:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Walter K. Lew" Subject: Re: Pound translation Dear Jerry Rothenberg and others interested in the burgeoning pidgin literary scene, I wanted to add a few more names to the list of interesting Hawaiian pidgin writers that Susan Schultz gave last week. Among younger poets, R. Zamora Linmark (currently finishing up a reading tour for ROLLING THE R's--see below) and Barry Masuda (now studying in the graduate Literature program at UC San Diego) refresh/outrage Hawaiian pidgin by recombining it with other dialects and discourses, such as Masuda's cyberpunk deconstructions of both tourism and local identity movements in Hawaii and Linmark's out-there queer/Tagalog/Hollywood talk. There's a substantial sample of both poets in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry. (By the way, thank you for the positive comments on Premonitions that I have heard appeared on this elist--I think I joined too recently to catch some of them.) In the area of prose fiction, I feel one of the classic works is Milton Murayama's short novel, ALL I ASKING FOR IS MY BODY (reprinted by the U. of Hawaii Press, I believe); his long-awaited second book came out last year, but I haven't had a chance to read it. I agree with Susan Schultz about Lois-Ann Yamanaka's new prose book--it falls far short of the intensity found in her volume of poetry, SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE PAHALA THEATER (Bamboo RIdge Press, 1992). Two other new books to read instead are Kathleen Tyau's A LITTLE TOO MUCH IS ENOUGH (FSG, 1995) and especially R. Zamora Linmark's ROLLING THE R's (Kaya Production 1995). Another Hawaiian writer who sometimes uses pidgin is Gary Pak, whose collection of short stories, THE WATCHER OF WAIPUNA (Bamboo RIdge 1992), unfortunately did not get the type of mainland attention that is being showered on Yamanaka. As for the future, Linmark has the range of interests and energy to constantly experiment that will make each new work a surprise. The remaining part of RZ's tour follows; he's a good reader and will probably also talk a bit about the recent literary use of Hawaiian pidgin: Wed, March 6th: People Like Us (Chicago, IL) @ 7pm (312-248-6363) Thurs, March 7th: Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) @ 3pm Tues, March 12th: UC Berkeley Fri, March 15th: Spruce Street Forum (San Diego, CA) (619-295-0301) The most comprehensive book on the literatures of Hawaii is Stephen Sumida's AND THE VIEW FROM THE SHORE (U. Washington Press 1991); he teaches in the U. of Michigan English dept. In case anyone thinks the above is shameless self-promotion, I have recently given up the chief editorship of Kaya Production. In fact, any mail intended for me should not be sent to Kaya (it probably won't reach me), but to: 8 Old Colony Rd. Old Saybrook, CT 06475 ph & fax: (860) 388-4601 I hope this is useful. Bye for now, Walter K. Lew ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 23:43:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: BOO Magazine I just got a BOO magazine published in Chicago.... perhaps this is a different one? cs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 23:48:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: BOO Magazine Deanna---sorry about the confusion (mine).... the magazine in Chicago is called BLOO not BOO... chris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 18:58:38 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: Pound translation In-Reply-To: <960306201541_239416979@mail06.mail.aol.com> Thanks, Walter, for a fine list of writers; let me just add the names of Rodney Morales (who was just hired by the U of Hawai'i English department on tenure track--the first local writer in a permanent job). Of course we have a hiring freeze, so we can't pay him next year. His _The Speed of Darkness_ contains very strong short stories, and he's working on a novel that promises to be good. Marie Hara and Juliet Kono Lee are also good Hawai'i writers. Who is Kathleen Tyau? I haven't heard of her, strangely enough. Zack Linmark and Barry Masuda are the two writers who would most appeal to subscribers to this list, I think. Rob Wilson has done some excellent work on Hawai'i writers, too, more theoretical than Sumida. The main rap on Sumida is that he writes almost exclusively about local Asian-American writers, and not about Hawaiian writers (Hawaiian means native Hawaiian). But the book is still extremely valuable. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 10:16:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Poetry City Reading POETRY CITY reading tonight! at Teachers & Writers Collaborative 5 Union Square West, 7th Floor March 7 at 6:30 p.m. Lisa Jarnot & John Godfrey free (212) 691-6590 http://www.twc.org ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 15:26:26 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Subject: New (Cybertextual) Work from Indra's Net Comments: To: ws@shadoof.demon.co.uk ** APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS ** Pressing the Key. Indra's Net VIII ------------------------------------------------ Using a development of the form initiated in Book Unbound (Indra's Net VI) this piece allows readers to create and explore collocational blends generated from an article on the relationship between software engineering and experimental poetics written for the electronic journal, EJournal, vol. 6, no. 1 ("an all-electronic, e-mail delivered, peer-reviewed, academic periodical" -- to subscribe, send 'sub ejrnl' to: listserv@albany.edu; to get vol. 6, no. 1, send 'get ejrnl v6n1' to the same address). > one constructs with and against and amongst the code > it can be made to enrich such phenomena > real inscriptions of our most intimate activities > real inscriptions of our creative > and destructive > operations > > so either of these absent agents may be programmers > systematic manipulators of text > authored in the constructive act as > poetry > inscriptions of the code > each term of the code > each term of the field of writing > > press the reveal code key The HyperCard-based (Macintosh-only) cybertextual version of this work can be downloaded from: http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/in/indown.html Previously announced, but also new: The Speaking Clock. Indra's Net VII ----------------------------------- ... with acknowledgements to Emmett Williams's 'Poetry Clock' and, more specifically, to John Christie's mechanical 'Word Clocks' ... however this (silent) speaking clock in software both composes from a given text according to quasi-aleatory procedures and actually tells the 'real time': "What if it was impossible to apply a single name from a finite set to a moment which seems to recur in an acknowledged cycle of time? What if it was impossible to apply the word 'dawn' to more than one single instant at the beginning of some one particular day?" (from the given text.) > destroyed warmth true cold > spelt out and riverflow > inscribed on illusion of > real time passing flake > of snow white to > many a different instance > > even last the clock > and time piece unique > name the city this > last even against on > this island impossibly lost > warmth true into would > > tells last breath out > and no like more > than one single instant > at the beginning some > one single instant at > the beginning of entropy -- February 26, 00:49 - 01:02 The Speaking Clock can also be downloaded from the site above. More information on the Indra's Net cybertextual project generally at: http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/in/ - - - - - > John Cayley Wellsweep Press [in Chinese HZ: ~{?-U\02~} ~{=[i@3v0fIg~}] ^ innovative literary translation from Chinese ^ 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD UK Tel & Fax: 0171-267 3525 Email: cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk Old home (still working): http://www.inforamp.net/~cayley (Expansive) New home: http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/ < - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 12:21:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: POETRY CITY book offer POETRY CITY, the experimental theme park, is proud to make a special offer to poetix readers: TWO BOOKS BY BILL LUOMA for $10 ppd _My Trip to New York City_ and _Swoon Rocket_, both published by The Figures, sell separately in stores for $11. Just email POETRY CITY at jdavis@panix.com and send your real-world address. We'll send you a bill. But hurry! quantities are limited, and when _My Trip to New York City_ is gone, that'll be it! (_Swoon Rocket_ is available separately for $5 ppd or 20% off--order now, but please, not to the list!) Thanks, Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 12:33:21 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Jim Brodey "Heart of the Breath" Readings Comments: cc: jongams@crocker.com Hard Press sponsors two readings to celebrate the release of Jim Brodey's "Heart of the Breath" East Coast When: Wednesday March 13 at 8 pm Where: The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church 2nd Ave. & 10th. St., NYC 212-674-0910 Who: Greg Masters Frank Lima Tom Savage Joel Lewis John Godfrey Tony Towle Bill Zavataky Paul Violi Ed Freidman Gillian McCain Geoffrey Young Yuki Hartmann Barbara Barg Ray DiPalma Sharon Mesmer Steve Levine Rod Padgett Clark Coolidge Charles North David Shapiro Lisa Jarnot Susan Cataldo Eileen Myles Elio Schneeman Michael Gizzi Organized by Michael Gizzi, Joanne Wasserman, & Clark Coolidge West Coast When: Friday April 12 at 7:30 p.m Where: The New College Theater, 777 Valencia Street, San Francisco Who: Bill Berkson Tom Clark Joanne Kyger Larry Kearney Robert Grenier Joanne Kyger will play a tape of Brodey Reading =========================================================================== Kenneth Goldsmith http://wfmu.org/~kennyg kgolds@panix.com kennyg@wfmu.org kgoldsmith@hardpress.com v. 212-260-4081 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 07:49:37 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: FW: Re: Seals Eyes They stay up late into the Arctic night reading Bibles written on grains of rice. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 13:29:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: NEW BOOK In-Reply-To: <199603071818.NAA00995@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> alert for all interested in Caribbean studies / postcolonial issues / cricket! Kent Worcester's _C. L. R. James: A Political Biography_, first announced by Blakwell and now actually and finally pub'd by SUNY Press, is out and on the shelves. While it is not yet the full bio. we need, it is more detailed than Paul Buhle's book of some years back. Worcester has been working on this for a long time and has studied documents that remain unpublished even now -- Get it quick! Includes a selected biblio. on James with good annotations. An excellent starting place for those new to James's work, and good background material for those who've been reading James all along. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:01:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: ABR >I was off-line for a bit, so may have missed if somebody already answered >our friend's question -- but in case it wasn't answered -- > >the _ABR_ containing Keith Tuma's review is the _American Book Review_, >which name, I suppose, distinguishes it from the _North American Review_, >etc. > Thank you __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 19:27:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: NYC reading Just found this on a flyer: Lyn Hejinian Ron Silliman Tuesday, March 19, 1996 8:00pm Maison Francaise, Columbia University Admission is free -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 19:29:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: ReVersing Poetics: Measure and Rhythm in the Vicinity of the Postmodern MLA 1996 Special Session >Posted-Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 04:15:29 -0500 (EST) >Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 01:10:50 -0800 (PST) >X-Sender: ez013445@peseta.ucdavis.edu >X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 2.1.1 >Mime-Version: 1.0 >To: cfp@dept.english.upenn.edu >From: Joe Aimone >Subject: ReVersing Poetics: Measure and Rhythm in the Vicinity of the > Postmodern MLA 1996 Special Session >Sender: owner-cfp@dept.english.upenn.edu >Precedence: bulk >Status: RO > >ReVersing Poetics: Measure and Rhythm in the Vicinity of the Postmodern. >Perspectives (aesthetic, political, philosophical, psychoanalytic) on >theories and practices of rhythm and meter re-erupting in recent poetry - - >retroversions, recuperations, reinventions, rediscoveries. Abstracts, >proposals, March 15. Joe Aimone (joaimone@ucdavis.edu), English, University >of California, Davis, CA 95616. > > > >-- >Joe Aimone >Department of English >University of California, Davis >joaimone@ucdavis.edu > > -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 22:52:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: BOO Magazine Deanna-- Wld you like to trade Aerial for Boo? Otherwise can you take 'merican cheques? Thanks Rod ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 20:26:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: dead horses, live theories, bodies trans sending academic poet/ry Jordan davis queried: >Tom, could you elaborate on your intriguing, provocative Levinas >quote a bit? How is the body manifest as a contestation of the >attribution of meaning? And is this contestation unique to the >body? The body seems to me to ground meaning as much as defy it, >and it seems to me that similar claims could be made for any >phenomenon. Maybe I should just read the Levinas: feel free to >tell me so. This says it for me: Invocation Some of us have spent our lifetimes searching our bodies for the letters of flame, when they arise some of us burn and some of us set fires. Deena Metzger, "Invocation" _A sabbath among the ruins_ Levinias quote came from latest PMC tom ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 06:33:03 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: help anybody out there know the word wch means: that portion of grain wch goes to pay the miller like tithe saw it while reading dictionary have lost the word thanks chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.8.96 6:33:03 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 09:59:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Walter K. Lew" Subject: Poetry City Dear Maria, Jordan, & others involved/interested in the 3/14 reading at Teachers & Writers Collaborative, In belated reply to Maria's question to "Wall": Yes, I will be reading selections from Premonitions, maybe talk a bit about its structure, intended role. Jordan--Is there any way a VHS deck and monitor (preferable at least 26") can be set up for the reading? I want to show some brief video poetry (e.g. Gloria Toyun Park's work; cf. pp. 172-75 "Red Lolita" excerpts). Let me know so I can prepare. Has anybody out there spent time in Montreal? I'm going up to lecture at McGill on Korean literature for a few days at the end of the month and would like to know what I can do in my spare time. Any leads on interesting cultural resources, poetic history & archives, walks, hiking trails, specialty/used book stores, bars, ethnic subcultures and neighborhoods, etc.? My reading French is passable, but my speaking/listening skills are almost non-existent. Any tips would be appreciated. WKL ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 14:02:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: msgs hi folks, i haven't gotten any POETRIX msgs for about 4 days; what's going on --has someone unsubbed me accidentally, or is something wrong w/ my mailer or yours? concerned, maria d ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 16:14:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: checking I haven't received any mail from the poetics list for 2 days, while all other lists are coming through fine. If this gets through, would someone please let me know? Is there word of anyone else having this problem? I checked my settings at Buffalo and they are all OK. Thanks, Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 13:49:15 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: TINFISH erratum In-Reply-To: To everyone who gets a copy of TINFISH #2: pages 2 and 3 of Joe Balaz's poem are reversed from what they should be. The actual order, then, goes as follows: pages 1,3,2,4,5 make up what should be pages 1,2,3,4,5. Gabrielle Welford was acute enough to realize the error, for which I thank her (even as my feeling about messengers is ambivalent at the moment!). Susan Schultz ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 10:32:09 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Horne Subject: Another patois translation Those of you who liked the Hawaiian Creole English translation of Pound's "The Return" may also enjoy Tom Leonard's spin on WCW's "This is Just to Say." For those of you who haven't come across his work before, Leonard's a Scottish poet who usually writes in a Glaswegian patois: Jist ti Let Yi No (from the American of Carlos Williams) ahv drank thi speshlz that wurrin the frij n thit yiwurr probbli hodn back furthi parti awright they wur great thaht stroang thaht cawld and one more untitled original for good measure: right inuff ma language is disgraceful ma maw tellt mi ma teacher tellt mi thi doactir tellt thi priest tellt mi ma boss tellt mi ma landlady in carrington street tellt mi the lassie ah tried tay get aff way back in 1969 tellt mi sum we smoat thi thoat ah hudny read chomsky tellt mi a calvinistic communist thi thoat i wuz revisiionist tellt mi po-faced literati grimly kerryin thi burden a thi past tellt mi po-faced literati grimly kerryin thi burden a thi future tellt mi ma wife tellt mi jist-tay-get-inty-this-poem tellt mi ma wainz hame fray school an tellt me jist aboot ivry book ah oapnd tellt mi even thi introduction tay thi National Scottish Dictionary tellt mi ach well all livin language is sacred fuck thi lohta thim ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 00:50:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: POETRY CITY book offer Oops---wrong heading.... I have two questions. 1) For Deanna Ferguson---I hope you can get someone to bring copies of BOO to the NYU POERTY TALKS thing that's happening in late march----it'd probably be a great place to sell it to amerikans like me..... 2) I need to backchannel Kevin Killian/Dodie Bellamy, but lost their sirius address.....could anyone forward it to me.... thank you, chris stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 22:43:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: Jim Brodey "Heart of the Breath" Readings I'd like to add that the West Coast Jim Brodey reading is being organized and presented by Small Press Traffic--in cosponsorship with the Poetics Program of New College. Dodie Bellamy >Hard Press sponsors two readings to celebrate the release of >Jim Brodey's "Heart of the Breath" >West Coast > >When: Friday April 12 at 7:30 p.m >Where: The New College Theater, 777 Valencia Street, San Francisco > > >Who: > >Bill Berkson >Tom Clark >Joanne Kyger >Larry Kearney >Robert Grenier > > >Joanne Kyger will play a tape of Brodey Reading ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 05:50:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: This Is Just To Say My favorite "translation" of that poem is by a woman I was in a show with once. Her name's Rachelle Ray, and I have absolutely no idea what she's up to today, but I've remembered this: This is Just to Say I have packed the clothes which were in the bedroom and which you were probably stroking before breakfast Forgive me he was delicious so sweet and you, so cold _________________ Emily ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 11:56:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: test I have gotten several reports of problems with messages getting posted to the list. I sending this as a test to see if I can figure out what's wrong. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 11:57:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Samuels Subject: Re: Silliman's 60s & another perspective In-Reply-To: <199603051102.DAA14056@ix2.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at Mar 5, 96 03:02:36 am dear ron, et al, you wrote that one did not study 60s poetics in the 60s. during my 1980-84 undergraduate education, i had no idea that anyone was really writing any poetry anymore -- apart from the cookie-cutter lyrics in the -new yorker-, the daunting perfections of -poetry-, etc. in part, that must have been due to the schools i attended -- a small midwestern one, then william & mary, then unc-chapel hill (i was hooked on the transfer system). but still, i should have thought some notion of a live scene might have trickled down. even more (after five years out of the school world), i managed to get completely through my graduate coursework and exams without ever once learning about language poetry, much less any more recent poetic scene, or even any individual not sanctioned by the likes of the yale younger poets award. i had not heard of anyone on this list before about a year and a half ago. i am the first to say my own failure to seek reading i didn't know -- & perhaps not living in american cities -- had everything to do with my ignorance. but i was not, technically, uneducated. i thought this perspective might be worth hearing, given what a blessing the discovery of this world has been for me. it's strange to realize how utterly non-existent one population of the thought & writing world can be for another. yours, lisa samuels ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 13:16:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Albert Cook Subject: Re: test In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 9 Mar 1996 11:56:00 -0500 from The message came through OK to me. Albert Cook ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 10:38:50 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: Silliman's 60s & another perspective --- On Sat, 9 Mar 1996 11:57:02 -0500 Lisa Samuels wrote: > i am the first to say my own failure to seek reading i >didn't know -- & perhaps not living in american cities -- >had everything to do with my ignorance. but i was not, >technically, uneducated. > i thought this perspective might be worth hearing, given >what a blessing the discovery of this world has been for me. >it's strange to realize how utterly non-existent one population >of the thought & writing world can be for another. > >yours, > >lisa samuels > lisa --- even tho i live in sf bay area, i didn't quite realize that an avant-garde existed outside of the relatively small forces in academia until i got on a list much like this one in january and commenced putting my foot in my mouth in a very big way. was out of touch for abt 15 years, am complete autodidact, had assumed because of despair that avant-garde had basically become codified, (nonetheless have eyes and could have sought ... did not for various reasons, some of them good.) imagine my delight when informed the opposite! all to say yr not alone in intimations of blessedness. yrs ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.9.96 10:38:51 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 11:42:13 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: plz disregard is a test please disregard ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.9.96 11:42:13 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 11:49:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: SPT upcoming events Small Press Traffic is presenting two exciting events in the next week or so= . Kevin Killian and Tan Lin =46riday, March 15, 7:30 p.m. at the New College Theater 777 Valencia Street San Francisco $5 Robert Gl=FCck & Carla Harryman Tuesday, March 19, 8 p.m. at New Langton Arts 1246 Folsom Street San Francisco $5 Those hot lights, trained on one's skin, were like the great eyes of God the poet Jack Spicer wrote of in Imaginary Elegies. They see everything, even under the skin where your thoughts are. Your dirty little thoughts. You can take off all your clothes and pretend to be "naked," but you are still Kevin Killian from Smithtown Long Island, with all the petty details that denotes. And yet at the same time the heat made me feel languorous, forgetful, like Maria Montez at the top of some Aztec staircase -dangerous, as though there were nothing beyond the circle of white-no audience, no society, only oneself and the red or purple or black hard-on that floats magically to the level of one's lips. I suppose all actors must feel the same way in some part of being-that the camera's eye represents the eye of God, which at the same time judges all and, threateningly, withholds all judgment till time turns off. - from Kevin Killian's "Hot Lights" The agents ('senders') numbered about forty and the tests included a number, a wild animal with a letter written over his head, two intersected coloured lines, a taste, a pain at some point on the hands or arm, the emotional experiences of a drowning man, and finally what a fireman feels like when he is rescuing a girl. All the stimuli were chose automatically by means of a machine. Listeners were informed of the general nature of the stimulus, whether it was an animal, a number, and so on. There shall be with seraphim and cherubim, there also we shall meet with thousands and thousands of others that have gone before us to that place. enlarged lymph mode divisional sales chart fully jacketed bullet [insert photo here] [insert photo here] [insert photo here] - from Tan Lin's "100 Second Chances" ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 14:52:46 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Silliman's 60s & another perspective >(Lisa Samuels) >during my 1980-84 undergraduate education, i had no idea >that anyone was really writing any poetry anymore -- apart >from the cookie-cutter lyrics in the -new yorker-, the daunting >perfections of -poetry-, etc. ... > even more (after five years out of the school world), >i managed to get completely through my graduate coursework >and exams without ever once learning about language poetry, >much less any more recent poetic scene, or even any >individual not sanctioned by the likes of the yale younger poets >award. i had not heard of anyone on this list before about >a year and a half ago. ... > i thought this perspective might be worth hearing, given >what a blessing the discovery of this world has been for me. >it's strange to realize how utterly non-existent one population >of the thought & writing world can be for another. a while back, someone here suggested the image of a Venn diagram to describe poetry communities in the us--numerous circles, each containing individuals w/ shared aesthetics or experiences; some of those circle partly overlapping, but mostly not, free-floating in space w/out any contact w/ each other... i've found it a very useful picture, added details in my own head (it must, frinstance, have at least 3 dimensions...), and generally hopeless that i could actually draw such a map. more than just LangPo has created a range ov work, and a community, that challenges the received traditions-- & it's sometimes disappointing to me that such are not often included in th discussions here... but lisa reminds that this list, & resources like it, can literally change a reader's worldview, open the atlas to new maps, new territories... not a trivial matter. lbd trr/burning press oh, yeah, lisa: no accident that i ellipsed out part of your original message, the parts where you blame yourself for lack ov exposure to alternatives... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 12:11:10 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: one of my favorites forever! In-Reply-To: <9603090037.AA20761@nzseq1.nz.oracle.com> So glad you brought in Tom Leonard! He has to be one of the funniest and most pertinent poets around. A few more great poems in _The New British Poetry_, especially his version of "Baa Baa Black Sheep." Thanks. Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 15:00:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Access (not in my 60s yet) It's instructive to recall how particular access to this world invariably is. I grew up in a family without books (beyond Readers Digest Condensed Novels) or music, but it was at the edge of Berkeley and my restlessness put me in touch with so many things. Seeing Chris Daniels, who lives 7 blocks from the best bookstore in the USA (1814 San Pablo Ave), write of his imagination of a codified (reified?) avant-garde underscores the problem for each of us. I tend to think that every one of us is in some sense (not Gerry Jamposlky's or Jeremy Tarcher's) a miracle. Somehow we did find our way here. It's a test. I discovered Louis Zukofsky through public TV. Bob Holman is going to change somebody's life with his series--in ways that he cannot predict nor control. Good for him. L-Bob is absolutely right about the existance (and importance) of many other scenes simultaneous to (overlapping with) (contesting against) L-poesy, without which the world would be arid indeed. I think it's important to acknowledge the value in such scenes and not simply theoretically. For me at least, these scenes are precisely what poetry at its best is about. Communitas, Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 17:19:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: POETRY CITY book offer Just for my personal and professional curiosity, would you tell me more about Poetry City? Tim >POETRY CITY, the experimental theme park, >is proud to make a special offer to poetix readers: > >TWO BOOKS BY BILL LUOMA for $10 ppd > >_My Trip to New York City_ and _Swoon Rocket_, >both published by The Figures, >sell separately in stores for $11. > >Just email POETRY CITY at jdavis@panix.com >and send your real-world address. >We'll send you a bill. > >But hurry! quantities are limited, and when >_My Trip to New York City_ is gone, that'll be it! > >(_Swoon Rocket_ is available separately for $5 ppd >or 20% off--order now, but please, not to the list!) > >Thanks, >Jordan Davis in space no one can hear you scream in Dallas no one cares... ______________________________________________________________________________ Check out the Voices new poetry website at http://www.connect.net/twood/ the Word, Dallas' monthly arts guide: http://www/connect.net/twood/word.html poetry & video poetry ---- graphic design & database development ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 17:52:27 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: BOO Magazine Deanna, what are the articles about? Tim in space no one can hear you scream in Dallas no one cares... ______________________________________________________________________________ Check out the Voices new poetry website at http://www.connect.net/twood/ the Word, Dallas' monthly arts guide: http://www/connect.net/twood/word.html poetry & video poetry ---- graphic design & database development ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 16:06:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mikl-em Subject: 90's and other perspectives... Lisa's note struck a chord, esp. in light of luigi's reply re: circles overlapping--she having attended w&m and now being at UVA, and I being a graduate of James Madison, a third VA university. I had a professor who talkd about Lpo's, but I gather there was no support for her actually teaching a class focused on them. She accurately reccommended several off-stream poets that I would be interested in, but alas I didn't find them until after my school days were up. I do regret not being able to encounter writers such as Howe and Scalapino in a classroom setting, becuz I find it difficult to blend smoothly into their work reading them on my own. There are other neglected poets though, ones who are outside of some of the movements which get more press, and it took my own active pursuit to uncover Rexroth, Patchen, Antin, Blackburn and others who have been essential for me and my writing. Ultimately Language Poetry intimidates me, not only in the work itself, but since it is the avant-garde establishment, so to speak, must it be dealt with in order to proceed, and, if so, are those who know the present limited by it, ala' the Apexers? Meanwhile, I am trying to find the poets of language poetry, mostly one by one, and I think will eventually be glad for finding them the way I am, rather than buying the whole posse on one ticket. Incidentally, I had a friend who became somewhat of a convert to LangPo from an undergrad class at UVA--taught by none other than Tan Lin who is about to read in the SPD series. How's that for closure? A couple other threads to touch on: I clearly remember scanning the bios in my undergrad anthology, Norton I'm sure, and finding consistently Ivy leaguers and WWII vets, interesting that the GI Bill and the rift from the Vietnam era experience are strange cousins in a way as far as "producing" poets. I know that it isn't so simplistic a case, but does it make you wonder how a generation that isn't touched so intimately with War will differ in focus? Let's hope that we find out. And finally, I know another Bowling Green poet, who also was a JMU undergrad, Denver Butson, who studied under Ted Enslin there--not hugely published, but doing excellent work. take care all, michael --mike@taylor.org ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 16:16:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: dub test (Delete Unless Bernstein) At 11:56 AM 3/9/96 -0500, you wrote: >I have gotten several reports of problems with messages getting posted to >the list. I sending this as a test to see if I can figure out what's >wrong. here's typing at you. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 17:33:37 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: another by tom leonard GOOD STYLE helluva hard tay read theez innit stull if yi canna unnirston thim jiss clear aff then gawn get tay fuck ootma road ahmaz goodiz thi lota yiz so ah um ah no whit ahm dayn tellnyi jiss try enny a yir fly patir wi me stick thi bootnyi good style so ah wull (from the faber book of xx-cent. scottish poetry) great anthology later --- chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.9.96 5:33:37 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 20:19:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: Spring issue of SPT newsletter Dodie, I've recently joined the mailing list and --since it has spammed my mailbox-- I just got to your message. Pity is there are still three hundred on either side of yours to read. Anyway, if it's not too late, I'd like to recieve a copy of Traffic. I can be reached at PO Box 835984 Richardson Tx 75083 thanks, Tim in space no one can hear you scream in Dallas no one cares... ______________________________________________________________________________ Check out the Voices new poetry website at http://www.connect.net/twood/ the Word, Dallas' monthly arts guide: http://www/connect.net/twood/word.html poetry & video poetry ---- graphic design & database development ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 17:54:55 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: Access (not in my 60s yet) ron silliman --- >Seeing Chris >Daniels, who lives 7 blocks from the best bookstore in the USA (1814 >San Pablo Ave), write of his imagination of a codified (reified?) >avant-garde underscores the problem for each of us. well, yeah, codified: reduced to a code or set of laws, i.e. DEAD. for many many reasons, and to my loss, that was my initial reaction to langpo theory and praxis around and abt 1980. was way too "dense" for me back then. not now tho. in my defense i must say that i moved to this part of berkeley last october. SPD is a wonderful store. i volunteer there off and on and am becoming friends with steve dickison. but SPD for various reasons is unable to stock i wld say MOST of what is going on right now. i know, i've gone in there, TAPROOT in hand, to find nothing i wanted to check out. particularily no vizpo, most tragic. you signed yr post: COMMUNITAS this is the beauty of the web, where a relatively well-known poet like yrself may be approached and engaged in friendly discussion with no question of hassle. obviously you are online because you want to be. if i saw you on the street i would never approach you, not wishing to bug you. the web makes it all so easy, has created a potentially VAST community for poets. very heartening. yrs --- chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.9.96 5:54:55 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 20:53:30 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Barton Rollins Subject: A Protest Against the Missile Exercise (fwd) Date: Sun, 10 Mar 96 15:01:40 -0800 From: rhhwang To: teacher@ccunix.ccu.edu.tw Subject: A Protest Against the Missile Exercise A Protest Against the Missile Exercise Starting from March 8th the People's Republic of China will launch a series of missile exercises. The missiles will fall roughly 20 kilometers from the coast of Taiwan. This is a prelude to a full scale military blockade of Taiwan, an island girded by the seas. Freedom and democracy of the 21 million peace-loving people in Taiwan are now being threatened. The international community should not stand by and let the people of Taiwan lose their freedom. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 08:09:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Ellis McAdams" Subject: Re: Wars In-Reply-To: <199603100501.AAA00990@graf.cc.emory.edu> Michael asked yesterday "how a generation that isn't touched so intimately with War will differ in focus?" I think this question is very much complicated by the Gulf War, so that many of the undergraduates presently in universities believe that they have had a close, first-hand experience with war, because, as many of them have told me, for the first time people "at home" were "on the frontlines" a la CNN et al. This issue arose last week in my seminar, "Contemporary Native America," when we read Adrian C. Louis's "Red Blues in a White Town the Day We Bomb Iraqi Women and Children" from his AMONG THE DOG EATERS (Albequerque: West End Press). A few students were angry about what they perceived to be "America bashing"--nothing unusual there--but one of them said something interesting re: Louis's supposed anti-whiteness, "Well, he is, but I don't take it personally." When I suggested that maybe he should take it "personally," that Louis intended to make white people uncomfortable, he and the other students did not seem to grasp what this might mean in a concrete sense. I'm rambling here, but I see a connection, that is, the inability (or unwillingness) of students to put themselves into the equation--of the poem, in this instance--even as they see themselves involved in this TV war. I'm wondering 1) what others' experience about the Gulf War have been in the classroom? and 2) what strategies you use in the classroom to enable students to write themselves into the text? Janet Note: My use of the term TV War is in no way intended to be dismissive of the horror and brutality of what we did in Iraq. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 09:17:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: test i got this msg, thanks, today it seems to be working--md ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 09:17:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: test wow, albert cook, i didn't know you were on the list. awesome, ... my graduate advisor turned me on to your stuff... maria d ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 09:17:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Poetry City/yo wally lew hiya wally, my old friend peter gibian (who you met at your pacific film archive show in the 80s) teaches at McGill, i'll let him know youre coming. or better yet, his e-address is czpg@musica.mcgill.ca so you can get in touch. see ya thurs. (yay!)--md ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 11:17:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: msgs hi guyzies, i'm getting msgs again. thanks for your support, concern, sympathy, and fine suggestions, all of which have been invaluable in my time of need. bests, md ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 07:44:13 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: test Receiving you cool & exquisite, Charles. Best, Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 11:00:14 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: test likewise, dude ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.10.96 11:00:14 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 11:42:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Going on without George Burns In-Reply-To: <199603100703.CAA09268@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> recent dialogue interesting to me -- when in university in the 70's (undergrad) never really expected that professors might teach from contemporary poets, and was thus never disappointed (later courses with David McAleavey, lurking around this list, were a welcome change in that regard) -- book stores in D.C. then weren't much help either -- so one seized upon those few openings -- such as the short-lived folio books, where one could actually buy small press books by poets one had never heard of -- followed in the same space by second story books, whose used & new sections included much of interest and where the employees held readings by the likes of Silliman, Hejinian, Palmer, Kelly, and welcomed local poets to read as well -- That store was my introduction to those poets, and I am sure this was the pattern in other parts of the country for other readers -- the academy was not, even for those of us who by then intended to become academics, where one hoped to encounter such works -- Now, as someone who does attempt the teaching of contemporary poets I remind myself of those days as a caution -- who might I be overlooking that my students would later thank me for? The answer now as then is to do what I always did with music -- to make a point of finding and reading poets whose names are new to me -- and that may be, for me, the chief value of this list! this has been a test -- people have been telling me that poetry is not getting through -- no need to respond -- test will resume at the usual location & time ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 20:52:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KUSZAI Subject: ANNOUNCING RON SILLIMAN's _XING_ from MEOW PRESS _Xing_ by Ron Silliman Meow Press Buffalo, 1996 52 pages, saddle-stitched No ISBN Published in an edition of 300 $6 Available from SPD 1851 San Pablo, Ave. Berkeley, CA 94051 Comprised of 364 three line stanzas, this single long poem is the latest installment in Silliman's ALPHABET, a project begun with the publication of ABC in 1983 by Lyn Hejinian in her Tuumba chapbook series. _Xing_ affords the reader the possible view of a writer at work, engaging with the everyday while filtering in/out the effects on consciousness of the material circumstances of the poet's life and thought. Like in Zukofsky's poetry, the domestic scene registers its familial tonality upon the poem's optics: the poet writing and the meditative quality of writing which includes itself as part of the frame of the everyday experience. Curiously enjambed, the materials brought together in this poem represent an encyclopedia of careful attentions, with characteristic wit: (noticing how Big Bird never moves his right wing expect for certain distance shots in which he doesn't open his beak or move his head, I begin to wonder If Bob Dole isn't also a muppet). Cuticle torn down the side of the nail. (p. 23) * * * OTHER TITLES AVAILABLE FROM MEOW PRESS George Albon, _King_ $5 Andrews, Bernstein, Sherry, _Technology/Art: 20 Brief Proposals_ $5 Rachel Tzvia Back, _Litany_ $6 Michael Basinski, _Cnyttan_ $5 Charles Bernstein, _The Subject_ $6 Jonathan Brannen, _The Glass Man Left Waltzing_ $5 Dubravka Djuric, _Cosmopolitan Alphabet_ $5 Robert Fitterman, _Metropolis_ $5 Benjamin Friedlander, _A Knot is Not a Tangle_ $5 Benjamin Friedlander, _Anterior Future_ $5 (New Reprint!) Peter Gizzi, _New Picnic Time_ $5 Loss P. Glazier, _The Parts_ $5 Mark Johnson, _Three Bad Wishes_ $6 Pierre Joris, _Winnetou Old_ $5 Elizabeth Robinson, _Iemanje_ $5 (New Reprint!) Leslie Scalapino, _The Line_ $5 James Sherry, _4 For_ $5 Misko Suvakovic, _Pas Tout_ $5 Juliana Spahr, _Testimony_ $6 Bill Tuttle, _Epistolary Poems_ $5 COMING SOON: Dodie Bellamy & Robert Harrison, _Broken English_ Wendy Kramer, _Patinas_ Meredith Quartermain, _Terms of Sale_ Aaron Shurin, _Codex_ NOW READING FOR SUMMER 1996 Series. SPRING 1996 Series announcement due out soon. * Special offer to Poetics List * Buy any 3 Meow Press books direct from the publisher and receive 1 Free! Buy any 5 and receive 2 Free! Subscriptions to the press are also available. Subscribers receive super-limited edition ephemera items not listed here and not available elsewhere! Please contact Meow Press "back-channel" or by mail 151 Park Street Buffalo, NY 14201 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 22:51:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: COLLEEN LOOKINGBILL READING Thursday, March 14th, the Scottsdale Center for the Arts (greater Phoenix area) is pleased to present a reading by Colleen Lookingbill at 8:00 p.m. Colleen's reading will be followed by an open reading. This is a free event, and all are welcome. Hope those of you living in or visiting the Phoenix area will join us! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 07:42:35 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Paul Naylor Subject: Counter-example Although I suspect most on the list have had experiences similar to Mike and Aldon and others who discovered contemporary avant-garde poetry outside the academy, I'd like to say that my experience was very different. I was a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego from 1983 to 1989, and, thanks mostly to Michael Davidson, that's where I discovered the poets that now mean the most to me. When I think back on the poets I heard read at UCSD -- Palmer, Howe, Bernstein, Andrews, Silliman, Hejinian, Mayer, McCaffery, Mackey, Mac Low, Blaser, Coolidge, to name just the ones that pop to mind immediately -- and the poets I discovered, yes, in the class room -- Ashbery, Oppen, Creeley, Zukofsky, Niedecker, Spicer, Duncan, Stein, etc. -- well, I feel the need to come to the defense of at least one university. And I am trying to pass that experience on to my students here at The University of Memphis, where I've been able to teach a special topics course to undergraduates on experimental poetry as well as a graduate seminar on that same topic. Since I grew up in Utah (rumor has it the 60s have finally begun there), there was no way I could have discovered the avant-garde in bookstores or at readings during the 70s. Anyway, I guess the moral is: not all universities suppress the new. Paul Naylor MAIL SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 16:26:35 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: avant-garde perhaps I'm just sensitive to this particular word, avant-garde, but with all the other ideas I'm thinking during the day, I just can't agree with it I hope I'm never an avant-garde poet I mean, who do you really think you're leading to artistic salvation? For me, personally, the word reeks of "elitism," belief in linear evolution (the people who use the terms first, second, third-world as a value judgement or "logical" progression). The avant-garde were those _guys_ saying, someday, when you are enlightened like me, you'll understand what I was talking about/expressing. I feel like I'm opening up that whole censor-ship/ what words can we use/ pomo indian thing again. But I guess I'll post anyway. I just want to know if other people out there object to the use of "avant-garde" as a way of describing the writing going on by those on the list and in discussion of the list. I just think it's a little conceited/ ego-centric. Experimental is one thing, avant-garde is another, but I guess, why are we using these adjectives at all. James Perez jmp2p@virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 18:48:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: avant-garde James Perez: >I just want to know if other people out there object to the use of >"avant-garde" as a way of describing the writing going on by those on the >list and in discussion of the list. I just think it's a little conceited/ >ego-centric. Experimental is one thing, avant-garde is another, but I guess, >why are we using these adjectives at all. I object to the vagueness of the terms 'avant-garde' and 'experimental'. Both are over-used and have gazillions of implications/connotations/relationships of/to other words and meanings. Experimental is used to describe nearly everything even slightly new that we can't think of another word for. Home/kitbuilt airplanes are licensed as 'experimental' and must have big letters saying so near the cockpit, even though few homebuilt designs ar really experiments anymore, they've been proven to be as reliable as any other design. As for poetry, it seems to me that any/everything written without an easily accessible narrative is described as 'experimental'. A few months ago Gwyn McVay (I think) coined the term 'quertzblatz poetics' or some such, which i think is just plain fun to say. Same with avant-garde (although the FAA doesn't use that term anywhere). Everyone seems to have different ideas of what this is. In junior high and high-school I was lead to believe that all avant-garde artists were elitist french chain-smoking ascot wearers. We've got to use *some* adjectives to describe what we're talkking about, but why do we use such silly ones? Eryque ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 15:51:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ray Davis Subject: Re: avant-garde >Experimental is one thing, avant-garde is another, but I guess, >why are we using these adjectives at all. Genre is a matter of marketing category & argumentative community, & "avant-garde poetry" is just the name of a genre -- pretty much the same genre as "experimental poetry", I think (speaking as a poetry purchaser). If we choose to take the "its true meaning is..." approach to etymology, the term "avant-garde" is just as embarrassingly inaccurate as "mystery", "realism", "pornography", "science fiction", "the mainstream", "heroic couplet", or "match" (which derives from "nostril"). One might take the embarrassing inaccuracy of the etymology as a hint that genres can't be clearly defined rather than try to stamp out use of genre terms. Then again, coming up with _new_ genre terms can be a very useful exercise, both for marketing purposes & for establishing communities. Ray ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 18:53:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: avant-garde In-Reply-To: <199603112138.QAA02381@uva.pcmail.Virginia.EDU> from "James Perez" at Mar 11, 96 04:26:35 pm For those (relatively) new to this list, there was a long exchange regarding the appropriateness of the tern "experimental" about a year and a half ago. Check out the archive. As for a=v=a=n=t-g=a=r=d=e, it began, after all, as a military term. Need I say more? Love, Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 16:16:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: Re: Avant-Garde kills bugs dead The other day I was thinking of the term "options open". Does anybody know who COINED that? I'm sure I read/heard it somewhere because only terms like "DO NOT VIOLATE DOOR-LATCH INTEGRITY" come to my mind without a proper visa. was that you what said that, ron S.? i'm not sure i think the term applies to my process of writing but maybe (hopefully) my writing allows for an "options open" reading. Don Cheney --------------------------------------------------------------------- James Perez: >I just want to know if other people out there object to the use of >"avant-garde" as a way of describing the writing going on by those on the >list and in discussion of the list. I just think it's a little conceited/ >ego-centric. Experimental is one thing, avant-garde is another, but I guess, >why are we using these adjectives at all. Eryque: I object to the vagueness of the terms 'avant-garde' and 'experimental'. Both are over-used and have gazillions of implications/connotations/relationships of/to other words and meanings. Experimental is used to describe nearly everything even slightly new that we can't think of another word for. Home/kitbuilt airplanes are licensed as 'experimental' and must have big letters saying so near the cockpit, even though few homebuilt designs ar really experiments anymore, they've been proven to be as reliable as any other design. As for poetry, it seems to me that any/everything written without an easily accessible narrative is described as 'experimental'. A few months ago Gwyn McVay (I think) coined the term 'quertzblatz poetics' or some such, which i think is just plain fun to say. Same with avant-garde (although the FAA doesn't use that term anywhere). Everyone seems to have different ideas of what this is. In junior high and high-school I was lead to believe that all avant-garde artists were elitist french chain-smoking ascot wearers. We've got to use *some* adjectives to describe what we're talkking about, but why do we use such silly ones? Eryque ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 19:45:18 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: avant-garde well we're all just trying to write and who cares what it gets called? i myself couldn't care less what anybody CALLS what i write. all i ask is that if they read it, they really READ it and try to meet it halfway. labelling performs many functions, most of them useless to the process of MAKING art. talking abt art is a different story. "avant-garde" seems abt as good a term as any other. ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.11.96 7:45:19 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 16:20:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: AWOL: FAMOUS REPORTER This message has been forwarded on behalf of AWOL. Please direct all inquiries to AWOL at awol@ozemail.com.au (all prices are in Aust dollars - if you are interested in ordering any titles please contact AWOL for details). Thanks Mark ************************** The following notice has been posted by AWOL on behalf of THE FAMOUS REPORTER. For further information about THE FAMOUS REPORTER please contact them at the address provided. Further information about AWOL's Virtual Bookshop please contact us by using the contact details at the end of this post. ******************************************************* Famous Reporter 12 Famous Reporter is a biannual literary journal, jointly edited by Lyn Reeves (haiku), Lorraine Marwood (100-word essays/poems), Anne Kellas, Angela Rockel, Warrick Wynne (poetry) and Ralph Wessman. Famous Reporter 12 (December `95) features poetry (work by both new and established poets including Doris Leadbetter, Kathelyn Job, Pete Hay, Peter Bakowski, Mark Miller, Rudi Krausmann, Gloria B. Yates, John Malone, Kevin Brophy, Yve Louis, Chris Mansell, Tim Thorne, Rory Harris, Graham Rowlands, Anthony Lawrence & many more), prose (inc. Geoffrey Dean, Leah Nischler, Martin R. Johnson, Anne Shimmins), haiku, an interview (Pete Hay and Richard Flanagan in conversation), reviews of new collections by Nigel Roberts, Kristin Henry/Doris Leadbetter, Sybylla's She's Fantastical anthology, essays and articles (Helen Cerne: `Before Chaos - a visit to Croatia', Sherryl Clark: `Writers at Work' - excerpts from the 3CR radio programme sponsored by the Victorian Writers' Centre, Janice M. Bostok: `A Return to Romania', etc), email commentary (from the Austlit mailing list) by Lyn McCredden and Bill Schaffer, 100-word poems/essays, visits to the N.S.W. Spring Writing Festival in September and to the Tasmanian Poetry and Dance Festival in Sept/Oct, gossip and news.... For FR13, (besides poetry, prose, articles and reviews etc.) we are seeking haiku focussing on relationships; for the 100-word poems/essays section,we require material taking as its departure point a personal response to the opening line of `Jonah's Wife' by Jill Hellyer, published in the Penguin Book of Australian Women Writers, the opening line being "`A likely story,' she said." Contributions - between 95 and 105 words in length - are welcome in verse or prose form, and should reach Famous Reporter by April 12th, 1996. An SSAE is essential for the return of contributions. FR offers modest payment - haiku $5, 100-word essays $5, stories (prose under 500 words) $5, poems $10, short stories & articles $20 minimum, etc - for material. Address submissions (and subscriptions: $14/two issues) to Walleah Press, PO Box 368, North Hobart, Tasmania 7002. ************************************************************************* AWOL'S VIRTUAL BOOKSHOP AWOL will shortly post information about its VIRTUAL BOOKSHOP to its internet contacts and upload information to its web site. A mail order catalogue has been produced for the Salamanca Writers' Festival and will be available throughout the festival. If you are unable to pick up a copy please let us know and we will send you a copy by the most convenient means. Meanwhile, here is a glimpse of what is to come. You can order any of the following magazines directly from AWOL (a discount is available for libraries - please contact us for details. AWOL MAGAZINES Overland 142 (ISSN 0030 7416 88 pages perfect bound). AWOL is pleased to welcome Overland to the Virtual Bookshop. As always issue 142 is a high quality read featuring poetry by Bruce Dawe, Diana Faye, Stella Turner, Susan Hawthorne, Stephen J Williams, Peter Murphy, Sandy Jeffs and Emma Lew. Fiction by Merv Lilley and CC Mitchell together with articles and reviews. A feature of this issue is a tribute to the late Barrett Reid which includes three poems by Reid. $8.00 four W issue 6 (ISSN 1035 7920 Perfect Bound 206 pages) Edited by David Gilbey, Virley Dunning, Muriel Lang & Troy Whitford. This is the most impressive issue of four W to date. Poetry by: Mark Brennan, Anna Voigt, Jenni Munday, Jack Bedson, Margaret Bradstock, BR Dionysius, Mark Smith, M Turbet, Mark Roberts, Ouyang Yu, Anthony Lawrence, Debbie Robson, Adrian Caesar, Michael Crane, Myron Lysenko, Barbara Damska, Philip M Everett, Lizz Murphy, Marietta Elliot, Winifred Campbell, Mark O'Flyn, Troy Whitford, David Gilbey, Bev Stuart, Robert Verdon, John Foulcher, Kathy Kituai, Ron Price, Barbara Bailie Howard, Rory Harris, Jeff Guess, Kyle Powderly, CE Hull, M Thomas Schulze, Ken McKenzie, Bronwyn Rodden, Grahan Rowlands, MTC Cronin, Laureen Williams, Joan Phillip, Muriel Lang, Reg Naulty, Simone Guerin, Wiliam Berrigan, Jules Leigh Koch, Kelly Chan, Robert Doyle Paul c Dodd, David Luttrell & Mark Smith. Prose by: Diane Fordham, Dorothy Simmons, Ian C Smith, Muriel Lang, Pat Skinner, Jane Dowling, Jim Sordi, Virley Dunning, Archimede Fusillo, Barbara Heron, Francesca Rendle-Short, Barbara Brooks, Heather Nicholson, David King & Jack McInnes. Artwork by Rob Harris. $9.00 (issue 4 is also available) SCARP 27 New Arts & Writing (ISSN 0728 7372 66 pages Perfect Bound). Edited by Ron Pretty with assistance from an editorial committee. Once again a very impressive publication from SCARP. Prose by: John A Scott, Lola Stewart, Sue Saliba & John Millet. Poetry by: Tracy Ryan, Jorie Mannering, John Malone, Mike Ladd, Les Wicks, Andy Kissane, Peter Kenneally. Emma Lew, June Owens, Margo Button, CE Hull, Sharon Olinka, Peter Hunt, Margo Button, Deb Westbury, John Kinsella, Marc Swan, Shane NcCauley, Salamander Rilke, Bill Collis & Ron Miller. Artwork by: Christine Dunne, Brian Stewart, Riste Andrievski, Hannah Parker, Susan Fitzgerald, Joyce Allen & Dopiya Gurruwiwi. Reviews of: Lovely Infestation Purcell, The Sky is Moving Hinkley, Do Fish get seasick Murphy, Prismatic Navigation Leabeater & Life's never boring when you're a virgin Beach all by Mark Roberts. Coppertales - A Journal of Rural Arts No. 2 (ISSN 1320 1021 127 pages perfect bound) Edited by Chris Lee & Brian Musgrove. The second issue of Coppertales has confirmed the excitement which surrounded the publication of the first issue. This striking magazine highlights the depth of creative talent in regional Australia. Fiction by: Barbara Ross, Mark O'Flynn, Michelle Mee & Pat Skinner. Poetry by: Estelle Randall, Gary Smith, Robert Verdon, Julie Hunt, C E Hull, John Forbes, BR Dionysius, T M Collins, Jane Williams, Mark O'Flynn, Lorraine Marwood, Sunaryono Basuki, Joan Davis, Andrea Gawthorne, Dorothy Williams & Kate McArthur. Articles by: Ian Syson - 'Literature in Mt. Isa' & Susan Lostroh - 'The art of recycling'. Photojournalism by Lisa Kels. Interviews by: Margo Pye - 'The writing of A Christmas card in April' & Veronica Kelly - '"More Character-driven" An interview with Louis Nowra. Reviews by: C D Yeabsley Iris, it's finished: A childhood in country Queensland - R G Hay, Simon Ryan -In the National Interest Turner & Writing the Colonial Adventure - Dixon, Brian Musgrove The lives of the saints - Berridge, Christopher Lee The Scandalous Penton - Buckridge & Horst Duceveld Metro Arts Pamphlet Poets Series. $9.00 Inklings No.5 (ISSN 1322 7106 56 pages stapled.) Edited by the Inklings Collective Inklings is a Sydney based journal combining creative writing, cultural commentary and reviews, poetry and photography. Originally produced by a number of students and staff at UNSW in the later part of 1993 the journal has now grown into an established biannual publication. Issue 5 contains work by MTC Cronin, Mark Roberts and Mary O'Connell among many others and includes pieces on Jean Luc Godard, colonial discourses on subjugation, and the allegories of Walter Benjamin. $4.00. Tinfish No 1 (No ISSN 46 pages). Edited by Susan M Shultz. The first issue of this Hawaii based magazine is particularly exciting. Tinfish aims to publish "experimental poetry with an emphasis on work from the Pacific region" and includes work by a number of well known Australian writers. Tinfish 1 contains work by Joe Balaz, Peter Kenneally, Kathy Dee Kaleokealoha Kaloloahilani Banggo, John Geraets, Rob Wilson, Spencer Selby, Yi Sha, John Kinsella, Lyn Hejinian, Barry KK Masuda & John Tranter. $4.00 Hermes Issue 12 (ISSN 0 816 116X 108 pages Perfect bound). Hermes has a long tradition of publishing innovative writing and since its relaunch over a decade ago the magazine as gone from strength to strength. It is published annually. Issue 12 is perhaps the best issue yet. It contains poetry by John Tranter, Zan Ross, Peter Minter, Michael Brennan, Karen Attard, Roger Dillon, Alison Clark, Lisa Jacobson, Kate Llewellyn, Kristen de Kline, Tom See, Fecity Plunkett, Ron Pretty, Roger Dillon, Coral Hull and Helen Lambert. Prose by Melissa Brown, Lucy Neave, Adrian Wiggins, Nina Gibb, Andrew Hansen, Phillipa Yelland and Zoe Band. Graphics by Eliza Hutchence, Elena Nesci, Annie O'Rourke, Julian Green, Galea McGregor, Miranda Heckenberg, Aviva Ziegler,Hannah Kay, Charles Lake, Susan Bower, Janice Paul, Rachel Smith and Andrew Stark. Graphics by Susan Bower, Mark Byron and David Langsford. The Famous Reporter Issue 12 Published by Walleah Press PO Box 368 North Hobart Tasmania 7002 ISSN 0 819 5978 Perfect bound Magazine title on spine 128 pages. The Famous Reporter is one of the longest surviving small literary magazines in Australia. While it highlights the work of Tasmanian writers it also regularly includes work by well known mainland and international writers. It is of a consistently high quality and appears regularly twice a year. Issue 12 includes poetry by Nigel Featherstone, Jeff Guess, Brain Purcell, Mark Miler, Rudi Krausmann, Kevin Brophy, Chris Mansell, Tim Thorne, Anthony Lawrence and many more. Fiction by Knute Skinner, Martin R Johnson Alex Butterfield and others together with haiku and articles and reviews. $7.00 ORDER FORM To order any titles from the AWOL Virtual Bookshop complete the order form and mail to Australian Writing On Line, PO Box 333 Concord NSW together with your payment (make cheques payable to Australian Writing On Line). We will shortly be able to accept credit card payments, however, at the present time we must insist upon cheque payments. Please include a phone or fax number so we can contact you if there are any delays in completing your order. All prices are Australian dollars. (overseas buyers please contact us first for payment options). Freight: Please add to the following amounts to your order to cover postage: 1 to 2 items $1.00 per item 2 to 5 items $2.50 5 to 10 items $4.00 over 10 items $5.50 These costs are for delivery inside Australia please contact us for overseas rates. ************************************************ Cut here Title Price .................................. ................ .................................. ................ .................................. ................ .................................. ................ .................................. ................ .................................. ................ Freight ................. Total ................ AWOL Australian Writing On Line awol@ozemail.com.au http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol/ PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia Phone 61 2 7475667 Fax 61 2 7472802 __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 00:53:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: avant-garde >well we're all just trying to write and who cares what it gets >called? i myself couldn't care less what anybody CALLS what i write. >all i ask is that if they read it, they really READ it and try to >meet it halfway. chris, i agree completelike, > labelling performs many functions, most of them >useless to the process of MAKING art. talking abt art is a different >story. "avant-garde" seems abt as good a term as any other. but i thought the issue was *talking* about art? eryque "i left my tonsils in san fransisco" gleason ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 22:06:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: what a difference a decade makes In-Reply-To: <199603120502.VAA25822@sparta.SJSU.EDU> my own recollections to do with local variance (ask your zoning commission about it) -- Paul's later, enviable transit thru UCSD testimony to the value of Davidson's presence and the foresight of several others on that campus at that time -- On the other hand, at that same undergraduate academy where I could not expect to learn of innovative new poetries, we were required to take a course in African-American lit. crit., thus avoiding the now commonplace mistake of thinking that it all began with H.L. Gates & la bell dame hooks -- One looks around, locates that which is of use at whatever UNIverseCITY one has managed to get into, and heads straight for it -- Again, what I was more worried about looking back to my own education was the thought that there may be writers I should be introducing to my students to whom I have blinkered myself in one way or another -- I experimented for a time with the writing of avant garde verse, but gave it up as insufficiently innovative -- I am now determinedly guarding my derriere -- I am, you guessed it, a derrieridian ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 22:49:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Quartermain Subject: Ghost books _Imagist Anthology 1930_, Edited by Glenn Hughes?, Forewords by Ford Madox Ford and Glenn Hughes. London: Chaoot and Windus, 1930, lists at the end of its "Bibliography" on pages 153-154 four titles by William Carlos Williams: Tempera. 1913. Kora in Hell. 1920. Four Grapes. 1921. In the American Grave. 1925. Does anyone know of any other ghost titles, announced (or even promised)? + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 128 East 23rd Avenue Vancouver B.C. Canada V5V 1X2 Voice and fax: 604 876 8061 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 23:21:18 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: FW: Re: avant-garde --- On Tue, 12 Mar 1996 00:53:28 -0500 Eryque Gleason wrote: >>well we're all just trying to write and who cares what it gets >>called? i myself couldn't care less what anybody CALLS what i write. >>all i ask is that if they read it, they really READ it and try to >>meet it halfway. > >chris, i agree completelike, > >> labelling performs many functions, most of them >>useless to the process of MAKING art. talking abt art is a different >>story. "avant-garde" seems abt as good a term as any other. > >but i thought the issue was *talking* about art? o yeah, i forgot abt that ... >eryque "i left my tonsils in san fransisco" gleason chris 'i left my foot in my mouth' daniels sort of tastes like chicken, actually ... -----------------End of Original Message----------------- ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.11.96 11:21:18 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 23:46:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: Ghost books Peter Quartermain wrote: >Does anyone know of any other ghost titles, announced (or even promised)? Hi Peter . . . the 1st thing that popped into mind was the book by Dorothy L Sayers that her publishers kept announcing year after year, after she had quit writing detective stories, but she kept dangling this one last book at them season after season, called, "Thrones, Dominations." It was to her career what "Answered Prayers" was to Truman Capote's. Okay, ghost books-probably hundreds (dozens?) of readers have wondered whatever became of Robin Blaser's book of "Astonishments," after his announcement of it twenty years ago at the end of Jack Spicer's "Collected Books." Peter, you are in as good a position as anyone to answer that question!! (There was also Stan's announcement-was it in 1970?-of the imminent publication of Spicer's "Vancouver Lectures.") But both these books will appear I'm sure, years down the trail, and so do not possibly qualify as "ghost books"? XXX Kevin (Killian) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 02:53:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: FW: Re: avant-garde >chris 'i left my foot in my mouth' daniels > >sort of tastes like chicken, actually ... yours too? after a good jog does it taste like dark meat cooked in a light garlic sauce? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 02:56:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: Ghost books >not possibly qualify as "ghost books"? XXX Kevin (Killian) Kevin, you're older than 30, aren't you? :-) sorry, it's three in the a.m. of the morning over here, bedtime for bozo! OOOO (i get it) Eryque ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 12:39:07 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "William M. Northcutt" Subject: avant-garde someone, and forgive my faulty memory, has recently written a good piece on the notion of avant-garde and all the problems with recent books on the subject, in Contemporary (contemptuous?) Literature. As for my own feelings about "avant-garde" as a word used to describe the works of people such as Pound, Marinetti, H.D., Williams, Reznikof, W. Lewis, Spicer, Desnos, Queneu, Breton, O'Hara, Dorn, Bernstein, Silliman, etc...the problem rests in using the term as a concrete rubric through which to discuss these writers. I mean, there are ways in which the term can be used so loosely as to apply it to Bly and even Fred Turner, since the term is a relative term. The trouble, as far as I see it, is in trying to once and for all codify a term. It may also be that in many cases we don't like to admit that there are definite similarities between some aspects of Dana DDDDDDDjjjjjjjjjjjjjjoyyer's work and, let's say, Jim Mc Manus's work, or more likely, V. Seth's and Jim Mc Manus's, and that there are some recognizable similarities between Silliman's work (all glories be to my favorite of all contemporary poets) and that of one of my least favorite writers ever, someone such as Fred Turner (embraced as he whole-heartedly is by some of the fascists of Europe I've met in the last year--I'm not directly attacking Turner here). The point I'm rambling on about here is that no term such as a-g or experimentalist can ever be less than abstract, or more correctly said, relativist. These thoughts are nothing new to the list. Just my 1 and 1/2 Cents worth. And has anyone yet tried to disentangle how it is that Pound's work, fascist and goddamned hard-assed as it is has aspects which make some of the more humane and radical aspects of lang-po impossible without there having first been Pound? I don't buy the pure methodology excuse. But I would like to know what some of you think. By the way, do any of you know whether Nate Mackey is on line? end of the pot pourri. William Northcutt ----------------------------------- William Northcutt Anglistik I Universitaet Bayreuth 95440 Bayreuth Tel: 44 921 980612 Fax: 44 921 553641 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 09:19:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen Landers Subject: Re: avant-garde all poetry is exactly the same and no other word should be used when discussing poetry because then the buyer will have no idea what is in the book and will have to rely exclusively on the opinions of others while accidentally buying what might have been called traditional work or what might have been called academic work when what was wanted might have been called postmodern or avant-garde but the language police didn't let anyone make any categories so noone bought any poetry Peter if you're ever on EFnet, drop in to #postmodern we're talking a lot about Pound/Olson/Zukofsky and say hi to me _Peter_ or Landers landers@vivanet.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 10:09:42 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: avant-garde Has anybody yet seen _The Dada Market_ anthology from Southern Illinois U. Press, can't remember the editor's name? Haven't cracked it yet, but bought it almost entirely for the cover, which is a photo of an apparently genuine RC-Cola roadside-dilapidated convenience store whose sign says "The Dada Market." I love it. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 10:17:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ursula K Heise Subject: Re: avant-garde In-Reply-To: Hello, I'm new to this list and have been following the discussion re. the term "avant-garde" with great interest over the last week or so. Some of the problems in using this word that have been pointed out seem to relate not to any fuzziness in the term itself, but to the problem of evaluating work with no or little historical distance. By which I mean: I think we probably all have a more or less defined and probably also shared idea of who and what the avant-garde of the 1910s, 20s, 30s was. But once it gets to the 70s and onward, it becomes harder to tell because in order to know what the avant-garde is "avant" of, you have to know what comes "apres," i.e. whether the avant-garde is followed by anything (if not, it presumably isn't one). So is the irony of the term that you only know what's avant-garde in hindsight? Ursula K. Heise Columbia University ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 10:31:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Gary Kirschenbaum Subject: (fwd) NEW: DADA - Dada mailing list I'm assuming this is legit. Or does it matter? Forwarded message: > DADA on majordomo@teleport.com > > ~~~:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.~~~~~ > tHE dADA mAILING LiST > ~~~~~~~~^~~~~~~~~==~~~~!~~~~~~ > > Subscribers to the dada mailing list send their insane ramblings to > the other subscribers, who are encouraged to embellish these ravings > with their own lunacy, in an ongoing torrent of meaningless babble! > It amounts to a verbal jam session. > > Some of this prose is appended repeatedly, creating long epics of > startling beauty and hilarity. Other times, no one adds to a piece, > and it stands on its own until forgotten. > > To subscribe, send mail to majordomo@teleport.com with the command > > subscribe dada > > in the body of the mail. > > Protocol and guidelines may be found on the dadaFAQ website at > http://www.teleport.com/~xeres/dadafaq.html > > Owner: The Robot Vegetable veg@vegtabl.com > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > ================================================================= Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k Electronic Text Center ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 11:00:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: avant-garde It seems to me not un-noteworthy to consider the difference between writers who label themselves and their friends avant-garde and writers who GET labelled avant-garde. This is how I interpreted (chris daniels?) the original question. If we call *ourselves* avant-garde, what are we contributing to? (possibilities: a linear view of time, a lack of responsibility/interest in being understood "because we're ahead of our time--100 years from now, you'll thank us!", the labelling process in general, and perhaps--as cd suggested--a kind of elitism, etc.). I do think there is a difference between those (Marinetti, Pound, et. al) who say "*I* am the voice of the next generation" (which automatically shuts the current generation up, because they can neither "prove" nor "disprove" it--saying "I'm avant-garde" poses me against the possibility of critique) and those whose writing simply IS such a "voice," but who don't go to great lengths to assert/promote it that way...it is the self-assertion, the passionate interest in labelling & grouping *ourselves* (inclusively/exclusively) or identifying with a "movement" that seems...discussable [sic]. E ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "Sometimes, in a flash, I wake up and reverse the direction of my fall" --r.barthes ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 12:25:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: avant-garde is it conceited to be avant-garde? on the frontlines? front lines of what. First lines. The first lines are the avant-garde of the poem. Are we conceited to be talking about poetry. Poetry isn't talking about us, right? So why talk about ourselves as experimental. What's the hypothesis. Well we weren't talking about _you_... Is it egocentric to be writing at all? Yes. It is. It's egocentric to be writing it all, to be monumental, or to be called monumental. But what else is there to do. What else. What else. Is it mental to be conceited. It is conceited to say I'm in charge now (Alexander Haig). It is conceited to talk about ourselves. What do we talk about. Do we talk about poems. Whose poems. Aha. Well we do talk about poems sometimes, or something in a poem. We talk about how to put a poem over, or what is it at the beginning, the avant-garde of the poem. The poem is not avant-garde. The poem is ahead of us? How does a poem get from the avant-garde to the end. What is an end. ("What is the name of this poem.") Is the job of the discussion which is not one of us to become accurate. To describe truthfully. To be? The Job of discussion is why we are avant-garde. How many poets live in apartment 2-B. Is the poetry we're talking about more appropriately called anti-teleological. Or is it as Tony Door says the commutative function of the alphabet. What are we doing. If we have to talk about it by groups, if we have to talk about a group coming after an avant-garde group, then what do we talk about. Paradigms? (Hi Gale!) What is different seems to be located around _what we want_. I don't think it's conceited to talk about what we want. Maybe it's conceited to speak for we. What we. Well it's important to talk about what is wanting. Very? Very wanting. Ambition has been defaced. What is the new ambition. What do they want these new writers we don't understand. The cover of Time magazine. To talk to improbable objects. To speak to them. Impossible? the bouquet years ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 08:53:19 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: pedal cuisine eryque yeah sometimes it tastes like the dark meat w/garlic more typically a benignly insolent ragout redolent of pickapeppa sauce and mogen david garnished w/sour cream o it's grand i'm tellin you highly recommend it to all blatherskites chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.12.96 8:53:19 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 11:45:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: 16 OZ or At 12:39 PM 3/12/96 +0100, William Northcut wrote: >And has anyone yet tried to disentangle how it is that Pound's work, fascist >and goddamned hard-assed as it is has aspects which make some of the more >humane and radical aspects of lang-po impossible without there having first >been Pound? I don't buy the pure methodology excuse. But I would like to >know what some of you think. Bernstein has an essay in _A Poetics_ called "Pounding Fascism (Appropriating Ideologies--Mystification, Aestheticization, and Authority in Pound's Poetic Practice)" (whew) which, although one could maybe argue that it relies on the notion of "pure methodology", as I see it simply makes the point that "some work may usefully evade any single social or political claim made for or against it because of the nature of its contradictions, surpluses, and negations." Or, Pound the fascist could also be Pound the artist because both were Pound the human being and neither the fascist nor the artist fully disappeared at the presence of the other; they formed this hybrid which created _The Cantos_. But the artist tricked the fascist because the poetic text, once released, escaped the control of (the artist too, but more importantly:) the fascist. By the way, I once had a dream that I went to this shack where Ezra Pound lived with his son, and ol' Ez sat out on his porch with us, waving a shotgun menacingly. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 16:09:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: avant-garde Since everybody's putting in their 2 cents worth, here's my irrelevant comment re: avant-garde. Short poem by Mandelstam, translated by Sidney Monas: [#357] As if, somewhere, a heaven-stone wakes the earth -- a poem fell, a disgrace, not knowing its father; creators accept the inexorable as it comes -- it is what it is -- no one judges it. Voronezh, 20 Jan. 1937 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 17:07:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: 16 OZ or In-Reply-To: > At 12:39 PM 3/12/96 +0100, William Northcut wrote: > > >And has anyone yet tried to disentangle how it is that Pound's work, fascist > >and goddamned hard-assed as it is has aspects which make some of the more > >humane and radical aspects of lang-po impossible without there having first > >been Pound? I don't buy the pure methodology excuse. But I would like to > >know what some of you think. The answer is yes: in my view, Bob Perelman's Pound chapter in THE TROUBLE WITH GENIUS is a little closer to the mark on this score than Bernstein's essay (which Steve Carll mentioned). Here's a quote that's not too substantive but gives a sense of what Perelman wants to do. ". . . when we come to THE CANTOS we cannot wish away the connections between the ambition and the agression that are positive virtues in his early writing and the rhetorical violence and moral blindness of his later politics. Painful as Pound's Fascism and racism are, and attractive as some of his poetry, literary insights, and pronouncements can be, nevertheless I want to insist on reading him whole. . . . What gives the best of Pound's writing its power cannot be dissociated from the worst of it." (pp. 30-1) Also, though it's anachronistic with regard to langpo, I must mention Olson's record of struggle in the volume edited by Catherine Seelye. The contradictions you mention are at the heart of that book. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 17:52:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Baker Subject: Derrida's Style I've been meditating the issue of Derrida's style, in response to an earlier posting, i.e. whether his style is in some sense a choice in relation to a possible audience. First, not to sound too pedantic, but any comments about his style would have to be directed to the French texts, *not* the translations. My own view is that he is one of the great stylists in the French language *ever.* In my own work with Derrida's text, I find that I am drawn in and engaged in a textual space that is unique and challenging, on a number of levels. Derrida has also been involved in a self-commentary, especially in texts like _Cinders_, available in bilingual edition, that approaches a kind of poetics of the text. The tape of Derrida reading _Feu la cendre_ with French actress Carole Bousquet (des femmes, 1986) is a real experience. His centering on the phrase *il y'a la (accent grave) cendre* [literally: there is ash there] reverberates in many ways consonant with the most interesting work (I think of Susan Howe, among others) investigating historically charged linguistic expression. I've already referenced my recent book on Derrida, _Deconstruction and the Ethical Turn_. For a more recent work in progress, I would invite list members to visit my Towson home page and the paper there: Deconstruction and the Question of Violence. http://www.towson.edu/~baker Though not specifically on topics of poetics, it does take a kind of cultural studies approach to issues of violence in reading of Derrida's essay "Force of Law" in juxtaposition to _Pulp Fiction_. Backchannel commentary welcome. Peter Baker ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 16:55:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: avant-garde "avant-garde" is certainly problematic, and usually just irrelevant as a term. Perhaps even worse is "academic" and "anti-academic." If the work is worth attending to it seems to make such distinctions seem silly. As critical terms they aren't worth much at all. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge just visited here and said something about her work being "anti-academic" and that just seemed wrong to me. I told her it wasn't "anti" it just was "not" academic. She said "thank you." That seems about right. But where I need to use such a term as avant-garde, or experimental, even where I don't want to, is when I'm trying to explain such work to those who are not familiar with it, or with a lot of contemporary poetry, at all. That is, much of my work over the last decade or so has been to present such work to audiences outside colleges & universities, & to do so I've had to write a lot of grant applications and proposals to a lot of different foundations, agencies, museums, & more. Usually I've tried to make the word "innovative" do the work, but that too gets old after awhile. But saying nothing seems not to distinguish the work from any other, and that won't do. And one doesn't necessarily want to give a large educational lesson to these agencies and organizations; to some one may not want to give any or a lot of examples to read. So if anyone wants to suggest new terminology, there are probably many of us listening. charles ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 17:34:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Steve Carl's dream "By the way, I once had a dream that I went to this shack where Ezra Pound lived with his son, and ol' Ez sat out on his porch with us, waving a shotgun menacingly." I once spent a morning with Omar Pound in Orono during which he was interviewed by the local Bangor literary critic, a semi-retired highschool English teacher who remembered that Ezra had been notorious for his politics. About halfway through the interview, he leaned forward, conspiratorially, and asked Omar, "So what kinda commie was your father, anyway?" Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 18:01:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: avant-garde Avant-garde has two connotations that I find not so problematic, certainly compared with experimental -- a term that is genuinely hideous (suggesting "scientism," or else the idea that the formally progressive poet does not know what he/she is writing and is trying to "find out"): One is its connection with an internationalist tradition that goes back into the mid-19th century (and which predates the "academic" tradition as we tend to think of it in the US), from Bertrand and Blake to the present. That's what I tend to think of as the identarian view of this community, and one I feel lots of sympathy for/interest in. The other has its roots right smack in the term's military origins. The avant-garde is precisely that portion of an army that gets "killed" in large quantities, the people who storm the barricade and provide (with their own bodies) the stepping stones that those who follow will climb upon. When I think of the Mina Loys, the Walter Conrad Arensbergs, the Fenton Johnsons (not the novelist!), the Marsden Hartleys, the Amos Zu Boltons, Else von Freytag-Loringhovens, the Dan Proppers, the Bob Browns, the Mary Butts, the Steve Jonases, the Harold Dulls, the Seymour Fausts, the Lew Welchs, the William Andersons, the David Schuberts -- the analogy seems more exact than I care to think. Not that all "ended badly," but rather that their extraordinary work went by with remarkably little notice for all the notoriety that the very few (Joyce, Pound, Stein, Williams etc) who managed to get through the net received. There is, I think, an inherent sacrifice not only in writing poetry but in writing poetry that makes demands on readers, that readers also perform at their best. Like so many other writers, I have benefitted greatly in ways that I cannot articulate from every one of these poets (and hundreds, maybe thousands, more). The term "avant-garde" suggests to me just that sacrifice. When I was a teenager, I wrote poems more or less exactly like those I was reading in the magazines (let's say Alan Dugan, George Starbuck, Donald Justice, for examples). By the time I was 21, I had had poems accepted by Poetry, TriQuarterly, Poetry Northwest, Southern Review, Chicago Review and a host of others. The minute I started to actually work seriously on developing a real aesthetic, I became "unpublishable" for several years. Every time I see a list of, say, NEA or Guggenheim winners, I re-experience all the sensations that went with that. When I read Mark Wallace's comment that only two members of the SUNY Buffalo graduate writing program have gotten fulltime tenure-track jobs in recent years, compared with the few hundred gigs there have been, I realize that this sense is not my own unique experience, and that sacrifice is inherent in what I and others do. I don't like the phrase "anti-academic," since the academy is in fact not the problem but rather the normative traditions that have held a certain hegemony over institutional culture for the past 50 years, one that declares American poetry to be a tributary of the British (and which in turn tends to ignore such great UK poets as Bunting, Raworth, Jones and others like Thomas A. Clark). While all institutions have their own internal logics (that can serve as an anchor or drag), it seems a mistake to confuse the field with the players. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 21:49:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: avant-garde >So if anyone wants to suggest new terminology, there are probably many of us >listening. > >charles i'm a corn field (all ears) eryque ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 18:45:46 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: avant-garde well i guess the only thing that really bothers me abt it is the tendency to group poets (wch means their WORK) into camps (phalanges) and so seeming to disallow any peaceable dialogue. all the rest of it i can live with --- ron silliman's vilification of the term "experimental" is on the money, though i at least DO learn to write as i write --- i get the drift ron's posting abt the front lines being killed off in a kind of sacrifice said it for me i have bob brown's 1450-1950, it's one of my most treasured books, but who the hell is thomas a. clark? i'll find out, you bet. but the list goes on and on. i'll just mention hugh macdiarmid who was a remarkable poet by anybody's standards, a poet as worthy of profound study as pound or olson; and also a living, breathing, amazing poet who gets little attention as far as i can tell: armand schwerner. later ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.12.96 6:45:46 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 21:21:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: avant-garde In-Reply-To: <199603122255.QAA06504@freedom.mtn.org> What about "what works" [for me]? In most other areas a successful experiment is a "success" not "experimental" and the forefront becomes present or it disappears. Does the experimental or avant-garde still need to be defensive? It is poetry. tom On Tue, 12 Mar 1996, Charles Alexander wrote: > "avant-garde" is certainly problematic, and usually just irrelevant as a > term. Perhaps even worse is "academic" and "anti-academic." If the work is > worth attending to it seems to make such distinctions seem silly. As > critical terms they aren't worth much at all. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge just > visited here and said something about her work being "anti-academic" and > that just seemed wrong to me. I told her it wasn't "anti" it just was "not" > academic. She said "thank you." That seems about right. > > But where I need to use such a term as avant-garde, or experimental, even > where I don't want to, is when I'm trying to explain such work to those who > are not familiar with it, or with a lot of contemporary poetry, at all. That > is, much of my work over the last decade or so has been to present such work > to audiences outside colleges & universities, & to do so I've had to write a > lot of grant applications and proposals to a lot of different foundations, > agencies, museums, & more. Usually I've tried to make the word "innovative" > do the work, but that too gets old after awhile. But saying nothing seems > not to distinguish the work from any other, and that won't do. And one > doesn't necessarily want to give a large educational lesson to these > agencies and organizations; to some one may not want to give any or a lot of > examples to read. > > So if anyone wants to suggest new terminology, there are probably many of us > listening. > > charles > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 00:32:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: DC Reading Sunday, March 17 @ 3 PM Leslie Scalapino & Rod Smith publication reading for Leslie's new _The Front Matter, Dead Souls_ (Wesleyan) & my _In Memory of My Theories_ (O Books). at DCAC, 2438 18th St NW, WDC (near 18th & Columbia) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 01:46:21 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: "scientism" what's wrong with 0the word experiment that as Ron says makes it "genuinely hideous." What is "scientism" any way. I think poets do find out what they are doing through writing, they find a lot of things through the process of writing, that's part of why I write. Who out there hasn't thrown something together and came back to it later and said, "I never knew that was there." And this whole thing about the relation of experiments and experimental method. Experimental method (scientific) was created through experimentation for the purpose of western science. There were experiments (ask Aristotle) far before experimental method (a product of the enlightenment?). Experimental method is for the purpose of forming theories and natural laws, and for that matter an experiment can really only be successful by proving the hypothesis do be wrong. I find it funny that western sciences closest thing to fact is negation, i.e. the earth does not orbit the moon (sorry couldn't think of a good example), because it only takes one experiment to prove a theory wrong even if that theory has been said to be correct by a thousand other experiments. Stein has a high percentage of "not" in her work, she knew something, Scalapino picked up on it to ("A crowd and not evening or light"). Anyway, experiments and experimental method are not dutifully intertwined, experimentation, for me, involves exploring new boundaries for narrative, verse, etc. But in that way, every poet is experimenting with some thing or other. James Perez jmp2p@virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:14:18 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 11 Mar 1996 to 12 Mar 1996 In-Reply-To: <199603130504.FAA25616@hermes.dur.ac.uk> chris daniels wrote: > i have bob brown's 1450-1950, it's one of my most treasured books, > but who the hell is thomas a. clark? i'll find out, you bet. Thomas A. Clark hails from Grennock, and currently runs Moschatel Press with his wife Laurie in darkest Gloucestershire. Following a runs of books from Jonathan Williams' Jargon (latest: A Still Life, 1977) he's produced a range of tiny-but-perfect pamphlets & cards from Moschatel, as well as Madder Lake (Coach House 1981) Tormentil & Bleached Bones (Polygon 1993) and appeared (with Barry MacSweeney and Chris Torrance) in The Tempers of Hazard (Paladin 1993). The Paladin one was almost a ghost book, and could be hard to find: they were taken over by Rupert Murdoch during publication, and when MacSweeney phoned for extra copies c. six weeks after publication, he was told "Mr. Murdoch ordered it to be burned"... Here's one from The Hollow Way (Moschatel 1983): freshness gathers in a jar the evening waits on splendour we have come home from war only the indigent wander ask nothing of life the hours have no halter the garden gate is ajar purpose does not falter abundance ripens in a bowl the telephone rings in an empty room a turbulence of trapped wings in the corner reclines a broom - hope that helps! 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, 13 Mar 1996 10:57:59 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "William M. Northcutt" Subject: Pound on the front pohch waving his shotgun Thank Steve and others for reminding me about Bernstein's and Perelman's pieces on Pound. I think the problem of avant-garde that I'm trying to get at is one that Keith Tuma and others have expressed, that a good deal of the discourse on the a-g tends to see AN avant-garde rather than multiple movements/discourses/etc which we discuss as being avant-gardist. Same with modernism as opposed to modernisms. It gets even stickier when we go beyond saying, "Pound's work is both fascist and radically non-authoritarian"--that is, it gets stickier when we try to nail down for sure what is and what isn't fascist. Of course, some aspects are obvious. What I'm interested in is how, let's say, Pound's glorification of Jefferson is both fascistic and radically humane at the same time. Or to take it to a different place, how Olson's work is both a conservative KULCHURal effort and an elaborate critique of that same culture. William Northcutt ----------------------------------- William Northcutt Anglistik I Universitaet Bayreuth 95440 Bayreuth Tel: 44 921 980612 Fax: 44 921 553641 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 01:00:05 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: FW: "scientism" --- On Wed, 13 Mar 1996 01:46:21 EST James Perez : >what's wrong with 0the word experiment that as Ron says makes it >"genuinely hideous." check out jake berry's "articulating freedom" in taproot 7/8 and also JUXTA #5 (i think) at GRIST --- he briefly sums it up, well enough for me anyway >What is "scientism" any way. here's what webster sez: 2. the principal that the scientific method can and SHOULD BE (my emph) applied in all fields of investigation for me that's precisely what ron was after --- the SHOULD BE part --- SHOULD BE = DEATH to a poet's work and a poet's experience of the work of other poets i myself can not seperate theory from praxis any more than i can seperate form from content --- maybe i'm dumb or something, but it seems impossible for me, maybe a matter of training --- i dropped out of highschool, total autodidact, etc and if we continue to call a poet "experimental" whose work has not appreciably TRANSFORMED itself over a period of years (this is going on these days in a very big and scary way), what are we saying abt ourselves? just because a poet's work has no truck w/ academic values does not for an instant mean that poet is not in practice just as conservative and dependent on received "wisdom" --- wch is something all of us are fighting against >I think poets do find out what they are doing through writing, they find a >lot of things through the process of writing, that's part of why I write. >Who out there hasn't thrown something together and came back to it later >and said, "I never knew that was there." with some thing or other. no one in their right mind wld ever argue w/ what you've said here tho i think artists neither experiment nor hypothesize when they are making art, but seek to unfetter, unless they are not intuitive in the least, wch seems impossible to me --- this has been my experience and my wish for what it's worth --- and i think poets MUST keep that part of their process alive or their process reaches stasis BUT for me "experimental" is not a good one at all --- my stuff is being accepted by JUXTA and VISION PROJECT and ANTENYM --- as far as i can tell my stuff is nowhere near as outside as poets like spencer selby, jim leftwich, tom taylor --- my process has never been one of experimentation --- i work painfully in an agon of revision and careful attention to MEANING first and foremost and if anybody called my stuff "avant-garde" i'd think they were crazy or just kind of unaware --- i feel as much an affinity w/ the early anthony hecht as i do w/ paul celan or susan howe for example it occurs to me that the scientific process UNFETTERS KNOWLEDGE and after all art is partially at least a process of aquiring some kind of knowledge. all the great scientists have been hugely intuitive and the scientific community thrives on ferment and logomachy, so, well, just gabbin ... later --- chris > >James Perez ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.13.96 1:00:05 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 02:02:59 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: thanks richard caddel thank you for the information, richard, and the very beautiful poem by thos a. clark --- i will definitely look into this poet yrs --- chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.13.96 2:02:59 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 02:08:03 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: thos a clark's ghost book "rupert murdoch" is obviously a croesus and a stultus but "ordered it to be burned" is amazingly terrifying ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.13.96 2:08:03 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 08:58:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen or Peter Landers Subject: Re: 16 Oz or >Or, Pound the fascist could also be Pound the artist because both were Pound >the human being and neither the fascist nor the artist fully disappeared at >the presence of the other; they formed this hybrid which created _The >Cantos_. But the artist tricked the fascist because the poetic text, once >released, escaped the control of (the artist too, but more importantly:) the >fascist. or read _Your Witness_, a poem by Charles Olson ... "If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinion, "either his opinions are no good or he's no good" Peter Landers landers@vivanet.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 21:54:34 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: avant-garde In-Reply-To: <199603122255.QAA06504@freedom.mtn.org> personally, I was always comfortable describing my own poetry as academic, although no " real" academic poets ever considered it as such. I remember once discussing with Ted Greenwald how little most "academic" poets actually knew about any traditional poetries. Of course, that was some time ago, perhaps the situation has changed. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 08:18:14 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 11 Mar 1996 to 12 Mar 1996 Nice that this is the second time within a year (go back through the poetics list archive) that thomas a. clark has been the subject. Richard Caddel's list leaves out one title I have, which is Dwellings & Habitations, from Prest Roots Press in 1993. Kate Whiteford contributes drawings which do justice as well. Among the pages saxifrage on a wet rock face samphire in a salt marsh skeins of mist among bog cotton a depth of sky in a shallow pool quite in the rib-cage of a sheep's carcase always nice to have a reason to look back at thomas a. clark's work. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:12:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: avant-garde I liked Ron Silliman's connecting "avant-garde" with the sacrificial aspect. But it seems to cover an awful lot of territory; how, for example, is Marsden Hartley's career sacrificial? Are all the modernists sacrificial victims on the altar of a few mighty masters who get all the attention? Doesn't that just play into the cliche of the heroic artist? What lasts, what gets read, what people like in the next millenium, is still very open to question. I think the critical & public judgements about art works and artists should be evaluated very specifically with respect to the individual artist, within a historico-biographico- aesthetic frame. To lump all the "experimental" artists out there as part of a great creative sacrifice punished by the critical/academic dead wood powers-that-be leaves out all the historico-biograph-aesthetic details. For example, each of the ignored great Harlem Renaissance poets & writers have white counterparts - sacrificial or no - who for a long time got more attention than they did. But fame/sacrifice are not simple contraries. Don't talk to me about the heroic sacrificial artist any more; tell me about the talented artist who makes some work that's gonna stand no matter how many or few discover it. The vagaries of criticism & attention have always been just that. I know this sounds like denial, disinterest, or indifference to many of the burning "canon" issues discussed here, but often such discussions leave out the particular, actual art works, and end up echoing or rehashing real aesthetic issues of long ago. What are the aesthetic - as opposed to literaro-political - issues of today? - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 06:44:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Subtext Readings in Seattle Here's the schedule for the next few months: the first two readings listed were curated by Ezra Mark, the last two are the first of four readings to be curated by Nico Vassilakis. Thursday March 21 Nico Vassilakis & Laura Feldman Thursday April Jeanne Heuving & Dan Farrell Thursday May Joseph Keppler & Gerald Burns Thursday June Michael Magoolaghan & Catriona Strang with Francois Houle All readings at the Speakeasy Cafe at 2304 2nd Avenue in Seattle's Belltown district at 7:30pm. Donation of $5. Also of note, David Bromige will read at Open Books at 2414 N 45th Street on April 11th. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:04:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Paul Naylor Subject: avante-garde and other terms I find the discussion of the possible adjectives for the poetry we discuss on this list very useful and productively problematic. I'm facing a very practical problem on this issue. I'm in the process of writing a book on contemporary poetry that focuses on six poets -- Susan Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Charles Bernstein, Lyn Hejinian, Kamau Brathwaite, and M. Nourbese Philip -- and I'm struggling with that necessary adjective to put after that requisite colon in my title. Like Charles, this is a practical problem of addressing an audience that may not know who these poets are and would like ("require" may be more accurate, since my first audience will be publishers of academic books) some way of initially categorizing (an awful yet necessary stage in this scene of writing) the writers I'm discussing. I too find "experimental" the least appropriate term, and I do like the term "avant-garde" because it taps in to the tradition Ron mentions, but it does carry too many "berets and black clothes" connotations for too many people. Again like Charles, I tend to use the term "innovative," but I doubt that there is a poet out there who doesn't consider his or her work to be "innovative" in some sense (I'm sure Mark Strand considers his work "innovative," but I'm also fairly sure that he wouldn't consider his work "avant-garde"), so it may not do the work of distinguishing the poets I'm concerned with from the poets I'm not concerned with. I'd prefer not to pin these poets down with a single adjective, but I don't think that will fly in the realm of discourse I've chosen to enter with this book. So I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions about how do deal with this nagging but (it seems to me) necessary issue. And, yes, this post is the product of tenure-angst. Paul Naylor SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 10:19:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: avante-garde and other terms In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:04:25 -0600 from On Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:04:25 -0600 Paul Naylor said: >not to pin these poets down with a single adjective, but I don't think that So I'd >greatly appreciate any suggestions about how do deal with this nagging but (it >seems to me) necessary issue. And, yes, this post is the product of >tenure-angst. --How about "swell"? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 10:43:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: should be = death forgive the provocative appropriation but I'm hearing things that remind me of the "rules" thread from last year roughly this time aka "reverse" and I'd like to float the waterlily that there are some ideas one works on and adjusts these being ones politics aesthetics and general way you know life and when description cools it becomes imperative maybe but what do you call that then that saying to yourself no not that do this is that learning? or writing ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:56:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Paul Naylor Subject: Re: avante-garde and other terms Henry -- "swell" is perfect, and much more compact than "Poets Paul Likes," which is the real answer to my dilemma -- but since I'm not Helen Vendler, I don't think I can get away with it. Paul Naylor MAIL SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" >From: IN%"POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU" "UB Poetics discussion group" 13-MAR-1996 09:40:48.81 >Subj: RE: avante-garde and other terms > >On Wed, 13 Mar 1996 09:04:25 -0600 Paul Naylor said: >>not to pin these poets down with a single adjective, but I don't think that > So I'd >>greatly appreciate any suggestions about how do deal with this nagging but (it >>seems to me) necessary issue. And, yes, this post is the product of >>tenure-angst. > >--How about "swell"? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 16:00:00 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: Carlyle Reedy Carlyle Reedy's new book from words worth books: Obituaries and Celebrations . 0 906024 05 6 . 9.95pounds plus post words worth books, BM Box 4515, London WC1N 3XX Carlyle's had work in loads of anthologies from "Children of Albion" (196-something) to "Out of Everywhere" (recently plugged on this list, Reality Street, 1996) but very few solo publications. I failed to get her to do one with Pig, years ago, there's a slim pamphlet called "The Orange Notebooks" (Reality Studios, 1984) - and now this. It's really nicely produced, too. f i r e lights b o n e s the chinese cast of faces recognized hair wet soft caught in hands familiar lilies of solomon Ash in the instant I realise now that this will look very odd on some folks' equipment - oh well, you'll just have to go and buy it... Richard Caddel ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 10:53:57 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: Re: Ghost books These books are _not_ ghost books. The imagist anthology was a copyeditors nightmare, done in such a rush that the typos throughout the book are well documented and easy to notice by comparing the anthologized pieces with the originals. So to to answer your question, all of these are slight typographical errors of the original titles of Williams second through fifth books. Of course I'm new to this list, perhaps your definition of ghost titles includes any book mentioned in print, reguardless of textual elements mired in error. davebaratier@mosby.com ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Ghost books Author: UB Poetics discussion group at INTERNET Date: 12/03/1996 00:59 _Imagist Anthology 1930_, Edited by Glenn Hughes?, Forewords by Ford Madox Ford and Glenn Hughes. London: Chaoot and Windus, 1930, lists at the end of its "Bibliography" on pages 153-154 four titles by William Carlos Williams: Tempera. 1913. Kora in Hell. 1920. Four Grapes. 1921. In the American Grave. 1925. Does anyone know of any other ghost titles, announced (or even promised)? + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 128 East 23rd Avenue Vancouver B.C. Canada V5V 1X2 Voice and fax: 604 876 8061 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 11:03:54 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: should be = death In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 13 Mar 1996 10:43:21 -0500 from On Wed, 13 Mar 1996 10:43:21 -0500 Jordan Davis said: >forgive the provocative appropriation >but I'm hearing things that remind me >of the "rules" thread from last year >roughly this time aka "reverse" >and I'd like to float the waterlily >that there are some ideas one works >on and adjusts these being ones politics >aesthetics and general way you know This sounds like what the deathly Blasing was describing - the fusion of form and politics > >life and when description cools >it becomes imperative maybe but >what do you call that then that >saying to yourself no not that do >this is that learning? or writing Maybe choosing? Somewhere in Shakespeare's sonnets, I forget which one, he distinguishes between political maneuverings and something else, a commitment or dedication (to love? to art? God?) he calls "hugely politic". I suppose this HAS all been discussed before, on some thread or other; the dividing line between art & politics is essentially un-markable on any abstract scale of apprehension, yes; but I guess when I think of "poetics" (and what do I know about it?) I'm thinking of the graininess of the maker's work - the sound, the rhythm, the crossweave, the stealth, the obstacles, the finish, yeah, the form. And the human & maybe transhuman (along with political) impulses behind it. -HGould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 10:42:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: avante-garde and other terms At 09:04 AM 3/13/96 -0600, Paul Naylor wrote: > I too find "experimental" the least >appropriate term, and I do like the term "avant-garde" because it taps in to >the tradition Ron mentions, but it does carry too many "berets and black >clothes" connotations for too many people. Again like Charles, I tend to use >the term "innovative," but I doubt that there is a poet out there who doesn't >consider his or her work to be "innovative" in some sense (I'm sure Mark Strand >considers his work "innovative," but I'm also fairly sure that he wouldn't >consider his work "avant-garde"), so it may not do the work of distinguishing >the poets I'm concerned with from the poets I'm not concerned with. Last year two of my poems appeared in a UK little magazine called _Terrible Work_, and the contributors' notes in the back referred to me as an "expansionist." Elsewhere in the issue, the editor mentioned preferring that term to "linguistically innovative", "avant-garde", "experimental", "post-modern", etc., but he didn't really say why, except to note that some minimalism could also be expansionist. I guess what's supposed to be expanding are the possibilities of language, but in practice the term sounds kind of ominous, like "imperialist" or "neocolonial" or something. Yikes! I think Paul Naylor may have hit on something with his distinction between a single, monolithic AVANT-GARDE as opposed to many avant-gardes. If used in this way, much of the elitist hot air is deflated, since any single avant-gardist is one among many, and even one's particular AV-GD group is one group among many. Of course, "the avant-gardes" as a whole can still be opposed to "the mob" or whatever, but I think there's something to be said for speaking and hearing terms like this carefully and conscientiously, rather than simply rejecting them because they may need a little further elaboration due to historical-cultural baggage they've acquired. This baggage is exactly what needs to be sorted through. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 13:53:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: 16 Oz or In-Reply-To: Have you read the radio broadcasts? If you haven't, let me assure you they contain some of the worst anti-semitism I've ever read. I can't read Pound anymore; he sickens me. The artist didn't trick the fascist; the fascist did his disgusting dirty work, did damage. Alan On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, Karen or Peter Landers wrote: > >Or, Pound the fascist could also be Pound the artist because both were Pound > >the human being and neither the fascist nor the artist fully disappeared at > >the presence of the other; they formed this hybrid which created _The > >Cantos_. But the artist tricked the fascist because the poetic text, once > >released, escaped the control of (the artist too, but more importantly:) the > >fascist. > > or read _Your Witness_, a poem by Charles Olson ... > > "If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinion, > "either his opinions are no good or he's no good" > > Peter Landers > landers@vivanet.com > With some new texts and image files - http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Other images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 13:57:34 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: what is poetics Lesson 12 in HG's Back to Basics course. Half hour after I posted last message expounding on poetics as close reading, I happened upon the following (in Poetics of Cavafy, by G. Jusdanis): "I take poetics to mean a theory of literature that seeks a methodical knowledge of the principles underlying it. It defines literature and its subdivisions, as it also establishes the criteria and standards by which literature has meaning and value. As Tsvetan Todorov points out, poetics does not propose a close reading or a description of a particular work, nor does it promise to name the text's message; rather it explores the laws governing the production of literature. Poetics is concerned with the properties of literary discourse; it differentiates the codes specific to literature as opposed to those of other arts, such as painting, architecture, or dance. In other words, poetics represents the theory of a particular art - literature - in the system of arts." HG ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 15:43:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bill Luoma Subject: NYC Poetry Talks, fwd from R. Fitterman NYC Poetry Talks: a convergence of questions March 29, 30, 31, 1996 Organized by Robert Fitterman and Stacy Doris Panel Discussions **New York University: Silverstein Lounge and Jurow Lecture Hall** 101 Main Building (NE corner of Washington Square Park) Poetry Readings **Biblio's Bookstore** 317 Chruch Street (1 block south of Canal Street) **The Ear Inn** 326 Spring Street (Corner of Washington Street) **Ichor Gallery** 127 W. 26th Street (between 6th & 7th Avenue) **St.Mark's Poetry Project** 2nd Avenue & 10th Street **Segue Performance Space** 303 E. 8th Street (between Avenues B & C) Friday, March 29 3:00 Opening Remarks 3:30>>Poetry & Definition (I) Joe Elliot Robert Fitterman Andrew Levy Kristin Prevallet Rodrigo Toscano 3:30>>Poetry & Definition (II) Lee Ann Brown John Byrum William R. Howe Garrett Kalleberg Heather Ramsdell Rod Smith 5:00>>Poetry & Community Tim Davis Jeff Derksen Stacy Doris Kimberly Lyons Sianne Ngai Joe Ross 5:00>>Poetry & Audience Michael Friedman Judith Goldman Dan Machlin Melanie Neilson Fiona Templeton 6:30>>Poetry & Collaboration Elena Alexander Michael Basinski Martine Bellen Heather Fuller Kim Rosenfield Cole Swenson 10:30>>Poetry Reading at St. Mark's Michael Heller Michael Basinski Jeff Derksen Chris Funkhouser Joel Kuszai Kristin Prevallet Lisa Robertson Cole Swenson Saturday, March 30 10:00>>Poetry & Tradition (I) Dan Farrell Liz Fodaski Ben Friedlander Robert V. Hale Catriona Strang/Nancy Shaw 10:00>>Poetry & Tradition (II) Louis Cabri Lisa Jarnot Bill Luoma Doug Rothschild Chris Stroffolino Mark Wallace 12:00>>Poetry & Poetic Forms Beth Anderson Steven Farmer Jessica Grim Joel Kuszai Sean Killian Lisa Robertson 12:00>>Poetry & Technology Jordan Davis Chris Funkhouser Brian Kim Stefans Samuel Truitt 2:30>>Reading at The Ear Inn Elena Alexander William R. Howe Nancy Shaw Catriona Strang Chris Stroffolino Rodrigo Toscano 6:00>>Reading at Ichor Gallery Stacy Doris Steven Farmer Dan Farrell Robert Fitterman Ben Friedlander Jessica Grim Melanie Neilson Kim Rosenfield 10:00>>Book Party at Segue 12:00>>Party Party @ Bill Luoma's Apt 280 Court St #4 Brooklyn, NY 11231 (between Douglass & Degraw) 718-596-1752 F train to Bergen St, follow traffic on Bergen to Court, left. Sunday, March 31 3:00>>Readings at Biblio's: Beth Anderson John Byrum Louis Cabri Heather Fuller Sianne Ngai Joe Ross Mark Wallace 4:00>>Readings at Biblio's: Lee Ann Brown Tim Davis Michael Friedman Lisa Jarnot Bill Luoma Doug Rothschild Rod Smith 5:00>>Readings at Biblio's: Martine Bellen Garrett Kalleberg Sean Killian Andrew Levy Dan Machlin Heather Ramsdell Samuel Truitt 6:00>>Readings at Biblio's: Jordan Davis Joe Elliot Liz Fodaski Robert V. Hale Kimberly Lyons Brian Kim Stefans Fiona Templeton A presentation of New York University's School of Continuing Education, in conjunction with the General Studies Program. Special thanks to Dean Gerald Heeger (SCE), Dean Steve Curry (GSP) and the SCE Writer's Community for their support and assistance. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 15:50:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Another one for the academics As per the list guidelines, I announce: A piece I wrote AGES ago is just out. Some on this list might be interested. "Literary History and the Problem of Oppositional Practice in Contemporary Poetry," *Cultural Critique* 32 (Winter 1995-96): 153-186. Although the piece is "about" poetry, there's no actual citation of poems. It's really about Robert Langbaum, using Langbaum's 1957 book "The Poetics of Experience" to argue that prevailaing notions of poetic history constitute a repressive univocal mechanism -- also, it makes a plea at the end for a more Foucauldian genealogy (thus more or less describing my current project). I extend the same offer that I made for my American Imago piece a couple weeks back -- anybody wants it should mail me and I'll send a xerox gratis (sorry, they didn't send offprints). Apologies for redundancy: if I'd known this piece was going to come out on the tail of the other one, I would have sent them together. As it was, I mailed the Lacan article this week. As it's a wee bit of labor on my part, I'd ask that folks who are likely to paper their birdcages with either article don't ask. Also, before I forget: a piece on the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella entitled "Kinsella, Geography, History" should be out *any day now* in SAQ. I'll send that too if you'd like. Send your addresses again, too -- I wrote them on address labels. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 15:45:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: Re: avant-garde In-Reply-To: <199603130521.AAA00662@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Automatic digest processor" at Mar 13, 96 00:02:15 am William Northcutt writes: "And has anyone yet tried to disentangle how it is that Pound's work, fascist and goddamned hard-assed as it is has aspects which make some of the more humane and radical aspects of lang-po impossible without there having first been Pound? I don't buy the pure methodology excuse. But I would like to know what some of you think." I think this is a pretty fascinating question. Perelman's Pound chapter in The Trouble with Genius takes it on in more depth than anything else i've seen. But still leaves much to wrestle with... steve ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 23:36:08 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ada Aharoni Subject: Re: avant-garde In-Reply-To: <199603132045.PAA42746@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> Hi! And has anyone tried to protest how it is that Pound's work, fascist and goddamned Hitlerite ... is so much discussed in this list? I don't buy the pure methodology excuse or any other pitiful excuse. What I suggest is -- just bury the guy and forget about him, alongside his his "genuis mates" Hitler and Mussolini. Ada Aharoni ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 17:02:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: avant-garde Hey, I heard a rumour there's a new bernadette mayer book out on nude-erections does anybody know if this is true? chris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 15:04:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: turn of the repressed At 11:36 PM 3/13/96 +0200, Ada Aharoni wrote: >What I suggest is -- just bury the guy and forget about him, alongside his >his "genuis mates" Hitler and Mussolini. It would be nice if things were this simple, wouldn't it? Steve ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 18:50:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: turn of the repressed >At 11:36 PM 3/13/96 +0200, Ada Aharoni wrote: > >>What I suggest is -- just bury the guy and forget about him, alongside his >>his "genuis mates" Hitler and Mussolini. > >It would be nice if things were this simple, wouldn't it? Well, I don't think burying people is too complicated, but if those three haven't been embalmed, they must stink pretty badly. -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 19:00:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... At 11:36 PM 3/13/96 +0200, Ada Aharoni wrote: > And has anyone tried to protest how it is that Pound's work, fascist > and goddamned Hitlerite ... is so much discussed in this list? > > I don't buy the pure methodology excuse or any other pitiful excuse. > >What I suggest is -- just bury the guy and forget about him, alongside his >his "genuis mates" Hitler and Mussolini. Eek, I mean, gosh, I don't even LIKE Pound's stuff (except the loose translations), but--flaming guyzie-with-1001-liberal-causes that I am--I can't agree with agreeing NOT to discuss him just because his politics repulse me. All the more reason TO discuss him. If I only read/discussed the poets that didn't offend me in some way politically, I'm not sure WHO I'd read. . It is important, tho, to discuss him as we *are* discussing him--fully acknowledging his fascism, etc., which often gets edged out by that wet, black bough in classroom discussions. Vivas to you, Henry, for your post on sacrificial a-g poets. (& I don't mean that in no Whitmanian sense, neither) If we want to say "why talk Pound, who's been done to death, when we could talk about harlem renaissance poets," then I'm all for *that*. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "I mistrust your bitch."--Nietzsche ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 19:46:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... In-Reply-To: <199603140000.TAA28138@mail.erols.com> But what does it mean to "fully acknowledge his fascism"? Does it mean to read his fascist texts, or just to talk about them? Does it mean to read his poetry or just to talk about it? Hatred makes me sick. I have trouble with Kerouac, Eliot, and the like. A survivor once told me if I ignored the anti-semites I'd hardly have anyone to read. But it's the same problem for me, say, with Henry Miller - much as I appreciate his support of AN, his justification of woman-beating on occasion is difficult for me to take. Also given the shit in the world at the moment, the subject header for this thread is insulting. I don't find fascism fun. Alan On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, Emily Lloyd wrote: > At 11:36 PM 3/13/96 +0200, Ada Aharoni wrote: > > > And has anyone tried to protest how it is that Pound's work, fascist > > and goddamned Hitlerite ... is so much discussed in this list? > > > > I don't buy the pure methodology excuse or any other pitiful excuse. > > > >What I suggest is -- just bury the guy and forget about him, alongside his > >his "genuis mates" Hitler and Mussolini. > > > Eek, I mean, gosh, I don't even LIKE Pound's stuff (except the loose > translations), but--flaming guyzie-with-1001-liberal-causes that I am--I > can't agree with agreeing NOT to discuss him just because his politics > repulse me. All the more reason TO discuss him. If I only read/discussed > the poets that didn't offend me in some way politically, I'm not sure WHO > I'd read. . It is important, tho, to discuss him as we > *are* discussing him--fully acknowledging his fascism, etc., which often > gets edged out by that wet, black bough in classroom discussions. > > Vivas to you, Henry, for your post on sacrificial a-g poets. > (& I don't mean that in no Whitmanian sense, neither) > If we want to say "why talk Pound, who's been done to death, when we could > talk about harlem renaissance poets," then I'm all for *that*. > > > > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Emily Lloyd > emilyl@mail.erols.com > > "I mistrust your bitch."--Nietzsche > With some new texts and image files - http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Other images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 16:54:02 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: avant-garde schuchat: >I remember once discussing with Ted Greenwald how little most "academic" >poets actually knew about any traditional poetries. Of course, that was >some time ago, perhaps the situation has changed. abt ten years ago i was at a party w/ a bunch of comp lit grad students (cal berkeley) and there was the usual for that day talk abt the frankfort school, anti-oedipus --- i was entirely lost so got drunker and drunker. at some point somebody pulled down the oxford shelley and began reading first lines of poems and asking people what were the titles of the poems. i got them all, beat the shit out of the entire bunch of em. i'm still amazed. i mean, shelley? ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.13.96 4:54:02 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 17:02:23 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: avante-garde and other terms paul --- how abt colon Poets What I Read During Summer Vacation ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.13.96 5:02:23 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 17:07:11 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: should be = death >there are some ideas one works >on and adjusts these being ones politics >aesthetics and general way you know > >life and when description cools >it becomes imperative maybe but >what do you call that then that >saying to yourself no not that do >this is that learning? or writing i hear that loud and clear chis ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.13.96 5:07:11 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 17:15:01 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: 16 Oz or >Have you read the radio broadcasts? If you haven't, let me assure you >they contain some of the worst anti-semitism I've ever read. I can't read >Pound anymore; he sickens me. The artist didn't trick the fascist; the >fascist did his disgusting dirty work, did damage. o yeah those broadcasts are some sick shit. that's the thing for me as well w/ pound, being myself a jew. wch is why the ONLY pound i can read is the pisan cantos where pound is convinced he is soon to die for his naive treason and he KNOWS what a fool he's been and he tells us so. i can't stand him as a person either, but some of those cantos are unspeakably honest and terrible and beautiful. it does not redeem his idiotic racism one jot, can not palliate the fact that he took his amazing talent and crapped all over it for the sake of that sub-primate mussolini and his thug cohorts scattered all over europe. but some of those pisan cantos are among the greatest poetry. chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.13.96 5:15:02 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 17:33:13 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... >Vivas to you, Henry, for your post on sacrificial a-g poets. >(& I don't mean that in no Whitmanian sense, neither) >If we want to say "why talk Pound, who's been done to death, when we could >talk about harlem renaissance poets," then I'm all for *that*. yep chris >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >Emily Lloyd >emilyl@mail.erols.com > >"I mistrust your bitch."--Nietzsche ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.13.96 5:33:13 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 22:52:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... At 07:46 PM 3/13/96 -0500, Alan Sondheim wrote: >But what does it mean to "fully acknowledge [Pound's] fascism"? Does it mean to read >his poetry or just to talk about it? Read it; talk about it. Preferably in that order. Or don't read it, and don't talk about it. >Hatred makes me sick. I have trouble with Kerouac, Eliot, and the like. Some years ago I interviewed Rita Dove for a feminist newsjournal. I asked her if her advice to women writers would be different from her advice to men. She said something along the lines of, "To women, I'd say, don't miss reading Hemingway just because he's a sexist man. To blacks, don't miss out on reading so-and-so because they're racist & white." I fully agree. Often there's something to learn from these bad folks. This could be anything from "knowing thine enemy" to useful ideas sitting on a page right next to insulting crap, as I often find with the man down there in my signature quote. Hatred makes *all* (at least, most) of us sick. Your "having trouble" does not saint you. If we need to get into a "who's more marginalized and mad at the bad bad world" contest, I'll be happy to throw my stats into the ring. I apologize if the subject header offended (Alan, whoever else) (whoops, it's on this message, too). I do not think fascism is "fun." The header does not connote "fun" to me. I was thinking of the Salt-n-Pepa song "Let's Talk About Sex"----i.e., we need to talk about the things in our lives that affect us, scare us, are surrounded by silence, NOT *avoid* talking about them. Sex and fascism--poor interchangeables, I realize. On the other hand, maybe not. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "I mistrust your bitch."--Nietzsche ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 00:19:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Hawkins Subject: Re: Pound I'm posting the following for Laura Hope-Gill. We hold just one subscription to the list so as not to be swallowed with duplicate poetics mail. > >To:UB Poetics discussion group >From:laurahopegill@halcyon.com (Laura Hope-Gill) >Subject:Re: Pound > > > >You can't kill a poet such as Pound; we can only engage him in battle >throughout our own work, not essays or e-mail, but poetry, that place >between dream and history, the place from which Pound wrote. In her essay >"What would we create?" Rich quotes Rukeyser speaking of two kinds of >poetry: > >"the poetry of 'unverifiable fact'- that which emerges from dreams, >sexuality, subjectivity-- and the poetry of 'documentary fact'-literally, >accounts of strikes, wars, geographical and geological details, actions of >actual persons in history, scientific invention. > "Like her, I have tried to combine both kinds of poetry in a >single poem, not separating dream from history-- but I do not find it >easy." > >Pound also wrote both kinds in single poems. He did not find it easy either. > >Poems create space in the universe (this also from Rich). The spaces >created balance the weight of material history (weaponry, stripmalls, etc) >but also the weight of ideas. To face Pound, poets have to create poems >which balance the bastard out. We have to descend into the same dark dream >to undo on the poetic level what's been done on the historic. That's our >job. > >Get to work. > >Laura >laurahopegill@halcyon.com > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 07:58:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: Re: avant-garde and other terms In-Reply-To: <199603130201.SAA02363@ix5.ix.netcom.com> The term "Savant gardeN" comes to mind, but I'm not sure if I just made it up or read it somewhere else Peter Jaeger ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 08:17:00 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: avant-garde and other terms In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 14 Mar 1996 07:58:33 -0500 from On Thu, 14 Mar 1996 07:58:33 -0500 Peter Jaeger said: >The term "Savant gardeN" comes to mind, but I'm not sure if I just made >it up or read it somewhere else Savant gardeN ? - or... Savagen' trad'N ? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 08:34:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... I probably quoted this once before... Cixous quotes I. Bachman--- "the first thing in a relationship between a man and a woman is fascism...." why are we racing to be so bold? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 08:59:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen or Peter Landers Subject: Re: 16 Oz or Alan Sondheim wrote: >Have you read the radio broadcasts? If you haven't, let me assure you >they contain some of the worst anti-semitism I've ever read. I can't read >Pound anymore; he sickens me. The artist didn't trick the fascist; the >fascist did his disgusting dirty work, did damage. > >On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, Karen or Peter Landers wrote: >> >> or read _Your Witness_, a poem by Charles Olson ... >> No, I haven't read them and I don't want to. I believe you. But how many people did he affect in a good way? Jewish or gay poets that he encouraged or recommended to editors. Doesn't it go some way toward reconciliation? Zukofsky spoke up for him, too. And, as a friend pointed out recently, shouldn't we be more upset at people like Frost who got a colleague fired for being gay? When did Ezra actually personally destroy another person's life? I have friends who have to take a lot of medecine. I try not to hold them responsible for the things they have done when ill. Peter landers@vivanet.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:08:35 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: Re: avante-garde and other terms paul, I think you should cut to the point on the subject title: Poets. Hide yourself or be Destroyed! (I think more subtitles need a good caesura for dramatic effect) and imagine the cover with giant comic drawings of Howe, Bernstein, Brauthwaite, etc. stomping through NYC tearing it apart. I would buy it in a second. In fact, make it large format and soft cover, and maybe you can trick some comic-buying teens and pre-teens into buying it (which led to my other possible title, "Poets that will corrupt your children"). James Perez jmp2p@virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:18:41 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... I have to agree with Emily and Dove. Further, since I think it is especially pertinent to this topic... I think anyone interested in how artists are to deal with fascism should take a look at the work of the German Painter Anselm Keifer. There was a good book done for one of his exhibits (nearly a decade ago now?) with essays on his work. He is a painter trying to find out what it means for himself to be german after the Nazi period. He is dealing directly with Nazi work, mimicing the Nazi/Roman salute in full dress in a book of photos, dealing with how to accept artists that the Nazis accepted, such as Wagner and a good deal of German Literary/Cultural/Art History that was/is being looked down upon for being liked by the Nazi regime, dealing directly with the Jewish issues of the Nazi era, check out his pieces inspired by Celan's Death Fugue (anyone ever see the translation that calls it Death Tango?). Keifer's work is excellent and very intellectually and emotionally challenging (such as a painting called Shulamith (I might be wrong on the title) that is a german soldier monument painted with charred brick walls to look like a furnace). Where does the irony end? Someone gave a lecture at UVA last year and talked about Keiffer for a while (I wish I remembered who it was), which was a pleasure for me considering my interest in Keifer's work, and it surprised me when she said Keifer's work was highly praised by a large number of Jewish-American citizens. See his paintings "live" sometime at any major art museum (they are huge and beautifully painted in a vocab of dripping, scraping, throwing, brushing, pouring...pouring molten lead that is) James Perez jmp2p@virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:55:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: 16 Oz or Peter wrote: >And, as a friend pointed out recently, shouldn't we be more >upset at people like Frost who got a colleague fired for being gay? AS upset, at least. YES. >When did Ezra actually personally destroy another person's life? Well, okay, he wasn't exactly kind to Amy Lowell, and certainly sought to destroy her reputation. Whether this was because she was a woman, or fat, or a lesbian, or just a lame poet? Who knows. On the whole, it seems to me that Peter's basically right--Pound didn't seek to destroy lives so much as prevent them from happening. Those he promoted he demoted as soon as it looked like he wouldn't have as much control over them as he wanted. He *was* a pain in the butt. Pretty much bar none. More complicated (for me) is someone like Baraka--some of whose political contributions I truly admire--a major fagbasher (at least, in his work) who felt the need to abuse one already-abused group in order to empower another...as if this were the only way to accomplish his argument. And, of course, it *was* a very effective way. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "The female is a chaos, the male is a fixed point of stupidity" --Ezra Pound, in a letter to Marianne Moore ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 10:24:45 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: 16 Oz or Bravo, Peter Landers, bravo, bravo for compassion. I take psychiatric meds, too, and would not like my life's work to be judged on what I was like "before." Of course, that's easy for me to say, woman but not Jew. Gwyn McVay ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:26:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: in the public domain... well speaking of poet-characters: what y'all think about *the postman*?... i was bowled over by it... joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 10:25:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Pound in the doghouse Seems pretty clear that Pound reflected and exaggerated (but not really exaggerated) in a grotesque mode, but without irony, a cultural pathology at the core of the WC (Western Culture). It wasn't a personal illness entirely, it was a recapitulation by megaphone & poetry; it's not something he can exonerate himself of by personal kindness to some of his best friends. The best thing I've read about it is "Genealogy of demons" by Robert Casillo (NWU Press, 1988), which doesn't try to read a redemptive pattern in the late verse or statements he made to Allen Ginsberg, etc. But it's not simply judgemental, either - Casillo tries to explore what happened. & speaking of Harlem Renaissance, somebody might want to compare the cultural rivalry, borrowings, mimicry, appropriations, masking, and scapegoating involved in black-white relations in US (one could argue that ALL modern popular culture in US stems from blackface minstrel shows & vaudeville) - with the age-old relations between Christianity & Judaism. Might be an interesting take on "our" Son of God. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 10:47:29 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: Re[2]: avant-garde Anyone who is living and can be considered "a poet" becomes avant-guarde (or advance-guarde if you prefer) by default, by the act of continually writing in a period where continuity has been debased. Categorization is for the empire of the senseless, the bigots who couldn't care less. Even the fields of Robert Bly's masculine epiphany are avant-guarde: get used to it. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:50:44 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: lb.'s oz. >No, I haven't read them and I don't want to. I believe you. >But how many people did he affect in a good way? Jewish or gay poets >that he encouraged or recommended to editors. Doesn't it go some >way toward reconciliation? Zukofsky spoke up for him, too. Reconciliation, no. Good deeds don't cancel out bad, in my mind. But they are important, and it's necessary not to neglect the good, and not to neglect the bad. And unlike one post, I don't think The Pisan Cantos are the only good -- some is to be found in various Cantos, other poems, and essays, as well as in the good words & deeds for other artists. I am intrigued by the notion that some of what we positively take from Pound is inextricably linked to the negativism and hatred. Instinctively it seems as if this must be true, but I'd like to read more specifics. Guess I should read Perelman's work on this. OK. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 11:00:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: HYPE CITY thanks Tonight at POETRY CITY: Maria Damon & Walter Lew Maria Damon is the author of _The Dark End of the Street_ (UMP, 1993). She's a frequent contributor to the poetix list, and a charter member of the renga qabal. Walter Lew is the editor of _Premonitions: the Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry_ (Kaya, 1995). It's one gorgeous book. He's quite a reader. Poetry City is a borough of Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 5 Union Square West, 7th Floor, New York NY 10003. Both books will be available at the reading. If you're in New York, stop by Poetry City and say hi. ______ SPECIAL OFFER to the first five people to respond: _Selected Poems_ by Simon Pettet & _Talking Pictures_ by Simon Pettet & Rudy Burckhardt sold separately in stores for $35 available *today* from Poetry City for $30 ppd Send your street address to jdavis@panix.com "We want to get the books out there." --our founder Thanks, btw, to everyone who jumped on the Bill Luoma twofer deal. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 11:16:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: - Kim Tedrow Subject: Re: HYPE CITY thanks Kim Tedrow 8208 Houston Ct. #6 Takoma Park, MD 20912 (301)588-7156 http://members.aol.com/RoseRead/ Thanks Jordan, Kim ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 11:38:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: 16 Oz or In-Reply-To: On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, Karen or Peter Landers wrote: > No, I haven't read them and I don't want to. I believe you. > But how many people did he affect in a good way? Jewish or gay poets > that he encouraged or recommended to editors. Doesn't it go some > way toward reconciliation? Zukofsky spoke up for him, too. No. Nor does this work with Heidegger. > > And, as a friend pointed out recently, shouldn't we be more > upset at people like Frost who got a colleague fired for being gay? > When did Ezra actually personally destroy another person's life? Since Pound was only broadcasting over Italy I have no idea. > I have friends who have to take a lot of medecine. I try not to > hold them responsible for the things they have done when ill. Nazism is not an illness any more than poetry. People who advocate extermination and are sane enough to be on national radio should be held responsible. Pound did damage. Alan > > Peter > landers@vivanet.com > With some new texts and image files - http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Other images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 10:59:05 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Pound takes an "ing" >When did Ezra actually personally destroy another person's life? Emily's repsonse: Well, okay, he wasn't exactly kind to Amy Lowell, and certainly sought to destroy her reputation. Whether this was because she was a woman, or fat, or a lesbian, or just a lame poet? Who knows. On the whole, it seems to me that Peter's basically right--Pound didn't seek to destroy lives so much as prevent them from happening. Those he promoted he demoted as soon as it looked like he wouldn't have as much control over them as he wanted. He *was* a pain in the butt. Pretty much bar none. Emily, I don't read posts on this list for scholarship but I am wondering (again) if you can cite a few examples about Pound as Power Broker of poetry. I'm thinking, as a response, of a letter George Oppen wrote to Pound in the early 60s stating how exceptional his behavior in regard to young and/or unknown poets had been throughout his (Pound's) career. And I'm pretty sure Oppen was no big fan of Pound, as a person, at that point. As for Amy Lowell (she could have used a few lessons in professional decorum also) I am trying to think of how Pound "sought to destroy her reputation." ?? daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 11:48:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... In-Reply-To: <199603141418.JAA25948@uva.pcmail.Virginia.EDU> Why is it surprising that Keifer is praised by Jews? I like Keifer as well. This isn't the issue. Look, Pound the fucker called for extermination of my people. He called for it repeatedly and publicly. I'm glad you all can forgive him. I can't. If poetry is elevated above political action, poetry is obscene. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 12:05:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: POETRY CITY 6:30 just a couple quick reminders then I'll stop abusing the list-- Poetry City events are at 6:30 pm daylight savings (or 6:45 poetry savings)-- and be sure to send responses to book offers to me (jdavis@panix.com) and not the list! (don't feel bad, Kim, it's an easy mistake to make) Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 12:09:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: Re: query: book distribution Dear Wendy Battin: This is in reply to your post (attached) re your panel at AWP in Atlanta. I don't know if my MUDLARK is relevant to your project but I would like to call it to your attention. It is refereed, copyrighted, archived and distributed, free, on the World Wide Web, by e-mail, and on disk. MUDLARK has an ISSN from the Library of Congress so, technically, it is a journal not a press, but its second (and current) issue, for example, is a chapbook, THE RAPE POEMS, by Frances Driscoll. Perhaps you'll be willing to at least have a look at MUDLARK and decide for yourself. I have tracked what you're doing with CAPA from the beginning and, of course, I know you're own poetry. In both cases, it's important work you're doing. Sincerely, William Slaughter _________________________________________ MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics Never in and never out of print... E-mail: mudlark@unf.edu URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark >I'll be part of a panel on electronic publishing at the AWP Convention >in Atlanta this April; I'll be doing a presentation on using the internet >to keep books in print, to distribute them despite the economic pressures >that are driving small & university presses out of bookstores, etc. >(Given all the scares about internet as the death of the book, it seems >important to turn attention to the alternate economy the net can sustain.) >I've run across a few instances of small presses and bookstores marketing >their stock on mailing lists and on the web; I'd like to know more and to >make these resources more widely available, and this convention seems >like a good start. If you know of major distributors on-line--especially >those dealing with small press books--or poetry bookstores, presses, samisdat >networks with websites or email addresses, please send them to me, and I'll >see that they're distributed as widely as I can manage. I'll get them >out at AWP, and I'll post them on the CAPA site as well. > >Many thanks, >Wendy > >---------------------------------------------------------------- >Wendy Battin >wjbat@conncoll.edu >wbattin@mit.edu > > Contemporary American Poetry Archive > http://camel.conncoll.edu/library/CAPA/capa.html >---------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:11:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: wings & things In-Reply-To: <199603140523.AAA29582@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Naylor -- I want to read that book! While I'm waiting, is the Mackey chapter a version of your essay in _PMC_? Used that in a class a couple weeks ago, & grad. students liked it lots -- Kellog -- Only reason I haven;t been addressing you for copies is that I am briefly living near a library that actually subscribes to all those journals -- keep those notices coming in -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 12:51:35 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: PAVEMENT SAW Pavement Saw is published once a year has been said to "mix the incongruent" in way which was compared favorably to kayak in Small Press Review. Some of the contributors are ususal suspects, regulars on this list. The most recent issue is 56 pages, fleck cover, perfect bound. The featured writer is Gian Lombardo. Others include Chris Stroffolino, Jendi Reiter, Will Alexander, Charles Rittenhouse, Lizbeth Keiley, W.B Keckler, Sheila Murphy, Simon Perchik, and Virginia Aronson to name a few. One issue is $3.50 and a subscription is $6.00 for individuals. Back issues are availiable for $3. $10. subscription fee (2 issues) for libraries and institutions. Send to: Pavement Saw 7 James Street Scotia, NY 12302 Make checks payable either to Pavement Saw Press or David Baratier. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 13:28:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: in the public domain... dear joe amato-- I was very interested in seeing IL POSTINO because it portrayed a poet as a character, and the tension between the poet as marxist/populist and as "ladies man" was quite interesting. And the way N became role model for young Italian male. At first middle man to woo/seduce woman and then, of course, more important to that young man than the woman now his wife. This latter part was the weakest part of the movie for me... and the tentative Marxism (albiet culminating in heroic death).... anyway, curious what you thought of that.... Another issue: somebody raised the question of BARAKA (who interests me more than EZ) and it made me think of the whole question of discomfort with a poet's POLITICS (in the vulgar sense) and stance. I've seen Baraka speak in a very improvisatory way on political issues--and one of the things I admire about him (both in the microcosm of lectures and in the macrocosm of his whole development--the various phases he's gone through)--is his willingness to RISK saying things that may be perceived as stupid or wrongheaded. When called on it, at one of the lectures I've seen, Baraka appealed to the poets' right to THINK OUT LOUD, or to grow up in public --- A lot of the question of "poetic responsibility" for me turns on a question of genre. When we read a novel or a play, we often accept the fictions of characters. Yet, in reading poetry (especially "statement poetry") there's this desire to want to hold the poet accountable as if the speaker of the poem (or even a whole book of poems) is not to some extent a character, a fiction. Perhaps this is because one wants to identify with a poet as a person---despite the "death of the author" and all that---and this need and/or desire is not necessarily to be blamed. Yet, at the same time, it does seem to hold others up to standards of consistency we may not necessarily apply to ourselves (sorry for the use of the "royal"? "we" here)-- Aside from the politics that makes Baraka great (see for instance his two pieces in the most recent NEW AMERICAN WRITING) is the ENTHUSIASM that may be involved in what many find disturbing about him..... Aside from my belief that even if we take Baraka strictly as a public intellectual (rather than a poet) the good outweighs the bad, there is also the sense that the whole question of judging poets' on their politics does to a large extent reduce the whole issue to one of mere OPINION. I can't believe that I am alone in thinking that "I DO NOT TOTALLY AGREE WITH ANYONE" and nor do I expect people to totally agree with me. I tend to be moved by things I HATE more than things I tepidly embrace. Ashbery said something like the reason he doesn't read much vulgar political poetry is because he finds himself in too easy agreement with it. I don't TOTALLY AGREE with that either, but AT TIMES I do. Am I "taking a stance" here? Is that a value? Or is it what "they" (and you know who they are) want from us?---- And perhaps the problems people have with poet X or Y are related very much to the POLITICS OF POETIC STANCE, of the perceived need for poets to commodify themselves, and take a position that is seen as consistent in both the narrower sense of the literary world and the larger political. But such a need for consistency is as much a problem as the failure of poets to achieve it, and probably more. It boxes people in to pre- existing grids, one becomes even more of a slave to one's past than one would otherwise---even in trying to make a "clean break"...... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 12:56:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: Re: ghost titles In-Reply-To: <199603140523.AAA29582@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Automatic digest processor" at Mar 14, 96 00:02:07 am An "Objectivist" number of Contempo magazine was advertised, but never appeared. Ooooh, scary. steve ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 08:07:12 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: what is poetics Re Henry Gould's quote. Is that really Todorov, or was that ghosted by Clement Greenberg, literature as distinguished from as opposed to other arts? (Eliminating concrete and visual elements components or practices from writing and verbal-textual writing ditto from the other arts -- e.g. music and painting. Really difficult for him.) In so far as "poetics" is about "making", and "medium" is not a useful means of categorisation, that position needs some heavy rethinking methinks. Todorov's "poetics" looks like being a prescriptive (policing) organisation over poetic production too. Meanwhile, it's just after dawn and the traffic is intensifying into the sonorous stinking rushhour. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 13:59:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: poetry center info/donations Rhode Island has nothing like Poets House in NY or other poetry resource centers for the public; it's something some of us have been thinking about for a long time. 6 yrs ago a group called the Poetry Mission was set up with this long-term goal in mind - a public resource/performance center. We concentrated for a few yrs on publishing a journal we inherited (NE Journal, now Nedge) and other things, but the goal has been there. The Mission recently reached an agreement with a branch of the Cranston Public Library - Hall Library, near Providence/Cranston line - to set up a collection/reading space in a large room there. We have access to about 100 ft of shelf space, several tables & chairs, areas for readings, and a full stage for other performances. We plan to start being open one night a week & one Saturday a month; we envision reading & talk series, informal writers groups gathering there, people looking for book & journals, etc. Considering the dearth of such a focal point around here outside of the colleges, we think it might be fairly popular. If you want to help us inaugurate this space, there are several ways you can do so. You can: 1. Donate poetry bks or journals, chapbooks 2. Send info about your journal (i.e. subscription cost, # issues, address, etc.) 3. Suggest worthwhile materials for the center & how to acquire them. 4. Other suggestions welcome! (i.e. offers to read while in area, etc.) All donors will be gratefully acknowledged & the materials will be well cared-for with the library's assistance. As the Mission currently has basically a zero budget beyond putting out Nedge, we can't afford many subscriptions, but some extra income will go in this direction. All queries or suggestions can come to me via email (Henry_Gould@brown.edu), all materials should be sent to: The Poetry Mission, PO Box 2321, Providence, RI 02906. Please include a note & return address - and if you have special requirements regarding use of materials, please query before sending! If the project for some reason does not get off the ground or folds, materials collected will be donated to a public library (unless other arrangements have been made with the donor). Thanks to all interested - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 14:41:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Pound's mean: examples Below is taken from Steven Watson's _Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde_. Stuff written in CAPS is me interjecting. (AT A DINNER CELEBRATING THE BRIT. PUB. OF _LES IMAGISTES_) "In a Garden" [was Lowell's] sole contribution to _Des Imagistes_. Pound suggested that her closing line, "Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing!" referred to Lowell and her vast, pale body...Pound stole out to an adjoining room and returned with a large tin bathtub on his head. He deposited it before Amy Lowell, and made a formal announcement: Les Imagistes would be succeeded by a new school of poetry, Les Nagistes, with this tub as its symbol. Perhaps Lowell, its inaugurating poet, should demonstrate her whiteness by bathing in it. THIS IS NOT SO MUCH POUND SEEKING TO "DESTROY HER REPUTATION" AS TO PUBLICLY HUMILIATE HER AND PARADE HIS POWER. HOWEVER, TWO WEEKS LATER, WHEN LOWELL SUGGESTS ANOTHER IMAGISTE ANTHOLOGY BE COMPILED... As a democratic alternative to _Des Imagistes_, Lowell suggested that each poet be given equal space in which his or her own selection of poems would appear. To ensure publication by a reputable firm, Lowell would stake the venture. She secured their [HD, Aldington, Ford, Fletcher, Flint, Lawrence's] participation and then invited Pound...He roundly rejected her proposal, informing her that poetry was not "a democratic beerhall." Pound entreated his friends not to participate. (DESTROY HER EFFORTS, INTERFERE WITH HER PROJECTS=WHAT I MEANT BY "SEEK TO DESTROY HER REP.")...he asserted ownership of the term "Imagisme," and when Lowell simply stripped the word of its Gallic affectation to make it "Imagism," he riposted that the movement would henceforth be known as "Amygism." [END WATSON] "I think that America is getting fed up on gynocracy and that it is time for a male review."--Pound to John Quin, 1915. Once Amy et al. had taken up Imagism, Pound said he had never been serious about the movement at all, and took up Vorticism, denouncing Imagist poets & poetry (inc. HD). In what I've read of Pound (as a person), seems less like he was interested in helping young poets and more like adopting them, putting his stamp on their work, and getting to hold them up claims to his own fame. "Yes, Tiffany started out right here on Star Search." It's just a feeling. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "I know that I know myself/no more than a seed curled in the dark of a winged pod/knows flourishing --R. Hass ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 15:08:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: in the public domain Chris Stroffolino: thanks for that post. "Baraka appealed to the poets' right to THINK OUT LOUD, or to grow up in public." Yes; I think that might be a nice right to appeal to not only in "public," but on this list. Appealing, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "I know that I know myself/no more than a seed curled in the dark of a winged pod/knows flourishing --R. Hass ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 14:25:34 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: Re: 16 Oz or Alan, not to be argumentative, but I think you are being reductive, since when is speaking on national radio a mark of sanity? Nazi-ism may not be an illness, but something like chronic depression will make someone reach out for anything, then the Nazi-ism is just another symptom of the illness. I think you're being reductive, not that I profess to know anything at all about Ezra's psychology. When I think of Ezra Pound I think of that portrait of his by Avedon. He's old and disfigured, outright grotesque, but beautiful somehow. That's how I like to think of his poetry. Along that line (and about bad tepid poetry vs. good horrible poetry) someone once told me that when a thing is ugly it repels you, but when it is grotesque its ugliness attracts you even as it is pushing away. James Perez jmp2p@virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 15:22:11 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: what is poetics In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 15 Mar 1996 08:07:12 GMT+1300 from On Fri, 15 Mar 1996 08:07:12 GMT+1300 Tony Green said: >Re Henry Gould's quote. Is that really Todorov, or was that ghosted by Clement >Greenberg, >literature as distinguished from as opposed to other arts? >(Eliminating concrete and visual elements components or practices >from writing and verbal-textual writing ditto from the other arts -- e.g. music >and painting. Really difficult for him.) In so far as "poetics" is >about "making", and "medium" is not a useful means of >categorisation, that position needs some heavy rethinking methinks. I agree, Tony. It was another HG patented confu-mush post. Only sent it to highlight contrast between a previous post of mine, where I tried to describe poetics as the study of the specifically artistic qualities of poems, and what seems to be the generally accepted view of poetics, as a more broad-based study of poetry in its cultural context. And regarding New Zealand rush hour: I hope you're not reading your POETICS while driving (or herding sheep) - HGould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:51:05 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: avante-garde and other terms the Naylor dilemma: if it's a matter of provocative description some striking neologism or unexpected banality might do: the poets might take offence at " X,Y and Z: Fucked up Poets of the 90's", while "X,Y and Z: Real Poets of the 90's" wd raise a question or two that might make opening the volume or buying it more likely options than passing by. " Real Cool Poets: X, Y and Z", for "cool" substitute whatever word is current..."of the 21st century" is actually more enticing than 90's"... It does not matter a damn from the point of view of sales whether the poets in quesion have been writing and publishing since 1958 or whether they really have got test-tubes going or not...or have done something they think is new....from the point of view of poetics maybe it matters. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 16:02:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Pound takes a "Ding" -Returns a "Dong" Following the flap-chat from Calabria, Tony Door asked me to forward this to the list: daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ___________________ wAtt? has someone rushed to defend amy lowel? not to say the pound was not rich or anything, but wasn't the town near boston that kerouac came from named after some progenitor of hers? wasn't she the third generation of american poet? wasnt her success generated by this fact? isn't the FACT that we ALL know her name completely contradicted by the relative merit of her work? Finally, does naming a derived "movement" in poetry AMYGISM constitute "ruining" someone's career? like, if he ruined it, how come she still had one. I think asking Beckett if he was working on the ILLIAD. (even that didnt seem to ruin his career) or perhaps when he told Jackson Mac Low that he (Jackson) was NOT Jewish...I never heard of Pound actually denouncing anyone but the Stiff, Stuffy, & Well Established in poetry--perhaps this has been hidden, but he seems to have let loose on his own against anyone he didn't like. I would not be suprised to learn that there were those whom he might not have helped--there seem to be no women in his circles. perhaps in part due to his unattractiveness as a "teacher" for women poets--on this i do not know. (but would like to find out) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 16:14:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: in the public domain... did anybody go to the jim brodey reading? i'm curious for any report..... cs ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 12:40:46 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... Comments: To: sondheim@PANIX.COM Dear Alan, That AN is Anais Nin? Well, that's one of my problems with HM, how can you justify his support for AN? Tell me. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 13:06:25 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: 16 Oz or Comments: To: emilyl@MAIL.EROLS.COM Dear Emily, Don't hate me (it'll make you sick) but learn from me. Better still lets learn together. Let's make a BAD FOLKS List. Let's see, who we got so far: Pound Frost Baraka Hemingway There are so many bad folks in the world and so much badness to learn from.More names please. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 16:43:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... In-Reply-To: On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, Alan Sondheim wrote: > If poetry is elevated above political action, poetry is obscene. If poetry is related to political action, poetry is obscene. This is really the issue here, isn't it? tom ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 20:16:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: ghost titles A few years ago Viking announced an unpublished ms. of Joyce short stories -- believe they sd it was written after Ulysses, & parts of it were garbled into or swallowed whole by the Wake. This is a less clear memory-- but something abt they were based on irish fairy tales, or variations on a particular tale. The estate must have pulled it. Rod ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 20:20:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Bad Folks List Comments: To: w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz At 01:06 PM 3/15/96 +1300, w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz wrote: >Let's make a BAD FOLKS List. >Let's see, who we got so far: > Pound > Frost > Baraka > Hemingway >There are so many bad folks in the world and so much badness to learn >from.More names please. > Wystan Joking, I hope? Subjective. My bad is not your bad (which may be the only thing we've learned re: my derrida comments). My bad is not even *my* bad all the time. I would say, in what I hope is closing, that reading someone's work is no synonym for "forgiving" them. I still believe, if that's what's being challenged, that one can (and perhaps even should try to) learn from people that offend, hate, etc. one. But the list above reminds me of "potential rapists" lists on university bathroom walls. I don't want a bad folks list any more than a capital A G avant-garde. E ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "I know that I know myself/no more than a seed curled in the dark of a winged pod/knows flourishing --R. Hass ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 20:29:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... Comments: To: w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz In-Reply-To: <2CEAC9231B3@engnov1.auckland.ac.nz> I like some of her stories, short novels, and general predating of Irigaray and Kristeva... Alan On Fri, 15 Mar 1996 w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz wrote: > Dear Alan, > That AN is Anais Nin? Well, that's one of my problems with HM, > how can you justify his support for AN? Tell me. > Wystan > > With some new texts and image files - http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Other images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 17:26:34 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: FW: lb.'s oz. --- On Thu, 14 Mar 1996 09:50:44 -0600 Charles Alexander wrote: >>No, I haven't read them and I don't want to. I believe you. >>But how many people did he affect in a good way? Jewish or gay poets >>that he encouraged or recommended to editors. Doesn't it go some >>way toward reconciliation? Zukofsky spoke up for him, too. > >Reconciliation, no. Good deeds don't cancel out bad, in my mind. But they >are important, and it's necessary not to neglect the good, and not to >neglect the bad. And unlike one post, I don't think The Pisan Cantos are the >only good -- some is to be found in various Cantos, other poems, and essays, >as well as in the good words & deeds for other artists. I ONLY SAID THAT PERSONALLY I COULD ONLY READ THE PISAN CANTOS NEVER MADE JUDGEMENT OF ANYTHING ELSE AS GOOD OR BAD I am intrigued by >the notion that some of what we positively take from Pound is inextricably >linked to the negativism and hatred. Instinctively it seems as if this must >be true, but I'd like to read more specifics. Guess I should read Perelman's >work on this. OK. > -----------------End of Original Message----------------- ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.14.96 5:26:34 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 17:57:59 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels i am a jew. if it weren't for WWII, i wld have a huge family in rumania and the ukraine. my people were beaten, tortured, raped and gassed by corporal hitler and his idiot assassins. i grew up in a housing project in nyc where i was beaten, tortured, stolen from and constantly humiliated by blacks and latinos. when i was 13 a black wino raped me. i will never forgive what was done to my extinct european relatives or to me when i was a boy, and i have trouble with the hurt, yet one of my favorite poets is steven jonas, a gay black man. martin heidegger is important to me. so is the music of charles mingus and villa-lobos, both notorious assholes. one of the first thing we notice abt fascists is their inability to accept anybody who looks, acts, thinks differently. yeah, pound was an asshole and a fascist. he was also a great poet. and he furthered, made the careers of several poets, no matter his motives. that's something we can either deal with or ignore. bestiality resides in the human heart. none of us are sheltered from it, all of us are capable of it. that's another thing we can either deal with or ignore. human beings are terribly complicated; our motives usually suck, especially when we jump up and down and yell abt how good our motives are. the finger points both ways. later ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.14.96 5:57:59 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 21:41:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: Bad Folks List >I don't want a bad >folks list any more than a capital A G avant-garde. E hell, sometimes i don't even want capital e's... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 18:47:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: william elliott vidaver Subject: Question re: Schwitters studies Does anyone know of an electronic mailing list (or association) that is dedicated to any extent to discussions of the abstract collage work of Kurt Schwitters and/or Hannah Hoech, and/or their contemporary inheritors? Any leads would be helpful, Aaron Vidaver c/o wvidaver@direct.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 22:16:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: 16 Oz or In-Reply-To: <199603141925.OAA13049@uva.pcmail.Virginia.EDU> I want to bow out of this discussion. But I must say I have chronic depression and it does not "make me reach out for anything." And if Nazism is the symptom, pray, what is the cure? Yes, I read Pound; I wouldn't deny myself that. I read Celine. I don't have bad boys and good boys. But I read through, not around, Nazism, just as I have to have an informed reading of Heidegger say for my own work. I would be careful about all this excusing fascism. Perhaps all fascists in Germany and Italy were chronically depressed? Alan On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, James Perez wrote: > Alan, > > not to be argumentative, but I think you are being reductive, since when is > speaking on national radio a mark of sanity? > > Nazi-ism may not be an illness, but something like chronic depression will > make someone reach out for anything, then the Nazi-ism is just another > symptom of the illness. I think you're being reductive, not that I profess > to know anything at all about Ezra's psychology. > > When I think of Ezra Pound I think of that portrait of his by Avedon. He's > old and disfigured, outright grotesque, but beautiful somehow. That's how I > like to think of his poetry. Along that line (and about bad tepid poetry vs. > good horrible poetry) someone once told me that when a thing is ugly it > repels you, but when it is grotesque its ugliness attracts you even as it is > pushing away. > > James Perez > jmp2p@virginia.edu > With some new texts and image files - http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Other images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 22:28:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carla Billitteri Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... Worth reading in this context is Charles Olson's journals kept while visiting Pound in custody, published in _Charles Olson & Ezra Pound: An Encounter at St. Elizabeth's_, edited by Catherine Seelye. Olson had quit his government job in the wake of F.D.R.'s death and the sellout (as he saw it) of the progressive wing of the Democratic party by Truman. (Much of Olson's work had involved coordinating activities with immigrant organizations.) He was really just starting as a poet, and though _Call Me Ishmael_ was written, he hadn't yet secured a publisher. Olson was fascinated by the Cantos and had arranged to cover the trial for Partisan Review. The issues raised here on the list more or less as a matter of intellectual stance take on a palpable reality in Olson's journals, enthrallment and disgust hopelessly tangled. Should Olson have washed his hands of Pound sooner than he did? (Pound credited Olson's small kindnesses at this time with saving his life.) What exactly did he learn by sitting at Pound's feet? Condemnation and forgiveness are two ends of a very long continuum of possible judgments. Here are two interesting excerpts: From 15 January 1946: . . . was it in here that he asked, does anyone know Westbrook Pegler? I indicated I didn't, and must have froze more than I ever have with him. He then called him "the best man they've got." And with that, for the first time, the full shock of what a fascist s.o.b. Pound is caught up with me. I guess I had to feel it on my own America before I could have a realization. For Pegler I have traveled through and understood. Pound's praise of him reveals his utter incomprehension of what is going on, and what has happened to himself. Just on a technical level, that such an ear as Pound's could permit himself to praise Pegler! What a collapse. I wondered then how long more I can hold out my hand to him as a poet and a man. I suppose I shall tell him one day I am the son of immigrants, this influx of second class citizens whom Pegler and Pound think has made impure their Yankee America of pioneers--and Biddles. That my father was killed fighting for the right of labor men to organize in unions. That decadent democracy gave me the chance to grope out of the American city into some understanding of what life is, and how to peg a smart fascist s.o.b. like Pegler--and Ezra Pound. From 24 January 1946: He was quiet for a minute, working his forehead, talking down and away toward the window to his right and my left: "There was a Jew, in London, Obermeyer, a doctor of comparative . . . . . of the endocrines, and I used to ask him what is the effect of circumcision. That's the question that gets them sore," and he begins to be impish as hell, "that sends them right up the pole. Try it, don't take my word for it, try it." And then, with a pitiful seriousness, turning directly toward me and says: "It must do something, after all these years and years, where the most sensitive nerves in the body are, rubbing them off, over and over again." ((It was fantastic, again the fascist bastard, the same god damned kind of medical nonsense Hitler and the gang used with the same seriousness, the same sick conviction.)) It was so cockeyed for the moment it was funny actually, absurd, and I was carried along by the swearing, swift, slashing creature. I record it, but here as elsewhere, it is impossible to give a true impression. For at any given point, always, there is the presence of the seriousness of the man. Even in his sickest and most evil moments. He is always a man at work, examinging, examining. Here, for example, on the one hand he is attacking K as a Jew, when the truth is K is making the mistakes of any young man, and Pound is god damned well lucky it is K and not the monster Griffin who is questioning him, is in charge. I could not help feeling during this whole line of Pound's, how it was precisely the Jews around him here and in the DDC who gave him some warmth and help, how it was through Tiny and K that I had got drawers issued to him, how it was K who at least had the curiosity to read his verse, and that K, in Chicago, when the bookstores said, they wouldn't carry the books of a fascist, objected and damn well told him that was the same as burning books, and plain out and out fascist. On top of that it was Rahv, another Jew, who had accepted my Yeats thing on EP, when all the blessed Christian editors took it as offering Pound an out, an intellectual excuse. **** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 22:16:07 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim Wood Subject: Re: poetry center info/donations Henry, I'll be sending materials in response to your querry on the Poetics group. You probably don't recognize my name, since I've been mostly lurking. Anyway, enough of that. As a bug to chew on your mind, how about setting up some sort of resource center for poetry resource centers. Put another way, I and Joseph Zitt are in the first stages of developing a poetry organization to act as a resource center/event organizer/whatever in N. Texas. And there seems precious little available out there on how to make that happen: what are the pitfalls, the shortcuts, the wise moves and foolish ones... thanks, Tim Wood in space no one can hear you scream in Dallas no one cares... ______________________________________________________________________________ Check out the Voices new poetry website at http://www.connect.net/twood/ the Word, Dallas' monthly arts guide: http://www/connect.net/twood/word.html poetry & video poetry ---- graphic design & database development ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 20:05:51 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: 16 Oz or alan --- i've bowed out also. let he who is w/o sin ... ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.14.96 8:05:51 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 13:00:54 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Reedy / plus Sound & Language books (special offer) Ric mentioned Carlyle - I published a chapbook of hers called 'Sculpted In This World' in 1979 under my old Bluff Books imprint - 18 poems - still have some copies if there's interest. Also available from Sound & Language: 'stranger' - cris cheek (44pp, one extended piece) a brief extract: Film keeps jumping in Her frame. And on an old Hum Teeming with cows a blood puddle yoked to a sky. The Earth - burying A small boy beating a Squealing Pig with a red hot stick . . One at one time, bird lures Flit across corn, of Ripening Chrome. Smudging movements, to irrigate Fracture. and 'Civic Crime' - Allen Fisher (29pp - 6 poems from 'gravity as a consequence of shape'): (from 'Cakewalk') The image of a woman frottaged by the Burglar to the wall shifts with his attention reads a bicontinuous sponge with surfactant interfaces. His cleansing gaze as he sees it rapidly fluctuates the curvature of her shapes. They begin to leave the wall and spatter the footpath. The Informer's report confirms they are metallic balls of crystalline liquids sandwiched in saliva honeycombs and dynamically disordered into droplets disturb the gravel. Oh what a wonderful world. . . . and 'Sore Models' - Miles Champion (32pp sequence of 28 poems): what place does consiousness have in a world of molecules for which God or Nature designed the solid table of common sense? a coral reef has a history thousands of small mutations finding their niches a cosmic ray scrambles the atoms of secularisation and late capitalism an obsessional kink in these brains left by traumatic constellations of causal forces and producing talk (27/12/94) and 'TM 4' - Ulli Freer (40pp - 4 poems): a tight never found myself in a pit full of many bodies some were moving between the bushes woes magpies flutter reflections damage limitation line war low sound merges thresholds each breath stirs inversion who eats propaganda raw garden green in your heart on saturday me awn saturday and magpie circles the head Offer is to Poetics list subscribers at: all five books (Carlyle Reedy / cris cheek / Allen Fisher / Miles Champion / Ulli Freer) 15 dollars (cash) 10 pounds sterling (money order or sterling cheque) or swap for other chapbooks Offer runs from April 1st (but it's not an April Fools gag - just that's the date of the Ulli Freer publication to make this offer possible). Separate titles can be bought at 5 dollars or 2 pounds sterling or equivalent. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 22:04:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Filkins Subject: Re: Bad Folks List Hey i once broke a dog's neck and i write pomes, do you think i can get on the bad poets list? Does anyone know if this will help my career? Am i left out cuz i haven't published racist polemics? Should i work some up right quick? signed, poor misunderstood bastard looking for notoriety. _______________________________ In the undergrowth There dwells a Bloath Who feeds upon poets and tea. Luckily, I know this about him While he knows almost nothing of me! - Shel Silverstein ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 21:11:26 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Thomas A Clarke Good to see Thom turning up again here - he's certainly worth tracking dow= n. =46or those really keen to dig you might look into two other poets close to him early on. Namely Charles Verey and Neil Mills to whom he dedicated his Jargon book 'some particulars' in 1970. Both are almost forgotten now, although both produced (to my mind) very interesting work. Certainly John Wilkinson has acknowledged the early influence of Verey as a teacher. A nexus of Ian Hamilton Finlay meeting Jonathon Williams and Dom Sylvester Houedard? Here are a couple of pieces by Neil Mills: (they're hard to give well in this space as he uses handwriting and spaciality extensively - so I've had to translate a lot of 'peritext' to represent it; some of his neo-signs aren't on the keyboard at all but I've deliberately intended that different systems in this space will be rendered differently for each user - this one's from a 1969 booklet called '12 LOGOTRICKADES - TEXTBOOK' terrific stuff - and btw i've proofread these, no errors as far as i can tell. Curiosity of the week has got to be the prescient 'pog' at the end here, for those who know this kiddie craze) 14. WOODBLOOD .prannies .?nias .witlap .aucholy !ebe - ebe .puselech .thich =A7steamen .spargines .gulc @dudphoe .phalcious *parospect %titip .villocks inpee@aggrimes ^soud-rinal =99espher 67 - inorize - intasch bra-austive + .verp & pog (the next is from 'Explanation Poems!' in 1970 - intended very much for performance; strangely prefiguring Maggie O'Sullivan's work?) STONESWANE ! EARTHSHIRE ! STAGAGAGONY ! toadplant & foestrade TEMTARNISTIME ! BRUUU ! lovehewn & seedslow / mangrowth dreambraided / saintselect ! SEASWAX! DRUMBOUND 1 VIVEMAXIMUS MINDFLESHED 1 selfpriested & bellyzest ! quaaaaarm ! swadewaters slateshelved & blackdeep MANBROODS INDAGGERED razorstark ! nervesqualid ! rooftight ! caregave & painfucked / TIMESWING IMEMERGES GINGERMAN LIFESUCKLED & NORTHFAMED ! DOOMFUNCT NEVERGAIN ! cuntsmead & noonblonde & harrierlord ! kingfingers ! lupinsbleed ! jaggedbones ! FLINTSUCKERS ! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 00:59:31 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: Thomas A Clarke cris --- tell me more abt verey. the mills stuff looks fantastic --- 1969-70 you say? goes to show you. later ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.15.96 12:59:31 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 11:23:16 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: in for a pound "Every anti-semitism, anti-niggerism, anti-moorism, that I can recall in history was base, had its foundation in the meanest kind of envy and in greed. It makes me sick to see you covering yourself with that filth. It is not an arguable question, has not been arguable for at least nineteen centuries... it is hard to see how you are going to stop the rot of your mind and heart without a pretty thoroughgoing repudiation of what you have spent a lot of work on." - Basil Bunting to Pound, 1938. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 05:34:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Thomas A Clarke Cris, Thanks so much for posting the work by Neil Mills. Marvelous. I'll have to try and find his books in libraries here, there, or somewhere. charles ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 08:11:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: poetry center info/donations In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 14 Mar 1996 22:16:07 -0600 from Thank you, Tim - that's great! I HOPE OTHERS FOLLOW SUIT ON THIS LIST - I know there are a lot of publishers, manic book collectors, & poets who'd like their stuff read out there. One of the things we'll do to start with is make a big add-on poster roll call of all the people who donate materials. The Mission will send you something in exchange if you're taking books now. Good idea about gathering info on how to set one up, though there must be endless different ways. I bet somebody could do a good oral history project on it, such places probably go back farther than we think. Lee Briccetti at Poets House in NY has always been friendly & helpful, they seem to have done pretty well & might have some ideas. They have gotten pretty good financial backing, it seems. Beyond Baroque has been around for a long time out in LA(?) though I don't know much about them. We shall see how working with a library is. For a long time we had our sights set on downtown Providence, closer to the (mini) artist & theater scene; plus there's a pretty active multi-arts punky funky dada thing going downtown called AS 220. But the logistics of renting space & protecting materials made starting in a library more feasible. Plus it sort of happened by chance. Edwin Honig & I discovered about 2000 copies of poetry & fiction books he had published in the late 70s - & subsequently turned over the operation to another publisher - sitting in a basement, still in good condition. We arranged with this library to have sets of 25 titles each distributed free to public libraries in the state & that formed the connection for us with this branch library. If other states are like RI, branch public libraries are one way to move some books (if you're not looking to sell!). Here they have a pretty efficient delivery network covering the whole (humoungous) state. Besides logistics, we liked the idea of connecting quiet reading, research, study & conversation with possibilities for performance. Cafes & bars are some scene, but I think poetry worth its salt has to be attended to, and then it takes you far out of the drab or homely performance space, whatever it may be, into its own reality. Tim, thanks again. For people still mulling this over, we would be very grateful for your extra poetry books, recent back issues of little mags, etc. Please email me at Henry_Gould@brown.edu, or write to me at The Poetry Mission, POB 2321, Providence, RI 02906 if you have any questions about what to send, how it will be handled, etc. All materials can be sent to the same address. Thanks - HG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:24:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: 16 Oz or In-Reply-To: from "Alan Sondheim" at Mar 14, 96 10:16:54 pm > > I want to bow out of this discussion. But I must say I have chronic > depression and it does not "make me reach out for anything." And if > Nazism is the symptom, pray, what is the cure? > > Yes, I read Pound; I wouldn't deny myself that. I read Celine. I don't > have bad boys and good boys. But I read through, not around, Nazism, just > as I have to have an informed reading of Heidegger say for my own work. > > I would be careful about all this excusing fascism. Perhaps all fascists > in Germany and Italy were chronically depressed? > > Alan Not to try and keep you in this, Alan, but one parting observation-- you're right, neither illness nor depression seem very relevant here. The way Robin Blaser taught Pound (it was him I first read Pound with 30 years ago) was as symptomatic of the dis-ease of our deeply troubled times that drives so many lively minds, in their turn towards "utopian" remedies to our historical malaise, to become inhuman--Blake's Druids. Where "to build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars" gets you. And where not building it gets you. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:55:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin Subject: Re: in for a pound In-Reply-To: Someone referred earlier to Charles Bernstein's essay on Pound in A Poetics, and I thought it worth quoting two lines at this point: "When Pound the great artist is excused for his politics, fascism has won. When Pound's politics are used to categorically discredit the compositional methods of his poetry, fascism has won" (p. 126). Nicely put. It's extraordinary how utterly complicitous Pound can make us feel. The problem with Pound is that he's such a magnificent reader: he's a dream student, going out and digging things up and then making them his, swinging them into his orbit, setting them in motion in new and provocative ways. This, I take it, is what Bernstein means by the compositional method (it's also, I think, a reading method: which is where Kathryne Lindberg's terrific Reading Pound Reading: Modernism After Nietzsche converges with a postmodern, Language-ish Pound). Being a good reader, being a magnificent reader, and being a genuine revolutionary of poetic form, has nothing at all to do with being good. It makes you wonder what it is we have to teach, exactly: sentimental cliches about fellow feeling and peace? (We are the world and the like.) Pound, I think, is a tremendous challenge. All I know about him, for myself, is that it's better to face such a challenge than to turn from it, to appreciate its many-sidedness, good and ill. How could anyone so smart, so talented, so full of lively intelligence, be so stupid, so simple-minded, so inhuman? No answer required. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:56:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen or Peter Landers Subject: Re: 16 Oz or (bow outs) Alan, I suspect you will never really bow out, this runs too deep. I have similar problems with Edmund Spenser, so I understand your emotion. There is also a lot of gaybashing and racism in other work by modernists. Edward Dorn, for instance, even though he denies it, upset my sense of justice, making Slinger seem like macho psuedo-intellectual rambling. It is true that "anyone can use logic to justify his emotions" (Twain). I realize my perspective is always colored by feelings. It's easier to villify poets who write poorly. Modernism didn't have a Byron to write pastiches and lampoons. Maybe it would have helped. Another reason this is a problem, for others probably as much as me, is because I want to draw a historical lineage. It's naive, I know, but the line from my favorite poets back to Whitman goes through Pound. If I look at it: Whitman - Pound - Zukofsky - Olson - (here it explodes into various Black Mountain and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E people), I can see where the weakest link is in the chain. It is Pound. Compare any part of the Cantos to any part of "A" or Maximus, it really pales in comparison. And I don't know but it seems "A" was started before the Cantos and would have existed without the Cantos, however it was EP who told Poetry magazine to look into LZ, then LZ did the "Objectivism" issue and brought in many on his coattails. And there are certain techniques (indentation, repitition, lingering on the sound of a word from another language, imbuing words with stipulated meaning) that are forceful and effective. These techniques are also used by other prop- agandists, of course. And neo-beat neo-poetry has been airing a lot on ads for beer and jeans lately. Ad writers and speechwriters probably take great pride in their skill ... and when I make money as a tech writer I pull in my esthetic of simplicity. (a tangent, sorry) The lineage I draw includes Pound. This does not mean that I condone him. He was sick, he was hospitalized for 20 years, he was punished. His karma includes this thread, which has been running for 50 years and will continue. Frankly, I wish LZ had done something to upset people enough to talk about him to the same degree. Each time I see a young poet discover LZ and ask "how come nobody ever mentions this, it's awesome" I realize that the adage continues to hold: infamy is better than no fame at all. Two more points (not directed at Alan in particular): Never say let's *not* talk about some poet on poetics. We'll end up with three weeks of that poet above all others. Never say _such-and-such_ is a bad word, for the same reason. That said, let's *not* talk about Zukofsky; "objectivism" is a bad word. :) peace (I can't even resist breaking my own rules!), Peter Landers landers@vivanet.com Alan, I want to give you a hug! I *know* where you're coming from. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:54:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: the postman... (ok, don't read this if you ain't seen the film) chris s., seems to me in that last post of yours---which i found really useful & provocative---you've suggested reasons for liking *il postino* so thoroughly (and i'm thinking out loud): that the young man becomes absorbed with neruda in part b/c he mistakes the poet(ic) for the person(al), and that neruda becomes absorbed with the young man in part b/c he mistakes the person(al) for the body politic(al)... neruda/poetry for the young man is initially merely a means to making love, and the young man for neruda is initially merely a political gesture to reach (another) 'ordinary' man (like the miner he mentions)... what makes the film so intriguing for me is how the personal gradually intrudes upon this reductive poet=person or person=political formula... in the scene where the young man attempts to rationalize neruda's abandoning him, what's really happening as i see it is that he's finally taking responsibility for his actions... i mean, it's clear he *knows* he's rationalizing at one level, but on another this is necessary, vital to his self-identity... ergo he forges a poetry of the island's sounds---a found poetry---a poetry of the ordinary that constitutes a gift in exchange NOT for the gift that neruda has given (and taken away)---guidance---but in exchange for neruda's friendship... in a sense, the young man is actually *befriending* neruda as an equal... if the social action that precipitates the young man's death is part poetry reading and part coming to age, it is also a public act of friendship (hence his poem's title has neruda's name in it) ... but what really makes the film for me is its conclusion... as i read this emotional sequence, neruda is struck with the recognition that poetry constitutes neither pure political (-marxist) statement, nor pure aesthetic achievement (we never get to see the young man's poem)... in the final few moments, it seems to me (and with due regard for the lines from neruda with which the film concludes) poetry is understood as part of a larger social context that brings with it certain responsibilities... and neruda understands that he's reneged on his responsibility---not to politics or to poetry, but to the young man, the person who's implicated in both... the insight would seem to be that, however personal or political, poetry per se matters less than the person who writes it or reads it... and a thing more: that poetry can represent as much an avoidance of our responsibility in this regard as a means of addressing same... and for neruda to realize this---again?---as an older man--- well, i found it astonishing, and astonishingly rendered... sorry for going on some, but that's a rough approximation of the way i saw the flick... joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:18:46 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: Pound takes a "Ding" -Returns a "Dong" Somewhere along the line of the deja vu Pound discussions comes the statement "there seem to be no women in his circles" as against his extraordinary elevation of the young H.D. as the exemplary Imagist poet, his promotion of the work of Moore and Mina Loy very early along -- however anyone might want to explain that away. It is interesting to consider too how the most telling impact of his work -- the most vital influence -- was precisely on poets who politically, morally, might have been at the greatest distance from it. I mean particulary in my generation and beyond. I take it that this is Pound's legacy also -- in the strange way that these things work. Jerome Rothenberg ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 12:30:44 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: Alan Golding Subject: West coast trip Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu I'll be in San Diego the evening of Th. March 28, and either there or LA the evening of Fri. March 29. Anyone know of readings / performances / other interesting stuff going on either place on those dates? Alan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 12:34:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: ghost titles In-Reply-To: <960314201627_351491374@mail02.mail.aol.com> Don't know if these would count, but I recall seeing Thomas Pynchon's VINELAND listed in a prepublication *Books in Print* as *Vineland, Volume 1." And wasn't Pynchon supposed to be writing a Civil War novel? Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 12:33:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: 16 Oz or (bow outs) From a post from Karen or Peter Land: Frankly, I wish LZ had done something to upset people enough to talk about him to the same degree. Each time I see a young poet discover LZ and ask "how come nobody ever mentions this, it's awesome" I realize that the adage continues to hold: infamy is better than no fame at all. I'm not at all certain about this. Sometimes I think it's the hateful work which, in part, comes out of the desire for fame, notoriety, etc. Has being famous helped anyone's work? Would it have made LZ a more interesting poet? Has it made Michael Jackson a better songwriter/performer? Has it helped Bob Dylan? True, it does seem necessary to get noticed, and I think of some of the finest work of our moment being done by people who aren't all that good at getting noticed, such as Bev Dahlen, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and M. Nourbese Philip (thanks to Paul Naylor for suggesting this last writer). And I would like them to have more attention, but I'm also concerned that having a lot of fame/notoriety might not help their work at all. I don't mean I want writers to be unnoticed, just that fame takes a price probably at least equal to what it gives. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 13:08:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Machlin Subject: New Reading Series at Segue The Segue Foundation will host the following readings/events at its Segue Perfo rmance Space located at 303 E. 8th Street, NY, NY (bet. aves B&C)212/674-0199 THURSDAY, March 21, 7:30 Joe Elliot/Barbara Henning SATURDAY, March 30, 10ish New York City Poetry Talks Book Party and Social (hosted by Rob Fitterman) FRIDAY, April 12, 7:30 Jeff Prant's "Slide Show of America"/Tim Davis "Poems ab out Photographs" Three Weeks of New Fictives /THURSDAYS, 7:30 4/18 Lauren Sanders/Angela Himsel; 4/25 Linda Solomon/Leslie Daniels; 5/2 Eliss a Schappell/Susan Sherman TUESDAY, May 7th,7:30 LIVE FROM THE WEST COAST! Dodie Bellamy/Kevin Killian THURSDAY, May 9th,7:30 Segue Sponsored Event at Hebrew Union College-Brookdale Center 1 West 4th Street(near W.Bway)Rob Fitterman/Kim Rosenfield/Hugh Seidman All events Free|| For more info. mail me at this address or at 212/674-0199 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 12:50:55 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: battling the other Re; Goulds comments on the Harlem Ren. and CS on Baraka I take it that these issues aren't important enough to be dealt with on this list, that people are too intent on defining themselves, others and the like. Our passion for categorization, life neatly sectioned into graspable sanctions, has led to an unforeseen paradoxical distress; confusion, a breakdown of meaning into THAT WHICH CAN ONLY BE DEFINEC. The aim has become to reduse all writers to the compulsive, bloodless dimensions of a moniker or an empty sign (which ever fits your terminology better). The proper name is merely artifice. Baraka has indirectly given many their freedom through his audacity to say that which needs to be said. Most of the writers avoided in the academe', oh say Kenneth Patchen as another particular, are refused status because the force of the WORD as a power of revolution, one which builds and destroys countries, has been forgotten or not accepted as an important aspect and function of writing. While the academy of the future might have been opening its doors at that time, the door was one of singular speech variety: one that didn't offend the american sense of progress limited to the social arena, one which was divested of overarching human concerns such as poverty, violence, or slums for the sole sake of retaining the cloud of statistical safety. David Baratier As the inner fails, people run desperately to the post-office. -Thoreau ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 13:42:57 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Machlin Subject: Additional Readings at Segue Sorry folks, my list of Segue Performance Space Readings got too big for my scr reen. Here are those additions: these all on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at 303 E. 8t h Street between Avenues B&C. Refreshments. All free except BIG ALLIS event. THURSDAY, May 16th, 7:30 p.m. Bill Luoma/Deirdre Kovac THURSDAY, May 23rd, 7:30 p.m. Blockbuster Reading to celebrate BIG ALLIS # 7 (Modest Contribution) Release Party Reading Hosted by Melanie Neilson: featuring Bruce Andrews, Marti ne Bellen, Abigail Child, Ulla Dydo, Rob Fitterman, Elizabeth Fodaski, Deirdre Kovac, Jena Osman, Joan Retallack, Kim Rosenfield, Juliana Spahr &Hannah Weiner THURSDAY, June 6th, 7:30 p.m. Special Gay Pride Week Presentation Mark McBeth - Lecture: THE QUEENS' ENGLISH: The Forms and Function of Gaylect With New Video Work and Special Guest t.b.a. Thursday, June 13th, 7:30 p.m. Sharon Lattig/Krysia Jopek ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 16:14:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Watts Subject: Action Derrida (et al) francaise Guyzies, this lookt interesting in light of the recent discussion around Derrida: Forwarded message: > From owner-english-dept Fri Mar 15 13:42 > >>>Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 16:22:01 -0600 (CST) > >>>From: anderson kevin > >>>Subject: French Intellectuals and Political Engagement > >>>Sender: owner-psn@csf.colorado.edu > >>>To: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK > >>>Reply-to: tk0kxa1@corn.cso.niu.edu > >>>MIME-version: 1.0 > >>>Precedence: bulk > >>>X-To: progressive sociologists > >>> > >>>The following commentary on "French Intellectuals and Political > >>>Engagement" by Kevin Anderson, Department of Sociology, Northern > >>>Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, was broadcast on KPFK-FM > >>>(Pacifica Radio, Los Angeles) on Febuary 12, 1996: > >>> > >>> At a time when French thought - from deconstruction to post- > >>>structuralism to difference feminism - continues strongly to > >>>influence radical thought in the U. S., especially in academic circles, > >>>there is a curious omission in much of the U. S. reception of these > >>>French thinkers. Here in the U. S., the work of these thinkers is > >>>often presented as if it were cut off from the social and political > >>>engagement which marked earlier generations of French > >>>intellectuals. > >>> Such a reception is distorted, as can be seen by the intense > >>>involvement of French intellectuals in a number of current political > >>>issues, including, most recently, the massive anti-austerity strikes > >>>of last December, which at their peak brought over 2 million > >>>disaffected workers and students onto the streets of Paris and other > >>>cities. The strikers forced the conservative Chirac-Juppe > >>>government to withdraw most of a series of budget cuts which > >>>would have drastically lowered the standard of living of public > >>>employees. While the December strikes were reported at least > >>>sporadically by the American mass media, the involvement of > >>>leading French intellectuals in the strike has been passed over in > >>>silence. > >>> At the beginning of the labor protests, a few progressive > >>>intellectuals criticized the strikers and tacitly supported the > >>>austerity plan. These included the sociologist Alain Touraine, who > >>>called the government measures "courageous", the philosopher and > >>>human rights activist Bernard-Henri Levy, who termed the strikers a > >>>privileged special interest group, and the editorial board of the left > >>>of center Catholic journal Esprit. > >>> These efforts to distance progressive intellectuals from the > >>>workers met with a furious reaction from hundreds of other well- > >>>known intellectuals of the left. By December 4, over 500 leading > >>>intellectuals, including the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, a professor > >>>at the prestigious Coll=E8ge de France, where luminaries such as > >>>Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault once held professorships, > >>>had organized an "Appeal to Intellectuals in Support of the Strikers." > >>>The intellectuals' appeal spoke of "our responsibility to affirm > >>>publicly our solidarity with ...this movement, which has nothing to > >>>do with the defense of special interests and still less that of > >>>privileges. In fighting for their social rights, [the appeal continued], > >>>the strikers are fighting for equal rights for all: women and men, > >>>young and old, unemployed and employed, public employees and those > >>>working in the private sector, immigrants and French men and > >>>women." Among the other signers of the appeal were the > >>>deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida, Regis Debray, the > >>>companion of Che Guevara in Bolivia during the 1960s, the feminist > >>>philosopher Christine Delphy, the Trotsky biographer Pierre Broue, > >>>the Marxist theorist Michael L=F6wy, and the historian Pierre Vidal- > >>>Naquet. > >>> Pierre Bourdieu also addressed a large meeting of workers on > >>>the evening of December 12, following the demonstrations of over 2 > >>>million. "This crisis is a historic chance," Bourdieu said, "for France > >>>and for all those who refuse the new choice given to us: free market > >>>liberalism or barbarism." He castigated experts who, "using the > >>>authority of science, especially economics," tell us that "they know > >>>what is best for people, even when it goes against the popular will." > >>>Today's economic and social problems, Bourdieu concluded, "are too > >>>important to be left to technocrats." In France, a country where the > >>>opinions of intellectuals carry greater weight than in the U. S., > >>>Bourdieu's speech was reported on the front page of the country's > >>>leading newspaper, Le Monde. > >>> This "return" by French intellectuals to political engagement > >>>has been building all through the 1990s. Over the last few years, a > >>>number of leading intellectuals have spoken out forcefully against > >>>the genocide in Bosnia, and against a series of draconian and racist > >>>anti-immigration laws passed by the French government. > >>> The philosopher Jacques Derrida is a good example of this > >>>engagement in the 1990s. In the last few years, Derrida has > >>>(1)strongly supported the Bosnian cause, (2)campaigned on behalf of > >>>the feminist writer Taslima Nasreen, still under a death sentence by > >>>Islamic clerics in her native Bangladesh, (3)spoken out against > >>>racism in France and abroad. With regard to racism, of particular > >>>note was Derrida's lengthy August 1995 article, carried on page one > >>>of Le Monde, on behalf of African-American writer Mumia Abu- > >>>Jamal, who still faces a death sentence in Philadelphia. Derrida > >>>lashed out at the State of Pennsylvania "for wanting to offer more > >>>'Black blood' in a racist frenzy, and this in a state which dares to > >>>boast of being the place where the U. S. Constitution was written, a > >>>Constitution whose letter and spirit it violates daily." In his 1993 > >>>book, Specters of Marx, Derrida also pointed to the importance of > >>>rereading Marx today in order to understand and act upon the > >>>cultural, economic, and social crisis. Something is definitely > >>>stirring today among French workers and intellectuals, something of > >>>which we need to be more aware. > >>> > >> > >>------------------------------- > >>James G. Ennis > >>Sociology, Tufts University > >>Medford, MA 02155 USA > >> > >>617 628 5000 x2473 > >>fax: 617 627 3032 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 01:02:24 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Thomas A Clarke / Charles Verey / Neil Mills et al >tell me more abt verey. well i don't know too much myself. He was an art teacher who was a member of the Gloucestershire Group aka the Gloucestershire Ode Construction Company, centred around Dom Sylvester Houedard. He's worth a prolonged diversion here. Some readers here may know of Dom, a remarkable figure who lived at Prinknash Abbey in Gloucester and went awol with his typewriter and his sexualities every now and again and again. Perhaps most outlived (at present - there's a huge reclamation project under way spearheaded by Bob Cobbing and Peter Manson of the excellent 'Object Permanence') by his simplified translation of the Basho haiku as 'frog pond plop'. Many will recognise a fine bp nicol running gag in that one. Dom Dylvester was a remarkably erudite man with rangey understanding of poetries, particularly those with sonic and spatial concerns. His own typewriter poems are quite extraordinary and I'm no way going to attempt to place one of them here. I simply recommend that you track them down. He prolifically translated and mis-translated, in particular from the Chinese. He archived assiduously. Charles Verey edited the best collection I know of (ceolfrith 15) dedicated to his work from which 2 poems: streets go BOTH crazy ways at once. if this hp soul were a portable id take it ev rywhere beaches choir buses bluecinemas and chap termeetings cafes innerspace & play it full blast the second is dated 1963 this poem all it represents what ? ______________________________ this transvestite poem parading about in somebody else's prose ________________________________________________________________ my mind transparent this between here. So that's a mere taste of Dom. Verey ran a small press called South Street. Neil Mills and Thomas A Clark were both also members of this Gloucestershire network. The poet John Wilkinson acknowledges this as his start-off patch in the early seventies. Thomas A Clark edited a little mag call 'bo-heem-e-um' and its no.3. january 1968 edition was a Charles Verey (rare as hens' teeth) special. Much of his work is so spatially set (often angled) as to be no use in thise space. It's work that unsettles me by dint of a sentimental undertow within a seeming arcane stream. But i'll post a couple of more robust bits - (this is from a booklet 'some soundings' of 1970) i can only exerpt what's feasible [chunks are missing]: POEM ZERO (for Tom) Rose no more Fat Bastard - who cares? Squirrel seen rarely so yr beechnuts rise into this ether newly brother light even tangible in tubes and meander thro' clouds Red was it roses are red be hanged . fat Moon meaning thrown into running water fortunes . that easy . of gold Black is colour of love some . more azure some . more green some . more umber [ . . .] trine tarry a ritual that burn and the little mist that rise , above the holme AND GROAN crackle as timber stakes MALT by former skills of terraces particles dust and scorpion lanes fingered before the holocaust slide and across the water glimmer the fail line of two planets [ . . . ] blood rumba beating in the suburb blood rumba in the beating suburb blood rumba beating in the blood in the rumba blood blood rumba blood love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 17:10:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: AN: Aldon Nielsen: BAD In-Reply-To: <199603150544.AAA00675@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> no way to part Baraka's petics from his politics -- But, have to read things like _Rays, Raise etc._ and the essay that was titled (not by Baraka) "Confessions of an Ex-Anti Semite" -- alongside Stalinist verse of late 70s,,, alongside, in turn, more lyric pieces that appeared throughout -- Can't abide the antismitism of the earlier pieces, the homophobia of same period, the Stalinism that still appears from time to time,,, nor can I simply read around them as if they weren't there -- Have somehow to account for all of these appearing in the same man's life -- not easily accomplished ["poetics" for "petics" above] If one risks thinking out loud, one must be prepared to take repsonsibility for that loud thought (& Baraka has always been, as an early poem put it, loud on the changing of his ways) Derrida's remarks on the reading of Nietzche in his _The Ear of the Other_ have much to offer this discussion that so many are bowing out of -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 20:25:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: ghost titles then there's the dreaded book by Harold Bloom-- FREUD: TRANSFERENCE AND AUTHORITY...... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 17:25:44 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: AN: Aldon Nielsen: BAD >Derrida's remarks on the reading of Nietzche in his _The Ear >of the Other_ have much to offer this discussion that so many >are bowing out of -- now that things have calmed down, i'm bowing back in. i think it's very clear where i stand on the whole subject. if i may, i wld like to elaborate. that asshole pound was terribly hurt by the death of his dear friend gaudier-brzseska in WWI. WWI was perceived (rightly) as the deathknell of an entire civilization. even yeats flirted w/ fascism. wyndham lewis. they were all grasping at straws because everything they knew had just been shown to be bullshit. i can't imagine how painful that must have been for these people. i'd rather talk abt what fascism IS than talk abt how LOUSY it is --- we all agree on that, we all want to see an end to injustice and blind hatred. fascism as i understand it is a combination of several things: nationalism, deep concern w/ roots charles olson wc williams belief in and insistence upon racial purity castigate zukofsky for agreeing w/ "purifying the language of the tribe" coupled w/ racial/sexual intolerance kill the hip-hop artists exclusionism get rid of the anthologists bizzare distortions of history anyone who insists their cultural (in the widest possible sense of the word) ancestry is free from evil mysticism robert duncan robert kelly jack spicer john donne wm blake christopher smart abu abulafia paul celan blaming one's own problems on The Other everybody alive on this earth from the beginning of history proto-fascists, each and every one of the above named. okay. hitler was a vegetarian therefore all vegetarians partake in his madness to some degree. goebbels was a dope fiend so heroin addicts? fascism is one of the most recent of our blights. we HAVE to discuss it, but let's please try to discuss it w/o rancor no matter how much we hate it, otherwise we just end up getting pissed at each other, people bow out and nothing gets learned. i enjoy this list very much, and hope my outbursts have not alienated anybody. thanks chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.15.96 5:25:45 pm q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 21:16:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: AN: Aldon Nielsen: BAD Dear Aldon-- thanks for taking up the baraka thread.... okay, i grant you these negative things about baraka BUT there's a couple issues here.... first, wasn't baraka closeted himself (re homophobia).... secondly, was talking to a *friend* lately about Laura Riding's THE WORD "WOMAN" in which at one point she makes an anti-homosexual statement....and we decided to "historicize" and "contextualize" it (in terms of her "project") as making a valid point about the homosocial qualities of the heterosexual male dominated canon and/or culture industry..... But the more important question I think needs to be raised, re WHOEVER (Baraka, Pound, Riding) is a question of OUR stance, and also of the the relationship between it and criticism of others. It's pretty damn easy and done over and over again recently to speak from a perspective of IMPLIED values ("liberal" and "democratic"?)--and this is not targeted at Aldon btw--and reactively critique the "great masters" for flaws in their politics. And this is a necessary step perhaps towards self- definition. Yet it seems so many are not going beyond it. Part of the MALAISE I see in academia and perhaps the poetry world is this FEAR of taking a stance. Alot of stuff I'm reading seems to have this attitude that "THOSE NAIVE MODERNISTS, those naive beats," back in the days when people really believed in such silly things as saying things, or even creating the illusion of immanence, or something.... related to this is the question of p.c. type verse.... probably one of the reasons the pound/baraka threads have been so HEATED is because there's passionate attachment and/or investment to the work (Pound: "can't move 'em with a cold thing like economics"--all writing is hero worship, etc.)--much of which has to do with PERSONALITY.... now there was the ANTI-PERSONALITY movement, the trouble with DUNCAN and GINSBERG, etc--that was perhaps born out of a recognition of the analogy with such differentiation on a personal level with a need for HEIRARCHIES which becomes disturbing on a "political" level. And since the personal is the political, therefore any admission even on aesthetic and/or subjective/psychological plane of the need for heirarchies is problematic and proto-fascist. I think such a rational needs to be rethought--it definitely accounts for why so many L poets don't write about things like LOVE and marriage from any kind of immanent perpsective --that becomes consigned to the margins and ironically the art/life distinction THICKENS (with usury?).... If we look at Pound from the perspective of a poet dissatisfied with the tepid PC qualities of his day (which he saw in ROOSEVELT, who for us of course is far better than CLINTON---WPA stuff etc...) and remember that he was looking for JEFFERSON and had to settle for MUSSOLINI, and that perhaps it was done out of a feeling of powerlessness--despite how POUND is now served up as a cultural authority (Oh yikes, I really didn't want to get into pound again....), we may not be able to REDEEM him, but at least we can see why it's NOT JUST THE FORMAL QUALITIES OF HIS WORK that make him a more potentially subversive poet than the so-called liberal stuff that gets in the NEW REPUBLIC or THE NATION..... But Baraka is (as Emily Lloyd brought up) a different issue because there is a LOT more empowering on a strictly political level to him.... sometimes I wonder if the critical attitude of superiority is not a form of censorship---and if that's the case why not THROW OUT EVERYBODY..... Ginsberg is AT LEAST as compromised as Baraka, for instance.... I mean why not dwell on the good Baraka did, does--- or is there a fear of that VULGAR MARXISM again, or does it come to close to home.... that maybe looking at BARAKA and seeing his failure, we retreat into the academy, and then convince ourselves it's not a retreat. And maybe it isn't. But Baraka went to jail to help blacks, not to bash gays.... Yeah, he failed. Well, we fail too--especially if we side with the boring drab academic drudges AGAINST the barakas of the world..... I'm not saying anybody here necessarily is. But if you can't change anybody's mind (shades of alfred corn!), at least there can be unity in diversity. I used to be involved in local political groups in the early 80's and we always got into arguments over the one or two things that divided us. That attests I think more to the NEED FOR ARGUMENT than anything. And though Lou Reed sang that song to Jesse Jackson about common ground (great guitar playing, LOU!) about "common ground", I still would rather accentuate the positive when it comes to Baraka.... Just as Susan Howe wrote HER Emily Dickinson. As Rod Smith says "you take what you need and leave the rest...." ........okay, i contradict myself...i am contained by multitudes.... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 21:19:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... In-Reply-To: <199603150544.AAA00675@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Sorry, been away, and am only on digest lately. But where can I find Perelman's piece on EP? It's always seemed important to me to keep him in mind, both as great poet and as vicious politician--a warning that poetry doesn't make us what we'd like to think it does. Also a very personal warning to the autodidact and the isolated bright against the arrogance that comes with that territory--I wasn't born in Idaho in the 19th C., but grew up where his "I don't imagine America has any more idiots per capita than anywhere else" (loosely from memory) was a perverse comfort. Bad news. All that mostly entertaining early rage had to go somewhere, and there were plenty of hate-machines to absorb it. Still are. While I sympathize with Alan's refusal, I don't think it's safe to ignore this man, to rub him out of memory before we've taken him in. And his poetry caught me young & still shakes me--Pisan Cantos, yes, also Rock Drill & many others--to the point where I can't stop asking, ever, who can afford to hide in talent or even in genius. Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 21:29:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: let's talk about fascists, bay-bee... Dear Wendy Battin--- Perelman's main writing on POUND is in "THE TROUBLE WITH GENIUS" (U-CAl Press, 1995, or is it 94?). He also had some essay on POUND and CELINE in an earlier form in POETICS JOURNAL..... I sat in on a course with him at U-Penn in 1990 on Pound and Stein and it was quite brilliant---really did close readings of ABC of READING and GUIDE TO KULCHUR as if they were POEMS rather than "prose"--- ---c, stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 10:57:31 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: poetry center info/donations In-Reply-To: Henry, considering the location ("Cranston near the city line") might I suggest you name the poetry center after that son of Providence, Ted Berrigan? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 10:58:06 +0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ada Aharoni Subject: Re: Bury Fascist Ezra Pound In-Reply-To: > At 11:36 PM 3/13/96 +0200, Ada Aharoni wrote: > > >What I suggest is -- just bury the guy and forget about him, alongside his "genius mates" Hitler and Mussolini. > Steve Carll answered: > It would be nice if things were this simple, wouldn't it? > > Hi! It could be that simple if we make it so. One of the methods I've used is just refuse to teach him to my students, and have stopped reading him a long time ago. From my point of view and that of many of my colleagues and students, as well as poets\critics around the world - Ezra Pound has already been buried alongside his "genius" friends, Hitler and Mussolini. Please don't resurrect him! He's dangerous to our world! Let's read Wilfred Owen instead, perhaps we would bring our world one inch closer to the world beyond war he dreamed about. Ada Aharoni ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 03:12:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: Bury Fascist Ezra Pound In-Reply-To: Hey, no no no... I'm sorry, but _everyone_ should be read; the world is too complex to do a repeat cleansing. I've read Mein Kampf, Goebbels' Michael, most of Celine, a lot of Pound. If we're going to ever comprehend what we ourselves are, and not just our "evil" selves, the last thing we need is censorship. (And we should not read _X_ say "just for" the politics or to reprimand, violate - my own relationship to Heidegger is much more complex than that, for example, breaking out in other, productive directions.) To censor, is to give in; as someone else has pointed out, the fascists have won. There is another issue, incapable of resolution, needing discussion in the classroom, and that is the relationship of _any_ biographical infor- mation to the written texts of an author. This can't be passed over; I read Celine _cold,_ engrossed, sensing a violence towards myself, a vio- lence towards him, a Europe that Heiner Muller built on. I would never say, don't read Celine; I would say, read him _most of all_ - how else to comprehend the abject, ressentiment, burial? Alan On Sat, 16 Mar 1996, Ada Aharoni wrote: > > At 11:36 PM 3/13/96 +0200, Ada Aharoni wrote: > > > > >What I suggest is -- just bury the guy and forget about him, alongside > his "genius mates" Hitler and Mussolini. > > > Steve Carll answered: > > It would be nice if things were this simple, wouldn't it? > > > > Hi! > It could be that simple if we make it so. One of the methods I've used > is just refuse to teach him to my students, and have stopped reading him > a long time ago. From my point of view and that of many of my colleagues > and students, as well as poets\critics around the world - Ezra Pound has > already been buried alongside his "genius" friends, Hitler and Mussolini. > Please don't resurrect him! He's dangerous to our world! Let's read > Wilfred Owen instead, perhaps we would bring our world one inch closer to > the world beyond war he dreamed about. > > Ada Aharoni > With some new texts and image files - http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Other images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 00:07:56 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: Bury Fascist Ezra Pound but, ada, fascism didn't just suddenly spring into existence because of the minds of the "geniuses" you'd like to eradicate --- didn't stalin and mao love to rewrite history? --- it was and is a product of several thousand years of human history. don't you think it wld be better to try to undertsand why fascism exists instead of sweeping it under the carpet where it can fester and erupt again? the more we look at fascism, the more we expose it, the less of a chance it has of gripping our lives. bt we can not simply point a finger and accuse: we have to do our best to understand, even if that understanding may be very painful. because ultimately don't we have to examine our very souls for the seeds of fascism? yrs --- chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.16.96 12:07:56 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 13:05:20 +0300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ada Aharoni Subject: Re: Bury Fascist Ezra Pound In-Reply-To: > but, ada, fascism didn't just suddenly spring into existence because > of the minds of the "geniuses" you'd like to eradicate --- didn't stalin ....> > chris SORRY, HAVE NO TIME OR USE FOR READING ABOUT DESTRUCTIVENESS, FASCISM AND HATRED. I PREFER TO USE MY READING TIME FOR CONSTRUCTIVE ISSUES, AND LEARNING ABOUT NEW FIELDS IN POETRY THAT HAVE NOT BEEN OVER-KILLED BY USELESS "BADINAGE". I WISH I HAD MORE TIME TO READ MORE "WOMEN POETRY", "BLACK POETRY," "THIRD WORLD POETRY," "PEACE POETRY" ETC. WHY BOTHER WITH THE LIKES OF NAZI POUND? > ------------------------------------- > > q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they > said anything goes?" > --- charles wourinen (?) > > a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." > > --- george clinton > > snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa > voice: 510.524.5972 > http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 10:19:23 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: Dom Sylvester Houedard In-Reply-To: <199603160504.FAA08717@hermes.dur.ac.uk> And it's good to see dsh cropping up on the list. The Ceolfrith publication must be long gone by now, as are other Ceolfrith publications of that time including my own, but there's still a chance to get the dsh special issue of words worth magazine (same outfit that did Carlyle Reedy's book) - that's : words worth books BM Box 4515 London WC1N 3XX - but dammit, I can't find the price! "write for further details"... By the way - let's have that superfluous e off the end of Thomas A. Clark's name! He only put the "A" in to avoid confusion with a similarly-named US literary figure... signed, The Librarian 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: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 04:01:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: 16 Oz or (bow outs) Charles Alexander writes: "True, it does seem necessary to get noticed, and I think of some of the finest work of our moment being done by people who aren't all that good at getting noticed, such as Bev Dahlen, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and M. Nourbese Philip (thanks to Paul Naylor for suggesting this last writer). And I would like them to have more attention, but I'm also concerned that having a lot of fame/notoriety might not help their work at all. "I don't mean I want writers to be unnoticed, just that fame takes a price probably at least equal to what it gives." Charles, I'd add you to that list of poets who deserve much more wide exposure (not exactly the same as notoriety). Watching Ginsberg at Stanford last year (as distinct from at Naropa the year before), I realize that this is a man who never gets to read to an intimate audience, an audience where he knows a large portion of the readers first hand, an audience that even knows his work all that well, simply because of his fame (a cynical take on which can be found in Spicer's work). It seems like a lot to give up, frankly. So, who can introduce me to the work of M. Nourbese Philip? This is a new name to me. Books, quotes, etc? Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 05:32:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves Wendy, "I wasn't born in Idaho in the 19th C., but..." Don't blame Idaho. Pound was very much a creature of the Philadelphia suburbs (going to Penn was not going "away"). At the end of his life he refers to his anti-semitism as a "suburban prejudice" and I fear that there's much more truth in that than we can to admit. I.e., it was (is) not his problem alone. I've been depressed by this entire discussion, frankly. The discussion on Baraka has been interesting, but it seems like so much of this is just re-opening old wounds and pain. I'm sympathetic to Alan Sondheim but wonder if there is ever any way out of that cycle of pain for people who have been or feel victimized. How women might feel about Carl Andre.... (or Bill Burroughs or Jack Spicer or...) How people who were sexually abused (or who have young sons) might feel about Ginsberg and Hakim Bey's activities on behalf of NAMBLA How people might feel about all that sexual come on (almost a form of stalking) that goes on in the correspondence of a Dahlberg or even an Olson... The problem of making a "perfect revolution" (to loop back into 30 year old language for a moment) is that we are, all of us, starting off from a condition of damage that history has brought to us and that we carry within ourselves in many different ways. The problem is not the "other guy's (or gal's)." The problem is us. Every heterosexual I've ever met (myself included) who was not homophobic seems to have been personally educated by a specific gay man or lesbian who helped them (me) to understand the world in a new way For this education in my life, I thank David Melnick. But I can remember just how macho the antiwar movement in the 1960s was, both homophobic and just plain sexist. It seems unimaginable now but was simply unquestioned then until some people actively stood up and did question it. And those were people who were trying to make a better world... So I wonder just how good a job I can do as a father helping my own sons not to carry that problem (homophobia) in their own lives, knowing how much of it they will get in school, from friends, etc. Not to mention racism, anti-semitism, sexism, agism, the whole shebang. Do we all have to learn these lessons over again and again, each person from scratch? It ain't easy... Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 21:50:17 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves In-Reply-To: <199603161332.FAA03675@ix15.ix.netcom.com> Ron's post reminded me of one Chinese traditional theory of reading the Odes, which was meant to justify/explain the inclusion of certain "lascivious songs," the Odes of Zheng (which Pound described as 'a sort of crooning or boogie-woogie'), anyway, the problem was to reconcile the presence of immoral poems within a moral text. the solution offered by the Song neo-Confucian Zhu Xi was that, by reading these immoral odes, you could experience immoral thoughts and, having internalized them, you would be prepared and able to defend yourself against the immoral acts that might be the consequence when circumstances caused you to have the immoral thoughts, i.e., reading Pound one enters into the consciousness of a fascist and perhaps, as a consequence, can recognize fascism in one's own self. or antisemitism or homophobia or whatever the condition. I wouldn't want to suggest that the only justification for reading Pound is prophylaxis (now I sound like Pound) but it is one way to deal with the fascism. in any case, this century* is defined by the two mirror ideologies of fascism and communism, our art will also be understood by the future in their context, and in this sense we'll be in the same boat as Dante and that awful medieval Catholicism. * the one that's finally almost over ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 07:12:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Fwd: The poetry of Lenore Kandel (fwd) This showed up on the Sixties List this morning. Please contact Karen directly (I don't think she's on this list, so a "reply" won't work). Ron ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Karen Kling Subject: The poetry of Lenore Kandel Hi. Does anyone know where I can get a copy of poems by Lenore Kandel? She was a popular Haight Ashbury poet who wrote a book of Love Poems that was seized in the late 1960's for being too explicit. I am currently doing research on the writinngs of those who were there at the start of the Haight Ashbur phenomenon. I would appreciate any information. -Karen Kling kk15968@academia.swt.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 10:13:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: let's talk about In-Reply-To: <199603160521.AAA16637@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Dear Chris Stroffolino, many thanks for the Perelman info Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 10:27:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves Thanks Ron -- once again, you've summarized a vitally important "theoretical" issue without even one time using theoretical language, achieving a level of clarity and directness that even the best cultural theory, for me, sometimes lacks (is *this* what being a language poet, or an "M poet," etc., means??) At any rate, for those with a taste for MORE theoretical language, and back to the D. word again, several of Derrida's recent works (I'm thinking of OF SPIRIT, POINTS, "At this very moment in this work here I am," MEMOIRES FOR PAUL DE MAN, "'Passions': An Oblique Offering," THE OTHER HEADING, &c &c) offer a series of reflections on this topic with regard to figures like de Man & Heidegger that strike me as very much in line with Ron's comments & those of some others. Also cf. Gayatri Spivak's "Responsibility" in _boundary 2_. I agree with those who've suggested that there's no easy answer to these issues -- & pretending there are no hard questions is one of those easy answers that aren't. -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 07:51:22 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: FW: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves --- On Sat, 16 Mar 1996 05:32:14 -0800 Ron Silliman wrote: >Wendy, > > >I've been depressed by this entire discussion, frankly. I'VE BEEN ENRAGED >The discussion on Baraka has been interesting, but it seems like so >much of this is just re-opening old wounds and pain. I'm sympathetic to >Alan Sondheim but wonder if there is ever any way out of that cycle of >pain for people who have been or feel victimized. YES, I THINK THERE IS A WAY OUT --- I FOUND MY OWN WAY OUT --- IT WAS NOT EASY AND IT IS STILL NOT EASY >How women might feel about Carl Andre.... (or Bill Burroughs or Jack >Spicer or...) > >How people who were sexually abused (or who have young sons) might feel >about Ginsberg and Hakim Bey's activities on behalf of NAMBLA BEING A VICTIM OF SEXUAL ABUSE ALONG W/ MOST EVERY OTHER KIND OF ABUSE A CHILD CAN SUFFER I AM HERE TO SAY THAT IT HAS NOT HELPED IN MY APPRECIATION OF THEIR WORK. >How people might feel about all that sexual come on (almost a form of >stalking) that goes on in the correspondence of a Dahlberg or even an >Olson... >The problem of making a "perfect revolution" (to loop back into 30 year >old language for a moment) is that we are, all of us, starting off from >a condition of damage that history has brought to us and that we carry >within ourselves in many different ways. The problem is not the "other >guy's (or gal's)." The problem is us. EXACTLY SO, RON, THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS SO DIRECTLY. >Every heterosexual I've ever met (myself included) who was not >homophobic seems to have been personally educated by a specific gay man >or lesbian who helped them (me) to understand the world in a new way > >For this education in my life, I thank David Melnick. FOR MINE I THANK ONE OF MY BEST HIGHSCHOOL FRIENDS, TED VAN WHY, WHO CAME OUT TO ME IN 1974 --- I SAID "DON'T CARE, JUST AS LONG AS YOU DON'T TRY TO FUCK ME." TED LOOKED AT ME, DECIDED NOT TO GET PISSED, AND SAID "WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I FIND YOU ATTRACTIVE?" . WE BEGAN TO LAUGH, AND THEN BEGAN TO TALK ABT IT. WE HAVE TO TALK ABT THESE THINGS, BUT WE HAVE TO TALK ABT THEM W/O TOO MUCH RANCOR AND W/ REAL SENSITIVITY TO EVERYONE ELSE'S EXPERIENCE OR WE POUR SALT IN SOMEONE'S WOUNDS AND THAT CAN NOT HELP. >But I can remember just how macho the antiwar movement in the 1960s >was, both homophobic and just plain sexist. It seems unimaginable now >but was simply unquestioned then until some people actively stood up >and did question it. > >And those were people who were trying to make a better world... > >So I wonder just how good a job I can do as a father helping my own >sons not to carry that problem (homophobia) in their own lives, knowing >how much of it they will get in school, from friends, etc. Not to >mention racism, anti-semitism, sexism, agism, the whole shebang. Do we >all have to learn these lessons over again and again, each person from >scratch? YES I THINK WE DO --- IT SEEMS A TERRIBLE THING BUT I THINK IT IS UP TO EACH OF US TO HONESTLY AND COURAGEOUSLY FIND THESE THINGS OUT FOR OURSELVES WITHIN OURSELVES --- OTHERWISE OUR SOCIETY BECOMES OVERWHELMINGLY PC (IT CURRENTLY SHOWS THE SIGNS) --- LIKE THE RED GUARD DURING THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHINA --- CONSTANT DENUNCIATION --- BLAME --- OPPRESSION OF DIFFERENCE --- WCH AS WE HAVE SEEN --- OVER AND OVER AGAIN THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY --- LEADS TO SOMETHING MUCH MORE TERRIBLE AND DISHONEST --- THE INQUISITOR'S QUESTION WE DO NOT NEED TO BE TOLD, WE NEED TO BE SHOWN --- WE DO NOT NEED TO MERELY HATE, WE ALSO NEED TO UNDERSTAND >It ain't easy... AMEN TO THAT. BUT IT'S ESSENTIAL. THANKS VERY MUCH FOR THIS POSTING, RON >Ron Silliman > -----------------End of Original Message----------------- ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.16.96 7:51:23 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 10:21:35 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves yeah, that was a great post, ron... and thanx to others too for keeping this thread productively alive---alan, chris's, jerry, david, ada, peter, michael, carla etc... one thing that strikes me is the willingness hereabouts and in general to discuss pound's fascism as such, whatever one's ultimate opine, in part b/c it's been a controversy from way back... as opposed to, say, getting twain folks to discuss outright twain's nastier tendencies... by which i mean to say that the pound issue is a valuable locus of points if only b/c it permits for plumbing the personal/political/poetic... alan's right about this: there's value in reading even the bad and the ugly... even as i can appreciate that tolerance for same may reduce to individual motivation... and yeah, we each have that little jack-boot fascist inside someplace... mebbe the point is finding ways not to let him out... joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 11:33:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: Re: Marlene Noubese Philip and Pound In-Reply-To: <199603161201.EAA07670@ix14.ix.netcom.com> On Sat, 16 Mar 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: > So, who can introduce me to the work of M. Nourbese Philip? This is a > new name to me. Books, quotes, etc? Marlene Nourbese Philip is a Tobago born poet and essayist who now lives in Canada (Toronto, I think). Her work is challenging because of its use of two dicourses, a so-called standard (educated middle class) Canadian English and what she calls the Caribean demotic. Her book _She Tries Her Tongue her silence softly breaks_ (Charlottown: Ragweed Press, 1989) provides a good example. To pick up a thread from the Pound discussion, Nourbese Phillip's writing certainly can be situated in a genealogy which includes Pound, regardless of her radically different poilitcal agenda, i.e. her search for a "mother tongue" which has been silenced by colonialism. This search is formally enacted through fragmented long poems, classical mythological intertexts, and citations to historical figures. I'm sure I would never have understood her project without some knowledge of the generic conventions that she uses and/or breaks. Conventions I learned about through reading Pound. So until someone can convince me otherwise, I'm for the "if Pound is censored, fascism has won" position. Peter Jaeger ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 08:37:48 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves joe amato wrote: >and yeah, we each have that little jack-boot fascist inside someplace... >mebbe the point is finding ways not to let him out... > >joe almost precisely agree. wld like to refine: mebbe the point is finding ways to DISARM HIM chris ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.16.96 8:37:48 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 12:31:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves Just as an aside: NAMBLA is not about child abuse, but challenging age-of-consent laws and "who is old enough to have rights." A friend of mine, Rick, 23, whose lover (also my friend) is Jason, 15, was charged by Jason's mother as an "abuser of children" because she didn't want to deal with her son's homosexuality. She couldn't have cared less how old Rick was, but used his age as a means of preventing them from seeing each other. The age discrepancy between them may seem big, but when I was 15 and dating college men no one complained or cried "abuse." "Children's" rights, sexual and otherwise, are important. NAMBLA seeks to empower, not abuse, queer kids. Aside over: this business of raising kids in society is a scary one. It does seem to me that an important thing to think about is how to be a parent/teacher w/o putting our kids into a hierarchical relationship with us. Like Ron says, our kids are going to get different perspectives from their friends, etc.--and, from my own (I think this is common) experience, kids are more likely to listen to their friends than their parents; they assume lessons from parents have "motives" and lessons from friends don't. So, it's "desirable" to have one's kids think of one as a friend & equal. One thing I'd like to get rid of (along with those gender pronouns) is "Mom" and "Dad" as opposed to first names. I saw a preview for a film, I forget which one, and the father was talking about sex with his new lover, and the son said, "Please. I'm not ready to think of you as a human being yet." That really resonated with me. It's "funny," but it's also scary as hell. Carolyn Forche writes, "When my son was born, I became mortal." Our kids, unless we stride otherways, are more likely to see it the opposite way: when our kids are born, we become (inhuman) gods. I spent some time on a commune a few years back & met the most amazing kids. They were, *really*, small people. 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, sitting there participating in political discussions with myself and other "adults," and completely willing to call us on our opinions. As a kid I don't think I *ever* stood up (other than tantrums or whining) to adults, certainly not *strangers*. These kids had been taught that they were people; they hadn't been told "I'm the mommy, that's why" or "You'll understand when you're older." They weren't in hierarchical relationships with their parents (except economically)--and it seems to me that kids like this are more likely to stand up to folks in the Real World, to call bullshit, to resist "peer pressure," etc. I don't think we need to raise our kids on communes to raise kids like this. e (lowercase for eryque) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "And how one goes about educating that would-be audience may very likely determine the history of that moment, its direction, the qualities that become emphatic and characteristic of its later influence." --Lyn Hejinian ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 09:35:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Baraka again In-Reply-To: <199603160521.AAA16637@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> well, the first time Baraka went to jail it was because of his reading matter (in the Air Force) and the second time he went to jail it was for what he had printed in _Floating Bear_, and what might irk me is that most people would not see that this was still a cse of going to jail "to help black people" -- Look, none of this has anything to do with assuming any position of superiority, and I was talking about Baraka because it was his name that had been brought up in the discussion -- One does not engage in a critique of racism in verse simply so that one can then hold oneself proudly above it, as having gotten beyond all that -- It is important to anatomize racism in American poetry, antisemitism, homophobia, because we HAVE NOT gotten beyond all that! I do not believe it possible to read Pound coherently without attempting to understand the way in which antisemitism functioned in his thought, and in his poetics -- I do not beliueve we can understand Baraka's post-cultural nationalism poetics/politics without analysing carefully, AS HE DID HIMSELF IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS, the variious dead-ends of that nationalism -- OF COURSE the same sorts of analyses need to be done with other poets as well -- for one example, I think many in the academy who have been gushing about RAP and cultural studies could learn an imprtant cautionary lesson from the BEATS writings about jazz -- And most importantly, the telegraphic ref. to Derrida had to do with this -- We cannot dismiss the NAZI appropriations of Nietzsche simply as rank misreadings, nor can we leave unchallenged readings of Nietzsche that sugest that Nazism is an inevitable outcome of his texts. What we need are readings that account for the ways in which Nietzsche's texts lend themselves to both Nazi and antiNazi readings -- I do not read the racism of tate's poetry or the antisemitism of one phase of Baraka as a means of dismissing these poets, but as a means of understanding what they mean FOR US NOW, how those politics continue to affect our reading, thinking and writing today -- to place a writer in his or her historical context, whether Jefferson or Baraka, is not done either to dismiss or to rescue that writer's racism, but to understand it as living discourse ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 12:58:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew D Epstein Subject: Silliman and Hejinian Reading In-Reply-To: Hi. This is my first post here, but it's just an annoucement. Last week someone mentioned they had seen a flyer for this reading, and I just wanted to make it official. For those of you in the New York area: The F. W. Dupee Poetry Reading Series at Columbia University (founded and organized by Kenneth Koch) is pleased to present: Lyn Hejinian and Ron Silliman Tuesday, March 19 8 PM Maison Francaise Columbia University 116th and Broadway Admission is FREE and there will be a reception following with wine and cheese and other things. Please come! (If anyone needs directions to the Maison Francaise at Columbia, feel free to contact me). Andrew Epstein ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 13:11:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: - Kim Tedrow Subject: Re: Bury Fascist Ezra Pound > At 11:36 PM 3/13/96 +0200, Ada Aharoni wrote: > > >What I suggest is -- just bury the guy and forget about him, alongside his "genius mates" Hitler and Mussolini. > Steve Carll answered: > It would be nice if things were this simple, wouldn't it? > >Ada responded: > Hi! > It could be that simple if we make it so. One of the methods I've used >is just refuse to teach him to my students, and have stopped reading him >a long time ago....... About 10 years ago, I stopped reading anything written by men because I was pissed off about sexism. Showed THEM didn't I? -Kim ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 13:20:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: Bury Fascist Ezra Pound Alan Sondheim: >Hey, no no no... I'm sorry, but _everyone_ should be read; the world is >too complex to do a repeat cleansing. I've read Mein Kampf, Goebbels' >Michael, most of Celine, a lot of Pound. If we're going to ever >comprehend what we ourselves are, and not just our "evil" selves, the >last thing we need is censorship. (And we should not read _X_ say "just >for" the politics or to reprimand, violate - my own relationship to >Heidegger is much more complex than that, for example, breaking out in >other, productive directions.) > >To censor, is to give in; as someone else has pointed out, the fascists >have won. Exactly. Yay Alan! Think back to hich school history class, someone would invarably ask "Why do we have to know all this stupid stuff?" The responsemy teachers gave was invariably that old quote "He who doesn't know the past is doomed to repeat it." (loosely from my remembery of loosely given quotes). It's a crock of shit of course, but it does give a perspective of what goes on (there was a party across the hall last night, noone was over 25 and EVERYone was wearing bellbottoms or polyester flower shirts, and it wasn't a costume party). Knowledge of history does give us a way out (sometimes) when we see the bad shit going down, even if that way out is to migrate to friendlier climates. To say simply "we should stamp out pound and not read him" might be okay ONLY IF YOU'VE ALREADY READ HIM, or at least enough to be disgusted by his ideals, but it's certainly not okay as a general rule for everyone, particularly since he is, like it or not, an important poet as (i think it was) chris s. pointed out. I don't care how adamately you don't want to read someone, and i don't care how violently you assert YOUR right not to read them, but please don't let it get beyond YOURself. Ada: >SORRY, HAVE NO TIME OR USE FOR READING ABOUT DESTRUCTIVENESS, >FASCISM AND >HATRED. I PREFER TO USE MY READING TIME FOR CONSTRUCTIVE ISSUES, >AND >LEARNING ABOUT NEW FIELDS IN POETRY THAT HAVE NOT BEEN >OVER-KILLED BY >USELESS "BADINAGE". I WISH I HAD MORE TIME TO READ MORE "WOMEN >POETRY", >"BLACK POETRY," "THIRD WORLD POETRY," "PEACE POETRY" ETC. WHY >BOTHER WITH >THE LIKES OF NAZI POUND? > ------------------------------------- Way to assert YOUR right not to read him. But do we have "black poetry" without someone to oppress blacks, make it a class rather than an adjective? Love, (and i mean that) Eryque and now that i'm about to send this i get ron's and joe's and chris's postses. amen amen amen ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 13:44:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: Baraka again Aldon wrote: >-- We cannot dismiss the NAZI appropriations of Nietzsche simply as rank >misreadings, nor can we leave unchallenged readings of Nietzsche that >sugest that Nazism is an inevitable outcome of his texts. What we need >are readings that account for the ways in which Nietzsche's texts lend >themselves to both Nazi and antiNazi readings -- well, here we're in a dangerous area. As far as I'm concerned, Nietzsche was very CLEARLY against fascism in his writings. ALL texts in the world "submit" themselves to different readings, readings that the author didn't intend. Like, say, the bible. One would have to disregard MOST of Nietzsche to hallucinate a pro-Nazi stance, as one has to disregard most of the bible to be a member of the religious right. It's like, what do you do with the guy who goes out and rapes a bunch of women and has a copy of "Playboy" in his glove compartment? Not, as far as I'm concerned, blame "Playboy." Is it possible to write responsibly for irresponsible readers? To make sure they won't find what they're determined to find? e PS--my messages were getting bounced back to me again, so I've double-subscribed to poetics until I can figure out which subscription is working and which isn't. Is everyone getting my messages twice? I hope not. How obnoxious. Let me know. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "I know that I know myself/no more than a seed curled in the dark of a winged pod/knows flourishing" --R. Hass ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 10:41:13 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: Bury Fascist Ezra Pound was it raymond federman said abt beckett: the more sam rubs our noses in the shit the more we love it by quoting wch i mean to say (along w/ ron, eryque, joe, alan, wendy, emily, all us chris's and EVERYBODY else and i mean EVERYBODY): the more you look, the more you learn. the more you learn, the more you know. the more you know, the more you can change IF YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY to change. olson: what does not change/ is the will to change i wld change that "does" to "must" for what it's worth later ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.16.96 10:41:13 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 13:57:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves >I spent some time on a commune a few years back & met the most amazing kids. >They were, *really*, small people. 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, sitting there >participating in political discussions with myself and other "adults," and >completely willing to call us on our opinions. As a kid I don't think I >*ever* stood up (other than tantrums or whining) to adults, certainly not >*strangers*. These kids had been taught that they were people; they hadn't >been told "I'm the mommy, that's why" or "You'll understand when you're >older." They weren't in hierarchical relationships with their parents >(except economically)--and it seems to me that kids like this are more >likely to stand up to folks in the Real World, to call bullshit, to resist >"peer pressure," etc. I don't think we need to raise our kids on communes >to raise kids like this. e (lowercase for eryque) Emily, (and btw, i've taken to capitalizing only the first letter of sentences for readability, when i remember to follow my own rules :-) Amazing story, five year olds actually taking place in political discussions? I've met some bright kids, but few that young that would keep a thought around long enough to form solid "intellectual" opinions (as opposed to emotional ones). My mommy always makes fun of her mommy for saying "because i'm the Mommy", but then turns right around and does it anyway. Thank god she can't ground me anymore. eryQue ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 10:54:10 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: Bury Fascist Ezra Pound abt 10 years ago i read a small book of translations of italian and german fascist manifesti, etc., all written before WWII. i'm almost ashamed to admit this, but at the time i was both repulsed by and attracted to these ideas, and i was so scared i immediately began to wonder why. my current attitude is the result of that wondering, which continues to this day and (such is my fervent wish) will go on until i die. ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.16.96 10:54:10 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 11:02:48 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: chris daniels Subject: Re: Baraka again emily --- PS--my messages were getting bounced back to me again, so I've double-subscribed to poetics until I can figure out which subscription is working and which isn't. Is everyone getting my messages twice? I hope not. How obnoxious. Let me know. i'm not getting them twice. ------------------------------------- christopher daniels 3.16.96 11:02:49 am q: "how can you be revolutionary when 20 years ago they said anything goes?" --- charles wourinen (?) a: "free yr mind and yr ass will follow." --- george clinton snail: 1474b 7th st berkeley ca 94710 usa voice: 510.524.5972 http://users.lanminds.com/~kunos/ (constructing) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 15:25:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: learning about the other I think what Ron has said about his "homosexuality" is right on the money. I found when I came to a point that I was questioning my own sexuality, that I was getting into more and more discussions with friends who were homosexuals, finding out about what it meant to come out, what helped them to come out, etc? As well as finding out more and more about gay culture. But for a friend of mine it was a little different... She wasn't questioning her sexuality, but here homophobia, not exactly...more of a fear of gay life and an extreme disgust for it, she had been brought up in an extremely anti-homosexual household. Through working as a waitress she was able to get in touch with that "other," a very nice gay man who was a bartender. She got to know him before she knew he was gay, and was finally led to see that "gays are real people, too." It's too easy to say that the other is inhuman, something that was used to justify all kinds of inhumanity (I find this term odd, because humans are very good at being inhumane). To further the happy ending to her story, she now works with a gay man who is a drag queen and has brought started to get her to come out to some drag shows in DC. Transvestites were weird dirty perverts to her (parental and media education there) and has found these drag shows to be great celebratory experiences, as well as just plain fun. I'd also like to say my "chronic depression" comment has inspired responses that I agree with whole heartedly. I wasn't trying to be so literal, but I should watch myself when in such emotionally charged waters. What I was trying to do was open up the discussion to what causes "fascism," and for me chronic depression, etc. is what made me run into the arms of a heterosexual, homo-phobic, community as a young adolescent, and was comparing that kind of wrong-headed move, and trying to understand it through my own experience. I should have explained it more, but keeping things to yourself becomes a habit after a while. Thanks to chris daniels who was so much more lucid on the topic and was able to bring a lot of factors to light that we should all think about. Not to keep on the point, but I think burying Pound is a very wrong idea. My roomate (he's Jewish) and I got into a very emotional discussion of the holocaust one night and I learned the true meaning of "forgive but never forget." If we forget Hitler, Mussolini, Pound, etc. we will never be able to investigate what is in us that causes these extreme inhumanities. When I read Conrad's work (rampant racism in "...Darkness") it allows me to see aspects of racism in myself that I need to work against. I think the same of the work of Pound, Hitler, etc. Sorry if I'm dragging this out, but I think revising fascism out of history just improves its forecast for the future. James Perez jmp2p@virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 15:28:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves aside to Emily... "I'm not ready to think of you as a human being yet" is from "Kicking and Screaming" amazing how a line that is supposed to be a joke, about a typical situation...thinking about your parents having sex...really pegs down a very disturbing subject James Perez jmp2p@virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 15:39:13 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: Re: Baraka again re: appropriations of Nietzsche by the Nazi's I think this is the same as the Nazi appropriation of Wagner and other German art that I had discussed re. Anselm Keifer's work. I think we have to reclaim these things. It reminds me of the history of dynamite. Invented as a digging tool. Or nuclear fusion/fission...a power source. With every breakthrough there is the opportunity for wrong-headed use. Can the invention of dynamite be said to inherently contain its use as a destructive weapon of war. Perhaps. Can the invention of nuclear fusion be blamed with the massive destruction caused by the bombs. It can also be blamed for the lives saved in radiology and radio-therapies. Anything can be twisted into a "bad" thing by the right person. That just takes the same amount of creativity pointed in a direction that is very human, but that we like to think is inhuman (I'm human, he's not, therefore I am not like him...now I feel better). James Perez jmp2p@virginia.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 15:09:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Paul Naylor Subject: Nourbese Philip Peter beat me to the punch on Nourbese Philip. Glad to hear that others are reading her work. _She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks_ (Ragweed, 1989), which won the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1988, is her best work, and there is one poem in particular that engages Pound directly. It's in a series called "The Question of Language is the Answer to Power" (which was also published in _Hambone #8). Here's an excerpt: word it off speech it off word in my word word in your word I going word my word begin the in of beginning _OO as in how did they 'lose' a language._ empires _oo as in 'look' at the spook erect with the new "Make it new" he said "Make it new" floundering in the old For those interested, Nourbese also has a fine collection of essays, _Frontiers: Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture_ (The Mercury Press, 1992) and a long poem in poetry and prose, _Looking For Livingstone_ (The Mercury Press, 1991) as well as an "adolescent" (for lack of a better term), _Harriet's Daughter_ (Heinemann, 1988) I should also note that all but the collection of essays are published under the name Marlene Nourbese Philip. She also has a piece of fiction in the latest issue of _Hambone_. I think her work is well worth searching out -- for many of the reasons Peter mentions. And, finally, to put in yet another plug for _River City_, she's a contributing editor (along with Nathaniel Mackey, Michael Davidson, and Omar Castaneda), and we will be publishing an interview with Nourbese in the upcoming special issue on "The Caribbean: South of the South." Paul Naylor MAIL SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 16:16:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: switzerland What are you reading these days. --Jd ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 15:24:45 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Paul Naylor Subject: Nourbese Philip Just a correction to my earlier post. _Harriet's Daughter_ is a _novel_ addressed to adolescents (still for lack of a better term). And she does live in Toronto and has for the last 25 years, which is one reason her work isn't well known in the U.S. Paul Naylor MAIL SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" SEND in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 16:41:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: learning about the other Having been "My First Homo" to a number of people, I have to say I'm a little worried about the "I was homophobic, but then I met this nice normal homosexual" thing. I don't wish to underestimate the power of personal experience--"evidence"--to change minds in a nice & effective way, but...what if you never meet that special homo? What if all the gay people you meet are assholes? You stay homophobic? When friends tell me I'm the first dyke they've ever met, I get a little worried about the (implied) responsibility: I'll be the deciding factor. What if I'm in a bitchy mood? Uh-oh. I've also been told, in many a relieved voice, "Oh, wow, you're not like the stereotype at all." Meaning, workboots crewcut & flannel. While I know that stereotypes are harmful, and while it's nice to know that in some way I've de-legitimized them for these "wow"-ing folks, I'm more interested in asking: what's wrong with workboots? What if I *were* "like that"? Would we then not have spoken? If meeting me, a "nice" "normal" (loosely) homo has changed your mind about homosexuality, does this mind-change include the workboot gals---or do they still repulse you? And if so, why? Do you still "have a problem" with homosexuality, just not with me? Mistaking your lack of emilyphobia for a lack of homophobia? etc. In days of old (highschool) I felt very pleased to put a friendly "normal" face on homosexuality for my small Virginian town. "Look, she's in the honor society! First chair clarinet! She laughs! She cries! She eats food!" etc. But I *have* realized that, for ex., my family members, "accept" me but not "those daggers" or "those queens." Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather the idea of "normalcy" be questioned than my "normalcy" praised. Or, in other words, I don't think it should be the responsibility of gay people to cure straight people's homophobia. flaunting it, e ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "I know that I know myself/no more than a seed curled in the dark of a winged pod/knows flourishing" --R. Hass ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 17:03:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves yes, chris daniels to DISARM the little fascist in us all is TO LET HIM (gender?) OUT, not to keep it bottled up.... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 17:26:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: p.s. other Sorry I was a little frothy in that last post. I forgot to mention another problem I have with "getting rid of one's homophobia" because of one great gay person one met. That's: is it not possible you might meet one helluva-guy fascist or Nazi? How do we want to decide what we believe? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@mail.erols.com "I know that I know myself/no more than a seed curled in the dark of a winged pod/knows flourishing" --R. Hass ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 17:29:17 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: let's NOT talk about fascists, but ourselves emily sed: >Just as an aside: NAMBLA is not about child abuse, but challenging >age-of-consent laws and "who is old enough to have rights." A friend of >mine, Rick, 23, whose lover (also my friend) is Jason, 15, was charged by >Jason's mother as an "abuser of children" because she didn't want to deal >with her son's homosexuality. She couldn't have cared less how old Rick >was, but used his age as a means of preventing them from seeing each other. >The age discrepancy between them may seem big, but when I was 15 and dating >college men no one complained or cried "abuse." "Children's" rights, sexual >and otherwise, are important. NAMBLA seeks to empower, not abuse, queer kids. that view would carry more weight with me if NAMBLA was an organization of queer kids; it is in fact primarily made up of adults, most of whom have a vested interest (by virture of their taste in sexual partners) in lowering the age of consent. i'm for empowering children in all areas ov their lives, as i am for empowering all individuals... which i think means opposing the ability of people with more power from using that position for their own benefit at the expense of those with less power. despite their rhetoric, i don't believe that is the agenda of NAMBLA. but to address ron's original question; as a survivor of abuse, one of the things i do is to speak up when folks would ignore or whitewash the kinds of situations that have caused me so much pain. just as various have vehemently reminded me of the pain that pound caused, & still cause. i'll continue to read pound for what i find of use, but i appreciate the reminders here that his work is compromised--for that matter, i'll still read ginsberg; but i won't pretend his NAMBLA shit means anything more than he'd like to sleep with young guys. sincere luigi ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 17:39:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Baraka again Dear Aldon-- You're right. I overstated the case about the reasons Baraka went to jail. Further, yes Baraka did ANALYZE HIMSELF IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS ABOUT HIS INVOLVEMENT in Black Nationalism. But to me--I still love reading the stuff from the period. My only regret is that certain anthologies don't publish stuff AFTER that period--and give the distorted view of a two phased Baraka. The dead lecturer somewhat white assimilati- onist Jones (learning the language of the enemy to some extent so he could curse in it?--or at least get famous in white circles, a la the early FANON--and there may be a psychological need for this as well, a genuine love in the early years of Olson/Creeley/O'Hara who influenced that work) and then the BLACK NATIONALIST. Yet, since I am interested in Baraka's whole OUEVRE (sic?), I think we can't simply dismiss even (scratch even) this phase as nothing but negative. The separatism, like Malcolm X's, WAS heroic, and perhaps a necessary phase. Granted, it's easy to say this in retrospect (and may have been harder to accept at the time--if I may strain an analogy here, just as NASHVILLE SKYLINE alienated alot of Dylan's fans at the time, but later listeners see it as part of the overall sense of Dylan)--Yet, part of this very much has to do with CLEARING A SPACE FOR ONESELF.... you know? the whole Blake "I must create my own...or be enslaved by another's" and in such a creation often EXTREME postures are needed. The struggle against anti-semitism, homophobia, racism, classism, sexism (did i leave anything out?) can not be enforced. I certainly would appreciate it if anybody calls me on what may be perceived as any kind of hate politics. But the absence of hate is not enough, and the FEAR of being seen as sexist, racist, etc, may be a problem to address. I'll offer two examples: One of them reminds me of the POMO thread. While teaching a class of mostly black students, one student told me how she finds a certain kind of racism in the pious use of the term "african american" by so many whites. Now, this is a thorny issue--and the fact that I generally say BLACK does not make me immune...but this reminded me of a time I saw Angela Davis at Smith College lecture about how Northeast liberals (as I think she categorized them) are in some ways worse than the BLATANT racism of the southeners. At least they, she said, can look us in the eye...and deal wit