========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:10:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: nonset form In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Fri, 31 May 1996 13:18:45 -0700" Dear George Bowering, Yes, this is an interesting difference, isn't it? I think one of the reasons I enjoy "predictable" forms or whatever on earth we are calling them now, wherever on earth we are callingthem now, is just because they do seem to be alive o n the page to me. And to you poems are most alive off the page. Are these open form poems / do you notice a difference depending on the level of predictabiliy of the poem in your sense that it's alive off teh page? I guess to mea predictable form seems a transcription of a performance always, since the repetition and the dialectic of expectation I have with it act like a physical voice to me, even when it's just in a book. --Annie and t okind of s athey are alive e to t eh ci ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:31:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Fri, 31 May 1996 11:44:23 -0700" <2.2.16.19960531114639.2437dd86@pop.slip.net> A thought: Steve Carll wrote: "overterminologization does violence to the phenomenon [i.e. the poetic form /deform-AF ] being engaged with." EXACTLY. I don't know about the over, but terminologization does do violence to the phenomenon. And isn't that voilence a good thing for writing? It stops smug following in tracks by clarifying the truth that they ARE tracks, and forces you to be aware, to change your tarcks, to do violence back. That's waht keeps it alive. So terminology can be the frog you have to leap over. --Annie F. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:42:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: Nonset form In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Fri, 31 May 1996 17:27:43 -0700" Re Charles Alexander's question on the origin of the sonnet, According to Paul Oppenheimer's fascinating book The Sonnet, it was invewnted by a lawyer early in the 13th century, Giacomo da Lentino, who took an existing Sicilian folk song stanza and added the 6 lines, and the "turn," to it--thus, in Oppenheimer's view, inventing modern poetry by taking poems out ofthe public realm wher e you need an audience and into the arena of self-contained self-ref lection (since the two-part form (actually three-part, since Oppenheimer claims that even int he Italian sonnet the couplet usually has a separate presence) allows the poet to resolve a problem alone, to talk to her/himself. The term sonnet ws first used by Dante, who ws the one to really popularize the form, fifty years later. Oppenheimer says that it really does NOT mean "little song" and makes much of the fact that the sonnet may have been the first kind of poem NOT meant to be set to music. He claims that sonnet means simply "noise." he also says the strucutre exactly reflects the harmonia mundi, the pythagorean/platonic theory of numbers.o iaionor, la ehrt sea .ri I like this typosoup so much I'm keeping it in the main text. Annie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 11:07:12 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Music City sonnet Comments: cc: clements@fas.harvard.edu, lsr3h@virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com, guitart@acsu.buffalo.edu, MDamon9999@aol.com, cschei1@grfn.org, AERIALEDGE@aol.com >> > bantering martians hope for glory >> > we committed literary piracy on the high seas >> > Al left Billie Joe Cat found the path to >> > hunger large as scaredy free-throw >> > underground stone guitar blue uniformed blow >> > mouth on double-cross diploma clue >> > a world without nouns is healthy? >> > sequined sequels quells >> > primacy recency a magnificat its own >> > catorziemme and quattrocento etc >> > and minnie pearl and conway twitty >> > a dirge enough for Solent murk >> > too much robing and screeing >> > the voice of an angel and the soul of >> > blue few, grow a garage band >> > glue bag a branding fag wagered row >> > Sue the crew could count, although >> > soccer Tolemy semper vivens ection >> > >> > >> ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 10:04:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: just thought you'd want to see this In-Reply-To: <01I5BIFKFWB691VSQU@cnsvax.albany.edu> from "Chris Stroffolino" at May 30, 96 02:07:21 pm Chris, did you post this piece of "academicism" to rile us up? It certainly demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of what's at stake in this writing. Part of the impact and importance of _Pieces_ was the way it undermined the entire notion of the "trivial" poem and it's new critical counterpart, the monumental poem. The metrical ramifications of "A Piece" alone are worthy of extended consideration. In place--that is within the unfolding thinking of the book--the moves this poem makes are crucial. Only a neo-scholastic could miss it. As for opacity--good grief, do we still have to put up with that ridiculous concept? And biting gem? Gimmee a break. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca > I find RC's work highly uneven. Many poems are little biting gems (such as > the renowned "I Know A Man"), while others strike me as mere finger > exercises, opaque or trivial notations. An instance of opacity, which opens > the poem "To And": > > To and > back and forth > direction > is a third > > or simple fourth > of the intention > like it > goes and goes. > > And here's a poem I would call trivial, "A Piece" in its entirety: > > One and > one, two, > three. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 09:40:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: PROTO-ANTHOLOGY of HYPERMEDIA POETRY now AVAILABLE kudos! to chris funkhouser for his provocative, linked essay on the web about hypermedia poetry... again, at http://cnsvax.albany.edu/~poetry/hyperpo.html check it out!... joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 12:08:00 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: just thought you'd want to see this Chris, Creeley's poem to WCW I would think provides the rationale / defense for C's "finger exercises. Burt ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 12:53:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: -- When nighttime falls, I crawl the walls, Miss all that I hold dear; I drop a tear, my crying stalls, Because I walk the sphere. I walk the left, I walk the right; I walk both far and near. I am bereft, an ugly sight, Because I walk the sphere. The sphere is big, it has no eyes, It has no ears to hear my cries; It is a nightmare in disguise - I walk it in great fear. I never know where I have been In spite of mourning and of sin, Because I walk the sphere. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 09:26:56 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: Music City sonnet In-Reply-To: <833623319.2661.0@slang.demon.co.uk> > >> > bantering martians hope for glory > >> > we committed literary piracy on the high seas > >> > Al left Billie Joe Cat found the path to > >> > hunger large as scaredy free-throw > >> > underground stone guitar blue uniformed blow > >> > mouth on double-cross diploma clue > >> > a world without nouns is healthy? > >> > sequined sequels quells > >> > primacy recency a magnificat its own > >> > catorziemme and quattrocento etc > >> > and minnie pearl and conway twitty > >> > a dirge enough for Solent murk > >> > too much robing and screeing > >> > the voice of an angel and the soul of > >> > blue few, grow a garage band > >> > glue bag a branding fag wagered row > >> > Sue the crew could count, although > >> > soccer Tolemy semper vivens > ection > >> > noften nifty Nat Nat! shrinking > >> > > >> > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 13:34:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS At 03:42 PM 5/31/96 -0500, Annie Finch wrote: >Dear Steve, >So you cede the point taht one can predict what an open-form poem or chant will >be about, or a projective verse poem, as much as one can predict what a sonnet >will be about. >Then how can you read at all, if you find such that such predictability >precludes reading? >Do you honestly think that every "experimental" poem is in a completely new >form? You seem to be painting yourself into a corner. > >-Annie Well, appearances can be deceiving, can't they? :-) In general, this predictability precludes my interest in reading it to exactly the extent that the poem is (unreflectively) "about" staying within the "traditional" confines of the form. Again, it goes back to, is the form being simply used as a template into which one is plugging words in order to manufacture a poem in that form, or is the form itself being honestly engaged with in such a way that it, too, transcends some of the limitations history has imposed on it? My answer to the last question here depends on how we define "completely new form." You recently posted something to the effect that it's fine for people to experiment in such a way that they change the forms, but they shouldn't drag the terminology with them into the (now-changed) form. If, for the sake of dialogue, I accepted those terms, then I'd have to say that any poem which created such an epiphany of its form would indeed create a "completely" new form. However, I don't believe the terminology needs to be so rigid. No, I don't think every experimental poem is in a completely new form, I think our notion of form itself needs to be more fluid. Which kind of puzzles me about where you're coming from. You seem to be arguing that we should be more precise in our definitions of various forms, but when Jordan asked what your definition of a sonnet is, you replied you couldn't articulate one, but you knew a sonnet when you saw one. But a lot of people could make a similar claim (heck, I know a sonnet when I see one, too) and yet be seeing a huge range of different things as sonnets that others would never consider sonnets. So we have, it seems to me, two choices at this crossroads: 1) We can stop worrying about the precise boundaries of definition, allowing everybody to exercise (and, not coincidentally, share) their own intuition with regard to the form, or 2) We can try to find some authority for our own definition and exclude everybody else's. (Of course, now that I say that, a dozen people will post a dozen "third choices" I didn't think of!) |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| `````````````````````````````````````````````` Steve Carll sjcarll@slip.net I listen. I hear nothing. Only the cow, the cow of nothingness, mooing down the bones. ~~Galway Kinnell `````````````````````````````````````````````` |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 00:15:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Sat, 01 Jun 1996 13:34:04 -0700" <2.2.16.19960601133614.27478678@pop.slip.net> Dear Steve, It seems to me that your idea of where forms' boundaries go is rather sputtery. On the one hand, you ahve an idea that a poem in a (shall we say predetermined rather than traditional, for the sake of variety) predetermined form is poured into something "rigid," a word that sets my teeth on edge in this context because ANY good poem in a predetermined form naturally changes that form! Form is only rigid in a bad poem, in other words. But, though you don't accept the possibility for fluidity and dynamic engagement within a predetermined form, you do allow for some quasi-mystical point where suddenly the form is being "changed" in a daring and valuable way, by exactly the kinds of technical changes that were futile mechanical exercises while one was "inside" the form. I don't see such a magic point where what had been robotic submission is suddenly transformed into charismatic rebellion. To me there is sa continuum between what happens "inside" the form and what happens outside it. Maybe, paradoxically, that is why I am more interested in trying to speak exactly, in terminology that accords with common sense, about the differences it IS possible to spot along the contiuum. --Annie ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 00:39:00 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Nonset form In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 31 May 1996 17:27:43 -0700 from On Fri, 31 May 1996 17:27:43 -0700 George Bowering said: > >Couple decades ago I was listening to Kenner, cant remember whether it was >in the Japanese restaurant or at the lecture, when he posited that the >sonnet was accidentally created when some Italian poet, writing eight-line >stanzas, quit after doing 6 in his second stanza. Someone else found this >and mistook it for a new form, and did another, etc. > >Kenner compared this with the post-renaissance European sculptors who found >Greek or Roman busts that were just torsi, the heads and limbs broken off, >so that they started doing it too, not breaking off liombs, but making >sculptures of torsi, and so we got that form. Critics are full of clever "it". More likely the form of the sonnet corresponds to the basic mathematical ratio of the fibonacci series found both in nature and in a great deal of ancient & modern art. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 17:40:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS At 12:15 AM 6/2/96 -0500, you wrote: >Dear Steve, >It seems to me that your idea of where forms' boundaries go is rather sputtery. >On the one hand, you ahve an idea that a poem in a (shall we say predetermined >rather than traditional, for the sake of variety) predetermined form is poured >into something "rigid," a word that sets my teeth on edge in this context >because ANY good poem in a predetermined form naturally changes that form! Form >is only rigid in a bad poem, in other words. > But, though you don't accept the possibility for fluidity and dynamic >engagement within a predetermined form, you do allow for some quasi-mystical >point where suddenly the form is being "changed" in a daring and valuable way, >by exactly the kinds of technical changes that were futile mechanical exercises >while one was "inside" the form. > I don't see such a magic point where what had been robotic submission >is suddenly transformed into charismatic rebellion. To me there is sa continuum >between what happens "inside" the form and what happens outside it. >Maybe, paradoxically, that is why I am more interested in trying to speak >exactly, in terminology that accords with common sense, about the differences >it IS possible to spot along the contiuum. > >--Annie Well, again, Annie, what seems "sputtery" to you is simply paradoxical to me, and what you describe as paradoxical in your own interest is probably what seems contradictory to me in your position. I don't agree at all with your summarization of my perspective. It's not true (and to my memory, I've never said) that I don't accept the possibility for fluidity and dynamic engagement within a traditional form. The word you're using as quasi-synonymous, though, "predetermined", that worries me. If the thing is TOO predetermined, the form is really doing the job that the poet should be doing, don't you think so? I haven't argued in terms of any "point", mystical or not, separating "submission" from "rebellion" (which latter term I haven't used; this isn't about rebellion at all but mindfulness, at least from the point of view of the writer.) What I meant was that, as a reader, if I get the sense that the poet has just been facilely plugging in words to fill out a rhyme scheme or a meter, it turns me off. Of course a good poem in a form won't give me this impression; of course a poem in a form invented by the poet shifts me into different questions: how much of this form is content? Is this form itself interesting? And while I'm on the subject, the "violence" I was referring to by overterminologization (what's the rhetorical term for a word that's an example of what it describes?) is the violence done to the poem when we try to tear it apart analytically and stop listening to what it's saying. Now, I realize that the form it's in is part of what it's saying, but it's only part. I caught myself wondering yesterday why I'm even involved in this question, since I generally don't give it much bother either, and I realized it was because Alan Sondheim posted a beautiful poem last week, and I felt that your response to it was dismissive; that you were ignoring its content on the basis of what you felt was its specious claim to sonnethood. I saw that as an act of violence against that poem, and no, I don't feel that's a good thing. Later on I saw that you had indeed appreciated it on another level, but of course by that time more ire had been raised. (BTW, Alan, if you're still reading, the one you posted yesterday was--how can I say it?--exceptional.) All poems take some form; form is nothing other than the structure by which the poem appears in the world. The two extremes of the evolution-of-form question as I see it are these: On the one hand you could argue to the extremest minutiae of form--every word, punctuation mark and space are part of the form of that poem (an extremely rigid definition of form)--and thus that to change one word, one comma, is to introduce a new form necessitating a new name. True in a certain way, but kind of a time-waster I'm sure everyone would agree. On the other hand you could argue that there's really only one form a poem can take: poetic form (aka "the form of a poem.") Also true in a certain way, but then we can't talk about interesting patterns that pop up in certain poems and not others. Somewhere in between these two hands is the question of "traditional" forms and "experimental" forms, and it's a gigantic power struggle, and I think it would be best now to take a really broad view of this situation and not trample on any poems that may have fallen underfoot. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 22:56:57 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Bernadette Mayer comes to SF--ANNOUNCEMENT This is Dodie Bellamy. Small Press Traffic is hosting an impromptu reception for Bernadette Mayer Saturday, June 8 at 8 p.m. Any poets (or other interested parties) in the San Francisco Bay Area who'd like to come, backchannel me for details. Onward! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 23:15:39 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: "Stone Marmalade" Thank you, Rod Smith, for placing "Stone Marmalade" so high up (#2!) in your list of good current books. Now I, Kevin Killian, will bring you all backstage into the mysterious world of "Stone Marmalade," the play I wrote with Leslie Scalapino. Here's what you do first: if you're not nearby Bridge Street Books, or any other bookstore that carries this item, order directly from publisher: Singing Horse Press P O Box 40034 Philadelphia, PA 19106 USA (215) 844-7678 It's only $9.50 (US), plus add $2.00 for shipping & handling. Okay, now that THAT's out of the way, and you have your copies in hand, we (Leslie and I) you to play a part in this play when she and I give it this big staging at the San Francisco Art Institute in December. We are in desperate need of poets willing to don cow costumes and travel, submerged under swamp water except for your heads, for the two hours the play lasts. Stone Marmalade, set in Hell, is our version of the old Orpheus and Eurydice story, as seen through the filter of the thought of the Italian philosophy of Giorgio ("Language and Death") Agamben. A year and a half ago, when this play was a work in progress, we put a little of it on at the Kootenay School in Vancouver. David Ayre was a handsome Orpheus, Charles Watts a quirky, puzzled Agamben, Catriona Strang was very striking as Julia Roberts, and Scott Watson and Susan Clark essayed the malicious, hungry neighbors of Hell. Lisa Robertson strode the stage in full Eurydice grandeur. Excellent work by all! Then this past spring I (Kevin) tried acting another scene from this play, at New College in San Francisco-playing Kathy, the assistant of Eurydice (did I mention that Eurydice is not only queen of hell, but also runs its airport duty-free shop--following Agamben's apercu that the modern day airport duty-free shop is a space outside of juridice?) . . . I was backed by two mighty Greek choruses, one of the Bacchantes (played by Renee Gladman, Carla Harryman, Hoa Nguyen, Alicia Wing) and one of a bunch of puzzled male neighbors (Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan and Dale Smith). I was like Maria Callas come back to life, only . . . younger I suppose, and I did not have to sing. A month later I brought the same act to New York, at the Segue Foundation space, where Erin Courtney, Elizabeth Fodaski, Deirdre Kovac and Heather Ramsdell played the mad, vicious Bacchantes, and Bruce Andrews, Kevin Davies and Bill Luoma were testosterone personified as the neighbors. I have nothing but praise for all the above "performers." However in December we need plenty of poets and painters capable of playing the sick, Georgia O'Keeffe-like, soaking wet cattle of hell who fill the inferno with low sick moos. And so report to the casting couch of me (Kevin Killian) or her (Leslie Scalapino) before December 1st, script in hand, available now from Singing Horse Press as above. Thank you all! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 20:33:54 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Salmon Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS At 05:40 PM 2/06/96 -0700, you wrote: >>--Annie > >Somewhere in between these two hands is the question of "traditional" forms >and "experimental" forms, and it's a gigantic power struggle, and I think it >would be best now to take a really broad view of this situation and not >trample on any poems that may have fallen underfoot. > >Steve > Steve, As many readers can only glimpse the carpet between books - trampling on poetry is sometimes unavoidable. Dan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 10:03:46 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: query: Russian residencies I would be grateful for any leads regarding possibilities for teaching or writers residencies in St. Petersburg Russia this fall. Please backchannel only to Henry_Gould@brown.edu. Spasiba, HG ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 10:55:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: broad view Dear Steve, Actually, the more this discussion progresses the more it seems there is just a hair's breadth between the two attitudes in question (wasn't that what someone recently mentioned on this list separated the nominalists and the idealists?) So I too look forward to a broad view. The Exaltation of Forms anthology is gathering poets from this list at a good clip to edit sections on experimental forms, (still room for more, too), and maybe whenit comes out it will help provide such a view. As Lynn Emmanuel pointed out in an essay on "Language Poetrey and New formalism"'," which was I believe critical of both equally, both are very interestd in form and technique as opposed to the extreme prioritization of content that dominates the belated romanticism of mainstreamd poetry. I think that many "post-new-formalists," or whatever one could call the younger generation, would readily admit that their interest in form arises from a desire to make their poems "anti-absorptive," to use Charles Bern stein's term for it. ntms of a tenhl, it. I am still trying to place you exactly from New College days. can you refresh my memory? --Annie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 10:04:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher J. Beach" Subject: Re: broad view In-Reply-To: <01I5GXERM8T08WXQLY@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> I am growing a bit weary of this discussion of poetic form, since it remains on what for me is a frustrating level of generality. Questions such as whether "open form" poems are just as predictable as formal ones, or whether analyzing a poem's form does "violence" to it are simply too vague to engage with, which is why I think many people on the list are turned off by this whole issue. It would be much more interesting, I think, to look at specific poems, whether traditional sonnets, "experimental" sonnets, or non-sonnets, in an attempt to understand how they manipulate form and how they either conform to or defy expectation. It is easy to make generalized claims about the possibilities of the sonnet or of any other form, but it is more difficult, and I think more useful, to discuss them in the hands of a particular writer. I also don't believe these comparisons between "new formalism" and "language poetry" hold much water. They are two entirely different phenomena and have very different critical and institutional histories. To be "critical of both equally" only implies a lack of attention to what either is doing. It may be that some post-new-formalists believe they are trying to use the form to create an "anti-absorptive" poem, but how does this work in practice? Once again, I would like to see the actual poems. I don;t mean to be dismissive of the issue of form, which I believe is crucial--I just think we need to start nuancing our comments a bit more if it is going to lead to anything but a kind of intellectual mud-slinging or vague philosophizing. Christopher Beach On Mon, 3 Jun 1996, Annie Finch wrote: > Dear Steve, > > Actually, the more this discussion progresses the more it seems there is just a > hair's breadth between the two attitudes in question (wasn't that what someone > recently mentioned on this list separated the nominalists and the idealists?) > So I too look forward to a broad view. The Exaltation of Forms anthology is > gathering poets from this list at a good clip to edit sections on experimental > forms, (still room for more, too), and maybe whenit comes out it will help > provide such a view. As Lynn Emmanuel pointed out in an essay on "Language > Poetrey and New formalism"'," which was I believe critical of both equally, > both are very interestd in form and technique as opposed to the extreme > prioritization of content that dominates the belated romanticism of mainstreamd > poetry. I think that many "post-new-formalists," or whatever one could call > the younger generation, would readily admit that their interest in form > arises from a desire to make their poems "anti-absorptive," to use Charles Bern > stein's term for it. > ntms of a tenhl, it. > I am still trying to place you exactly from New College days. can you refresh > my memory? > --Annie > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 13:55:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: sonnet preservation society I believe the following, by Gary Lenhart, is a sonnet. THE GREAT AWAKENING II Knowing what we couldn't know before, Although we were told by almost all, Today we stand among the many Happy to be pigeon-holed, less than Evangelical about the changed "Reasons for Being" we bandy In our abode, but tickled pink to be Near our daughter's sweet nature, even when Exhausted in the pre-dawn. If we Kowtow to earn a smile now and again, Again and again, must that sour This dotage with adverse repercussions? Idiot grins sum us up fine. Though our Eyes are open, we are out of our minds. (from _Light Heart_, Hanging Loose Press, 1991) I also believe that this poem, by Edwin Denby, is a sonnet: THE SHOULDER The shoulder of a man is shaped like a baby pig. It terrifies and it bores the observer, the shoulder. The Greeks, who had slaves, were able to hitch back and rig The shoulder, so the eye is flattered and feels bolder. But that's not the case in New York, where a roomer Stands around day and night stupefied with his clothes on The shoulder, hung from his neck (half orchid, half tumor) Hangs publicly with a metabolism of its own. After it has been observed a million times or more A man hunches it against a pole, a jamb, a bench, Parasite he takes no responsibility for. He becomes used to it, like to the exhaust stench. It takes the corrupt, ectoplasmic shape of a prayer Or money, that connects with a government somewhere. (from _Complete Poems_, Random House, 1986) Denby's poem puts the 'tourne' a little sooner than one expects, and Lenhart smudges it, the 'tourne', but these both have that standard fourteen line length, the last two lines reserved for closing remarks. How not to sound unreasonably like one writing a poem. Lenhart, I think, builds up a stilted but pleasant lyricism, which he then pushes over. Denby (who seems a lot like William Burroughs in this poem) allocates a classical grace for some potential shoulder, which grace he slouches away in the second stanza. The poem riffs on some 'enstranged' views of the shoulder, closing with a pretty spectacular connection between the meatiness of the body and one's generally dismal location in the so-called scheme of things. Maybe it does. I dunno. Somebody (Christopher Beach?) said this kind of thing would make the discussion livelier. The opposition to the discussion is probably not unlike in kind the opposition to the form--irritation at an archaism, already readily dismissed by our (we hope) ancestor, W.C.W. At any rate, these are two recent readable postmodern sonnets. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 14:10:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: broad view In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Mon, 03 Jun 1996 10:04:50 -0700" Dear Christopher J. Beach, Hear, hear! A Finch ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 14:17:27 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: so not again sonnet WHERE THE SONNET WENT Ten thousand feet above the ear plateau and smaller than a sixth of an infinitesimal the whiskers of a cat were barely visible. Nevertheless, the physicists (who know about these things) were able to show this feline had a phantom quantum double. Such heavenly things are figures here below. The theologians thought the cat was treble. "Roughen your act," grumbled the singing clown in a cat's voice - "smooth numbers cause trouble. There were three ravens sitting in a tree, With a hey, nonny nonny down down down. They were as black as black could be..." And he banged on his eardrum in the dry rubble. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 11:42:44 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: nonsuch sonnet includes allentois wrench torque Form is only rigid in a bad poem. There is a mystical point where rigid and rigere split, then the piece (whether sonnet or otherwise) ceases to be an exercise composed of "robotic submission" to the form. These are the ways in which ommon sense is not all that common. Terminology bores me, a named object does not become owned through the naming process in the same way that god is not further revealed to a person who cannot call jwy as such without syllables. There is no continuum except in terms of the overarching or the archetypal, values of written sets of words fluctuate continually. Annie, perhaps this is the difference you believe possible to spot, as if capitalizing IS will give that set of characters more weight in the discussion, or yelling "eidolons" with a megaphone on top of the largest building in a city means that more people are educated about poetry then when grounded handing out flyer's in front of a subway entrance. David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 15:07:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: Re: chax books I haven't read either of these, but I'll support any endorsement of either Mac Cormack's or Steve McCaffery's poetry. Jonathan Brannen >On the subject of Karen Mac Cormack's books, the one book of hers >not so far mentioned, and unfortunately not to my knowledge >available other than secondhand, is her first: Nothing By Mouth, >published, I think, in 1984, and not by Chax. > >And not to not plug Steve McCaffery's latest book of poetry, >it's just out from ECW Press in Toronto: The Cheat of >Words. Includes poems some may have seen over the years in excerpted >form in West Coast Line, hole, and other mags, and unpublished >early pieces. > >Louis > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 21:00:38 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS overterminologization (what's the rhetorical term for a word that's an example of what it describes?) Autonym (I think), like "noun", "pentasyllabic", "shibboleth", "misspellt", "obfuscatory", "autonym" and "word". Tom Beard. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 18:25:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet includes allentois wrench torque In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Mon, 03 Jun 1996 11:42:44 -0600 (CST)" <9605038338.AA833825936@smtp-gw.mosby.com> "god is not further revealed to a person who cannot call joy without syllables." True. and yet naming is one way things can be approached, the repetitions of the tea ceremony do yield moments, some people like to sit in a certain way when they meditate. Isn't this just a matter of temperament or even phase of life? To say that "there is no continuum except in terms of the overarching and archetypal; values of written sets of words fluctuate continually" is itself a nonfluctuating value claim, perhaps more dangerous because it is may be tempted to forget its own solidity? --A. R. Crane Finch "eidolon?" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 10:58:09 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Nonset form Dear Annie, Your postings are interesting and persuasive. I am searching for, way back, why I abandoned metre-and-rhyme defined forms. Long pause. However, having developed practices other than those of writing in metre-and-rhyme, I don't think I now want to return to what I perhaps foolishly perhaps not foolishly abandoned. As you and others note this is a hot topic. Best Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 20:55:48 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: ode to a colostomy bag In-Reply-To: <01I5GXERM8T08WXQLY@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu>; from "Annie Finch" at Jun 3, 1996 10:55 am I'm going to write a series of sonnets about the various women whom I have been in brief memorable love with, throughout the 1980s, when I've been drunk. Ok? Actually, I've been, structurally speaking, drunk for a long time - ever since our New World slaves first cut down cane, and rum was available to London sonneteers. I admit that to write these boxes these days is somewhat like willful suspension over an ideological overhang, with a hangover. I have to chip away even at the _adjectival_ use of "universal." And I'm on the wagon now, so I've got to be indirect about history - the rum (ie spirit) business, etc. In fact, why not just use a muted symbol, which might get passed off as completely without a referent - e.g. "ebony log"? It's as if the "making up" of poesis has become the make-up required for a pose, true. Please bear with me as I try, as best I can, to manage the contradictions that come with the recursive properties of literary effects. Make-Up Sling me the run-again please to not answer in poem poems. If I could word it through the prism so the text of ourselves is the text of an eye beyond, if I could hold the ebony log straight as it's squashed into two dimensions, if I could ease the half-shell into seas on the lee of engagement, I would put off the accretion of legend and love, for these are sounds forced into a box to elude the prevailing code of thinned-out universe terms. Gavin Selerie, from _Elizabethan Overhang_ (Cambridge, UK: Spectacular Diseases, 1989) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 23:09:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: - Kim Tedrow Subject: Re: ode to a colostomy bag For a brief moment, I was confused as to whether this post was from the Poetics List or from the Irritable Bowel Disease Support List. Anything is possible on the internet. -Kim ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 02:21:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: The rin-tin-tintinnabulations that so musically swell-- As per my vast and prestigious experience playing French Latin lounge versions of Sixties protest songs: a popular request. A nameless (and you *shall* remain nameless, ___) listserv subscriber requested that I post a few private comments. Here they are: =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7= =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7= =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7 > _____ isn't attacking Poe, s/he's attacking someone else's reading > of Poe (the ghost in ___'s head, perhaps). > People are free to attack Poe all they like. There are many good > reasons to denounce Poe (though my hard-on for Poe's sound-world > prevents me from joining in). But mere irony, mere disapproval, > is no better than sentimentality--no better than > the pretensions it tries to seek out and mock. > What exactly does ____ find less sing-songy, less mannered, than Poe-- > the jingles of Maggie Estep!? Side-note: When I dropped by Chez Rollo to deliver my piece (posted here) that made fun of Hal Sirowitz (my pal), Edwin Torres (total stranger), David Huberman (improved my quality of life dramatically) and Bob Holman (yoo-hoo, sailor), among others, who do you think was there but Mr. Torres himself? What an odd coincidence, I thought. Will he enjoy my parody, or take humorless offense, as Allan Ginsberg (unbelievably) has been doing? I never found out; the guy took off before I could decipher his airy expression and airier body language. It just goes to show you: "You set out to shock others, but in the end, you only succeed in shocking yourself."--Lynne Tillman (though the point of "parodying" another writer is really to try to figure out what in the hell said writer is doing). =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7= =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7= =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7 By the way: I've been reading Raymond Roussel's _How I Wrote Certain of My Books_, and find myself agreeing with his thoroughly *arbitrary* approach to technique. I thought of Houdini, Stravinsky ("I limit myself in order to free myself) and Austin Clarke ("I load myself down with chains and then try to get out of them"). In the work I love most, there is usually the sense that the music of the words is deliciously self- sufficient: it pulls you along, sometimes in spite of the so-called subject. And in the iconography of the writers I love (early Auden, Bob Perelman, Dennis Cooper, Campion, Laura Riding Jackson, Robert Desnos, Max Jacob, John Wieners, Bernhard, Michelet, Crashaw, Huysmans, Ballard, etc etc) there is often the sense of a de Chirico landscape, of sound providing the treadmill for a procession of charged but cryptic material. They feel like chamber music written by Joseph Cornell. Scriabin called his Ninth Sonata "a sonata of insects," and defined insects as "kisses of the sun come to life." There is just such a paradox, it seems to me, in the "Cadmus of the golden prow" section of Pound's Cantos: hard little bits of granite imagery, and yet there is sound, there are still "pale ankles moving." Few know what he is talking about (though I was once fool enough to annotate the entire thing in pencil), but everyone can hear what he sees. Jumbled, inarticulate notes, perhaps. But here's another thought: Roussel was gay at a time when popular wisdom equated homosexuality with perversity and madness. My theory is that Roussel was forced to create a cryptic mechanism, a code, to delineate his passions and desires. In formulating said code, he created a technique that was invaluable to everyone from the surrealists to Robbes-Grillet. My question: Though some poets reinvent techniques in order to destroy artifice and return to the language of ordinary speech (Wordsworth, Whitman, Kerouac), don't other poets (Ashbery, Mallarme, Unica Zurn, *de Quincey*) invent new techniques in order to *protect* artifice, destroy so-called ordinary speech, and avoid the obvious? Or are both points of view mere excuses for revelling in the texture of language itself? Your reveller at reveille, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 02:40:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Rin-tin-tintinnabulations: erratum >Will he enjoy my parody, >or take humorless offense, as Allan Ginsberg (unbelievably) has been >doing? Yes, yes, I know--that's *Allen* Ginsberg (1926-?). > Bob Perelman Not to mention *S.J. Perelman*. >to me, in the "Cadmus of the golden prow" section of Pound's Cantos Canto IV, to be exact: "Hear me. Cadmus of Golden Prows!" (First lines: "Palace in smoky light,/Troy but a heap of smoulderinmg boundary stones...") >Robbes-Grillet I could easily verify this man's name, but really, why bother? >Unica Zurn I can't find her xeroxed poetry, so I leave you with this, from Bataille's poetic journal, _The Little One_: Pure eroticism: the crater, the impossible, rising to the throat with the smell of blood.... To write is to go in search of chance.... By giving chance so wretched an anguish, I felt I was bringing it the thing it lacked. (Bataille) See ya (Hardin, quoting anon and ibid) http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 08:49:07 +0000 Reply-To: William.Northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: William Northcutt Organization: btr0x1.hrz.uni-bayreuth.de Subject: a sonnet Sonnet to one of the following: --headcounting the senate --viewing the genitalia of a mutant --noticing the similarities between headcounting the senate and doing the same to the genitalia of a mutant right right right right right right right right right right right right left left ----------------------------------------------- Chicken House Willie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 10:40:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: cultural colostomy, pardon moi, s'il vous plait... (rant, by default) I. PRERAMBLE the pure product placements of the americas go crazy to wit poets, moi included both ends moved to synchronous motion by the mediocrity of mediocrity & hopelessly awash w/portables of one sort & another sit on their virtual potties peeing words into the endless stream of consumable goods (later to be recycled & sold back (to them (as consumable waste wondering what is left to say of any moment of any singularity of any unrecognizable import or export value when all would seem so marketable so tributary so rumored... let's take a long step back off the screen & the page to examine this fucking conditional nightmare: men & women alike but clearly not entirely alike or this item you're reading (perusing would not be identifiable as such men & women alike well middleclass men & women alike probably white in fact & perhaps mostly heterosexual so white heterosexual middleclass men & women alike but again, clearly not entirely alike or etc. this somehow differentiable group of people i have in mind but i'm a white heterosexual middleclass man middleaged, to boot ok, let's not take a long step back let's dig right in & try to understand what, if anything i can say/write (please permit me this coupling for a few moments (as well as this apostrophic address, dear reader about anybody else around here: or perhaps i should simply speak/write to my own needs? & how to articulate the needs of a white heterosexual middleclass middleaged man? & do i have needs, strictly speaking or mere desires? in what context? & what is the basis of my self-identification? or is this self-indulgence? self-avowal? self-aggrandizement? fear? & who gives a shit, finally? or should i address myself instead to the plight of others however defined? & if not, if this be presumptuous should i just shut-up? should i just shut-the-fuck-up? take my hands off the keyboard? put the pen down? listen? for how long? and then what? & who gives a shit, finally? who gives a good shit? & is all of this all that i've said/writ here ancient history? no writ of habeus corpus is necessary to incriminate me: mea culpa. II. THAT SAID & due allowance made for critical complicities corresponding to sheer subject positionality let it also be understood to all parties to these presents acting however in good faith that compromise a discourse is & will obligate specific responses which may not but succeed on occasion in coming up empty- or red-handed within the field of hopeful possibilities constituting poetic license the affairs of such a state or states requiring internal & external investigation yet demanding also for their proper execution & elucidation a pang of consciousness a yen for spicy food & depending on the poet a gentle & specifiable smack either on the lips or upside the head all remonstrance notwithstanding. III. TO BE CONTINUED the time has come & gone to theorize capital & nobody has a mind too & nobody has the money too & everything is available everyplace you look except where you refuse too. IV. CLIFFHANGERS-ON history enters here locale along with & an overabundance of non-descript details & for good & bad measure a few arbiters of taste just to keep things overdetermined & interested: use your imagination, i dare you... & what insidious form is this i spy permuting my information seeping in & out of to corrupt the relative spontaneity of this heavily revised, carefully packaged item? a closer look reveals the presence of minute particles of motive ah yes i can see rather clearly now under the microelectroscatoscope it's the screen resolution & perhaps the hardcopy quality too, ultimately either way what you've got here & there is a terminal relationship between writers & readers & authors & critics & speakers & listeners & voters & non-voters & it's spreading "like a cancer" as we used to say & will soon overcome most of the cultural immuno-prophylacto-electro- resistance, or whatever apologies for the somatic metaphor installed & checked during the last major u.s. trauma (oil embargo/presidential resignation, c. 1974) & what you may end up with is pardon the expression a fucking pile of horseshit (the likes of which you've never seen. V. DEGENERATING FURTHER & in the midst of a global deregulation make-over we end this item with a foray into didactics directed esp. at those of you interested in practicing what you preach: fix it, please. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 11:45:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: why don't we tell them Poetry Parties--New York-- Birthday party for R Creeley at St Mark's Poetry Project--Wednesday night--he's 70-- End of the year party at Poetry City--Brenda Williams and Rosa Alcala Diaz will be reading--afterwards party--during party--beforehand party--6:30 at 5 Union Sq W, 7th Fl--celebrate --Jd ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 13:37:10 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Bernadette Mayer Excellent news about Bernadette Mayer's visit to SF -- does this mean she's made good progress in her recovery from her stroke? And regarding "Stone Marmalade" -- Kevin, are those sickly cattle in hell suffering from BSE? If so, you could recruit some of us Brits to play the parts. Wish I could be there. Moo to all. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 06:08:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: from IFEX COOMUNIQUE In-Reply-To: This just in from IFEX COMMUNIQUE # 5-22 & shld be of interest to some on the list -- Pierre NTERNATIONAL PEN CENTRES HOLD DAY OF ACTION ON TURKEY WRITER YASAR KEMAL AWARDED HELLMAN\HAMMETT GRANT Writers around the world held a day of solidarity with their imprisoned and censored colleagues in Turkey on 30 May, reports the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN. It was "the day before an important challenge to the laws which severely limit Turkish writers' right to freedom of expression." Members of International PEN centres around the world lobbied Turkish authorities, their own governments and Turkish representatives in their countries, "calling for the Turkish laws to be brought into line with international norms protecting freedom of expression." Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) awarded a Hellman/Hammett grant to world-renowned Turkish writer Yasar Kemal, who was tried and convicted in March 1996 on charges of "inciting racial hatred by way of regional and racial discrimination." Kemal, who was given a 20-month suspended sentence, "was warned that if he repeated his crime in the next five years, the sentence would become active." In recognising Kemal, HRW "noted the courage he has shown in defending freedom of expression for himself and the others currently on trial. It is ironic that Turkey, which prides itself on Kemal's place on the short list of candidates for the Nobel Prize, is at the same time harassing him and his colleagues for expressing thoughtful concern." [See IFEX "Communique" #5-11, #4-48, #4-30, #4-19 for background.] For its day of action, the WiPC notes, many writers and intellectuals in Turkey are being tried in connection with the publication of the book "Freedom of Expression in Turkey", which includes the article by Kemal for which he was charged. "Ninety-nine intellectuals who signed up as responsible editors of the book to challenge the government over freedom of expression restrictions were investigated and charged," says the WiPC, adding, "One, the well-known author Aziz Nesin, has since died and a second trial has been launched against 86 others who were identified after investigations." The 98 intellectuals went to court on 31 May, reports the WiPC. At a recent International PEN meeting in Denmark, writers from 19 countries signed up as responsible editors of "Freedom of Expression in Turkey" as a gesture of solidarity. The writers are from Denmark, Sweden, the United States of America, England, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Austria, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Kenya, Germany, Norway, Nepal, the Czech Republic, Malawi, Finland and Croatia. The WiPC reports that, in 1995, "human rights groups concentrated on pressuring the government to amend Article 8 of the Anti-Terror Law," and, in October, this law was slightly amended and several writers released as a result. However, some of these writers have now been sentenced again, says the WiPC, citing Dr. Haluk Gerger, another 1996 Hellman/Hammett grant recipient who was imprisoned from June 1994 until late 1995 under Article 8. He was sentenced for "inciting racism" on 15 May to 20 months in prison for an article on the state of emergency in southeast Turkey. "Turkish human rights groups have identified around 500 laws which can be used to restrict freedom of expression in Turkey," says the WiPC. The PEN American Center released a "Message of Solidarity to 98 Turkish Writers and Intellectuals Standing Trial in Turkey on 31 May, 1996 from 98 Writers around the Globe", in both English and Turkish. ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | "Form fascinates when one no longer has the force Dept. of English | to understand force from within itself. That SUNY Albany | is, to create." -- Jacques Derrida Albany NY 12222 | tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | "Poetry is the promise of a language." email: | -- Friedrich Holderlin joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 14:27:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Situation #12 Situation #12 is now available, featuring the work of Henry Taylor, Hung Q. Tu, Ross Taylor, Maryrose Larkin, M. Magoolaghan, Corinne Robins, Blair Ewing, and Charles Borkhuis. Subscriptions are $10 for four issues, or $3 for back or single issues. Make checks payable to Mark Wallace. Situation 10402 Ewell Ave. Kensington, MD 20895 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 14:00:17 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: A science project: if anyone is interested > >Why not help the kids out? >--------------------- >Forwarded message: >Subj: Re: Stevie and Amanda's grade school science project >Date: 96-05-28 22:53:31 EDT >From: MNRedwood >To: smc@tiac.net > > >>---begin fwd--- >>Hi, our names are Stevie and Amanda. We are in the 5th grade at the >>Phillipston Memorial school, Phillipston, Massachusetts, USA. We are >>doing a science project on the Internet. We want to see how many >>responses we can get back in two weeks. (We are only sending out 2 letters). >> >>Please respond and then send this letter to anyone you communicate with >>on the Internet. Respond to smc@tiac.net. >> >> 1. Where do you live (state and country)? >> 2. From whom did you get this letter? >> >> Thank you, >> Stevie and Amanda >> > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 14:40:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: New Books fer Poetics send these please? >4. _Symmetry_, Laura Moriarty, Avec, $9.95. >"The one clear night which encompasses the subject forgets everything." >6. _Natural Facts_, Melanie Neilson, Potes & Poets, $11.00. Cover is a >daguerreotype, 1840s, "Still Life with Pumpkin, Shakespeare, and Sweet >Potato." Lauterbach mentions Ives in her blurb, seems right to me. "Will >Congress / Canary the canon?" > >7. _Clean and Well Lit: Sel Poems 1987-1995_, Tom Raworth, Roof, $10.95. >Tom's tops. > >Poetics folks receive free shipping on orders of more than $20. Free shipping >+ 10% discount on orders of more than $30. There are two ways to order. >1. E-mail your order to aerialedge@aol.com with your address & we will bill >you with the books. or 2. via credit card-- you may call us at 202 965 5200 >or e-mail aerialedge@aol.com w/ yr add, order, & card # & we will send a >receipt with the books. > >Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Wahsington, DC 20007. yes? to Jordan Davis c/o Teachers & Writers (where you're welcome to teach btw) 5 Union Sq W 7th Fl NYC 10003-3306 Grazie-- Jd ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 11:42:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: client servile In-Reply-To: <199606040407.AAA00751@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> You are not authorized to send messages to E-Poetics List from this address. We advise that you attempt to be somebody else and post messages from an address that we are willing to recognize. We are, however, willing to foreward the end-rhymes from your message. We are also deleting the materials you have attempted to froward from Dr. Sokal regarding his recent discovery of the Piltdown Man. you though grown. true, blue woe known. to the boys we; toys. bait, wait. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 12:19:29 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: Bernadette Mayer At 1:37 PM 6/4/96, Ken Edwards wrote: >Excellent news about Bernadette Mayer's visit to SF -- does this mean >she's made >good progress in her recovery from her stroke? Bernadette hasn't arrived in town yet, but the last I heard she was hiking at Big Bear--a place I'd never heard of before, but everyone else around here goes, "Oh, yes, Big Bear." Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 15:23:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: mainstream art critic nonsense Well, here's a bit of the latest garbage from the Washington Post. In this case it's reviewer Tim Page, writing on John Cage's "Europera Five." I'll just give you the choice bits. The rest is just as stupid, only less funny: "If Cage ever wrote another important piece after 1952, the year of "4'33," I have not heard it. His musical universe grew obsessively inclusive and he spoke often and eloquently, in his gentle manner, about the danger of making any qualitative evaluations whatsoever." "What did it all mean? Nothing at all, of course. Was that the point? No. There was no point: never underestimate the simple-mindedness of Cage's later aesthetic." "For this spectator, the only remotely stimulating question of the evening was whether the authors of "Rescue Me" and the old Troggs hit "Love Is All Around"--both played in their entirety during the show---might have the right to sue the Cage estage for their completele incorporation into a work that was supposedly "by" John Cage." Now, here's where it gets TRULY amazing: "A ...spirited review of Cage's "Europera 5"... might read something like this. Fourscore and. Wednesday night Spoleto. This. When in the course of. Presented. Stately, plump. Europera. Whrrr. Across the sky. John Cage. Corn syrup, lecithin. Call 1-800. Bzzzzzzzz. One hour. Tweet." YES, THAT'S RIGHT, there is an absolutely amazing passage of poetry in the one section of this reviewer's foolishness that is actually an attempt to mock John Cage. Who knew he could be so brilliant? Especially when the most interesting question for him is the possibility of suing people he can't understand... mark wallace ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 15:33:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: mainstream art critic nonsense Who wrote "Rescue Me"---Fontella Bass, the singer, was married to Lester Bowie it is written. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 15:37:46 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: mainstream art critic Mark, It fits in with something that Nam June Paik (the video artist) said last summer (paraphrase) "Television is exciting therefore we have to make art that is very boring. " David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 17:32:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: mainstream art critic/apology for commerce I think the most amusing thing to say to the Post, Mark, might be something like 'Thank you for printing that beautiful poetry in the middle of your review of _Europera Five_. It's rare that such interesting writing is hidden where everyone can see it.' As. I missed. My folks. Also happens. Like a lamb. Possibly foppish. Name in Paper. A very sensitive maybe. Review the reviewers. Indubitably. Decontextualizing the left. Why. Mark. Maybe a letter. Page's text and sufficiently brief. The bastards. Lie by! Schtick circa 'Central Park. A given? South in the winter. Colorblind art critic. By the way, oops re my Rod order back then. JORD ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 14:42:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sonnet Actually, I think the sonnet was created in the 13trh century when it was common to take two weeks to write a poem, one line a day. At the start, sonnets had two stanzas of 7 lines each, but then Alfredo Rizzoli, the poet-monk found that he could not stop after line seven one day, so wrote eight lines in the first week, and then took a day off before starting the next stanza. Soon his acolytes copied him, and so there we are. .......................... "In town we have arguments." --Stan Persky George Bowering. 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:44:56 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: Re: client servile In-Reply-To: ; from "Aldon L. Nielsen" at Jun 4, 1996 11:42 am "Fabrication will produce the banausic mentality" dented sands "banausiacs." relented, Brians. yackety-yack homologue: twister, grog?" ifster smooth, basement-- moos _grincement_. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 01:39:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: A science project: if anyone is interested In-Reply-To: <9605048339.AA833920579@smtp-gw.mosby.com> from what i know this is as the dutch say a -roos. i received the same message a few weeks ago only to be followed by an appy olly ogy from its sender. for those with interests in irish lit i receive a post from the irish book review every month. it is sent out by the same people who put together the Irish Emigrant. if you are interested, let me know backchannel and i'll forward you the info to set you up. cheers, Caoimhin Oh-Eithir On Tue, 4 Jun 1996, David Baratier wrote: > > > >Why not help the kids out? > >--------------------- > >Forwarded message: > >Subj: Re: Stevie and Amanda's grade school science project >Date: > 96-05-28 22:53:31 EDT > >From: MNRedwood > >To: smc@tiac.net > > > > > >>---begin fwd--- > >>Hi, our names are Stevie and Amanda. We are in the 5th grade at the > >>Phillipston Memorial school, Phillipston, Massachusetts, USA. We are > >>doing a science project on the Internet. We want to see how many > >>responses we can get back in two weeks. (We are only sending out 2 > letters). >> > >>Please respond and then send this letter to anyone you communicate > with >>on the Internet. Respond to smc@tiac.net. > >> > >> 1. Where do you live (state and country)? >> 2. From whom > did you get this letter? > >> > >> Thank you, > >> Stevie and Amanda >> > > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 07:55:54 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: client servile In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:44:56 MDT from On Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:44:56 MDT Louis Cabri said: >"Fabrication will produce the banausic mentality" > > dented > sands > "banausiacs." > relented, > Brians. > yackety-yack > homologue: > twister, > grog?" > ifster > smooth, > basement-- > moos > _grincement_. Looks like hysterical dialectics has produced a new Language phenomenon: the "sonnot". c.f. Princeton Cyclonopedia: "The sonnot, a pre-millenial postprandial development within the larger phenomenon of Language Poetry, was by and large an attempt by a number of pre-colonial post-coastal American poets to delimit the essence of rhyme; the most common means involved a vaporization of between 6-8 syllables per line excluding ultimate & penultimate glossalalia, leaving the right-hand marginal superstructure to stand like the circular ruins, for example, of the Colosseum in Rome, Idaho - a tourist attraction since the late 19th century, famous for the "pigeon perch", a 60-ft lateral embankment jutting out of the Rocky Mountain feldspar producing conditions for dangerous rain on the surging crowd of visitors below." [pp. 1374; by Elwood F. Pederson, Prof. Em. Boise Univ.] - H. Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 09:21:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: client servile In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Wed, 05 Jun 1996 07:55:54 -0400 (EDT)" Dear Henry: "hysterical dialectic?" I thought we might manage to avoid the gender angle this time, though it's hard to avoid when the sonnet or even the sonnot is in question. As Gwyn McVay has observed, "the sonnet described as a short fat know-it-all? Funny, when I was in high school that's how everyone described me." -A. Crane Finch aligning thy choiring strings ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 09:37:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: client servile In-Reply-To: <01I5JMEYYGTW8WYHT4@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> Annie, elementary school! elementary school! Gwyn, still short ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 10:00:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: b b d o Beavis, stop trying to be funny! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 11:33:16 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet includes alletois wrench torque Anne, I thought a reference to eidolon, a known refrain of a poem by Whitman might be lost on you. Especially considering his work was written under the auspice of an organic form, one which secludes him from this discussion. I like how you manipulated my original quote to fit your purposes, for a sense of "rightness" perhaps? Here's your version. "god is not further revealed to a person who cannot call joy without syllables." There is a crucial change you made here, the replacement of my word which is the english translation of original hebrew characters for a sexless, faceless, spiritual manifestation with your word"joy" so you could agree: True. I could call this manipulation. As you said "naming is one way things can be approached" but there are also unnameable vacuities inherent in rhetorical functions when applied rather than etherized about. It's part of the field of language resistance, the natural difference between what is written and what is meant. At this point you start writing about repetition which, in context of this discussion, has nothing to do with the the laconian identification process. Repetition can be the grinding of a idea into a graspable concept. Jack Spicer said: poems only occur in series which Poe iterated in his writings on Milton's Paradise Lost where he found that a person would have to be a fool if they read the piece as one poem, in one sitting. So when you ask "Isn't this [repetition] just a matter of temperament or even phase of life?" I have to entirely disagree. Unless if you meant in the Yeatsian sense of placing yourself in the 28th phase of the cycle. When I said "there is no continuum except in terms of the overarching and archetypal; values of written sets of words fluctuate continually" you replied: "[this statement] itself [is] a nonfluctuating value claim, perhaps more dangerous because it is may be tempted to forget its own solidity?" In case you have forgotten the power of the word is always dangerous. The connotational and denotational associative values of my statement are in a state of flux also, as you so rightly point out. Considering the duration this message will survive in e-space, I comfortably assumed a current statement which includes a free lifetime updating. Be Well. David Baratier Here is the sound of a hero outgrowing his confetti. --Jeffrey McDaniel dave.baratier@mosby.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 11:39:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Oren Izenberg Subject: Re: mainstream art critic nonsense In-Reply-To: Mark, Why "amazing"? It strikes me that the strong defense of a disjunctive or unconventionally conjunctive or appropriative poetic must entail more than the reflex "now THAT'S poetry" when a skeptical critic tries to make a joke of the enterprise, more than the understandable desire to mock and deride what seems sometimes like a principled refusal to take the experimental seriously. (Although I must say, despite not having seen the review beyond your citation, the critic's distinction between early and later Cage does not seem "know-nothing" or even terribly conservative, nor, to this reader, entirely absurd.) One hopes (this one, at any rate) not to surrender the ability to ask questions of an "inclusive" poetics. The work, by virtue of its eventual end, remains (despite our fondest wishes) subject to criteria, however they are to be described-- and in the face of criticism, or mere curiosity, or urgent personal need, perhaps the best response would be to *describe* them, rather than to wink and nudge and congratulate ourselves on their existence and validity. The alternative, of course, is to write off those who are not *immediately* interested as those who will never understand, and to make of the "community" of writers and readers a cabal (and surely it is already sufficiently demonized in precisely these terms). Best wishes, O. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 13:04:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: criticism's face re the post review of Cage Oren Izenberg wrote: >having seen the review beyond your citation, the critic's distinction >between early and later Cage does not seem "know-nothing" or even >terribly conservative, nor, to this reader, entirely absurd. There was no attempt by the Post writer to contextualize Cage's later work whatsoever. He merely implies that John went crazy after abt 1952. Not very useful. O. also wrote: > The work, by virtue of its eventual end, remains (despite our fondest wishes) >subject to criteria, however they are to be described-- and in the >face of criticism or mere curiosity, or urgent personal need, >perhaps the best response would be to *describe* them, rather than to >wink and nudge This is exactly what Cage spent a great deal of time doing. It's not whether the Post reporter likes Cage or not, who cares-- It is the perennial problem of getting the press to acknowledge any context other than their own, which is almost always vapid (This is relevant to the Sokal "debate"). The few times in the article when something like information about Cage is hinted at, it's wrong. Another point which interests me is implied by the phrase "in the face of criticism"-- I've mentioned this before on the list I believe-- there's a logic of justification there which I suppose one could deconstruct. What I mean to say is, too rarely the attitude is one of respect & discussion-- more often it is "explain yourself sufficiently in _my_ terms"-- which seems to me to work against what art can do, is for. & at times I tend to admire those that refuse explanation as explanation, tho this was certainly never Cage's way. Rod "Attitude can be interesting" "Tell me what this is about" --Tom Raworth ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 17:31:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet includes alletois wrench torque David Baratier typed: > I thought a reference to eidolon, a known refrain of a poem by Whitman > might be lost on you. Especially considering his work was written > under the auspice of an organic form, one which secludes him from this > discussion. Though I don't wish to be dragged, citing and signing, back into the sonnet tussle, I do have to say this: The word *eidolon* is more than a mere feature of one Whitman refrain. It has been used regularly by several other writers, I'll have you know, including your lonesome. (Indeed, when people speak of *cultural icons*, I've always felt it would be more accurate for them to speak of *cultural eidolons*. If Barney is an important cultural icon, then my wetnurse was the Fountain of Youth.) My first kidly exposure to the word *eidolon* was in Hart Crane's poem, "Legend" ("Again, the smoking souvenir,/Bleeding Eidolon!"). Galvanized by Crane's energy and metaphysical compression, I immediately wrote a series of wretched imitations with titles like "Eidolon of Love" [sic (ick)]. It never even occurred to me to trace the Bloomlike map of misreading to Whitman and to stop short there. Whitman might be a great poet, but his diction, however characteristic, is not a claim of referent ownership. You may argue that Crane was making a deliberate ref. to Whitman (especially in light of _The Bridge_ and other Whitman-meets-the-Symbolists-in-a-play-by-Marlowe-esque works). But you're still suggesting that, without an intimate knowledge of Whitman's diction, A.F. is insufficiently literate to be part of this discussion. To which I say: should we write out an idiosyncratic reading test, complete with trick questions, give it to you by means of embedded references, grade you on the test, and bring it up whenever we disagree with one of your points? Knowledge ought to be shared, not hoarded. Also: Why suggest that a person who speaks passionately of formal verse is ignorant of all other kinds? I, too, am less familiar with Whitman than I ought to be. But that comes from having him quoted to me by an aunt ("I saw a noiseless patient spider, blah blah blah") until I developed a blind spot, not because I disapprove of Whitman's prosody. > I like how you manipulated my original quote to fit your purposes, for > a sense of "rightness" perhaps? (Suspiciously) I like how you imbedded this ad hominem interpretation of Finch in your letter. A subliminal message meant to activate some Manchurian Candidate, perhaps? (It's hard enough to understand an opposing point of view without attributing nasty motives to the speaker.) > I could call this manipulation. And I could call this ad hominem (see above). > In case you have forgotten the power of the word is always dangerous. Or impotent, depending on the reader and the context. Finally, this is to Annie Finch, who said, > "hysterical dialectic?" > I thought we might manage to avoid the gender angle this time, though it's > hard to avoid when the sonnet or even the sonnot is in question. The word *hysterical* is not sexist unless it is used etymologically. Context, I would think, plays a part in any use of the English language-- which, if you think about it, is embedded with sexist implications. Any writer ought to be free to use any word without taking a political litmus test--even when the word has an ugly etymological past. All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 18:06:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: client servile >Annie, > >elementary school! elementary school! > >Gwyn, still short Or as USAmericans pronounce it, "elemenary" school. .......................... "I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand." --Bobbie Louise hawkins George Bowering. 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 09:19:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: M/E/A/N/I/N/G I received in the mail last week the The latest edition of M/E/A/N/I/N/G - 19/20 "Special All-Visual Double Issue". A visual feast full of variety. Congratulations to editors Susan Bee and Mira Schor. If my subscription included only this issue it would have been worth it. Blair ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 08:22:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim wood Subject: Re: A science project: if anyone is interested As I found out when I happily went off and not only responded, but forwarded the message, this event is history. Apparently it happened sometime ago and was even picked up by the NY Times. It was discontinued after their service provider overloaded on 10-100 posts a second. Ouch. Tim Wood >Subject: Re: A science project: if anyone is interested >Sent: 06/05 12:39 AM >Received: 06/05 9:44 PM >From: k.a. hehir, angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA >Reply-To: UB POETICS List, POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU >To: UB POETICS List, POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU > >from what i know this is as the dutch say a -roos. i received the same >message a few weeks ago only to be followed by an appy olly ogy from its >sender. > >for those with interests in irish lit i receive a post from the irish >book review every month. it is sent out by the same people who put >together the Irish Emigrant. if you are interested, let me know >backchannel and i'll forward you the info to set you up. > >cheers, >Caoimhin Oh-Eithir > >On Tue, 4 Jun 1996, >David Baratier wrote: > >> > >> >Why not help the kids out? >> >--------------------- >> >Forwarded message: >> >Subj: Re: Stevie and Amanda's grade school science project >Date: >> 96-05-28 22:53:31 EDT >> >From: MNRedwood >> >To: smc@tiac.net >> > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 10:41:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Cage, and information Re Oren Izenberg's post: Yikes! I actually thought this poetics list was at least primarily for people who had some awareness about the history of experimental artistic practice, and so I could perhaps pass along what seems to me a pretty obvious joke and others would get it. It seems probably that mostly they have, but for some I guess I'll have to explain myself more fully. Please see Rod Smith's post yesterday for another elucidation of why it is ridiculous to dismiss all of Cage's work after 1952 (and is there anybody on this list other than Mr. Izenberg who thinks such a thing is even a conceivably respectable position? I hope not.) To take only several points, the idea that Cage's work is about "making no distinctions" is utterly preposterous, and based on no awareness of the absolutely intense distinctions Cage is making about the problem of defining what makes something "music." Whatever his "quiet gentleness" (this Tim Page guy is really a scream) Cage's work, among many others things, is a direct assault on the totally limited context of what constitues "music" in western culture--Cage wants us to hear the sound all around us that is inevitably repressed by the idea that only a certain range of sounds are available for music. Mr. Page, of course (Cage/Page, too much huh?) wants precisely all the trappings of "high" classical music that Cage has no use for and so can't hear him at all. Secondly, the idea that Cage's later work "has no point" must, I suppose, be based on the idea that the twenty or so books (many more? please help here, Rod) Cage wrote elucidating the incredible complexity of his practice (and which is not just theoretical--it's there in the recordings) must be irrelevant. Or perhaps Page hasn't read them? Now THERE'S a thought! What Page means by "has no point" I guess should really be "calls into question on almost every level each one of my bourgeious presuppositions and eliminates them from further serious intellectual consideration." I'm not actually going to go into great detail on what Cage says about the limited structures of western music and how he intends to go about expanding their limits by incorporating non-melodic, supposedly non-musical sounds into a sound landscape that shows how the sound of a musical performance is inevitably related to the sound that exists beyond the bounds of the performance itself, and how doing such a thing reveals the way in which western artistic culture has often intended to eliminate whole ranges of experience from artistic possibility. Do I really need to go into things on this basic a level on this list? Of course, I was kidding somewhat in calling Page's short little disjunctive blurb "wonderful poetry." But I did find it somewhat interesting that he actually managed to present a good approximation of disjunctive new sentence prose poem in what is otherwise a massive peon to ignorance. Of course, I'm getting the feeling now that maybe I'm being presumptive in assuming that everybody on this list knows what the New Sentence is (with my apologies to those who do). I suppose my friend Marc Scroggins is going to tell me I'm being pugnacious again. But geez, Marc, look at what I have to put up with. There would be value in being polite, I suppose, to people who were engaging with experimental work seriously and who, even if uniformed, were asking questions seriously. But the flippant, uninformed sneering dismissal that Page offers in the Post as serious criticism deserves no politeness because it does not intend to be polite, or to engage on any real level with one of the most significant musical and literary artists of this century. And the idea that Mr. Izenberg thinks that such a position is reasonable (and would seem reasonable to people on this list) is pretty much flabbergasting. Mark Wallace (and a brief plug for Joan Retallack's new book on Cage, which I hope Rod will talk about in more detail) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 07:51:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: alas, eidolon In-Reply-To: <199606060406.AAA27821@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> my wetnurse achieved cold fusion in the kitchen sink there was no joy in mudville the world was all that mighty casey struck out ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 10:38:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet includes alletois wrench torque In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Wed, 05 Jun 1996 17:31:07 -0400" Dear Rob, True, the word hysterical is not always sexist, and perhaps my consciousness of being greatly outnumbered genderwise in recent discussions coupled with my recent thinking about connections between gender and formalism (see intro to A Formal Feeling Comes) led me to jump the pearl-handled pistol on Henry's phrase. It never hurts to remind writers of the etymological unconscious of their language, though, does it? (The day I responded, I had also read a review of a new book on Hysteria pointing out that though the most common hysterical patient in Freud's day was male, Freud omitted any discussion of male hysterics in his work on the subject). David, I'm very sorry about transmuting your word into "joy." It was actually technical wrongness that led me to it, since the program I use at home can't quote text so I was working from memory in quoting you--and also, you may remember I have been prone to typos myself and probably thought I was doing you a favor in changing jwy to joy, though I should have noticed how odd the one apparent typo seemed in an otherwise flawless text. My fawwlt! I've been wanting to tell you how much I liked your "sonnet" from a ways back, by the way. As for eidolon, like Rob I thought of Crane first, and hence responded by dragging out my middle name (no relation). The question mark questioned your characterization of me as shouting eidolon from rooftops. Annie--eidolon shouter? was the purport of my signature. I've spent some time on Whitman and have a chapter on him in The Ghost of Meter, though that prefatory poem is not one of my favorites. I agree with Rob about litmus tests. --A.R.C. Finch ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 11:11:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: Cage, and Page informixion In-Reply-To: from "Mark Wallace" at Jun 6, 96 10:41:52 am I resent bitterly the accusations being thrown about on POETICS regarding the relative value of works by Messrs. PAGE and CAGE. While I understand various persons' opinion regarding said Cage's infamous short silent "Four Sticks (and Thirty Three Twigs)" I must invariably rate it of intenser value than Page's neoclassical attempts to invigorate Baroquial musiks through use of violin bow apres e-bow electrified bass. Until the death of John Bonham, I appreciated Cage's "quiet gentleness" in the many stadium shows fronting with Joyce mesostics "Sick Again," "Boogie with Stu," "The Lemon Song." The fact that Page has such difficulty with guitar recently was no justification for him to attack his prior ally. Only death of Cage prevented the anticipated "No Quartertone" reunion tour, though rumored that Cage & Page forgot David Tudor's phone #. Why such hostility in arts comunity? I have bootleg of A. Baraka doing "Trampled Under Foot" with Cage on triple-neck that will blow all minds, will trade for good quality tapes of Ben Bradlee w/Allman Bros or plain Bros. -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 09:00:32 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: mainstream art critic One thing that needs to be made very clear in regard to the Tim Page review of Cage's Europera 5, is that Page is NOT simply a yahoo with no experience with music later than Debussy & Ravel. As the primary music critic for the Soho Weekly News 15-20 years ago he heard, and reviewed intelligently, LOTS of new music. More recently, he produced a series of CDs for BMGs Catalyst label which, again, while not always to my taste, showed an awareness of a fairly wide range of recent music, some of which I respect & some of which I don't (composers in this se4ries include off the top of my head, Alvin Curran, Philip Glass, Arvo Part, James McMillan, Toby Twining, as well as a selection of Cage's piano music, including at least one piece composed well after 4'33"). In other words, while I haven't always agreed with Page's opinions (& certainly like later Cage more than he appears to), he has a pretty strong background in the field. There are a couple of things to consider here. First, newspaper articles are not solely written by the signator, copy editors can & do, change things quite a bit. They won't (usually) change the stated opinion of a reviewer (& I assume that Page honestly didn't like Europera 5), but they can & frequently do, change the emphasis & drop supporting arguments in reviews on the theory that people reading newspapers do not want to read criticism in any sense that we might agree on a definition of the term, but rather that newspaper readers simply want to know if they should spend money on going to the show. That's the point of all of those four-five star, thumbs up or downor other rating systems. This is consumer news, not considered, balanced criticism. The other point to consider here, though, is whether it makes sense to use the work of Cage, or of any artist, as a kind of litmus test. I can see this both ways, but I'm not the first to note that there is very little, if any, agreement on the relative value of specific poetry among those of us who subscribe to this list. I'm not sure that I can imagine what writers would be ranked most important, most influential, most popular, most likely to succeed, best dressed, most congenial, etc. if all 400 members of poetics were to vote on it. It would be interesting, but useful? Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 17:29:21 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ira Lightman Subject: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what? Hallo everyone. I've said a few things about John Cage before on POETICS but, since I've just re-joined, and very little of the viewpoint I tried to argue for once before is represented in this new outbreak of Cage discussion... I wonder what we're defending when we're defending Cage? How many are defending him out of a love of 20th century (or all) music, out of a pleasure in 20th century music, and out of an ongoing wish to stand up for an important human activity, and consciousness? I myself would be no friend of Mr Page, the, as Mark said, mainstream critic; I'm not presenting a reactionary position, as I'm very keen on many of Cage's contemporaries, who, it seems to me, rarely or never get namechecked, written about, festschrifts to, by the writers on this list, the writers who publish books away from this list, and indeed many poets or writers who think of themselves as, or proclaim themselves as, experimental artists. If we are experimental artists, it seems a fair assumption, that many I read and know make, that we be interested in all experimentation in all arts, and criticism and essays by experimental writers on, for example, music, seem to exude this assumption (eg the Joan Retallack book on Cage, mentioned, and the work on Cage in Marjorie Perloff's excellent - ie for me, great case for the generative power of Cage's aesthetics and example - book, Radical Artifice). My worry is that these two books start and stop consideration of music with Cage. That the fact he was, for me, a great writer, an even greater interviewee, as illustrated by memoirs of his conversation in Rod Smith's Aerial on him, in Radical Artifice, in Cage's biography. I love his pre-chance prepared piano sonatas, I love many experimental musicians' use of chance, I don't like Cage's, the many I've heard on disc, just one I heard on radio that (and I do not say this to be trivial, as I am an insomniac) put me into the most blissful sleep as I concentrated on it, waking exactly as the radio programme ended. I hope Cage would be pleased, not trivialised, by this reaction. My closest composer-friend, Mike Higgins, once said to me, when I told him how sad I was when I heard that John Cage had died, that for him he was sad but sadder still that, the same summer, Olivier Messiaen died. Messiaen was older and, given the upheavals of 1950's new music and, for example, Pierre Boulez' punk-like glee in titling an essay "Schoenberg is dead!" (Boulez' exclamation mark). Boulez' implication was that things had to move faster, that one major upheaval, serialism, was not enough, but it must reach "its" (ie Boulez's assumption) "evolution" in total serialism. This excites me, as I love the 50s composers most of all. Then, it seems to me, Cage proposes a further furthering, and proposes that this too evolves the form and makes the earlier work dull or even redundant ie his own work. My difficulty with this is that Schoenberg made people listen harder, for shape and configuration, and not wallow in a general feeling awaiting beauty, resolution of harmony, the manipulation of a fixed set of possible sequences of notes; this meant having to know an instrument, having to know keys, and thus opening up, afresh, a way of hearing the world away from the concert hall ie having the awful knowledge of key meant that you could then hear that sounds, like cars and birds, were not just noise or sound, but transcribable music (see Messaien's pieces using transcription of bird song played by violin). Going earlier to go later, one might say that one of the last powers that Debussy rang from the old harmony was to compose long modulating phrases slowly becoming other phrases - something akin to Henry James' prose style - so that the listener went away into the world hearing all the aftermath of each sound, the sine wave of a car revving, approaching, and departing; to make the listener think of sound as, to think of Derrida, not beads with borders on a necklace, but that we think of them that way, hearing only a part or peak of the wave of the whole sound, its geography and history, and classifying it only as a sign for the short peak in which we hear it (or bother to listen for it). The total serialists, to me, took this up, by focussing on slow sounds building and falling, texture, all the sound of sound. If that is nasty horrid Western classical music, then it is also the nasty horrid thing that has helped me enrich my senses. My worry is that a lot of writers like Cage because one doesn't have to do this hard work, this ground work, in listening, and learning an instrument, like the piano, rather than learning how to riff in the small range of keys available to R&B. Thus, goodbye to nasty horrid (impotent, ignored, widely hated) Western classical music, goodbye hard work, hallo an easily graspable principle mastered and you can call yourself musical and a musician. Okay, not all bad as self-empowerment, but not if the self-empowerer then disempowers, marginalises, and even stigmatises, alternative classical music of the same era, by, in Stockhausen and others' cases, exact contemporaries to Cage. Ira Lightman P.S. I'm partly inspired to write after hearing Steve Reich's Drumming, source for Ron Silliman's Ketjak, which I found similarly dull, easy to get into, compared to Indian classical music or, most wonderful of all for abstract expressionist rhythm, Xenaxis' Plaides. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 12:43:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: litmus party If school had been more about litmus tests, which were almost as exciting to watch as developing polaroids, I would not have dropped out, hitchhiked to alaska, and died eating the wrong kind of berry. That said, I'd like to invite all of you ex-senators and -lion tamers to a freeforall poetry party at POETRY CITY (5 Union Sq W, NYC) tonight, 6:30, which party will be punctuated by two readings--one by fiction writer Brenda Williams, and the other by poet and recent Brown MFA graduate Rosa Alcala Diaz. Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 13:32:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Oren Izenberg Subject: Re: mainstream art critic In-Reply-To: I can assure Mr. Wallace that he need not conduct an introductory tutorial in experimental music or in the New Sentence for my benefit. I give thanks for your expressed (if exasperated) willingness to "put up" with me; no doubt I will limp along without such kindnesses. Mark Wallace seems to have concluded that the point of my post was primarily to express (or endorse) a preference for early John Cage over late-- apparently this is an outrageous preference and no doubt I should have kept it to myself to avoid offending local orthodoxies. I did not, I acknowledge, offer reasons-- that the opinion was parenthetical may be an insufficient excuse, but it is mine own-- which apparently leads to the conclusion that I can have none because there are none. I certainly did not imply that Mark Wallace or any other member of the poetics list shared such opinions; but I had hoped (and this *was* the point of my post), was that the expression of an opinion, in the recalcitrant press or on this list, might provoke discussion rather than invective. I did fail to catch the humor of a post that called Mr. Page stupid and uneducated (as I failed-- and no doubt I am somewhat humorless on this score-- to be amused by the one that imputed to me massive ignorance of matters poetical); he is neither, and I doggedly refuse to acknowledge that engaging with "such" people, reiterating and expanding our own understanding in the process, is a pointless exercise. Herb Levy and Ira Lightman, most recently, have eloquently demonstrated otherwise. In response to Rod Smith-- I (sometimes) share your qualms about explanation qua explanation; since the offending article was a piece of criticism, it was primarily that genre and that forum for discussion I had in mind (although "mere curiosity and urgent need" were meant to suggest other provocations to inquiry, not quite as provoking or "in your face). Not all artists will, or need, explain themselves as well or thoroughly as Cage. Explanation may become a burden to the artist who feels obligated to terms and discourses other than, or parallel to, those of the art; but I do see critical explication as one among the many imperfect forms of acknowledgement; and incidentally, the one most likely to reach the traditionalist or the skeptic. Your Watten issue of Aerial (the most recent I have seen, and on which congratulations) suggests a similar belief; it pursues "explanation" on many fronts, in many forms: critical essay, conversation, "composition"-- to powerful effect. Best wishes. O. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 14:52:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what? > My worry is that a lot of writers like Cage because one doesn't have to do this hard work, this >ground work, in listening, and learning an instrument, >like the piano, rather than learning how to riff in the small range of keys available to R&B. Thus, goodbye >to nasty horrid (impotent, ignored, widely hated) Western classical music, goodbye hard work, hallo >an easily graspable principle mastered and you can call yourself musical and a musician. Okay, not all >bad as self-empowerment, but not if the self-empowerer then disempowers, marginalises, and even stigmatises, >alternative classical music of the same era, by, in Stockhausen and others' cases, exact contemporaries >to Cage. Ira, thanks for your considerations-- however this last bit makes me wonder how much of the late Cage you've heard. There are a number of pieces for virtuoso which were composed by working closely with musicians to find out what was considered "impossible" on their instrument & then to include that in the score-- John did this, he sd, to demonstrate "the practicality of the impossible." The pieces are _Etudes Australes_ (for piano), _The Freeman Etudes_ (for violin), and _Etudes Boreles_ (for cello). All are long suites which involved a substantial amount of time to compose, & even greater amount of time for performers to master. Seems what you've heard might be some of the quiet number pieces or Ryoanji (not the orchestral version). You might enjoy a late .piece called Quartets I-VIII, which makes astonishing use of, yes, harmony. I listen to & read Cage precisely because of the genuinely useful complexity of the work-- if his work at times seems "easy" it's for the same reason that Picasso made painting look "easy." I'd also like to note that through Cage I was introduced to a number of composers such as Stockhausen, Wolff, Boulez, Harrison, Feldman, Takemitsu-- so I have no sense of their being marginalized by Cage or anyone else. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 15:12:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what? continuing my last post after chance sent it off prematurely. I agree with you Ira, that there are some missing feschrifts for composers other than Cage. I'd most like to see a good Feldman book, & have toyed with the thought myself. Also, is their anything out there in terms of a good new music publication like _Ear_ used to be. Something that would cover say Frissell, Le Baron, & unkowns? Also, to note, there's a new book on Nancarrow from Cambridge (overpriced hc, but looks very good). Oren-- yes, explanation. I seem to have a split in my personality that way. I suppose it comes down to, as I said, justification. It seems to me so often that an artist is called upon to explain their right to do something, sorry, I ain't wid that-- whereas explanation is just that, an offering of context to allow further entrance to the work-- Duchamp & Johns come to mind. Cld go on but have to go to work, erk. Rod ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 17:46:19 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what? >Also, is their anything out there in terms of a good new >music publication like _Ear_ used to be.... _Musicworks_, out ov toronto. interesting running commentary fr the past few issues on Cage, but much more on emerging composers, as well as a broad spectrum of audio arts... a personal fave. luigi ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 09:38:26 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: nonsuch sonnet impotent lifetime guarantee Rob Hardin, I sincerely apologize for having irked your ire by not mentioning your own work in the eidolon discussion. Eidolon is more than a mere feature of one Whitman refrain. It has been used regularly by several other writers. While I could bring Hart Crane, yourself, or HP Lovecraft "the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation" into the discussion, I still am unaware of an earlier poetic reference than Whitman and was instructed at an early age to always return to the source. I will argue that Crane was making a deliberate ref. to Whitman. I am suggesting that without using your arms to open an OED to refute my point (anyone's for that matter), or to find out what any unknown word means, one arrives to the discussion sufficiently lazy enough to speculate on what is being said and offer their opinion, instead of their knowledgable experience. In answer to your question "Why suggest that a person who speaks passionately of formal verse is ignorant of all other kinds?" It's hard enough to understand an opposing point of view without attributing nasty motives to the speaker. As I said previously: In case you have forgotten the power of the word is always dangerous. To which you responded: Or impotent, depending on the reader and the context. Thank you, this has broadened our discussion this much. I suggest that if we continue this thread in a manner worth replying to, that we talk about how to determine which strings of words fit into a particular form, what aspects of words (phonemem, morpheme, arragement, connotational value, associative change of these values, etcetera) solidify in our minds which forms are to be used, as charles (chax) mentioned a while back. I'd rather be in Espana Be well, pegging pernod through a pajita or yagrelling a luk David Baratier jedamput en Jugoslavie, jowels wide & yowels not permitted to emerge-- --Paul Blackburn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 03:18:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: proto proto yahoo scene 1: i've just taken another look at chris funkhouser's essay on hypertext/media. i think it's well worth the visit, it seems to be a good middle ground between high-end thinking about hypertext (that's inaccessible to most folks) and the absurdly reductive stuff i've seen on t.v. i think chris has found a good level for introductory material as well as a good collection of links that won't bore those that have read much hypertext, or much about hypertext. scene 2: i'm sure many of you eat chinese food, i need fortunes and lots of 'em. they don't even have to be very good ones. i'd prefer them to be mailed to me in the original post-cookie form, taped to a postcard or somesuch, but i'll gladly accept them by email as well. scene 3: and horoscopes. i need horoscopes too, but preferably only pretty durn good ones. contributors will recieve a personalized thank you presented on handsome email, suitable for framing. happy summering, everyone! and remember: chinese food good. u.s. postal service mediocre, but all we've got for now. thanks, eryque ______________________________________ Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason 817 Myrtle Ave, 2nd floor Albany, NY 12208-2607 eryque@acmenet.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 12:45:33 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ira Lightman Subject: more rattling Cage Rod, thanks for those recommendations of late work, they intrigue. Oh, to be in America and follow them up immediately - purchasing disks, anyway. I like the Feldman idea - I'm really intrigued by his ideas and his emphases on slow build and slow fall and quiet - and want to hear more of the music. There was a Feldman concert in London last year which, of course, I only heard about a day after it took place! I would like to hear these pieces exploring the not yet done on those instruments, but I still maintain my criticism, which I stress was not really about Cage but about the books by experimental writers and critics that start and stop with Cage - and which, I suspect, would not be much interested in the late pieces you suggest musically; but only theoretically, as "destabilising" nasty western classical music etc. Is that just completely mistaken of me? Do you not sense this habit in experimental writer Cagers from time to time? Not that *Cage* marginalises the others, esp. not Feldman, given the Radio City interviews etc, but that these books do? I'm referring to the Radio City interviews that appeared in the Exact Change annual last year. I didn't think, myself, that Cage suitably engaged with Feldman's upset at, for example, pop music on transistor radios spoiling the quiet, in this case of the beach. As the world gets more crassly noisy, and my ears hurt, and I can't find a quiet house to live in, aren't these issues? I sometimes think of Cage's persona as like Paul McCartney's - chipper and happy, but slightly suppressing angered and anguished jeremiads against the down side of the changes (eg in freedom) that they were rightly optimistic about. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:34:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: dodecaphony as generative grammar In-Reply-To: <199606070413.AAA24395@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Listfolks, Has anyone heard of a book by Frederick Udahl (sp?) called something like "The Twelve-tone System as Generative Grammar" or "Towards a Generative Grammar from Twelve-Tone Music"? Thanks, Tom Orange tmorange@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 13:11:46 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Post in Performance Writing / Dartington, UK Hi all, I'm cross posting this job ad to the list. Particularly appropriate for anyone working with language / text from a Live Art perspective. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dartington College of Arts is an institution of higher education specialising in contemporary performance arts practices and their relation to changing social and cultural contexts. The College combines undergraduate teaching with research. Taught Masters work is planned. Subject areas are both i) distinct and clearly articulated, leading to designated degree awards and ii) participants in an integrated programme designed to promote inter- and cross-disciplinary practice and enquiry. September 1994 saw the introduction of a new degree. Planned as an extension to the College's work in the performance arts, the degree in Performance Writing is an approach to writing for performance which is open to a range of possibilities for the way that performance and writing can relate to each other. This approach explores underlying principles, techniques and understandings so that writers and text-practitioners can learn to apply their skills and creativity to a constantly expanding repertoire of performance media. Broad categories of practice include: body-related text performance, word-image work, concrete and performed poetry, radio and audiotape media, site-related writing. lecturer in performance writing three-year fixed-term appointment. A new post is required to continue the development of this new and exciting subject area. We are particularly interested in those who develop writing for and through live performance and whose work explores, through theory and practice, the impact and implications of live presence on the practice of writing. Successful applicants will be expected to contribute to teaching, research, subject development and programme support. closing date 19 June 1996 Further information from: Kathy Taylor dartington College of Arts. Totnes, Devon TQ9 6EJ Tel. +44 (0)1803 862 224 Fax +44 (0)1803 863 569 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:39:29 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: hysterical dialiects Is the word "hysterical" a sexist term? That's news to me, though I'm aware of its sexist usage in such phrases as "hysterical female". I used it in what I assumed was a "gender-neutral" way. It's also slang for "hilarious". I understand Annie was only saying I was inserting "gender" into the sonnet/sonnot discussion. I guess it depends on how you hear that word - and maybe I should be hearing more in it. "hysterica passio... ...our tongues are quibbled On a wheel of fire, and tis the upshot of our deeds Will ring yon neck of our embittered Rhetorick, dear cuz..." [King Lear, Act VII, scene 43] Hysterical dialectics is a mode of reasoning based on the principle "utque ante de nomina post factotum" first performed in a diagnostic setting by Averroes in his manual de logica diplodocus et diplomatica (hereafter referred to as Dip & dippy) in 1143 (after a big lunch). The systematics was appropriated by pre-psychologists in the late 18th century to explain the discovery of "galvanized globular life-entities" first discovered by Starbird Leewenhoek using a primitive microscope made of thin slices of Dutch ice-skates under straw matting and windmill batting and attributed to "saliences" on the cranium mapped by the phrenologist Pietter Pepper in 1643 (before breakfast!). The rest is history... - Hank Lear ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:21:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: hysterical dialiects In-Reply-To: I think the "sexist etymology" referred to is the word's origin in Gk. "hustera," womb, and the prevailing theories, at the time, that overemotion in women was caused by having their womb unhitch itself and float around loose inside their body. Seems like that would make one awfully itchy indeed. But per your subject line above, are we talking about "hysterical dialectics" or "hysterical dialects," like the strange languages spoken by wimmin poets and cartoon characters? And where do I get the female slave who is supposed to sit between my thighs and burn fragrant incense to entice my womb back into its usual arrangement? Isn't "meretricious" derived from Lat. "meretrix," harlot? Do you sometimes get that not-so-fresh feeling? Wondering in Washington ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 15:00:56 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: more rattling Cage Hi all, so leading questions for the asking: is the world (i worry about 'the' here) getting more 'noisy' ? are our worlds becoming more 'musical' ? is each listener a composer ? what are 'new' roles for 'composers' ? then - given proliferation of language constructs in our worlds, what are roles for 'writers' / 'readers' ? love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 10:08:45 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: hysterical dialiects In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:21:36 -0400 from On Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:21:36 -0400 Gwyn McVay said: >languages spoken by wimmin poets and cartoon characters? And where do I >get the female slave who is supposed to sit between my thighs and burn >fragrant incense to entice my womb back into its usual arrangement? Isn't >"meretricious" derived from Lat. "meretrix," harlot? Do you sometimes get >that not-so-fresh feeling? Pregnant thoughts. If I wasn't getting it before I'm getting it now. As Cynthia wrote in her unwritten poems (c.f. Elena Shvarts - fake reference here) - Rome as I was burning fiddled my thoughts of you and where sweetness was came sour tastelessness but lemon is a cure for scurvy knavery so take these lemons, squire, for your saucy filet before she rots and before my anger cools and I think of a new word to carve in your trunk - HNVY GILLED ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 10:28:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: the iliad of hypnotism Uh, hey... Anybody read any good poems lately? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:32:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Carl Subject: morty >I agree with you Ira, that there are some missing feschrifts for composers >other than Cage. I'd most like to see a good Feldman book, & have toyed with >the thought myself. There is a book on/by Feldman I'm aware of, but can't remember the title now. Mostly anecdotes and lectures of his (german/english edition, i seem to remember a complicated story behind the reason for this). Available through Larry Polanski's press (turtle island?) (for more information: http://onyx.dartmouth.edu/~larry/polansky.html) dgcarl@ucdavis.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 11:37:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Stadelman Subject: Re: dodecaphony as generative grammar In-Reply-To: Dear Tom, I think you must be referring to Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, _A Generative Theory of Tonal Music_ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983). 368 pp. (2nd Edition, 1996) Actually, Lerdahl's writings have recently been used as a club to attack musics with experimental ambitions, for instance those of 'constructivist' cast (Carter, Babbitt say). And, by implication surely (though I've not yet seen published critiques), they indict experimental work in the Cagean sense. A good introduction to how Lerdahl views the aesthetically delimiting effects of "the way our minds operate" can be found in an article whose title says it all: "Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems," _Contemporary Music Review_, Vol. 6, edited by Paul Moravec and Robert Beaser, Harwood Academic Publishers (1992). Jeff Stadelman SUNY at Buffalo On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Thomas M. Orange wrote: > Listfolks, > > Has anyone heard of a book by Frederick Udahl (sp?) called something like > "The Twelve-tone System as Generative Grammar" or "Towards a Generative > Grammar from Twelve-Tone Music"? > > Thanks, > Tom Orange > tmorange@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:37:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Them That's Got Shall Get In-Reply-To: <199603110702.CAA10237@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Did anybody else fall for the phony ad Yale placed in the _Chronicle_ last Spring announcing a search for a senior position in twentieth-century poetry? I didn't expect anything to come of it, having been told over the years that Yale's attitude is that they shouldn't hire anyone so lowly as to have to apply for a position, but what did surprise me was how many of my colleagues around the country predicted accurately who would be hired. And here comes official notice, dated May 31, that having searched assiduously across the length and breadth of the land, Yale has hired Langon Hammer. Professor Hammer was no doubt the most highly qualified candidate for this senior position, having published A book (_Hart Crane and Allen Tate_, 1993; now there's a new topic for you). It must have been quite a search. The MLA directory for this year listed Professor Hammer as an Associate Professor at, hmmmm, Yale. Before that, he was listed as an Assistant Professor at, you guessed it, Yale. Thank god that Yale has resisted the erosion of merit brought upon us by such foolishly egalitarian notions as affirmative action and has insisted upon rigorously seeking out the most obviously qualified candidate for such an elite position. and yes, that is the aroma of sour grapes you sense rising from this post -- if it weren't for _resentiment_ I wouldn't have no sentiment at all! (apologies to Albert King) ------------------------------- on a more uplifting note,,, Just back from the American Literature Association meeting in San Diego, where the panels on H.D., Marianne Moore, Williams, Pound and Kaufman all went very well indeed -- several folk will reappear at the Orono conference shortly,,, There is, by the way, now a Marianne Moore Society, for those of you who are interested in such things, along with the H.D. Williams, and Pound societies, which will sponsor panels at each year's conference. The African-American Literature and Culture Society continues to sponsor poetry panels at every year's conference, and is planning a symposium in New Orleans for '98. This year's Asian-American Lit. panel was really good, but we need to see more poetry discussion in that forum -- (especially with Walter's anthology just out) -- better than usual poetry reading by Quincy Troupe at this year's conference -- VERY strange first session on "Criticism against the Grain" by some of our more engrained colleagues -- (did you know that Lacan was a commie fellow traveler, for example??? that's what I'm told by this expert -- haven't heard that kind of overt McCarthyism for many a year -- according to this guy, all theory from France from roughly 48 on is either commie or what J. Edgar Hoover used to call comsymp agitprop -- I know this will come as cold comfort to those on the left who reject poststructuralism as a reactionary movement) a good time was had by all, and I, for one, learned quite a bit -- here's one connection for you Kaufman readers -- I had been looking at all the mentions of Crispus Attucks in Kaufman's poetry, and now learn, from Mona Lisa Saloy, that Charlie Parker, another in Kaufman's pantheon, attended Crispus Attucks School -- remember the line in "Ancient Rain" about the immigrants who refuse to attend school with Crispus Attucks -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:01:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: dodecaphony as generative grammar Tom Orange asks: > >Has anyone heard of a book by Frederick Udahl (sp?) called something like >"The Twelve-tone System as Generative Grammar" or "Towards a Generative >Grammar from Twelve-Tone Music"? > I know of a book by Fred Lerdahl & Ray Jackendoff called A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. I've never read so I don't know if it gets into twelve tone stuff at all. I'm on my way to a dream date with the lovely & talented Lake Quinault, if the discussion is still cagey when I get back, I guess I'll have plenty to read. &, to answer Jordan's question: yes. Bests, H Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:11:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: more rattling Cage Ira writes: I didn't >think, myself, that Cage suitably engaged with Feldman's >upset at, for example, pop music on transistor radios >spoiling the quiet, in this case of the beach. As the >world gets more crassly noisy, and my ears hurt, and >I can't find a quiet house to live in, aren't these >issues? You should look into the work of R. Murray Shaffer, a Canadian who began a project called the World Soundscape. I don't know what kind of materials are easily available in England. I remember a graph in one of his books labeled "the instruments of the orchestra are changing", that plotted the relative decline of sales of pianos against the growth of sales of lawn mowers, but this is serious work none the less. You could also check the Web site for World Forum for Acoustic Ecology: where ther are lots of links to relevant sites. Really gotta run now. See everyone at the lake. Herb Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 10:56:16 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: reading Monday 6/10 David Baratier reads from compartments in it's entirety in Philadelphia, 7:00pm at Cafe Santa Maria, 517 S. 5th Street (between South and Lombard) for the last time before moving to Ohio ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 12:20:04 -0400 Reply-To: "c.g. guertin" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "c.g. guertin" Subject: Re: more rattling Cage In-Reply-To: <834155731.13209.0@slang.demon.co.uk> In Sontag's article "The Aesthetics of Silence," she quotes Cage twice. Once as saying, "There is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound." And: "Every now and then it is possible to have absolutely nothing; the possibility of nothing" Infuriatingly, Sontag gives no footnotes. Does anyone know what the source of these quotes might be? Could anyone tell me where I might find the best discussion of Cage's aesthetics of silence and/or of 4'33'' (either by him or by others)? Thanks for your help. Carolyn Carolyn Guertin University of Western Ontario cguertin@julian.uwo.ca "My empire is of the imagination." -- H. Rider Haggard, She ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 12:23:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism In-Reply-To: from "Jordan Davis" at Jun 7, 96 10:28:28 am > > Uh, hey... > > Anybody read any good poems lately? > > Jordan > Yeah, Lise Downe's _A Velvet Increase of Curiosity_ (ECW Press, Toronto, 1993, $12.00 CAN). A stunning book. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 12:11:00 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: Re: the illiad of hypnoism Jordan, I don't read poems, I write them, quite often on napkins, and I have found that editors love crayon. One editor in particular sent me back praises on my choice of periwinkle for a poem and regrettably announced they were unable to reproduce that hue for their issue. As an editor myself, I open the small envelopes first, ones which could not possibly contain poems, and then ones addressed in crayon, followed by letters from prisions, ones with academic seals, ones with cartoon stamps, in this order and also opened in order of smallest to largest envelope size. As an added insider tip for getting into our journal, including blank university stationary directly affects the decision making process, as we love to send back rejection notices on these kinds of paper to the unsuspecting rejectee, so far we have letterhead from 13 universities. It's just wacky the responses we get when we reject somebody from Ypsilani with stationary from the same university. David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 14:35:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Coolidge and Mark? In-Reply-To: <9605078341.AA834171049@smtp-gw.mosby.com> Is this a typo? The Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY, lists among its previous faculty Ginsberg, Waldman, Creeley, Natalie Goldberg, and one "Clark Strand"--is that a real guy or a case of lang-po meets trad-po in the same body? Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 14:59:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: morty David Carl-- I've not been able to find the Feldman book you refer to, & was told it was out of print. The complicated story was that the original Feldman material in English, there was only one copy, was lost or ediotically disgarded, after it had been translated into German. So, the English is a translation from the German! Cage had a similar thing happen with _For the Birds_, which was interviews, the tapes were "lost" & the English edition is translated from French even though the original interviews were conducted in English. Rod ------------------------------- D. Carl wrote: There is a book on/by Feldman I'm aware of, but can't remember the title now. Mostly anecdotes and lectures of his (german/english edition, i seem to remember a complicated story behind the reason for this). Available through Larry Polanski's press (turtle island?) (for more information: http://onyx.dartmouth.edu/~larry/polansky.html) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 15:05:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Stadelman Subject: Re: morty On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, David Carl wrote: > There is a book on/by Feldman I'm aware of, but can't remember the title > now. Mostly anecdotes and lectures of his (german/english edition, i seem > to remember a complicated story behind the reason for this). Available > through Larry Polanski's press (turtle island?) > (for more information: http://onyx.dartmouth.edu/~larry/polansky.html) Morton Feldman, _Essays_, edited by Walter Zimmermann (Kerpen, Germany: Beginner Press, 1985). This book is, for the most part, bilingual (German/English) though there are a few items which appear only in German. Part of the complicated story mentioned by David Carl may involve the fact that some of the essays had to be translated into German from languages other than English (Italian at least, I seem to recall), with the English originals lost or destroyed. The editorial work on the English-language material is generally poor (misspellings galore), but the book is refreshingly blunt, entertaining and instructive--highly recommended. For German readers there's _Morton Feldman_, _musik-konzepte_ Vols. 48/49, edited by Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn (Munich: edition text + kritik, 1984?). And Thomas DeLio has a book on Feldman out, or coming out, published by Excelsior Press I believe. Jeff Stadelman SUNY at Buffalo ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:29:52 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert J Wilson Subject: Yale Sublimity Strikes Again In-Reply-To: 'Professor Langon Hammer has been appointed to replace Harold Bloom as Yale Professor of Sublimity,' or was it just the absent presence of Mark Strand as a Merwinesque canon-maker in the vacant 'landscape'-- now you see that trope and now you don't see the natives or nine tenths of social reality school of US poetics? Just wondering about that Yale School of Criticism as a disappearing act of the agrarian poetics into, now, nothing even to contest or offer to the suburbs and provinces of this grand old polity. What else has the fellow written to earn such banishment? Rob Wilson On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > Did anybody else fall for the phony ad Yale placed in the _Chronicle_ > last Spring announcing a search for a senior position in > twentieth-century poetry? I didn't expect anything to come of it, having > been told over the years that Yale's attitude is that they shouldn't hire > anyone so lowly as to have to apply for a position, but what did surprise > me was how many of my colleagues around the country predicted accurately > who would be hired. > > And here comes official notice, dated May 31, that having searched > assiduously across the length and breadth of the land, Yale has hired > Langon Hammer. Professor Hammer was no doubt the most highly qualified > candidate for this senior position, having published A book (_Hart Crane > and Allen Tate_, 1993; now there's a new topic for you). > > It must have been quite a search. The MLA directory for this year listed > Professor Hammer as an Associate Professor at, hmmmm, Yale. Before that, > he was listed as an Assistant Professor at, you guessed it, Yale. Thank > god that Yale has resisted the erosion of merit brought upon us by such > foolishly egalitarian notions as affirmative action and has insisted upon > rigorously seeking out the most obviously qualified candidate for such an > elite position. > > and yes, that is the aroma of sour grapes you sense rising from this post -- > > if it weren't for _resentiment_ I wouldn't have no sentiment at all! > (apologies to Albert King) > ------------------------------- > > on a more uplifting note,,, Just back from the American Literature > Association meeting in San Diego, where the panels on H.D., Marianne > Moore, Williams, Pound and Kaufman all went very well indeed -- several > folk will reappear at the Orono conference shortly,,, > > There is, by the way, now a Marianne Moore Society, for those of you who > are interested in such things, along with the H.D. Williams, and Pound > societies, which will sponsor panels at each year's conference. The > African-American Literature and Culture Society continues to sponsor > poetry panels at every year's conference, and is planning a symposium in > New Orleans for '98. This year's Asian-American Lit. panel was really > good, but we need to see more poetry discussion in that forum -- > (especially with Walter's anthology just out) -- > > better than usual poetry reading by Quincy Troupe at this year's > conference -- > > VERY strange first session on "Criticism against the Grain" by some of > our more engrained colleagues -- (did you know that Lacan was a commie > fellow traveler, for example??? that's what I'm told by this expert -- > haven't heard that kind of overt McCarthyism for many a year -- according > to this guy, all theory from France from roughly 48 on is either commie > or what J. Edgar Hoover used to call comsymp agitprop -- I know this will > come as cold comfort to those on the left who reject poststructuralism as > a reactionary movement) > > a good time was had by all, and I, for one, learned quite a bit -- > > here's one connection for you Kaufman readers -- I had been looking at > all the mentions of Crispus Attucks in Kaufman's poetry, and now learn, > from Mona Lisa Saloy, that Charlie Parker, another in Kaufman's pantheon, > attended Crispus Attucks School -- remember the line in "Ancient Rain" > about the immigrants who refuse to attend school with Crispus Attucks -- > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 15:00:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: Them That's Got Shall Get & to follow yr albert king sweet & sour grapes one grape further, aldon: if it weren't for insider-games like the one you describe at yale, there wouldn't be no game at all... the "job market" is largely a stacked deck, even with the best of hiring intentions, even when the person hired is from another campus... everybody is qualified on paper, and there are simply too many everybodies... most hiring (by which i mean to include the winnowing process) ends up being accomplished out of regard for a potentially dubious, in some ways arbitrary paper-trail---which latter is measured against criteria developed by---you guessed it!---places like yale... i've been there, and i can attest to the difficulties in trying to get 'around' the superficialities of vitae information... not that i'm against, say, a solid publishing record (though as to the threat of perishing over same---)... but i doubt, for example, that a book of poetry would "count" in yale's deliberations over who gets to go to ole new haven to profess the wonders of 20th. century poetry... i mean, just b/c one writes poetry doesn't mean one knows a damn thing about the history of same, right?... i'm not joking... on the other hand, a poet *could* very well know her history... moreover, when it comes to the poets i know, there's no question that they know their history... ergo--- then we have the little matter of what constitutes the "right" sort of scholarship... whether yale'd know it when they saw it... etc... the academic situation has really gone zonkers in so many ways... it's had its past moments of turbulence, but i'm not sure it's ever been quite so vexed... (((btw, i like it that you posted yr gripe-grapes here... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 10:09:04 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: Them That's Got Shall Get In-Reply-To: Langdon Hammer's book on modernism (by way of Crane and Tate) is excellent; in fact, it covers a lot of the same ground as Jed Rasula's brilliant _American Poetry Wax Museum_, if in a different manner. I'm sorry other worthies got overlooked, but I'd say he was a very strong candidate for that Yale position. He was a friend of mine in college, so I hate to see him used purely for his symbolic value. Susan S. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 13:25:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism >Uh, hey... > >Anybody read any good poems lately? > >Jordan I have been reading the poems of the new Zealander Sam Hunt, and they are really bad. .......................... "I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand." --Bobbie Louise hawkins George Bowering. 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 17:56:55 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: new poetry bookstore looking for wares (fwd) hope this may be of interest to some... [begin forwarded message]: Message #490 (492 is last): Date: Fri Jun 7 17:30:49 1996 From: IMPETUS@aol.com Subject: New Bookstore Seeking Stock Hello Poets & Publishers, This is an invitation to send me your catalogues/lists/ what have you's w/Bookstore rates so that I can start setting up. I want to specialize in small & micro press publications and true alternative. You can either e-mail, or snail mail.. cat's Impetuous Books & Stuff 233 1/2 S. Water St. Kent, Ohio 44240 Thanks, cat [end forward] please direct questions or replies to cheryl (aka cat), not me... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 18:59:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Gary Kirschenbaum Subject: Re: new poetry bookstore looking for wares (fwd) Comments: To: au462@cleveland.freenet.edu In-Reply-To: <199606072156.RAA10746@owl.INS.CWRU.Edu> from "Robert Drake" at Jun 7, 96 05:56:55 pm Imagine how relieved I was to read the note below after finding the following in my mail queue: 43 Jun 7 Robert Drake (54) new poetry bookstore looking for war > Hello Poets & Publishers, > > This is an invitation to send me your catalogues/lists/ what have you's > w/Bookstore rates so that I can start setting up. I want to specialize in > small & micro press publications and true alternative. You can either > e-mail, or snail mail.. ================================================================= Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k Electronic Text Center ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 17:11:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Tristan D. Saldana" Subject: Sontag on Cage Comments: To: "c.g. guertin" In-Reply-To: I am not aware of Sontag's "article" on Cage. Do you, Carolyn, or anyone else, know where I can find it? You're referring to the 'Susan' Sontag of _Against Interpretation_, right? I would like to see what she has to say, and what she doesn't. Tristan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 21:58:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Sontag on Cage She wrote the intro for something called _Dancers on a Plane_ which collected works by Cage, Johns, & Cunningham. Rod ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 10:11:23 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: Them That's Got Shall Get In-Reply-To: <199606072000.PAA04029@charlie.cns.iit.edu> About this Yale professorship thing, I'm confused. Do any of you think that you would be comfortable as members of that Department? I'm just recalling things Maria Damon posted about the difficulties she experiences in terms of her own Department's receptivity to her areas of interest. I'm pretty sure that Yale's English Department is more conservative than Minnesota. After all, Yale created a separate Literature program to contain (or rechannel) theory, and despite various anomolies such as an interest in Pound ahead of other parts of academe, it is a conservative, traditionalist department. Despite (or maybe it is exemplary) the Yale Younger poets, it has not been much of a place for "writers" as faculty: now it's Hollander, before it was Penn Warren and John Hersey. Bloom was considered to be an oddball, eccentric genius type. New Haven is okay to live in, but its just another suburb of New York. I suppose the full professorship pays well, and obviously is prestigious, and I guess it would implicitly carry academic power, but even so. As a non-academic, I hope I am not being too obnoxious by pointing this out. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 22:29:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: more rattling Cage Re Carolyn Guertin's post: The first quote you mention: "There is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound." John said this on any number of occasions relative to his aesthetic, & specifically to his visit to the anechoic chamber at Harvard. It's oft repeated but anyway-- he entered this silent chamber & heard two noises, one high one low. He asked the engineer what they were, & the engineer said one is your heart beating & the other is your nervous system in operation-- thus the understanding that there is no silence or that silence "includes" sound. I have no idea where the second quote: "Every now and then it is possible to have absolutely nothing; the possibility of nothing" is from. Actually sounds more like Jasper Johns to me, though John was happy to contradict himself on occasion. Single best intro to Cage I think is _Conversing with Cage_ ed. Kostelanetz (Limelight $16.95), simply because it includes Cage's views from a number of different times, sources. & of course I recommend Retallack's _MUSICAGE_ -- which incidentally goes into quite some depth on _Europera 5_, the piece Tim Page "reviewed." Re specific discussions of 4'33" -- there's an interesting Q&A on the tape that comes with _I-VI_, though I think it's impossible to seperate his "aesthetics of silence" from other concerns-- indeterminacy, chance operations, zen, etc. I don't recommend the biography titled _The Roaring Silence_. & of course there's Cage's _Silence_, particularly the "Lecture on Nothing." Daniel Charles has written very well on Cage, & Jackson MacLow's article on his writing is excellent. Geeze, I'm like "Cage Guy" around here lately. Rod ------------------------------------ Carolyn G. wrote: In Sontag's article "The Aesthetics of Silence," she quotes Cage twice. Once as saying, "There is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound." And: "Every now and then it is possible to have absolutely nothing; the possibility of nothing" Infuriatingly, Sontag gives no footnotes. Does anyone know what the source of these quotes might be? Could anyone tell me where I might find the best discussion of Cage's aesthetics of silence and/or of 4'33'' (either by him or by others)? Thanks for your help. Carolyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 22:35:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism wld somebody please post the address for this ECW outfit? thanks, Rod ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 14:32:20 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Salmon Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism At 01:25 PM 7/06/96 -0700, you wrote: >I have been reading the poems of the new Zealander Sam Hunt, and they are >really bad. In defence of poetry. I am jubilant raconteur Sam Hunt has moved to new Zealand, perhaps that will leave more space for 'poets' in New Zealand anthologies. Dan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 23:45:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "c.g. guertin" Subject: Re: Sontag on Cage Comments: To: "Tristan D. Saldana" In-Reply-To: On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Tristan D. Saldana wrote: > I am not aware of Sontag's "article" on Cage. Do you, Carolyn, or anyone > else, know where I can find it? You're referring to the 'Susan' Sontag of > _Against Interpretation_, right? > > I would like to see what she has to say, and what she doesn't. > > Tristan > Sorry. Yes, Susan Sontag. I am referring to her article "The Aesthetics of Silence" in her early volume of essays _Styles of Radical Will_. She also refers to Cage in another essay in that volume, "'Thinking Against Oneself': Reflections on Cioran." She doesn't really comment on Cage so much as use his words to backup her argument that there can be no silence without sound...at the risk of oversimplifying. Cheers. Carolyn Carolyn Guertin University of Western Ontario cguertin@julian.uwo.ca "My empire is of the imagination." - H. Rider Haggard, She ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 22:21:12 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism In-Reply-To: <960607223552_321757109@emout10.mail.aol.com>; from "Rod Smith" at Jun 7, 1996 10:35 pm ecw press 2120 queen street east toronto, ontario canada m4e 1e2 sorry i don't have the fax phone or email ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 22:54:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism >wld somebody please post the address for this ECW outfit? > >thanks, > >Rod This ECW outfit? The latest no. of the journal is 56. The number of books is enormous. The poetry in recent times is terrif. Unfortunately its poetry editor is moving to some place called California. .......................... "I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand." --Bobbie Louise hawkins George Bowering. 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 23:10:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: dis n dat In-Reply-To: <199606080406.AAA17181@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> dissin -- it's not about symbolism (this time) -- nor is it a question of the quality of Professor Hammer's book (though I can think of three on the same topic that top it) -- not is it really a question even of Professor Hammer's qualifications (though again, I can think of several assistant profs. that Yale has refused to tenure over the years who have had considerably more impressive records, as paper as such records might be) -- No, the question is -- why is Yale calling this thing a "search"? why are they pretending that they want to receive applications? and the answer is that they have to create a paper trail of their own -- At my campus (and even San Jose State gets the legendary three hundred applications for a position these days) we would very likely have a lot of explaining to do to a board of judicial inquiry if we pulled such a stunt (even in the California of Pete Wilson!) -- ____________ dats -- Gwyn and others -- here's the info. on the Marianne Moore Society -- memberships are $3.00 ("three" -- this is not a typo) -- and the address is The International Marianne Moore Society c/o Dr. Elizabeth Joyce Dept. of English Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Edinboro, PA 16444 EJoyce@Edinboro.edu There is a home page in the works -- and a listserv run out of Yale (yes, they are very good for some things, like the LIBRARY!!!) Subscribors to _Sulfur_, including the San Jose State Library, which I at long last persuaded to get the thing, have recently received word that _Sulfur_ was rejected for an NEA grant and is in big money trouble -- may have to shrink the mag -- etc. -- I know, and we all know, there are many even more deserving mags -- but if you care about Sulfur, think about sending a buck or subscribing, or something -- still raisin grapes in California, aldon ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 08:02:36 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J.V. Kinsella" Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism In-Reply-To: On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Jordan Davis wrote: > Uh, hey... > > Anybody read any good poems lately? > > Jordan > Try Rod Mengham's Unsung: New and Selected Poems [Folio(Salt), 1996, Applecross, Western Australia. $15] ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 07:55:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism In-Reply-To: > > > Try Rod Mengham's Unsung: New and Selected Poems [Folio(Salt), 1996, > Applecross, Western Australia. $15] > Anyone know if the Mengham book is available here in the States? I've always liked the work & wld love to get ahold of the new one -- Pierre ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 09:50:52 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism ECW Press 2120 Queen St. East Toronto Ontario M4E 1E2 Canada lbd ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 09:56:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism In-Reply-To: <960607223552_321757109@emout10.mail.aol.com> from "Rod Smith" at Jun 7, 96 10:35:53 pm > > wld somebody please post the address for this ECW outfit? > > thanks, > > Rod > Rod: Their books are distrubuted in the States thru InBook, 140 Commerce St. PO Box 120261, East Haven CT 06512, 800.243.0138, FAX 800.334.3892. I have the info on the Canadian distributor, too, if you want it. ECW's phone number in Toronto is 416.694.3348, FAX 416.698.9906. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 10:03:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: signafump In-Reply-To: <199603110702.CAA10237@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> for those who have not yet spotted it -- on pg. 139 of Paul Muldoon's recent _The Annals of Chile_, George Oppen figures among the red lights around Yale! enjoy it -- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 13:37:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: signafump when you, aldon, say open as red light at yale, do you mean "STOP SIGN" and thus "COP"--did OPPEN REPRESS MULDOON (at least in MULDOON'S version)? or do you mean red light as in district as in "Roxanne" as in "Red Dress Tonight"? For red is the color that will make me blue..... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 13:39:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Address change for Andrew Levy Andrew Levy 75 Poplar St #2M Brooklyn, NY 11201 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 12:47:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim wood Subject: Re: A science project: if anyone is interested from what i know this is as the dutch say a -roos. i received the same message a few weeks ago only to be followed by an appy olly ogy from its sender. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 16:27:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Annie Finch Subject: Re: M/E/A/N/I/N/G In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Thu, 06 Jun 1996 09:19:06 -0800" Der Mike, Are you aware of a poet called Jay McPherson? I just heard she lives in Toronto.Published a selected in 1981. She writes (or did int he 60's--i ahven't seen more recent work yet) a lot of mythological stuff, which interests me quite a bit. Just wonderred if you knew her. The tough job market is really having its effect on the list, isn't it. It 's really too bad. More later, Annie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 14:12:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Jay >Are you aware of a poet called Jay McPherson? I just heard she lives in >Toronto.Published a selected in 1981. She writes (or did int he 60's--i >ahven't seen more recent work yet) a lot of mythological stuff, which >interests me quite a bit. Jay Macpherson was a celebrated student of Northrop Frye, and several decades ago was hurriedly grouped up here in a kind of threesome with Eli Mandel and James Reaney as Frijian mytho-poets. Mandel decided later in life that he wanted to head more in the direction of poets like Kroetsch and Nichol. But Macpherson, who had early done some nice derivations of Blake songs of Inn. etc.,has not published a great deal over her long life as a poet. She is often cited by Atwood as an early influence on her work. Born 1931, so she might be retiring, prof. of English at Victoria College, U. of Toronto. First commercially published book, _The Boatman_ 1957. .......................... "I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand." --Bobbie Louise hawkins George Bowering. 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 18:47:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: commerce? > >First commercially published book, _The Boatman_ 1957. > George -- I'm curious about what you mean when you say this, i.e. "first commercially published book." Is a commercially published book any book which is for sale? Or is it any book from a press which actually lives via profits from book sales (which would actually discount more than just the so-called non-profit presses). Or is it a book published with the intent of making money, as opposed to the intent of simply distributing works of literature? Or what? No axe to grind here, just wondering what this phrase means to you, and others. charles ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 00:39:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: dissin dat higher-in thang In-Reply-To: <199606090403.AAA12242@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> but aldon, supposin a judiciary body of some sort was to call yale on thr higherin disscision (or san jose state for that matter, altho here is a different matter cuz wr talkin public vs private monies)--what would they say? "well yr honor, givin the fact that our `job search' (my quotes of course--the defendant from the search committee would be using the phrase in all sincerity) resulted in our conclusion that, altho it may look highly nepotistic, the candidate chosen to receive our highering offer was clearly the most qualified applicant from a pool of highly qualified candidates, and we stand by our decision as a difficult but entirely fair *and objective* one..." how can you question that logic or assail that argument? can't really, because it all rests on the appearance of objectivity: whatever admittedly subjective factors a search committee would willingly admit go into a `job search,' ultimately those subjective factors can never be held to any kind of objective accountability. sorry to slip so facilely into the subj-obj paradigm, but when has the university search-and-hire process ever been forced into external, let alone self scrutiny? the commodity under consideration here of course being particularly slippery: would that knowledge were a craft, that the town carpenter could find an eager and skilled apprentice to take on... tom orange tmorange@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 01:24:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet impotent lifetime guarantee David: > Rob Hardin, > > I sincerely apologize for having irked your ire by not mentioning your > own work in the eidolon discussion. I've been off-line for three days and this is the best you could do? To accuse me of anger and narcissism when neither were present? Did you really miss the lightness of my response? The response itself had to do with your ad hominem attacks of Annie Finch, with your dismissal of her argument on the basis of a reference to a single word in a Whitman poem, and with your supposition that Whitman's poem remains the most important use of the word *eidolon* (its meaning an indictment of the triviality of this exchange). I mentioned my own feeble attempts to imitate Crane in a rather self-incriminating tone. For you to have read embarrassed confession as triumphant citation looks breathtakingly unperceptive. The problem with your ad hominem attacks is that they reflect badly on the attacker and not on the object of the attack. Your indictments say far more about you than they do about my remarks on the word *eidolon*. > Eidolon is more than a mere > feature of one Whitman refrain. It has been used regularly by several > other writers. If you're going to quote me, honey, at least give me my props. > While I could bring Hart Crane, yourself, or HP > Lovecraft "the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation" > into the discussion, I still am unaware of an earlier poetic reference > than Whitman and was instructed at an early age to always return to > the source. Eidolon has been used by many earlier writers and contemporaries of Whitman, such as Scott ("Calling up his eidolon in the hall of his former greatness"), Carlyle ("...living with mere Eidolons"), Poe ("An Eidolon named Night/On a black throne reigns upright"). Your instruction to "look to the source" was obviously not itself a chronological source. Furthermore, your poinyt about precedents is moot, since I myself answered it in the post you've tried to answer: >> You may argue that Crane was making a deliberate ref. to >> Whitman (especially in light of _The Bridge_ and other >> Whitman-meets-the-Symbolists-in-a-play-by-Marlowe-esque >> works). But you're still suggesting that, without an intimate >> knowledge of Whitman's diction, A.F. is insufficiently >> literate to be part of this discussion. To which I say: >> should we write out an idiosyncratic reading test, complete >> with trick questions, give it to you by means of embedded >> references, grade you on the test, and bring it up >> whenever we disagree with one of your points? Knowledge >> ought to be shared, not hoarded. > I will argue that Crane was making a deliberate ref. to Whitman. I am > suggesting that without using your arms to open an OED to refute my > point (anyone's for that matter), Are you actually affecting disdain for etymological reference works? What are we to replace them with--your shoddy and unproven suppositions? I haven't had to open an OED in any previous post. But what if I had? Would that have made my knowledge less genuine--because I acknowledged a legitimate source of information? Or would you rather we renounce all attempts to check our facts? > or to find out what any unknown word Eidolon is not an unknown word. If it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion. > means, one arrives to the discussion sufficiently lazy enough to > speculate on what is being said and offer their opinion, instead of > their knowledgable experience. You offered far more than your opinion: You attacked another member of this list for missing your vague ref to a single word in a Whitman poem. You then inferred that missing your reference was a sign of illiteracy. I find it odd that such an exacting critic would now express contempt for etymology and research. > In answer to your question "Why suggest that a person who speaks > passionately of formal verse is ignorant of all other kinds?" [not] > It's hard enough to understand an opposing point of view without > attributing nasty motives to the speaker.["] Nice citation, but the closing quote mark ought to have come fourteen words later. > I suggest that if we continue this thread in a manner worth replying > to, that we talk about how to determine which strings of words fit > into a particular form, what aspects of words (phonemem, morpheme, > arragement, connotational value, associative change of these values, > etcetera) solidify in our minds which forms are to be used, as charles > (chax) mentioned a while back. I suggest that, if you truly want to return to a more civil mode of discourse, you thrill us with your self-restraint, and neither accuse Annie Finch of deception and illiteracy, nor me of narcissism and ire. My post to you and to Annie bore the suggestion that we reman civil. I've also seen brutal remarks about some of the sonnets posted here; I might not like some of them myself, it's true. But I can see no useful purpose in slagging the authors. Besides: as Lynne Emmanuel has pointed out (_After Modernism_), language poets and neo-formalists have more in common than is readily apparent. Aren't both "camps" fairly obsessed with questions of technique? Didn't Barret Watten once write that technique is the most exciting aspect of poetry? Also: linguistic terms are precise ones for discussing certain aspects of poetry; but in others, only conventional prosodic terms will do. I see no reason to restrict discussions of technique to linguistic terminology. Even Jakobsen did not confine his analyses to grammar and phonology. Even Saintsbury said a few useful things to Jakobsen. All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 01:38:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: hysterical dialect, hysterical eidolon Gwyn typed: > I think the "sexist etymology" referred to is the word's origin in Gk. > "hustera," womb, and the prevailing theories, at the time, that > overemotion in women was caused by having their womb unhitch itself and > float around loose inside their body. Yes, but should we really be held accountable for the etymological origins of the words we use? What I objected to in Annie's original comment was the suggestion that the *term* hysterical had lowered the tone of the debate to the level of gender prejudice. What would happen if we all posted in French, and were forced to reduce all classes of nouns to masculine and feminine? Would we all be guilty of etymological sexism? If we're going to discuss the sexist etymology of the English language, that's one thing. But to invest the user with the sexism of a word's history is uncalled for. At best, the message conjured is confused. At best, /the mes/sage con/jured is /confused and us/er, et-y-mo-/logi-/cally used Funny, isn't it? That mere words--like *hysterical* and *eidolon*-- have such power to provoke, such histories to invoke? All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 22:41:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: commerce? >> >>First commercially published book, _The Boatman_ 1957. >> > > >George -- I'm curious about what you mean when you say this, i.e. "first >commercially published book." Is a commercially published book any book >which is for sale? Or is it any book from a press which actually lives via >profits from book sales (which would actually discount more than just the >so-called non-profit presses). Or is it a book published with the intent of >making money, as opposed to the intent of simply distributing works of >literature? Or what? No axe to grind here, just wondering what this phrase >means to you, and others. > >charles Oh, I just meant by a commercially-bent publisher. She had published her earlier books under her own imprint and a chapbook by a friend. She published other books under her own imprimateur, too, nice woodblock and handset things by people like Al Purdy, Alden Nowlan. .......................... "Silence, sole luxury after rimes . . ." --Mallarme George Bowering. 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 01:48:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism Jordan Davis typed: > Uh, hey... > > Anybody read any good poems lately? Do old ones count? Interestingly, I just read a poem by Charles Baxter ("The Last String Quartet of Arnold Schoenberg") that seems to exemplify everything we tend to renounce: an artless affect, prosaic free verse technique, and lucid narrative. Similarly, a recent collection of Dennis Cooper's new and unknown poems has just appeared. So far, I love it. Even though I don't entirely agree with it, Charles Watson's essay-poem on the failure of spontaneous prose is pretty damned interesting. Everything else I've been reading is ancient--except the diaries of Dennis Nilsen, and Peter Sotos's _Total Abuse_. All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 02:54:53 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what? Comments: To: Rod Smith On 6 Jun 96 at 15:12, Rod Smith wrote: > Also, is their anything out there in terms of a good new > music publication like _Ear_ used to be. Something that would cover say > Frissell, Le Baron, & unkowns? Also, to note, there's a new book on Nancarrow > from Cambridge (overpriced hc, but looks very good). Musicworks seems to fit that bill for me, having good articles on a wide variety of musics. Check out http://www.web.net/~sound/ for more info. ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 08:00:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: EMF CALENDAR ALERT (fwd) ouf! now that the wierd sonnett thread seems to have run its course &=20 Cage & music is popping up, lemme forward this summer schedule of music=20 events.(Just a note re early/late Cage: there are years when I prefer=20 early Cage, there are years when I prefer the late Cage, there are other=20 months when I don't listen to Cage at all -- & that goes for all=20 composers, poets & painters; it seems somwhat silly to make sweeping=20 indictments re this or that musician, this or that moment in an artist's= =20 career -- or at least worth remembering that as listener/reader/critic=20 one always speaks out of a very relative moment & place oneself from=20 which any generalization is likely to be reductive. But right now what=20 I'm listening to is Messiaen "+concert a quatre" which will be followed=20 by Sulochana Brahaspaqti's "Raga Bilaskhani Todi" & Wilhelm Killmayer's=20 setting of Holderling songs. Pierre =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Pierre Joris | "Form fascinates when one no longer has the force Dept. of English | to understand force from within itself. That SUNY Albany | is, to create." -- Jacques Derrida = =20 Albany NY 12222 |=20 tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | "Poetry is the promise of a language."=20 email: | -- Friedrich Holderlin joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| =20 =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 11:56:43 -0500 From: Electronic Music Foundation To: emfnet@emf.org Subject: EMF CALENDAR ALERT EMF CALENDAR ALERT =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D June 6, 1996 EMF CALENDAR is published on the web by Electronic Music Foundation as a selective guide to important events worldwide. Our web site is http://www.emf.org This email version of EMF CALENDAR is being sent to you either because you've already asked to be on our list or because we believe you'll be interested in what we have to say. If you would rather not receive future email messages from us, simply let us know. If this has been forwarded to you by someone else and you would like to receive these notices directly, just send an email message to list@emf.org and say something like "Put me on your list" and we'll put you on our list. Note: Each monthly email calendar update contains only new material. For a complete picture of the future, save all calendars or check our web site. CONTENTS: 1. Summer education 2. Summer festivals and conferences 3. Concerts 4. Fall previews 5. To submit listings =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D SUMMER EDUCATION PHYSICAL MODEL SYNTHESIS WORKSHOP Friday, June 21 at the Accademia Bartolomeo Cristofori, Florence, Italy The Centro Tempo Reale of Florence will host a one day workshop which will include lectures and presentations relating to various aspects of physical model synthesis. Participation is free. frenci@temporeale.softeam.it *** 1996 LES ATELIERS UPIC June 25 to July 19 Les Ateliers UPIC, Alfortville (near Paris), France Please note that the dates have changed since last month's emailing. This course in computer music and composition will include lectures, supervised group practice in UPIC studios, individual studio time, visits to new music centers and student presentations at the conclusion of the course. Both English and French will be spoken throughout the course. Housing is available. For more information: 100422.1771@compuserve.com (33)(1) 4378 80 80 Voice (33)(1) 4368 25 52 Fax Les Ateliers UPIC 16-18 Rue Marcelin-Berthelot 94141 Alfortville FRANCE *** IRCAM SUMMER ACADEMY June 24 to June 29 at IRCAM and the Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris Workshops in various aspects of computer music such as composition, gestural interfaces for computer control and musical computing. Also, personal demonstrations of software and individual practice work. Instructors inlcude George Benjamin, Marco Stroppa, Michel Waisvisz, Laetitia Sonami and others. Application deadline is May 31. http://www.ircam.fr/saison/Academie-e.html =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D SUMMER FESTIVALS & CONFERENCES 1996 CROYDON COLOURSCAPE FESTIVAL June 6, 7, 13 and 14 Central Croydon, London Concerts include Llorenc Barber's 'City Symphony', the premiere of Lawrence Casserely's 'The Garden of Forking Paths' for guitar and ISPW (played by Richard Durrant, guitar), Simone Rebello's work for Colourscape C, Melvyn Poore's 'Happily Ever After', and several other works. Contact: leo@chiltern.demon.co.uk *** SON-MU '96 Monday, June 17 at Maison de Radio France, Paris Two concerts: the music of Benjamin Hertz, Lionel Marchetti and Francis Larvor will be performed at 7 pm; the music of Patrick Ascione, Ilhan Mmaroglu and Michel Chion at 9 pm. Part of the 'Cycle Acousmatique' concert series. Maison de Radio France SALLE OLIVIER MESSIAEN 116 ave du Pr=E9sident Kennedy 75016 Paris FRANCE =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D CONCERTS DOGS OF DESIRE: MISCELLANEOUS HOWLS Friday, June 7, 8:00 PM at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York David Allen Miller conducts an amplified, 20 piece orchestra of the future presenting new works by Michael Daugherty, Kamran Ince, Stewart Copeland and the New York premiere of David Lang's 'Are You Experienced?'. Tickets: $15. For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793 Email: kitchen@panix.com *** DOGS OF DESIRE Saturday, June 8, 8:00 PM at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York Todd Levin's 'Parallel Universe', a song cycle for voice, video and chamber orchestra based on the life of a vagrant, will be performed. A conversation with the artist will follow. Tickets: $15. For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793 Email: kitchen@panix.com *** BANG ON A CAN-SPIT ORCHESTRA Friday, June 9, 7 & 9 PM at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York 35 classically trained musicians updates the chamber tradition performing new works which stretch the boundaries of classical music. For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793 Email: kitchen@panix.com *** PAMELA Z Friday, June 9, 8:00 PM at Footworks, San Francisco Pamela Z will perform a solo set in an evening with Hip Circle, Jon Weaver and Sten Rudstrom as part of San Francisco's Festvial of Improvisers. For more information call festival organizers: (415) 664-8877 Or Footworks: (415) 824-5044 To contact Pamela Z: pamelaz@sirius.com http://www.sirius.com/~pamelaz *** CHRISTOPHER PREISSING: FRAGMENTS June 13 to 15 at the Indianapolis Repertory Theatre Upperstage, Indiana Multi-Arts performance featuring electronic music, dance, theatre, video and slides. Tickets: $10. Contact: 71726.2217@Compuserve.com *** DAVID BEHRMAN Friday, June 14, 8:00 PM at Lotus Music & Dance Studios, 109 West 27th Street, 8th Floor, New York David Behrman (electronics) will perfom 'Congress of Elders' with Jon Gibson (sax / flute) and "Blue" Jean Tyranny (keyboards). Admission: $8. Reservations are strongly recommended. Information & Reservations: (212) 627-1076 *** BUN CHING LAM / BERTRAM TURETZKY / MARK DRESSER Saturday, June 22, 9:00 PM at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York Lam and Dresser perform in The Kitchen, while Turetzky is audio-visually connected from Santa Monica. They perform an evening of solos, duets and trios on Qin (Chinese 7-string sitar), piano and bass, uniting Eastern and Western traditions. Tickets: $15. For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793 Email: kitchen@panix.com *** GORDON MONAHAN: MACHINE MODULATION MATRIX June 27 to 29, 8:00 PM at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York Monahan returns to The Kitchen as the final stop on his world tour to present the completed work of this installation that he presented as a work-in-progress last summer. Monhan's materials include metal, magnets and steam. Tickets: $15. For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793 Email: kitchen@panix.com *** PAMELA Z Friday, June 28 Salt Lake City, Utah Pamela Z will perform a solo concert as part of the Utah Arts Festival, which includes such diverse acts as Laurie Anderson and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. For more information about the festival, call: (800) 322-2428 To contact Pamela Z: pamelaz@sirius.com http://www.sirius.com/~pamelaz *** ELECTRONIC MUSIC, NEW FILM AND CHAMBER MUSIC Saturday, June 29, 8:00 PM at the Black Box Cinema of Film Museum, Dusseldorf, Germany Electronic music by Klarenz Barlow, Masahiro Miwa, Frank Schweizer and Christian Banasik, new chamber works by Hanna Kulenty and Jacek Rogala, and silent films by Han Richter, Oskar Fischinger and Wilfried Basse will be presented. Contact: c.banasik@t-online.de *** BENOIT MAUBREY / DIE AUDIO GRUPPE July 10 to 13, 8:00 PM at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York This performance, entitled 'Audio Ballerinas and Electronic Guys', features elecro-acoustic clothing such as audio tutus and smoking jackets, rendering each performer a walking studio, able to record, mix and loop found and prerecorded sound. For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793 Email: kitchen@panix.com =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D FALL PREVIEWS SONIC CIRCUITS IV ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL Begins in September Several cities in the US and Canada This international experimental music festival, produced by American Composers' Forum, will take place in Boston, New York, St. Cloud, Minneapolis, Toronto, Winnipeg and others. To find out how to host a leg in your city, and for more information, contact: compfrm@maroon.tc.umn.edu http://www.umn.edu/nlhome/m111/compfrm =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D TO SUBMIT LISTINGS If you'd like to list an event, simply send us the information. The information should contain the date(s), place (venue, city), name of event, type of event (i.e. conference, concert, festival...), description (what's happening, ticket prices... anything relevant), and where to go (contact numbers, email, URL and street address) for further info. Send your information to us at calendar@emf.org There is no charge for brief listings. For ads in conjunction with listings, please contact us for rates. =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D EMF Calendar is a publication of Electronic Music Foundation, Inc. Electronic Music Foundation 116 North Lake Avenue Albany NY 12206 USA (518) 434-4110 Voice (518) 434-0308 Fax Calendar@emf.org http://www.emf.org ## =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Electronic Music Foundation 116 N. Lake Ave. Albany, NY 12206 USA http://www.emf.org 518.434.4110 - voice 518.434.0308 - fax EMF@emf.org - email ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 08:42:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: EMF CALENDAR ALERT (fwd) Pierre Joris: Your latest post was unusually wise, restrained, tolerant and perceptive. One question: > But right now what > I'm listening to is Messiaen "+concert a quatre" which will be followed > by Sulochana Brahaspaqti's "Raga Bilaskhani Todi" & Wilhelm Killmayer's > setting of Holderling songs. I'm certain we all know Messaien. (Are you speaking of his Quartet for the End of Time?) But I've never heard of the last two composers you mentioned. Can you tell us more about Killmayer's settings of H=F6lderlin (who happens to be one of my favorites)? All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 09:17:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: EMF CALENDAR ALERT (fwd) In-Reply-To: On Sun, 9 Jun 1996, Carnography wrote: > I'm certain we all know Messaien. (Are you speaking of his Quartet for th= e > End of Time?) But I've never heard of the last two composers you mentione= d. > Can you tell us more about Killmayer's settings of H=F6lderlin (who happe= ns > to be one of my favorites)? >=20 > All the best, >=20 > Rob Hardin Rob -- the Messiaen is not the "End of time Q" but a late piece=20 (1990-1991) (score completed by his wife Yvonne Loriod after M's death) for= =20 flute,oboe, piano & cello. Its world premiere recording by the orchestra=20 of the Bastille opera, Myung-Whun Chung conductor, can be found on=20 Deutsche Grammophon 445 947-2. Killmayer is a German composer (b. 1927) & his "Holderlin -Lieder" is a=20 large (2 cd) double song cycle using late Holderlin poems set for=20 orchestra & tenor & compsoed between 1982 & 1987. It's a strange,=20 powerful work, ranging from the ethereal-metaphysical to the heavy=20 neo-classical germanic -- but fascinating. The CD is Wergo: WER 6245-2. Sulochana Brahaspati is one of the great traditional ndian vocalists,=20 the raga I mentioned is in the _khyal_ genre & she is accompanied by=20 Sultan Khan (Sarangi) & Anindo Chatterjee (Tabla). [Nimbus CD # NI 5305] Pierre ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 09:58:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: dissin dat higher-in thang i like what---is it simon?---sd about yale... i know it isn't aldon's point, but i rather like the idea of pointing to yale's less attractive aspects... new haven has a shitload of problems, yale has never had a friendly relationship with the town, yale itself has alla the worst, if some of the best, ivy trappings... witness the grad. student unionization effort, and the esteemed faculty's response to same... let me put it this way: a novelist friend of mine was once offered a job there, and turned it down... and it tickled me to hear this... would that i might turn down yale, i know... anyway, one of the reasons that yale *must* conduct a job search has to do with meeting eeoc/aap hiring guidelines, no?... now before anybody jumps out of their computer monitors at me: i'm in favor of such guidelines in general... but fact is that such guidelines, as well as general policies of academic hiring, require an ostensibly open search (if i'm hinting at something i shouldn't be, somebody please correct me here)... ultimately this ends up costing a lot of us a lot of wasted money... i'm not sure what to do about this... in any case there's a lot of false leads, and this is esp. aggravating in academe, where the job market is tighter than newt gingrich's asshole... excuse me... i meant bob dole's... anyway, inside hiring goes on all the time... we've just conducted an ostensibly open search for a dean here on my campus, and ended up hiring the inside man (which is not to say that there wasn't some chance he wouldn't get the job, or that he wasn't the best qualified for the job, but---)... in three job searches in which i've been directly involved, i was absolutely astonished at the capriciousness of the process... at the same time, it's clear to me that who-knows-whom is still a major factor in hiring decisions (and i've cut some folks some favors in this regard mself)... and this, again, is aggravated by the job market... it's simply astonishing to me (i guess i'm easily astonished, no?) that i have some inside dope on just about every hire i hear about in my presumed area(s)---either somebody i know left, or somebody i know was also applying for said job and was under the impression they were going to get it, or i thought i had a good crack at it, or whatever... again, small world... i like what aldon sd to me a while back: that given the current vagaries, we might all swap positions to determine where we might all feel most comfortable... but as aldon also noted, the "all" here is existing faculty, this doesn't answer a whit to new blood... ergo my wife leaves her visiting so's we don't have to live 1500 miles apart, and here we're limping along on my so-called (tenure-track) salary while she and i consider the ethics of adjuncting (once again---we've both seen that scene)... but a visiting position opens up, natch, at her former institution... i understand and appreciate that not all of you on this list may be interested in such laments... but just by way of fleshing out the academic backdrop, esp. when you hear that the "avg." professorial salary across all disciplines and all postsecondary institutions has finally cracked $50k (as aaup's mag. _academe_ cover-glossed "our" current salaries, "not so bad")... to give you some idea of just how misleading this number is, how disparate the academic experience can be: at my (tech.) institution, the AVG. assistant prof. makes something like $43k... now our institution ranks 14th. out of 16 tech. institutions in terms of wages (last i checked)---near the bottom, that is (and with *no* allowance made for the relatively high cost of living here in chicago)... yet nobody in my dept.---a humanities dept. that comprises anguish, falafelsy and mystory, incl. full-tenured profs. with 25 years---nobody is making more than $40k... both my wife and i had 'careers' in other professions before becoming academics... this wasn't for us a decision that was made w/o first having come to terms with corporate america (in our early and mid-twenties)... we know from first-hand experience that it's tough all over... but at the same time, neither of us anticipated the shell-game we're in the midst of now... which i suppose is why aldon is pissed about the yale situation... i'm pissed too, not at the guy they hired, but at the system we've (ok?) constructed... and as with most systemic pissing and moaning, it's difficult to point a finger in any but an institutional direction... all best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 10:59:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: the eternal summer reading thing re: read anything good yet... bruce weigl's _Sweet Lorraine_ just came out and WORTH waiting for; carolyn forche's _The Angel of History_ which is getting added, but slightly wierd resonance from being read at the same time as dave smith's _Dream Flights_ (they both even have similar covers...) -- keep getting flicked out of time and into a sense of history as something as palpable as present, i.e. went by a statue of a woman's head, sort of fierce and french liberty-looking, at decordova museum and found myself thinking it could have come from a southern church, or from vienna, or russia, and time went awry for a moment. and got coaxed into reading peice by meridel lesueur, "Annunciation," short story. WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! imagine everything glorious about tillie olson (if possible; there is so much) mixed with insinuating sound of judy grahn, then add a particular poignant sweetness and clarity and that is just the beginning of meridel lesueur. piece i found was in Norton Anth. of Lit by Women, and i am having stinker of a time finding anything else. any ideas? e ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 10:46:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: the eternal "summer" reading thing ok, let's see, my recent "reading," w/capsule commentary: -- finally got around to part ii of art spiegelman's _maus_... just can't say enough good about this book... -- primo levi's _the periodic table_... some beautiful insights here, esp. if you're into science/chemistry... -- erica hunt's _local history_... intriguing, demanding writing... this and c. s. giscombe's _here_ have helped me in my own work on place... -- (a plug) my wife kass fleisher's novel in manuscript, "blue blazes to dead woman hollow"... a somewhat conventional novelistic plot about life in central pennsylvania (present & past) that gradually reveals itself through assemblage & poetry... -- _critical inquiry_ winter 96---miriam bratu hansen's piece "schindler's list is not shoah: the second commandment, popular modernism, and public memory"... cogent, useful analysis, esp. if you have any interest at all in theorizing publics... -- poetic briefs 20... very engaging discussion going on here... -- chris funk's essay on hypermedia poetry... again, at http://cnsvax.albany.edu/~poetry/hyperpo.html -- maria damon's _the dark end of the street_... i've read the intro., and the chapters on spicer/duncan and stein... and i'm learning something new on every page... -- alan golding's _from outlaw to classic_... like ron s. sd a while back, one of the best shorter summaries of the new critics & co... i like too alan's approach to canonicity... -- (another plug) the electronic book review issue on "the politics of selling out" (incl. a piece by moi, and a newly added "riPOSTe" by michael berube)... at http://www.altx.com/ebr -- the weather... i'm convinced there's a consipiracy here in chicago to keep me inside, reading... joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 12:17:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: the eternal "summer" reading thing Hey---is Jeff Hansen on this list still? If so, I need your back channel address? The one I have (K-12 something) doesn't work..... Chris Stroffolino.... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 13:31:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Anton Vishio Subject: Re: EMF CALENDAR ALERT (fwd) In-Reply-To: On Sun, 9 Jun 1996, Carnography wrote: > Pierre Joris: >=20 > Your latest post was unusually wise, restrained, tolerant and perceptive. > One question: >=20 > > But right now what > > I'm listening to is Messiaen "+concert a quatre" which will be followed > > by Sulochana Brahaspaqti's "Raga Bilaskhani Todi" & Wilhelm Killmayer's > > setting of Holderling songs. >=20 > I'm certain we all know Messaien. (Are you speaking of his Quartet for th= e > End of Time?) But I've never heard of the last two composers you mentione= d. > Can you tell us more about Killmayer's settings of H=F6lderlin (who happe= ns > to be one of my favorites)? >=20 > All the best, >=20 > Rob Hardin >=20 >=20 > http://www.interport.net/~scrypt Thanks also to Pierre Joris for his informative and level-headed posting. If you're interested in getting to know European music from the last thirty years or so, Holderlin provides an excellent way in. I've been listening recently to the cycle of works composed by Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) around Holderlin's Hyperion poems, in a breathtaking performance by the ASKO ensemble conducted by Peter Eotvos on Disques Montaigne (the number on the the back of the CD set is MO 782014). The music ranges from avant-garde orchestral writing (at which Maderna was particularly skilled) to almost Renaissance-sounding choral writing to vintage late 1950's tape composition - pretty hard to sum up, at least in part because its not clear precisely how Maderna intended all these works - written over ten years - to go together. But I highly recommend it. (There are also readings of Holderlin's poetry by Bruno Ganz= .) Another place to listen would be to Luigi Nono's Fragmente-Stille, An Diotima (Deutsche Gramophon 437 720-2), a work for string quartet written in the late 1970's; the score contains some 40-odd quotations from Holderlin, not to be recited in performance, but to be used as guides to expression for the performers, who "may 'sing' them silently as they experience them - as sounds striving for that 'delicate harmony of the inner life'", which quote from the composer is a pretty good idea of the very rarefied (almost Feldman-esque) soundworld of the piece, and of a lot of Nono's late music.=20 Also to be recommended is the Scardanelli-cycle by Heinz Holliger, who is not just an oboist who plays all that baroque stuff but a fine composer; I've not been able to get my hands on a copy of the recording (on ECM) as yet, but have heard many glowing comments about it. In addition to the settings by Killmayer, there are also Holderlin settings by composers of the stature (in Europe, at least) of Gyorgy Kurtag, Gyorgy Ligeti, Hans Werner Henze, and Wolfgang Rihm, not to mention by composers of previous generations such as Paul Hindemith and Benjamin Britten - quite a diverse lot!=20 Anton J. Vishio avishio@freenet.columbus.oh.us ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 11:19:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: singnafump In-Reply-To: <199606090403.AAA12242@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> chris -- Oppen appears in an unlikely remark made by someone who has been stopped by a red light in the district around yale -- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 14:42:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: singnafump When one is stopped by a cop or a deconstructionist around YALE, all one needs do is yell "OPPEN YOU" or "OPPEN SESAME" and this can be quite seedy if novel... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 17:00:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Fred E. Maus" Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism In-Reply-To: from "Carnography" at Jun 9, 96 01:48:44 am > Interestingly, I just read a poem by Charles Baxter ("The Last > String Quartet of Arnold Schoenberg") that seems to exemplify > everything we tend to renounce: an artless affect, prosaic free > verse technique, and lucid narrative. Where does one find this? And what does it have to do with AS's 4th Quartet? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 17:15:18 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing re: Meridel Le Sueur-- i've got 2 slim volumes on the shelf (signed, i was lucky enuf to meet her 'bout 17 years ago): _Women On the Breadlines_; 4 shortshort stories which originally appeared in New Masses and The Anvil magazines; West End Press, (Box 697, Cambridge MA 02139). there's a blurb on the inside cover for 4 additional titles. _Rites of Ancient Ripening_; more recent poems, plus a bibliography in the back (12 books, frm _Annunciation_ in 1935, thru 1974); Vanilla Press, Minneapolis (no address) 1975. i prefer the stories, mself, but she was an awe-inspiring individual, and under-appreciated... luigi ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 18:06:15 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism > Uh, hey... > > Anybody read any good poems lately? > > Jordan > Try some of these (books), currently on my active shelf ... - Michael Haslam: A Whole Bauble (Carcanet). In effect, a collected poems (1977-94), but rewritten somewhat, by a neglected, brilliant poet of the Cambridge Diaspora (in his own words, "I think I'm a sort of wayward Prynneite, I suppose, and... etcetera") - Miles Champion: Compositional Bonbons Placate (Carcanet). Excellent first collection. Carcanet is getting quite adventurous for a change. - Paul Celan, tr Pierre Joris: Breathturn (Sun & Moon). - Catriona Strang: Low Fancy (ECW Press)(again). Wild "translations" of the Carmina Burana. - Ralph Hawkins: Flecks (Oasis Books) -- will be hard to obtain for non-UK readers so I quote: Off Course, A Little Looking you'll never see what you miss. You answer my question asking. The bridge is there and you look hurt. But that's all it is. It's gone now. It's the turn off. What is this heart shaped town I long for. We're off the map. The next roundabout will change the vantage. Will take us back, together, all. - Rob MacKenzie: The Tune Kilmarnock (Form Books). Likewise, rather fugitive. Harry Gilonis is the publisher. Post-Language poetry in English, Scots and Gaelic, eg: "suilean uaine over sand / sallow 'hint an fheusag bheag / bumfluff ejaculate 'tis a // quarter bottle balls all / inevitable poetries though / pulling God by's beard an /..." ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 18:00:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim wood Subject: Re: *Querzblatz*: Specimens and usage Not to revive a passed thread, but... to confuse a discussion on an empty signifier in a non-existant space... Quertzblatz is a wonderful invention for current (at least thaz my as-sumption) experimental work with the front end hinting of Queer (yes, as in both theory & pracitce) and kitchy (hate that one... never can spell it) advertising (Blatz! the new Beer from Budweiser for you all your BLITZED BLATHERING BUDDIES!! ). We now return you to your regular mailing list... Tim >From: Carnography, scrypt@INTERPORT.NET > >Rrrr-whaaar, you dear and pungent l'construction workers: > >Since neologisms tend to congeal--to become stained by the >context in which they are used--I thought I'd blend in my very >own (all ideas copyright 1996 by Robert Hardin, professional >prosodist: DO NOT PARAPHRASE) examples before the cement hardens >and the color scheme goes to the printer. > >Microwave your mixed metaphors for faster flavor, > >Rob Hardin > >(who requires no insurance or medical coverage, since a certain pelagic >sonnet by a Pultzer Prize-winning Belgian will allow him to "live forever") > > *Querzblatz*: Specimens and usage > >IIII. An exact copy of Kandinsky's *Staccato Abstract* was tattooed all >over the suspect's pulsating, querzblatz hands. > >XV. I can't read the letterhead on account of those roosters and their >querzblatz neo-Italian madrigals. > >VV. It is no longer querzblatz to read the ingredients aloud while pouring >the [table of] contents on yourself. > >MCCCXXXCIV. Ron Silliman's new manual, *Teach Yourself Querzblatz >in Fourteen Days*, is a must for students and professional prosodists alike. > >LXDQD. Aphid hail, aphid hail, querzblatz *homopterae* in the local mail! > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 18:18:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim wood Subject: Re: what poetry knows about scientists >I had the same feeling. Mathematics, in particular, I found a highly creative >activity, requiring intuitive leaps as well as rigorous logic. Some of group >theory and what mathematicians call 'foundations' (the intersection of logic, >set theory and number theory) is especially beautiful. > >People often talk about the connections between mathematics & music, but the >only connection that I found useful at the time was in understanding >acoustics My undergrad was in physics. What I found most useful was not the "connections" or the creative activty per se, but the (and yes what follows will be considered treasonious in certain P-modern corridors) almost transcendant ideas behind the physics. It's very rare that anything I learned in physics will end up in my work (either creative or scholarly) and often when it does it's nearly subtextual: existing in the structuring and hints of meaning. >cultural theorists to even _consider_ the possibility of biological >influences upon human behaviour. Seem remarkably close-minded for someone in the humanities. It's not like any of us have found a "conclusive" scientific way to prove our points... >I've rarely tried to involve science in my poetry, and tend to cringe at most >attempts to write poems about chaos theory. Is it just me or does it seem that too many people using chaos theory do not seem to understand the concept? > _The mathematician defines her space_ > > > With time, everything tends > to zero. > => leave her. > * * * * > >It amuses me now to recall how many of my colleagues really talked like this, >using mathematical jargon to describe their personal lives. Have you shared this with any of your colleagues? I would love to know the reaction. Tim ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 20:28:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: - Kim Tedrow Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing Eliza writes: >>>>imagine everything glorious about tillie olson (if possible; there is so much) mixed with insinuating sound of judy grahn, then add a particular poignant sweetness and clarity and that is just the beginning of meridel lesueur. piece i found was in Norton Anth. of Lit by Women, and i am having stinker of a time finding anything else. any ideas?<<<< Annunciation is a stunning story -- LeSueur is somewhat of a cult figure in Minnesota (at least she was still alive in her nineties when I left there), so I'd start with this URL (Hungry Mind Bookstore in St. Paul MN): http://www.winternet.com/~hungrymi/" If they don't list any of her works, call the Hungry Mind and ask for the numbers of the political/small press bookstores in the Twin Cities, I'm thinking Amazon Books, St. Martin's Table, MayDay books. I've been gone for almost five years, so I don't know that these bookstores are still in business. The book of stories I have is called "Corn Village", (I don't know if it's still in print, I bought it at a used bookstore), but she has published a fair amount, mostly with small press. Hope this helps somewhat, sorry I don't have URLs or ph. #s for those other stores, but someone at Hungry Mind would help with them. They're *excellent* about phone orders, too. Warmest, Kim roseread@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 03:27:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: dissin dat higher-in thang In-Reply-To: in reply to tom's post. as an undergrad with hopes of some kind of post grad i'm now questioning the decision to pursue poetry maybe bovine psychiatry is the place for me of course many will add moving to the proper london will cost me less than my shrink bills here in londonOnt. how will I convince them to lay on leathery couches? KEVIN just a posit ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 03:45:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: the eternal "summer" reading thing In-Reply-To: <199606091546.KAA25498@charlie.cns.iit.edu> mr.Amato, what's a shoah (and i, with the the only house with christmas lights on my block,-- i did play "Chutzpah" as a kid-- but then if if it is not a yiddish term i've offended many people- a round of shibboleths anyone?). thanks, kevin ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 03:49:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Visual Poetry Page Gone Mad Folks-- Kenny G's Visual Poetry Page has gone wild. Submissions are being received daily. Please let anyone you know who does Visual/Concrete Poetry that we exist and that we encourage submissions. Currently on view at: http://wfmu.org/~kennyg/visualpoetry/visualpoetry.html ViSuAL pOeTry Susan Bee from "Talespin" (Granary Books 1995) Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Charles Bernstein from "Veil" (Xeroxial Editions 1987/1976) Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 from "Language of Boquets" (Hot Bird Mfg, 1991) Example 1 John Cayley Various works selected from the Shadoof Home Page Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5 Example 6 Henrik Drescher from "Too Much Bliss" (Granary Books 1992) Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Johanna Drucker from "The HISTORY of the/my WOR L D" (Granary Books 1995) Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Kenneth Goldsmith & Joan La Barbara 73 Poems Dick Higgins i.e., or vice versa AN ARK In The Realms of the REAL: Found Poetry & Writings of the Insane The Jack Free Ads Series Bill Luoma 200Hex Bindfix Frank Pipes Volvox Janan Platt Internal Nature True Speech Poems Blair Seagram Short Wave Ante Prima Alpha B&W Cry Me A River Nerve Tree Ward Tietz Introduction buckle bingo calc glug swarm Jody Zellen Example 1 Example 2 Example 3 Example 4 Example 5 ======================================================================= Kenneth Goldsmith kgolds@panix.com kennyg@bway.net kennyg @wfmu.org v.212.260.4081 611 Broadway, #702 NY NY 10012 work: http://wfmu.org/~kennyg/Ubu/index.html play: http://wfmu.org/~kennyg Beans Dear? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 04:10:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: stays fresh longer In-Reply-To: This is a sentence. This is a sentence. This is a sentence. Is this a new sentence? No, just the next sentence. kev ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 06:31:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing >Annunciation is a stunning story -- LeSueur is somewhat of a cult figure in >Minnesota (at least she was still alive in her nineties when I left there), >so I'd start with this URL (Hungry Mind Bookstore in St. Paul MN): > >http://www.winternet.com/~hungrymi/" > >If they don't list any of her works, call the Hungry Mind and ask for the >numbers of the political/small press bookstores in the Twin Cities, I'm >thinking Amazon Books, St. Martin's Table, MayDay books. I've been gone for >almost five years, so I don't know that these bookstores are still in >business. A cult figure in Minnesota indeed &, I think, among leftist (working left more than those who come out of political theory, although there's certainly lots of mix & overlap here) literary folk far beyond Minnesota. I would definitely think Hungry Mind would be a help. I would also imagine that some used bookstores in Minneapolis might be, and I would suggest The Book House, whose phone number is 612-331-1430. I would also imagine Amazon Books (oldest feminist bookstore in the country) in Minneapolis would be helpful. Their phone number is 612-338-6560. Here are the numbers for the other bookstores Kim Tedrow mentions: St. Martin's Table: 612-339-3920 Mayday Bookstore: 612-333-4719 Several years ago, in its Winter Book series, Minnesota Center for Book Arts published LeSueur's Winter Prairie Woman in a beautiful limited edition, with illustrations from linoleum blocks cut by Sandy Spieler. Sandy is the artistic director of Heart of the Beast Theater, a performance/puppet theater company something in the mold of Bread & Puppet Theater, but with very much its own identity, one of the real treasures of the Twin Cities, particularly with its annual May Day parade & festival. LeSueur was still alive when I moved here to work at Minn. Center for Book Arts three years ago, and I haven't heard anything about her passing on, but I have wondered if she's still alive. Anyoe know for sure? charles ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 13:07:32 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ira Lightman Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes On Sun, 9 Jun 1996 18:06:15 EDT Ken Edwards wrote: > - Rob MacKenzie: The Tune Kilmarnock (Form Books). Likewise, rather fugitive. > Harry Gilonis is the publisher. Post-Language poetry in English, Scots and > Gaelic, eg: "suilean uaine over sand / sallow 'hint an fheusag bheag / bumfluff > ejaculate 'tis a // quarter bottle balls all / inevitable poetries though / > pulling God by's beard an /..." Although I am a fan and friend of Rob's work, the term post-language poetry does not apply to him in anything but the sloppy current sense ie: "poetry that recognizes that there was a movement called language poetry famous (and, as the small number of people who read it before talking about it - usually dismissively - know, best) in the eighties, and that we do not wish to be expected to be language poets ourselves". There is very little engagement with Coolidge, Hejinian, Silliman, Andrews, Bernstein, Howe, Weiner, Harryman, Watten, Robinson, Day, Dreyer, Greenwald, any of the poets of In The American Tree in Rob's work. He doesn't read it, it's not on his bookshelves, he rarely talks to me about any example of it, it's not there in the attitude to language or presence in any number games, paragraph organisation, or relation of page to page, or dual columns, in the way that it is in any of the poets mentioned. Rob's poetic, and I esteem it, seems much more related to creating a painterly effect, of the page as canvas which, at the most, related to Susan Howe. But his poems are very much narrative, spoken by a coherent I, even if (very powerfully) it is a bi-cultural, sometimes bi-lingual, I. This use is much more like the balladeers and mainstream poets which he (and I) like, who don't get much of a look-in in British avant-garde circles. Thus he is more accurately a post-Cambridge, or post-Subvoicive or post-Writers Forum poet (these last 2 are both London reading circles), in that he by and large ignores most avant-garde British poetry and works with other British "non pc" sources. At most, his idiom, and often Miles Champion's, another young poet mentioned by Ken, could be called "surreal" - and Harry Gilonis, Rob's publisher, is much more interested in surrealism than in LangPo, he says to me that he only really likes Susan Howe, and again it is for the resonance, the presence, of her placement of words visually. Not, a key LangPo position for many, the arbitrariness, the contigency, the non-I, of the form (isn't this why Silliman, for example, has expressed low interest in Howe on this list in the past?). Rob is more interested in the unconscious babble of automatic "unconscious", which is also presence. The resurgence of such "non-referential" language idiom in late 80s and 90s British poetry is as far as many Brit poets have gone in making a nod to LangPo, but it is, not being contingent but "the unconscious", in my view, inimical to LangPO- one of the things LangPoets argue against - see Watten's Total Syntax essays. Rob's greatest contact with LangPo was being in a creative writing class run by Stephen Rodefer, who is, at best, a hanger-on of LangPo, anyway, and only uses his links with LangPo to cloud himself in hipper-than-thou avant-gardism with no politics or theory, and to act up the stereotype of LangPoet=Paul De Man= amoralist, which has of course endeared him to Brit avant gardists who hate and fear LangPo and want ammo against it. I use the "post" prefix here, I believe, in the way Ken does (and I want to stress here that I am Ken himself is a major friend of LangPo, as one of the few British editors at the time, in the 80s, to publish it and review it, and see it reviewed, warmly, this is not an attack on Ken's being informed about LangPo). In other words, Rob is post-Britishavantgarde in the way that Ken says he is post-Langpoetry; ie Rob shows a fleeting courteous interest in the avantgardism of the immediately previous generation but basically rejects it, does not allude with it, does not wrestle with it. This is, in my opinion, the way a lot of self- designated post-modernism works. It is actually pre- modernist, and makes very little engagement with Pound or the sides of Williams and Zukofsky and Creeley and so on that are difficult (see Ron Silliman's essay Z-Sited Path, in _The New Sentence_). It is often anti-modernist, reactionary, attacking a forebear by using mainstream terms of abuse "mad", "not poetry", "easy", "a clique", and thus trying to win friends among the ignorant - not support the quest to be radical in all groups, just their own, ie not the principle of freedom, but their own freedom. Whereas the LangPoets use of, for example, Stein, is not anti-modernist (in the way I'm saying that a lot of British avant-garde poetry is, in fact, anti-language poetry) but genuinely post-modernist - not least because in Silliman's case, he is very much, in my view, a Poundian, absorbing and wrestling with a lot of Pound. But his, and many of the other writers' in The Tree, is the best post-modernism: ie, I refuse to take on the paideuma, the canons and exclusions, of the previous groundbreakers; I shall take on *equally* difficult poetics. That is actually what Pound meant by make it new; *renew*. There are very few British who have taken on LangPo and bettered it. Not least in the political example of Stein, that sexuality may be both exploratory, queer, and not attached to angry young man's "anti-bourgeois" thuggery, or self-mocking "I'm a camp hairdresser me" harmless kitsch. Very best, Ira Lightman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 08:37:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: update on meridel lesueur -- good news since the matter appears to be in question, and i would guess that we all enjoy good news, here it is: meridel lesueur is not only alive, but still writing! physical limitations, however, have made it difficult for her to write as much as she has in the past. she continues to read a fair amount. i don't know if it is realistic, but be damned to realism: i hope there will be new writing by her published soon. i arrive at my news of her via the friend who coaxed me into reading her work, jo grant (jgrant@bookzen.com). jo lives near her and visits with her frequently and would be as happy to pass on good wishes and praise for her work as meridel lesueur would be to receive them. this is not an entirely disinterested message -- "poetics" is clearly a mailing list of numerous effective and successful academicians and scholars. anyone writing about meridel lesueur, or using her work as part of theoretical speculation, will be helping get and keep her writing in print, n'est ce pas? maybe even getting and keeping her in the Canon (if bloom and co. can be got to look the other way while non-DWEM's pass the through the holey-city). e ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 08:51:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: John Felstiner In-Reply-To: <199606101237.IAA23141@toast.ai.mit.edu> Does anybody in poetics land have a snail address/other best means of getting in touch with John Felstiner? Backchannel is perfectly groovy. w typo soup is thick today the line-noise-afflicted Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:16:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing >re: read anything good yet... the reading list is piling up, as always. just completed: Leslie Scalapino, Defoe (Sun & Moon, 1984). For me, the most exhilarating work by Leslie Scalapino to date. Like learning a new language. A must. Leslie Scalapino, The Front Matter, Dead Souls (Wesleyan, 1996). Also a treat, although its momentum seems to me more pushed than in Defoe, which is more various in how it moves, from phrase to phrase, part to part. I have a review of this one coming out in the summer issue of Rain Taxi, a Twin Cities review journal which is fairly new. yet to read: Issues 5, 6, & 7 of Big Allis. Very fine journal I kept up with on the early issues, but missed some and am now catching up. I note Jessica Grim's departure as an editor, and I am certain she will be missed. I'd love to see more of her work. Chain 3. Leafing through, some striking visual work included. Catherine Walsh, Pitch (Pig Press, 1994) wet roof clear brown beyond buffeted flowers till light changed shade tone more than grey effectively impeding adumbration moving lines space (racing point to point) how many in or out does it take each an anchorage in view of the wind (the sea) marathon railway line sea side of a lonely night walking dark rocks shift water breaks Maurice Scully, The Basic Colours (Pig Press, 1994). From this one I'll quote a poem relating to another recent thread on this poetics list -- this is one of several poems in the book beginning "sonnet/" -- sonnet/ reach for the spray paint! the images were the last layer. the layers cracked & dried. let me see. the box was made of glass, mainly. watching the graph-paper slowly emerge from where the two worlds hit as such, let me show you, a hybrid, a raw image, emerging from an instrument, fascinated by this fragile film, awe-struck, rooted to the spot etc. they murder you in the mountains, they beat you in the foothills, in the lowlands, beware: quite an endearing little country. I have precisely what you need. each roll of thunder spreads & fissures, each a different, similar drama- carpet in the dark. syn. copating flashes. dauntingly stolid I thought I'd . . . I see. look at that & tell me what you see. inside there ar some beautiful verbs; outside there is the outside. peering over the fence at the outside one evening a gigantic mosquito swerved past my head & crashed into a tree. the tree shuddered & a large branch cracked off. just missed the dog. the cat froze. the mosquito stood elegant & terrible on her high legs. the proboscis could kill a man. what is the name of the noise of the rain? Paul Celan, Breathturn, trans. by Pierre Joris (Sun & Moon, 1995) Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (Third Woman Press, Berkeley, 1995, originally pub. 1982 by Tanam Press). I know, not new, but it's part of my reading list, and is one of the books on my desk here, still. Jeff Derksen, Dwell (Talonbooks, 1993) Jeff Dersen, Down Time (Talonbooks, 1990) Will Alexander, Asia & Haiti (Sun & Moon, 1995) Reading other books as well, for work & pleasure. But this is most of the current pile of poetry reading, at least for now. charles ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:32:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: no weirdos please (apologies to kevin davies) Dear poetics List People-- I will be moving on or about July 1st and resigning from the list and am curious if anyone wants to BUY A MODEM. It's a $180 value. A FAX MODEM, they say--though I'm too much of a clutz to figure out the fax part of it. Anyway, if not buy---will trade (or *@!k) for books or something. Please contact me via email if interested. Thanks, Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 12:19:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: the eternal "summer" reading thing yo, i don't know exactly what "shoah" means mself (and i checked when i read bransen's piece to see if i had any reference to it here at home, but no luck)... it's the title of a 1985 film (by claude lanzmann) dealing with the holocaust (which i haven't mself seen), and it's clear from the way bransen uses the term in her piece that it's interchangeable with "the holocaust"... but if anybody knows the derivation of "shoah," i'd love to know mself... joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 07:44:47 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert J Wilson Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing In-Reply-To: <199606101516.KAA01378@freedom.mtn.org> Re "Dictee" as 'summer reading,' it is hard to get a hold of but see Walter Lew's very intriguing as well as challenging response text to the dessicated Korean/American sublimity of Cha herself (available at that small press distributor on San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley) and a (rather too caustic) critique of ally/enemey Walter Lew's agon for priority with Cha (and the Cha critical industry as centered in Elaine Kim et al in "Northern California" hegemony over Asian-American professionalization of literature underway) by Rob Wilson in boundary 2 two issues back. And, as many of you know, Walter's "Premonitions" and "Muae" projects have virtually reinvented and reimagined the whole field of Asian American diasporic poetics and politics in one fell swoop, revealing how cyborgian, mixed, and engaged in semiotic/social transformation they had been all along despite the "yellow light" being administered by the not-so-open "Open Boat" poetics of Garrett Hongo et al. Anyway, it is a new day in that field, and Walter has done us all a blessing in the "machinic assemblages" of language work he has put together. So, yes, (re) read the sublime Cha by all means, but do check out Walter Lew's remappings in "Muae" and "Premonitions" and (if you have that boring and empty professional journal around) read "boundary 2" on the side of the sins and crimes of professionalization/careerism/stupidity that mar our days in the republic. With regards from the Pacific/Asia death of Captain Cook school of poetics (okay, on this language monstrosity, see Susan Schultz's 'postlocal' "Tinfish" journal and chapbook series where else but on the Buffalo electronic center while you are musing around this summer), Rob Wilson On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Charles Alexander wrote: > >re: read anything good yet... > > the reading list is piling up, as always. > > just completed: > > Leslie Scalapino, Defoe (Sun & Moon, 1984). For me, the most exhilarating > work by Leslie Scalapino to date. Like learning a new language. A must. > > Leslie Scalapino, The Front Matter, Dead Souls (Wesleyan, 1996). Also a > treat, although its momentum seems to me more pushed than in Defoe, which is > more various in how it moves, from phrase to phrase, part to part. I have a > review of this one coming out in the summer issue of Rain Taxi, a Twin > Cities review journal which is fairly new. > > > > yet to read: > > Issues 5, 6, & 7 of Big Allis. Very fine journal I kept up with on the early > issues, but missed some and am now catching up. I note Jessica Grim's > departure as an editor, and I am certain she will be missed. I'd love to see > more of her work. > > Chain 3. Leafing through, some striking visual work included. > > Catherine Walsh, Pitch (Pig Press, 1994) > > wet roof clear brown beyond > buffeted flowers till light changed > shade tone more than grey effectively > impeding adumbration moving > lines space (racing point to point) > how many in or out does it take > each an anchorage in view of the > wind (the sea) marathon > railway line sea side of a lonely > night walking dark rocks shift water > breaks > > Maurice Scully, The Basic Colours (Pig Press, 1994). From this one I'll > quote a poem relating to another recent thread on this poetics list -- this > is one of several poems in the book beginning "sonnet/" -- > > sonnet/ reach for the spray paint! the images > were the last layer. the layers cracked > & dried. let me see. the box was made of > glass, mainly. watching the graph-paper > slowly emerge from where the two worlds > hit as such, let me show you, a hybrid, a > raw image, emerging from an instrument, > fascinated by this fragile film, awe-struck, > rooted to the spot etc. they murder you > in the mountains, they beat you in the > foothills, in the lowlands, beware: quite > an endearing little country. I have precisely > what you need. each roll of thunder spreads > & fissures, each a different, similar drama- > carpet in the dark. syn. copating flashes. > dauntingly stolid I thought I'd . . . I see. > look at that & tell me what you see. inside > there ar some beautiful verbs; outside there > is the outside. peering over the fence at > the outside one evening a gigantic mosquito > swerved past my head & crashed into a tree. > the tree shuddered & a large branch cracked > off. just missed the dog. the cat froze. the > mosquito stood elegant & terrible on her high > legs. the proboscis could kill a man. what is > the name of the noise of the rain? > > Paul Celan, Breathturn, trans. by Pierre Joris (Sun & Moon, 1995) > > Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (Third Woman Press, Berkeley, 1995, originally > pub. 1982 by Tanam Press). I know, not new, but it's part of my reading > list, and is one of the books on my desk here, still. > > Jeff Derksen, Dwell (Talonbooks, 1993) > > Jeff Dersen, Down Time (Talonbooks, 1990) > > Will Alexander, Asia & Haiti (Sun & Moon, 1995) > > Reading other books as well, for work & pleasure. But this is most of the > current pile of poetry reading, at least for now. > > charles > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:45:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: hire the higher? In-Reply-To: <199606100404.AAA07638@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> tom -- yes, such things certainly are a bit subjective -- BUT, at least in this here public institution where I work, we DO have to be able to point to certain demonstrable accomplishments when we are asked to justify having hire prof. X over prof. Y, and we are indeed asked to provide such justification regularly -- That is, for example, if we were to hire someone for a senior position who had considerably fewer publications than a large number of the other candidates, or considerably less experience, we would indeed be asked to commit to paper the subjective grounds of our decision that prof. xs one book, for instance, was SO remarkable as to counter prof. Y's many books (which IS, I hasten to add, possible) -- this is not a perfect mechanism, of course -- it may be that the inquiry is conducted by a venal committee set upon rubber-stamping our decision (though this has yet to occur) -- Again, I would never argue that this is the best, or even a good system, but I think it generally a good idea that SOMEBODY looks into these things to see that I don't simply hire all my best buddies from grad. school, or, far more likely to happen in my own case, my wife. But the real objection I make is to the phoniness of the original search -- A well-known case of this recently took place at a public institution on this coast -- (NOT in English -- this wasn't a job I applied for) -- several people told me independently before the application deadline had arrived who was going to be hired for the position, and they were right -- this meant that several hundred hard-pressed job-seekers, at least a few of whom appeared to be demonstrably more qualified than the successful candidate, went to considerable time and expense delivering materials to the department in question -- and it does take a lot of time and money to do all this -- yes, we can simply remark that such shit happens, but I am foolish enough to believe that we had begun to make some small progress towards more equitable hiring procedures prior to the recent spate of cuts, lacerations, edicts from Governors, etc -- In the system I am tenured in, the chancellor wants to put greater power in the hands of deans when it comes to deciding pay raises -- this is presented under the guise of decentralization, putting power closer to the people affected, etc. -- but it's a pretty transparent move away from the more democratic review procedures we had been developing -- undsoweiter ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:54:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: eeoc/p/etc. In-Reply-To: <199606100404.AAA07638@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Joe -- Not even Yale is "required" to hold a national search in order to promote somebody from Associate to Full professor -=- this IS NOT an eeoc question in this instance -- Yale, an institution that routinely refuses to tenure highly qualified faculty, is up to something quite different here -- and yes, Yale sucks, but just maybe this is one reason that the sucking continues? This "private" institution is heavily subsidized by people like you and me -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:01:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Oppen Sesame In-Reply-To: <199606100404.AAA07638@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> I love that -- a world where the name "Oppen" opens doors -- "Out the window with the window," Corso said in one of his better moments -- ADD TO SUMMER READING new Kelsey Street book by Erica Hunt -- It's a beauty -- (as Oppen warned us, though, one day the knob comes off in your hand) Some time has passed and now everyone should know where they're sleeping in Maine -- So how about everybody who's going to Maine for the 50s conference letting everybody else know -- I know there have been schedule changes -- It was a lot of fun at the MLA putting faces and their attendant persons together with names known from this list ((( ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 14:26:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Oppen Sesame Okay Aldonet al., I'll be arriving in Orono on Friday afternoon and leaving on Sunday early afternoon, and am staying at the motel near the campus. I'll be chairing the William Bronk session of papers on Saturday and giving my own paper on Bronk and G Oppen on Sunday early morning. Et tu? Burt ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 15:07:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 10 Jun 1996 13:07:32 BST from Thanks to Ira for the post on British readings (or absence of same) in language poetry. A question--for Ira or anybody else--along these lines. There's a longish letter from Jeremy Prynne to Steve McCaffery taking up the matter of language poetry, and I'm wondering if this letter has been published somewhere. Somebody showed me a copy of it once, but I've not been able to learn whether it's been published anywhere yet, or if there's a response from McCaffery etc. Grateful for any information on this. Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 16:27:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism Fred E. Maus typed: > > Interestingly, I just read a poem by Charles Baxter ("The Last > > String Quartet of Arnold Schoenberg")... > Where does one find this? And what does it have to do with AS's > 4th Quartet? 1. One finds the poem in Baxter's collection, _Imaginary Paintings and Other Poems_ (Paris Review Editions). 2. The poem has to do with letters about the quartet written by Schoenberg while in hospital. It seems to be a companion piece to Baxter's poem on Erik Satie, which I've only seen in the early Eighties anthology, Coming Attractions. Have I mentioned that I quite liked the Schoenberg poem? For some reason, Baxter's free verse seems to have a formal finish, an attention to line breaks, an irrational openness, that is reminiscent of the Romantics, and possibly of certain poems by James Schyler. I haven't much use for William Stafford's common-sense tone and next-to-absent prosody, yet I've been a fan of Baxter's best work for almost a decade. Yet both appear superficially similar. Why is that? Also, Baxter embraces history--even European history-- while Stafford seems to affect Hemingway's disdain for literature's so-called preciosity. Stafford maintains a neither-nor approach to surface tension, a Writing Degree Theroux faux lucidity. But Baxter seems attentuated to semantic fields, and modulates diction along with (or against) the rhythm. *********** One's entire literary enterprise is "artificial" in the literal sense, isn't it? So what's the good in denying the artificiality of one's own project? Stafford seems "insufficiently synthetic," as Charles Bernstein once said of the Surrealists. That is, insufficiently idiomatic, insufficiently opaque; unable to a create a resonant sound or rhythm beyond that of the narrative and the procession of pictures it conjures. Stafford reads like Marguerite Duras gone wrong. All the best, Rob Hardin PS: Has anyone noticed that email forces the user to make line-break decisions? Could this be one more reason for the current explosion of online poetry? Even emoticons seem a peculiar notation designed for inter -disciplinary use. http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 15:37:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: eeoc/p/etc. aldon, yes, i see your point... i failed to grasp that they just up and promoted the guy (perhaps b/c i was passed over for a tenure-track once mself while on a visiting)... it bothers me to make an issue of eeoc in any case.. the yale situation just plain sucks... the Big 1... or YES WE HAVE NO BA NA NAS/// best, ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 17:07:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Oppen Sesame I am arriving Wednesday afternoon (hopefully in time for) my panel and staying to at least saturday AM---and POSSIBLY later. Will be rooming with a Vancourite named Andrew who I've never met. I don't know the people who are going to feed me (F O'H). Look forward to meeting y'all. cs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:21:49 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: wystan Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: stays fresh longer Comments: To: angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA >Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 04:10:35 -0400 >Reply-to: UB Poetics discussion group > >From: "k.a. hehir" >Subject: stays fresh longer >To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS > > >This is a sentence. >This is a sentence. >This is a sentence. >Is this a new sentence? >No, just the next sentence. > >kev > Come on man i got parole w. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 18:51:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism I typed: > 2. The poem has to do with letters about the quartet written by > Schoenberg while in hospital. To clarify: The poem cites letters written by Schoenberg while in hospital. The subject is (often ostensibly but always obliquely) his last string quartet. Supposedly, the quartet is all "about" American nurses, an idea which, like a good part-time modernist, I don't particularly like. However, my (and Schoenberg's) postromantic side seems slightly more at home with the idea. Also: Thanks, Tim Wood, for being kind enough to re-cite my querzblatz list. And thanks,too, to the person who invented the term--who *was* that exactly? I'd like to remember and acknowledge her (I think she was a her), since the defining act of mediocrity is to refuse to acknowledge good work. All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 20:16:32 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Word came today that Bert Schierbeck, who was one of the truly classy postwar poets, died yesterday at his home in Amsterdam. Anyone who spent any time among the Dutch poets would have known him: a wonderfully present & wonderfully life-affirming man, who broke much new ground in poetry & prose & in the necessary links between them. It was always a great pleasure to drink & talk with him -- talk (really) more than drink -- and though he was ailing & under sentence for the last few years, I hope he kept it going to the end. What follows is in no sense an obituary but the commentary that Pierre Joris and I wrote for inclusion with several of his poems in the second volume of _Poems for the Millennium . Signed off, with love. jr BERT SCHIERBECK there comes over us / that awful silence / which we saw in picture books / of animals in that vast sort of space / where they almost didn t exist at all / drifting in the mist of a still / bigger animal that devours us all. (B.S.) The work emerges from the vortex of the European & Dutch avant- garde (post-World War II), with affiliations to the mixed-means poetics of Cobra (page 000) &, at a greater distance, American poets like Williams, Olson, Burroughs. The defining breakthrough is his creation, circa 1950, of the _compositional novel_, in which the stated aim is the removal of the borderlines of the _I_ and their redistribution -- for him, as others, an act of defiance against imposed, inherited notions of the predetermined Self. Regarding the early means employed he writes (1952): [quote] At that time I wrote down on scraps of paper every conversation I heard, all the words I came across; I saved clippings from newspapers, I traveled through Spain and took notes on what I saw along the road, at the outdoor cafis, all kinds of conversations and forms of life. That can all be recovered in the book. Arranged upon a rhythmic base that was determined by _the breath of the people,_ which we have in common. Everything carefully, typographically divided up to make the whole surveyable.[unquote] Moving from prose to verse -- or holding some rich ground in between -- the resultant form works toward the creation of cross sections of reality where everything rhymes. His long novel-poems available in English include _Shape of the Voice_, _Cross Roads_, and _Keeping It Up_, along with short works like _The Sun: Day_ presented here. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 20:27:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: morty >There is a book on/by Feldman I'm aware of, but can't remember the title >now. Mostly anecdotes and lectures of his (german/english edition, i seem >to remember a complicated story behind the reason for this). Available >through Larry Polanski's press (turtle island?) One or two more things on the Feldman book, which has already been well identified. It's great & very funny. The long final transcription of his Darmstadt talk is hilarious: If only they'd make the tapes available. Oh well. It was available from Frog Peak, Larry Polansky's distribution collective, but I didn't see it on their Web site when I gave it a cursory look just now: so it may be out of print as Rod suggests. However, there are plenty of very good & hard to come by recordings, scores, texts, & tributes at this Web site. Including the wonderful mag Soundings, put out by composer Peter Garland which includes several festschrift-type items: a special issue on Ives, Ruggles & Varese; an ish on James Tenney; most of the early serious writing on Nancarrow. As an aside here, let me put in a good word for the new book by Kyle Gann on Nancarrow which Rod mentioned - it's expensive, but many academic libraries probably purchased it, so some of us here can probably get a hold of it - it's very, very good. For that matter, if you end up looking for Garland's Soundings in a library, note that it's the journal with the Santa fe address, there are several others with the same name. In other Feldman news, there was a good piece by Clark Coolidge on Feldman a few years back in Sulfur (I think). & those of you near New York City may want to consider checking out one or more of the four Feldman concerts at Lincoln Center in early August, including a concert with Kronos playing the six-hour single movement (with no interruptions) String Quartet #2. If I can finish enough work on the forthcoming CDs to need to talk with distributors by then, I'm going to try to hear as many of these as I can. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 16:01:08 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: proto proto yahoo Eryque, say more abt the horoscopes that you want, most of the NZ ones are syndicated from London someone told me. Do you want really stupid short ones that cd apply to anyone. Or long ones, ditto. There was one kind that always used to end with advice: Be kind. Be wary. Be...etc. I made a collection of these one time. Why not make them up yrself? best Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 22:11:40 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: Oppen Sesame Hi, this is Kevin Killian. Yes, I am going to Orono Conference. Get there on Wednesday late and leave on Sunday, so I am hoping to meet a lot of list-servers who I have never laid eyes on, I'll be wearing a big name tag. I'm talking about Jack Spicer on the quote unquote "gay" panel, really bringing up the rear as it is in the very last possible slot. So, everybody please attend!! Dodie Bellamy is coming too, and we are both curious about what all of you look like. Dodie will be doing the fashion reports just like she did at last year's Blaser Conference, so try to look your best. More later. Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 02:24:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: proto proto yahoo tony, i'm not really looking for anything specific in a horoscope, if you find it amusing or interesting or scarey, anything but boring and uninteresting i'd like a look see. what ultimately comes of this will be made up by me (mostly), but i want something that's not me to start with. one that ends with "be wary" may be perfect, i've been more and more cynical lately. otherwise, all bets are off. maybe the sillier the better, but i won't be too picky at all. all contributions will be much appreciated! best, eryque >Eryque, say more abt the horoscopes that you want, most of the NZ ones are >syndicated from London someone told me. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 03:55:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: a cage rattled In-Reply-To: <199606110655.CAA05100@shell.acmenet.net> i'm sorry if my la\st few posts seemed somewhat fun, but i will add this to the Caged thing. this from an address given before the National Inter-Collegiate Arts Conference, Vassar College, Ploughkeepsie,New York, February 28 -1948. The whole article or address is quite amazing.. for new desires..."I have fir instance, several new desires (two may seem absurd but I am serious about them ):first,to compose a piece of uninterrupteds silence silence and sell it to Muzak Co. It will be 3 or 4 1/2 minutes long - those being standard lengths of "canned music- and its title will be "Silent Prayer". It will open with a single idea which I will attempt to make as seductive as the color and and shape as a flower. The ending will approach imperceptibility." This is fromMusicworks 49. ala\ways a great read and even a more wonderful listen as they also send a cd. most seriously yours, kevin hehir ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 03:16:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Passings An obit yesterday in the Times for A. Poulin, Jr. and last week in the SF Chronicle for Lawrence Hart. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:03:06 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Apologies to Ira Lightman for my sloppy use of the term "post-language poetry" in connection with the Scottish poet Rob MacKenzie. I only meant something like (bearing in mind the nature of the readership of this list) "if you've engaged with language poetry and its various kinships you may find this work of interest". I don't know Rob personally, have never spoken to him, and know of his work only from hearing him read at SubVoicive in London and reading his extraordinary little pamphlet. In so far as I understand Ira's argument, though, "post-language" in this instance could be taken to be as accurate as "post-modernist" -- ie it doesn't necessarily imply an allegiance to or even an acquaintance with, what has gone before. I agree that there is a thread of antagonism in some British avant-gardist circles to langpo, often based on ignorance of the work, or at most on a reading of the theoretical writings (but not the poetry) of Silliman and Watten. This is frequently allied to a posturing, male-ego-centric romanticism, or alternatively to a patrician fastidiousness, both of which eerily echo attitudes otherwise identified with that chimera "the mainstream". On the other hand, there are many here who do engage intelligently with langpo. Myself, I believe the flight from engagement with what's being done elsewhere leads one -- at best -- to reinvent whole sets of redundant wheels. Please, please, don't anybody dare start another thread on "what exactly is langpo anyway"... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 09:26:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: adventures in paradise "Adventures in Paradise" by Laurie Duggan seems like a pretty good poem to me. Here is a sample stanza: The doctor lived on the main street until he moved around the corner. He thought I was smart. My grandmother didn't like Picasso - for her the sole representative of "Modern Art". I wanted to be a veterinary surgeon and fix up animals and live on a farm like my uncle and aunt. The poem may be a little 'smart' on the whole, but Duggan has a great light touch. Just typing, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 09:50:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Creely@70: A Celebration ROBERT CREELEY: A 70th Birthday Celebration BUFFALO October 10th to 12th, 1996 Thursday, October 10 8pm: Hallwalls, Buffalo Just Buffalo Tribute Eileen Myles Reading, introduced by Robert Creeley Friday, 10/11 3-5 Katherine Cornell Theater, SUNY-Buffalo, North Campus Welcome: UB President William Greiner Reading: Gil Sorrentino and Amiri Baraka 5-6:30 420 Capen Hall, North Campus Opening, "Here: Fifty Years of Poetry in Buffalo", Poetry/Rare Books Collection, 420 Capen 8:30-10 Katherine Cornell Theater Talk by Artist Jim Dine / Conversation with Robert Creeley Reading by Robert Creeley Saturday, 10/12 4-5 Katherine Cornell Theater Poetry reading: John Ashbery Reception follows, Jane Keeler Room 8:30 Hallwalls Jazz concert Steve Kuhn and Carol Fredette Reception and party with Mercury Rev all events free and open to the public *program subject to change* ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 14:42:03 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ira Lightman Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Thanks to Ken for his engaged response here. I reiterate that he is one of the pioneers of openness to LangPo among the Brits. Ken, could you detail a few of the poets here, as you say, who engage intelligently with langpo, which books or poems? Ira On Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:03:06 EDT Ken Edwards wrote: > I agree that there is a thread of antagonism in some British avant-gardist > circles to langpo, often based on ignorance of the work, or at most on a reading > of the theoretical writings (but not the poetry) of Silliman and Watten. This is > frequently allied to a posturing, male-ego-centric romanticism, or alternatively > to a patrician fastidiousness, both of which eerily echo attitudes otherwise > identified with that chimera "the mainstream". On the other hand, there are many > here who do engage intelligently with langpo. > > Myself, I believe the flight from engagement with what's being done elsewhere > leads one -- at best -- to reinvent whole sets of redundant wheels. > > Please, please, don't anybody dare start another thread on "what exactly is > langpo anyway"... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:25:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Passings Ron--DId you know POULIN? I remember his intor. to poetry anthology was what my first "hip" teacher used (and the WCW selected) to turn us on to poetry. I think the 3rd edition (it was green). Then each subsequent edition got WORSE. Like take out Baraka and put in Gerald Stern; take out Kenneth Koch and put in Michael Harper. Etc. Didn't he also do BOA? Pardon my ignorance, but who's larry hart?cs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:28:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: adventures in paradise jordan is that laurie duggan poem a sestina-- UNTIL WANTED, HER ANIMALS SMART AUNT-----cs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:53:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: adventures in paradise Chris, no, Duggan's poem has the pleasant slightly damaged quality of the sestina without the unfortunate insistence on those dopey end words. Whoops! my politics are showing. Here are another six lines of the poem: I burst a blood vessel below the brain and spent two months in the Alfred Hospital reading the complete works of Ian Fleming which I liked because he could make golf interesting. Then I read Emile Zola and started writing D.H. Lawrence imitations in which young men full of spirit flung themselves down upon the earth and felt it breathe and everything seemed complete. I wanted to be a rock star, then a painter, then a novelist, but I ended up writing poems late in 1966, misunderstanding T.S. Eliot. What the hell - have twelve lines! You'll note, Chris, a decided Kenneth Koch-influence on that last line. Duggan was I believe a big Scripsi conspirator, and an Otis Rusher as well. Any recent Duggan sightings? Enthusiastically, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:40:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Sumerian Reading In-Reply-To: <199606110404.AAA28107@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Ecco press, which seems in the past few years to have recognized the existence of black writers on the planet, has reissued William Melvin Kelly's beezaar jazz novel, _A Drop of Patience_ -- rec. with caution for all -- fascinating writer who has not been heard from in some time -- ORONO -- arrive Wed. evening STOP stopping at that same off-campus hotel STOP will be there entire conference STOP will nearly fall asleep from quandariness, then attend conference STOP do they still throw lobsters into the ring at poetry slams there? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 13:24:02 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: mainestays Aldon et al-- I'll be at Maine too, arriving Tuesday night, staying until mid-day Sunday. I'll give a talk on Wednesday, Panel 2E. I'm talking about the development in the early 1950s of a short-line resource in poetry, via Zukofsky, Eigner, Creeley, Niedecker, Olson .... part of an ongoing thinking about what Oppen called "the lyric valuables." Also I'll be taking part in group reading, which I think is scheduled for Friday evening. Looking forward to placing names with faces or vice versa.... Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 11:31:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Re: Passings 11 June 96 Chris - I have not known Lawrence Hart's work myself, but thought the name sounded familiar.I found him in the files here at the Poetry Center. He organized a reading here for the Activists - (Rosalie More, Jeanne McGahey, Marie Graybeal, Fred Ostrander, John Hart and Leonard Horwitz.) The mimeograph from the reading (probably put together by Robert Duncan who was Assistant Director of the Center at the time) gives a short bio of Hart. It is from March 5, 1963. "Lawrence Hart founded the Activists more than twenty years ago in San Francisco - their objective to work out disciplines for use in so-called experimental techniques. Work of this group has appeared widley in national magazines. The May 1951 issue of Poetry was entirely made up Activist work with Hart as guest editor - followed by a sequel in 1958. His criticism has been published in Poetry, Quarterly Review, Accent and has been reprinted in the British anthology Modern Reading. He is the recent publisher of the Activist anthology, Accent on Barlow, and has just completed a textbook presenting contemporary poetry for 7th and 8th grade and high schools. With the cooperation of Bay District and Marin County schools he has worked with talented children for several years." There is correspondence with Duncan indicating that the Activists group was underrepresented at the Poetry Center and eagerness from Hart that they be more involved. I believe we have an audiotape of the reading in 1963. Anyway, to fill you in - Laura ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 14:44:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: various cages Chris Stroffolino and anyone else: Jeff Hansen's e-mail address (for Poetic Briefs also) remains the same, but he does not respond to the list in the summer when he's not at work, so he will not be available via e-mail until the fall. Re Cage: Certainly there is value in comparing the later with the earlier Cage, and if someone has an interesting set of reasons for preferring the earlier Cage, than that seems reasonable. But as for Tim Page's review (and I appreciate Herb Levy's post on his credentials--it's a shame that they proved so worthless here), no such comparison takes place there. It is, and I've already said this, a hostile, slanderous attack in which he finally suggests that the only intersting thing about Cage's Europera 5 (and indeed ALL of Cage's work since 1952) is whether he can be sued for it. Educated, credentialed, or not, that's a fool's position, just as the idea that Cage's later work "has no point but isn't even about having no point" is simply not a respectable position, but a hostile assault. I may have misunderstood Oren Izenburg's response, if his argument simply is that he finds Cage's earlier work "preferrable." That's fine. But the problem (and it still seems a real one to me) is not that Page PREFERS Cage's earlier work on reasonable grounds, but that he dismisses the later Cage with a bunch of imperious and deeply incorrect statements about what Cage is doing in that later work (i.e. "nothing"). That's the offensive position that it seemed to me that Oren Izenburg was saying was "reasonable," but if it's Mr. Izenburg's position simply that he "prefers" earlier Cage, so be it. And I think my original post, in which I quoted Page saying that Cage's later work has no point, and that it's only interesting to think about whether he can be sued, made what was blatantly stupid about the article clear, and I still don't think that whether the article was a hostile, stupid attack is debatable. It WAS a hostile, stupid attack. It is in fact the STANDARDIZED hostile argument that the American media almost always presents about avant garde work on those rare occasions when it's mentioned. As to the issue of what can be made a litmus test that Herb Levy raises, that's an interesting question, but I'm not really that interested in making Cage a litmus test here. I think more importantly that the litmus test, in terms of this experimental context, is whether a writer responds to avant garde art and writing in an honest, however questioning, manner, or whether a writer takes blatant advantage of media hostility to artists (and experimental artists in particular) to LIE about such artists in order to be able to sell their articles to media monstrosities like the Washington Post. That's what Tim Page has done (and the fact that he knows Cage makes this only more clear)--nothing he says about Cage has the slightest ring of truth, nor does he intend to have it. I don't know how well known his obvious dislike of Cage is, but I'm also certain that it's quite possible that the Post knew Tim Page hated Cage's experimental work when they asked him to write the review, or agreed to let him submit it. Whether one loves John Cage or has problems with his work or both IS NOT THE POINT. The point, in this case, is the way in which Tim Page has used media hostility to intellectually slander somebody that he apparently once worked with. For me, intellectual slander IS a significant litmus test of whether one deserves respect. I guess what I'm not clear on in Oren Izenburg's post is whether he thinks that slander didn't happen, or whether he simply misread me to be saying that my problem with Tim Page was about artistic differences, when the problem is really about ethics and power. mark wallace ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 16:13:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: mainestays I'll be "competing" RED LIGHT With Hank Lazer and RED LIGHT doing what RED LIGHT I think is a kind of RED LiGhT "close reading" of RED LIGHT two 1952 RED LIGHT O'Hara POEMS to and or about RED GRACE LIGHT HARTIGAN the lyric invaluables.....cs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 18:52:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: mainestays In-Reply-To: <01I5SE9QQC4O8Y5K69@cnsvax.albany.edu> I'll be there, too, arriving Wednesday. Mine's the last panel in the whole damn conference, but my paper's on Stanley Kunitz of all people, so who can blame 'em? The upshot is a reading of the 1959 *Selected Poems* as a historical document creating an ancestry for Lowell et al., as against the prevailing "neglected genius" reading of that book's sudden laurels. Of course, I've still gotta finish it, and who knows what I'll say when it's over? 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, 12 Jun 1996 09:38:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: adventures in paradise >"Adventures in Paradise" by Laurie Duggan seems like a pretty good poem to >me. Here is a sample stanza: > >The doctor lived on the main street until >he moved around the corner. He thought I was smart. >My grandmother didn't like Picasso - for her >the sole representative of "Modern Art". I wanted >to be a veterinary surgeon and fix up animals >and live on a farm like my uncle and aunt. > > >The poem may be a little 'smart' on the whole, but Duggan has a great light >touch. > >Just typing, >Jordan Jordan I'm just wondering where you came across Laurie? Have you ever read (or better heard Laurie perform) 'do the modernism'? just hittin' the keys....... __________________________________ 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: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:46:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: adventures in paradise >Chris, no, Duggan's poem has the pleasant slightly damaged quality of the >sestina without the unfortunate insistence on those dopey end words. >Whoops! my politics are showing. Here are another six lines of the poem: > > >I burst a blood vessel below the brain >and spent two months in the Alfred Hospital >reading the complete works of Ian Fleming >which I liked because he could make golf >interesting. Then I read Emile Zola >and started writing D.H. Lawrence imitations > >in which young men full of spirit flung >themselves down upon the earth and felt it breathe >and everything seemed complete. I wanted >to be a rock star, then a painter, >then a novelist, but I ended up writing poems >late in 1966, misunderstanding T.S. Eliot. > > >What the hell - have twelve lines! You'll note, Chris, a decided Kenneth >Koch-influence on that last line. Duggan was I believe a big Scripsi >conspirator, and an Otis Rusher as well. Any recent Duggan sightings? > >Enthusiastically, >Jordan I first read Laurie in MAGIC SAM a wonderful magazine put out by Ken Bolton, Anna Couani and others in the late 70s early 80s. (Ken is now editing Otis Rush). Laurie contributed a couple of poems to the first issue of my magazine (P76) - including 'do the modernism'. He remains one of my favourite poets. For a comkplete change of pace try and find a copy of THE ASH RANGE which is a verse history of the east Gippsland area of Victoria __________________________________ 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, 11 Jun 1996 18:40:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J. Beer" Subject: what matter who's speaking Regarding what people are reading, I've been going through Beckett's trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies (I'm on this), and The Unnameable), and I was curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon contemporary writing. Particularly, I was struck by the way that "silence" and "nothing" are such central terms at about the same time for Cage and Beckett, but Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian types--am I wrong? If not, is the reason something like, they both intuited the impossibility of big-S Selfhood, but what was an opportunity for Cage was an intolerable threat for Beckett, and so he seems rear-guard? Or were they talking about totally different things under the same names? It's fascinating to me how liminal Beckett seems--both totally constructed and always seemingly on the verge of disintegration. But does the construction belie the desperation? Or vice versa? Thanks, John ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:47:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: LANSING TALISMAN!!! Ed -- subscribed earlier this year, received #15, but haven't ever received the "Lansing TALISMAN" -- have I missed it? -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:58:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking J. Beer: > I was > curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon > contemporary writing. This is too large a question to be answered off-handedly. It is like asking a Cabalist to explain the significance of the number seven over cocktails. More later. But for now: Suffice to say that Beckett--especially late Beckett--has had an *indelible* influence on contemporary poetry. Would Coolidge's _Mine_ read as it does without _How It Is_ and _Company_? Would Ashbery, for that matter? Would any so-called solipsistic text written in the last thirty or forty years? Would Alan Davies's essays read as they do? Would any voice that deconstructs itself reductio ad absurdum do so with a cantabile lilt without _Ill Seen, Ill Said_? It is difficult to think of a living writer who *hasn't* been influenced by Beckett. > Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian > types--am I wrong? Not for me--not, I think, for Perelman's AKA (though P's here, from what I hear, and can speak for himself). On the other hand, I believe you might be drawing a false parallel between two distinct philosophical choices. Beckett chose to focus on the individuated voice by stripping it clean; Cage often seemed to regard the voice as an egoic distraction, and performed chance operations, it would seem, to delete it completely. Re silence: When asked to explain the difference between himself and Joyce, Beckett said: Joyce wants to put everything in, I want to take everything out. In this context, silence is arrived at differently than in Cage's work. I regard both Cage and Beckett to be hugely important--but in hugely different ways. Diminuitively, Rob Hardin PS: =46or those who are interested: Here is one of the four Beckett parodies I wrote and read at The Unbearables' Irish Writers Reading Reading (Shanden Star, last year). It's about a crack whore, of course. =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7= =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7= =A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7= =A7=A7 Pizzles In afternoon's caul, at close of day, will she lean into sleep, suck smoke from pipe, exhale black bile of burning cellophane, then, spuming, feel light fail, exsanguine in southwest corner of grime-streaked window? In gradual glow of embers' end, will she lean and dream, or merely drum fingers on sill, each pulse-beat ticking its term of sleep, in paradiddles that trope the see-saw thrusts of clients, of her noonwhite whorelife, abandoned at brothel door, or so she imagines, recalling serrated day on plank of pricks, her sheep-count obliterating apes that crowd old holes, the ghosts of belly-slap and sweat-smear staining this sunset, staining her last inclination to end? Past slide of horizon, outside that fecal frame, will she lean, slow arc of sun sinking in window's rim, crease upon creak? Will she dream of first love, that doddering werewolf, no charm for her but immunity worn like mascara, eyes memorizing aimless dotard combing last strands and muttering of some insignificant summer? Will she lean even then? In gradual glow at close of day, will she imagine staring face down in river, wind smoked out of lungs at last, the water below impaled by piers, the surface scarred by water-boatmen and bits of floating wood, multiple exposures of reflection and flesh drifting across the mirrored lens of the water, as twists of bedsheet lasso her limbs like sleep? Will she picture moss tendrils seducing her into wreckage, as twinges of pain awaken her body, flashpoint beams of tiny, parasitical flashlights? Will her attention flicker, and dreams drone softer, as the sky grows deliciously dim? Never attend her, no succor but staring, no dream but drone, it is always she who dreams, I cannot dream, in a last still stream a stiff hand stands, white-edged in rinse of foam her sodden limbs, I wist she whitens, in river's isinglass poured toward shore, it is she who drifts, I cannot drift, if her head grew heavy with sleep and drooped face-down, would she laugh as she leaned and bubbles rose, or would she sink as now, in afternoon's caul, past slide of horizon, it is not mine to question, whether she feels light fail, it is my fault she fails, my fault the slow suffocation, I cannot lean, it is because of me she leans, into rivers' swirl, into surcease from tears, into ravenous water, afar she imagines the carrion's call, I cannot call, it is because of me she calls, one raven sated, nothing said, no word for breath, stretched vocable a rill derailed, afar she shrieks, afoul I follow, in afternoon's caul, to lean at last, in panic, shriek, in panic, to speak as Peter K=FCrten killed, each knife-slash ticking its term of sleep, in reddening light, in ruby sunset rime, I say to the tricks, to their drooling pizzles, I say to the toss-ups and crawlers, I say, she bleeds, I say, it is because of me she bleeds http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 21:44:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: LANSING TALISMAN!!! the last mailing went out yesterday. if you don't have a copy within a week, there's trouble with the post office yet again. best wishes, ed ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 14:18:45 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: wystan Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking Comments: To: jbeer@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU Dear John, I have always assumed Beckett was one of those writers of fiction who was important to poets and poetry; fiction's hardly the word for what he wrote which's part of the reason. For myself he was the writer that got me writing. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 22:26:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim wood Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking > I have always assumed Beckett was one of those writers of >fiction who was important to poets and poetry; fiction's hardly the word >for what he wrote which's part of the reason. For myself he was the >writer that got me writing. > Wystan Wystan, My agreement on this point. Beckett may have used the framework of "fiction" to cloth his work, but the heart of the work falls into poetry. Any number of passages in the trilogy work with some very intricate cyclings and subtle references and word play are rampant in his work, etc., etc. In one interesting performance I had the joy to experience (if only I could claim the idea!) they took the one passage (test: name work) in which the character goes back and forth between different elements in a bedroom, including the dresser over and over and over and over again. Instead of just "staging" (how would one do that...) or reading the passage, the reading was grabbed by a sampler and echoed back live again and again and again. The extend reverberation/echoing/whatever of the words seemed to pull the audience and the performers into a space seperate from the auditorium. Wonderful. Tim ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:32:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking Very Good post Rob on Beckett--- I'd like to add that the earlier Beckett (of the trilogy, WATT, even PROUST, etc.) seems to have a bigger influence on, say, Ashbery than the ILL SEEN ILL SAID stuff. more later.... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 22:50:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tim wood Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking >"silence" and >"nothing" are such central terms at about the same time for Cage and >Beckett, but Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian >types--am I wrong? If not, is the reason something like, they both >intuited the impossibility of big-S Selfhood, but what was an opportunity >for Cage was an intolerable threat for Beckett, and so he seems >rear-guard? Or were they talking about totally different things under the >same names? Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing. I seem to remember reading that Beckett's shift to plays was because the novels were too personal. Interesting, perhaps the impossibility of Selfhood was too personal . But, I don't know if that justifies reducing Beckett to the phrase "rear-guard". That term (and please I'm not flaming) seems meaningless for the same reason phrases like "cutting edge" and "innovative" and "original" are so utterly meaningless. What is "rear-guard" at this point? Perhaps its better to look at Beckett/Cage as a contrast of one dealing with/exploring/describing the struggle with that threat vs. one playing in the lack of selfhood. Some of the more romantic on the group might value the heroic antiheroism of the former as more important... >It's fascinating to me how liminal Beckett seems agreed... see my other post on this thread... >--both totally >constructed and always seemingly on the verge of disintegration. But >does the construction belie the desperation? Or vice versa? Perhaps it's both... both and neither belieing (word or not that) the other. Tim Wood ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:49:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking This Beckett/Cage question is interesting. I've often thought of it as Appolonian/Dionysian. Cage found Beckett's work too dark -- on the other hand he got on famously w/ Jasper Johns! Optimism was such an important part of Cage's character (not that he also didn't have a dark side/ dark times), but what he perceived as the complete lack of affirmation in Beckett made him question. I told him he should read _Watt_, the humor, as he loved Joyce so, but I don't think he ever did. I don't think it's true that Cage is more important to experimental writers than Beckett, he has certainly been of great use to many. P. Inman in particular points to Beckett, as does Retallack. There's a book by Nicholas Zurbrugg called _The Parameters of Postmodernism_ which works off a dialectic of what he calls "C-effect" vs. "B-effect" -- which opposes Cage, Beuys, Anderson, & others to Beckett, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, etc. (etc?) -- actually he locates "the dawn of the B-effect" in Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" to which he opposes Cage's radical experimentation, questioning of value judgements, & enthusiam for technology. I'm not doing the book justice here though at times it seems a bit to either/or, as does the Apollonian/Dionysian above, & needs more of an actual dialectic goin' on. One other thing on Cage & Beckett-- Cage contributed to the Review of Contemporary Fiction issue on Beckett, a beautiful, very spare mesostic on a 5-line Beckett poem. Cage is missing from the contents page, it's pg. 85. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:00:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking Tim wrote-- >Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry >about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty >damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I >wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing. Don't know what you mean by lacking content. How cld it be? Do you mean narrative? Also don't understand "playing in lack of selfhood." How cld it be? or not be? Rod ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:45:51 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking Comments: To: Tim wood On 11 Jun 96 at 22:50, Tim wood wrote: > Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry > about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty > damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I > wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing. Well, not for me. I love Beckett (have several settings of Beckett texts for voice and whatever sitting in drawers somewhere), but I don't find the "detached" Cage depressing at all. But then, I've never been much of a content fan (I get this image of the content hitting the...), and I find a lot of Beckett quite funny. (I get this goofy image of someone a hundred years down the line doing a paper viewing the Thoreau-based pieces that you and I are writing for Question Authority, The in the light of our respective views of Beckett and Cage... Maybe we gotta work Satie in somehow.) ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:16:52 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: wystan Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking Comments: To: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Dear Rod, Good posts. Your mention of Johns reminds me of the Beckett/Johns collaboration: FOIRADES/FIZZLES. Johns who is clearly creatively comfortable with both Cage and Beckett, can serves as a useful bridge figure here. Since for all three what content is is a question, it is not useful to compare them on the basis of how much any one of them has of it. Although, it is useful to see how putting the question is different depending on the art form in which it is put. And pessimism/optimism aside, the main thing is that putting content in question is a means of restoring the authority of the creative. ... leastways it did that for me. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:38:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking I don't know of any direct connection between Cage's use of silence/nothing & Beckett's, but there is a direct connection between Beckett & Morton Feldman, who has earlier come up in connection with Cage. One of Beckett's last texts was "Neither" written specifically for Feldman's opera of the same name & in gratitutde for this text, one of Feldman's later pieces, for chamber orchestra, was dedicated, and titled, "For Samuel Beckett." >Regarding what people are reading, I've been going through Beckett's trilogy >(Molloy, Malone Dies (I'm on this), and The Unnameable), and I was >curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon >contemporary writing. Particularly, I was struck by the way that "silence" and >"nothing" are such central terms at about the same time for Cage and >Beckett, but Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian >types--am I wrong? If not, is the reason something like, they both >intuited the impossibility of big-S Selfhood, but what was an opportunity >for Cage was an intolerable threat for Beckett, and so he seems >rear-guard? Or were they talking about totally different things under the >same names? >It's fascinating to me how liminal Beckett seems--both totally >constructed and always seemingly on the verge of disintegration. But >does the construction belie the desperation? Or vice versa? > >Thanks, >John Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 02:39:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking as to: "I was curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon contemporary writing. " For one, it's hard for me to imagine the writing of Clark Coolidge without the example & explorations of Beckett. Charles Smith ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:24:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: various cages - newspaper reviews I have a lot of different things to say in response to the ongoing discussion of Cage here. I've split my comments on the Cage discussion into several parts, cause this one got to be pretty long. It's about the value of newspaper reviews. The following is based not only on my own twelve years producing and presenting concerts of post-Cageian (wait, I think there were two concerts which included works by Cage, so they weren't all literally post-Cageian) new music, but also on my serving as board member of the now defunct New Music America festival for six or seven years & on my reading of the press kits of countless composers and performers of new music, dance, etc. as well. Also this applies most particularly to the situation in the United States, but in my limited experience it doesn;t seem to be too different in much of the developed world. Clearly the content, tone, etc. of Page's review were abominable, but it was a review in a daily paper. It isn't an academic or artistic critique of Cage, it's a newspaper review & the rules are very, very different. Newspaper reviews don't really mean anything, it's simply not worth the trouble to take them seriously. I don't think that experimental writers are used to dealing with newspaper reviews very often, so I guess I can understand wanting to treat it as serious criticism, but it's simply absurd to do so. Newspapers don't carry arts criticism, they have entertainment reviews. If the fact that sometimes these reviews of entertainment are about events that you consider art confuses you, this is your problem & not the problem of the newspaper. No one (except the uncle who lives in the town in which you are unlikely enough to be reviewed & he just wants to know why you aren't calling your parents more often anyway) remembers newspaper reviews, they are strictly filler that is only useful to the artist if the information about any future events, recordings or publiations is accurate. Particularly (but not exclusively) when they are about "avant garde" work, EVEN when the review is positive, a newspaper review is almost always just as full of errors of fact as when the review is negative. In virtually all instances where a review is not incorrect, it has been cribbed from the press release & does not reflect the thinking of the reviewer. People who write reviews of the performing arts for newspapers, many of whom are great people and good writers, are almost never specialists in "experimental" work. Even in the rare cases in which they are familiar with this kind of art, they were hired to write about mainstream movies or classical music or best sellers. So you frequently read reviews of jazz concerts by someone who knows about painting, reviews of paintings by former sports writers, reviews of theater by someone who knows about classical music, etc. That's the way it is in the newspaper world. The idea is that anyone who is a journalist can write about anything, because they are trained to cover the five W's before the deadline. Also, in this climate, writers who are supportive of unusual kinds of events are often seen as partisan, and in the wonderful world of journalistic ethics, that often means that they are not objective enough to review something. Anyway, editors will rarely assign reviews of "experimental" work unless the performance is running for more than one night (as a kind of consumer report for those who might want to go after the opening night) & the editor usually assumes (usually correctly) that most of the "regular" people who read his paper would think that this event was a pile of crap, anyway. &, even if an experimental event is running for more than one night, an editor will usually only assign a review of work like this if 1) it is being presented by an organization he cannot otherwise ignore, 2) if there are no other arts events that week for a salaried reporter to cover or, 3) there was a preview of the event in a competing paper that he can't ignore. Is this depressing enough yet? I don't know of an equivalent resource for Cage, so let me suggest that someone go to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Web site ( it's worth looking at anyway) & look up the tour history of the company. Then go to a good research library and look up the reviews in the daily papers for each performance/residency by the company. Count the ones that are factually accurate (don't expect them to be informed as to the aesthtic issues involved in what Cunningham et al are about) & let me know the percentage. I'll be very very surprised if it's higher than 10-15%. The fact that there's some coverage of the "experimental" performing arts in daily newspapers IS different than the usual case for "experimental" literary arts. But, because there's so little context for the work in the daily lives of most of the people who read these reviews, they are meaningless attempts at filling the space around the department store advertisements, and they are treated as such by most editors and writers. If you want to bang your head against this wall, you'd better believe that it has almost nothing to do with a despicable review by Tim Page, and everything to do with the general state of culture. The situation is so globally fucked up, that to get a wild hair up your butt about a literally stupid review seems like a misplacement of effort. The problem isn't that newspapers don't treat the avant garde with respect, it's that newspapers like the rest of the society we live in, don't treat any kind of art with respect, even the popular arts like television. & that's a whole other letter to the editor. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:25:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: various cages - Europera 5 Mark, have you heard Europera 5, on CD or in performance? I've heard a LOT of John Cage's music, I've heard the Europera 5 CD by the musicians for whom the work was created, as well as a local performance of the work, & I'd be quite hesitant to spend a lot of time defending the composition. There's plenty to be said about the work, especially in light of it's structural relation to the previous works in the Europera series. Plenty to be said, but, for many people, I doubt this would include "I really want to hear that piece again." I can think of hundreds of things (including hearing/seeing a performance of Europera 1& 2) that I'd rather do than to hear another performance of Europera 5. The work was made as a sort of small-scale performable version of the earlier incarnations of Europera: 1& 2, a major composition for extremely large forces (full orchestra, 19 singers, complex staging, lighting, etc.) in a very fully equipped theater (many opera houses aren't suited for the work, let alone more general theaters) & 3 & 4, already created for smaller performing ensembles. There's a discussion of the process of creating this piece in Musicage, the book of conversations between Joan Retallack & John Cage, that Rod has often refered to here. In many ways, Europera 5 is a minor work, & I don't think it's all that successful. Few of Cage's compositions that use other music as source material depend so much on the recognizability of the original for their effect. Even the other Europeras as denser, allowing for the awareness of other textures & structures out of the found material. In making Europera 5 as sparse as it is, Cage was faced with the same problem that many composers who use digital samples of other music face, how to create something that is unrecognizably new, while using source material that is recognizably old. The excerpts in Europera 5 rarely overlap & are so much a part of the works from which they come that comparatively little synergy arises out of the mix. It seems like nothing so much as a poorly received radio station playing excerpts from various operas in sequence. Does Europera 5 deserve to be brutally & ignorantly savaged in a review, probably not? Does such a review of this work deserve an all-out shrill call to arms in defense against an embattled "avant garde"? Again, probably not. I really don't think that any stance which must defend all works under the rubric of the "avant garde" against all attacks is a useful one. In the case of Europera 5, there are simply other fights that are more important and other fights more likely to be won. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 04:10:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: various cages mark wallace typed: >intellectual slander IS a significant litmus test of whether one >deserves respect. Or rather: Intellectual slander is the misdemeanor of critics. Its penalty is the loss of the reader's respect. The quickest way to regain respect: to acknowledge one's wrong and re-evaluate the object of slander. (Provisional Ethics 1-1) http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 03:22:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Miscellaneous stuff Chris, No, I did not know Poulin, but yes, he did do BOA. The obit in the Times was so cloying, it was hard to fathom (odd for a publication that prides itself in its usual critical distance). Hart published a newsletter out of his home in Marin in the mid-80s that attempted to scold all of us barbarians for failing to understand the true meaning of modernism. By comparison to the fugitives, he was a progressive, but that was always the context the work seemed to seek out. I think I've noted here before that Robert Barlow, the poet-anthropologist who was a fellow traveler with the Activist Poets, was somebody whom Olson mentions trying to seek out while in Mexico, somewhere in the Mayan Letters. Orono folks, For those of us (and I suspect we are many on this list) who have, as yet, to see a single word explaining what this conference there might be or be about, we hope you will provide the in-depth coverage we are growing used to here. Details, detail, details! Summer Reading List... Just finished Carole Maso's Ava, which makes Beckett safe for PBS (that is, to be less snide, she uses the same pallet of devices, but does so to construct a decidedly unified, even romanticized, subjective whole). It brought up for me the whole question of recycled modernism, thinking of Alice Walker's uses of Faulkner in The Color Purple or Ondaatje's Hemingway in The English Patient. In each instance, the techniques are used to much more conservative ends than those for which they had originally been elaborated. The whole question of a poet's prose or a poet's fiction makes enormous sense to me, Wystan, from Joyce forward. I think that Primary Trouble is right on target to include Dodie Bellamy in its anthology of poetry. (Great selection too, by the way.) Next book is Langston Hughes' The Big Sea, which I picked up in SF last month. All best, Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:02:18 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: poetry reading JOHN ASHBERY EATS FIDDLEHEADS You are invited to a poetry reading where five Boston cats* are blowing their poetry REAL HARD Ange Mlinko Damon Krukowski Sianne Ngai Daniel Bouchard Chris Stroffolino 10 Oxford Street- REAR, Somerville, MASS. Monday, June 17 8:30 PM Nothing has been so good since Wieners retired _____________________ * OK, so Stroffolino is an Albany cat not a Boston cat (and soon to be a Jersey City or Brooklyn cat anyway) but such an opportunity for palimpsest rarely occurs. On your way to Orono (or just hanging around New England?) and want to start the week off right? Here's your opportunity to see/hear some real Boston. Call for details: 617-351-5792. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:29:42 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: Miscellaneous stuff At 3:22 AM 6/12/96, Ron Silliman wrote: >Just finished Carole Maso's Ava, which makes Beckett safe for PBS (that >is, to be less snide, she uses the same pallet of devices, but does so >to construct a decidedly unified, even romanticized, subjective whole). >It brought up for me the whole question of recycled modernism, thinking >of Alice Walker's uses of Faulkner in The Color Purple or Ondaatje's >Hemingway in The English Patient. In each instance, the techniques are >used to much more conservative ends than those for which they had >originally been elaborated. Thanks Ron. Now I feel less guilty that I'm reading _House of Mirth_ right now rather than "keeping up." x, Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:31:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking Hey Rod--- Is BRECHT part of the B-effect? It would seem that Bernstein in this schema would be more a CHARLES (more C than B) in terms of darkness, while Perelman would be more a BOB (B)--I've been thinking about the BECKETT connection with AKA (who brought that up?). It seems that AKA is less, er, "stream of consciousness" though than more Bruce Andrews-like in the way it reads. By Andrews like I mean, the emphasis is on the sentence (not emotional) rather than paragraph. Beckett's emphasis seems more on the accumulative rush effect. (again, i'm speaking primarily of the trilogy era Beckett... and I haven't read AKA in years....so I think I know what I'm going to read today......cs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:32:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: summary reading In-Reply-To: <199606120402.AAA23641@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> OOOPS! I'm actually getting to Maine Tues. night, as my panel is the next day -- will also be in gang reading Friday night -- maybe we should all wear colors! and today's reading: Juan Felipe Herrera -- _The Roots of a Thousand Embraces_ Manic D Press available from SPD -- it's great -- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:19:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: against summer reading I am leaning to the left against my summer reading: a very large (1000 pages?) blank book, extraordinarily popular delusions, The Life of Johnson, etc, and what good poems it's making me flee to read--Frank O'Hara's poem up in the subway, contrarian and personist in the best of spirits, Karen Volkman's national poetry series book _Crash's Law_ the presense of which can only mean that Juliana Spahr's NPS book is preparing to knock New York City over like the cardboard diorama we know it is, oh and god! Laura Moriarty's book _Symmetry_ thank you Rod! for sending it - I've never seen anybody get knocked out the way it happens all the time on tv, how does anybody get any reading done when they own a tv, someone like Melanie Neilson makes a poem and the credit card offers, are they nefarious? Do you find out about yourself when you consume the endless electrons? It's something you can turn on, the Baudelaire of you, but when you find out the 'off' switch is symbolic at best, a surrealist at most, a batter in a cage, is she bored? Not Melanie but the manic imperative, the one up the street we'll have to go visit when they get here, deferring to the expert light of some characters we know, Ringo, Paul, John, Morton, etc. That ought to be something exciting. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:33:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: readings/twin cities A POETRY & MULTIMEDIA READING BY SPENCER SELBY & ERIK BELGUM sponsored by Cross-Cultural Poetics and the College of St. Catherine-Minneapolis SATURDAY, JUNE 15 ROOM 250 COLLEGE OF ST. CATHERINE MINNEAPOLIS 1:00 p.m. SPENCER SELBY Spencer Selby's books of poetry include Instar (SINK Press, 1989), Barricade (Paradigm Press, 1990), House of Before (Potes & Poets Press, 1991), Sound Off (Detour Press, 1993), and No Island (Drogue Press, 1995). His visual poetry includes Stigma (Score, 1990), and Malleable Cast (Generator, 1995). In the middle 1980's Spencer Selby began SINK Press in San Francisco, where he still resides, and he coordinated the Canessa Park Reading Series from 1987 - 1993. In 1993 Selby created The List of Experimental Poetry/Art Magazines, a noncopyrighted, freely circulating document that tracks over 250 publications around the world. ERIK BELGUM Erik Belgum's experimental fiction has appeared in over two dozen journals since 1985. Most recently he has been seen in literary journals such as Avec, Chicago Review, Red Bass, Central Park, Black Ice, and Caliban. His fiction will appear this year in an anthology of experimental fiction from the publishers of Avec, as well as in upcoming issues of Central Park and Asylum Annual. In his Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993), Richard Kostelanetz called Belgum one of "the best of the younger writers of fiction, let alone experimental fiction." Belgum's literary/audio/soundtext works have been played throughout the United States, in concert, on radio, and also recently on the CD audio magazine Aerial. Recent commissions include spoken word pieces commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers through a Jerome Foundation grant and another by Corn Palace Productions performed at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. This reading is FREE and is held at the College of St. Catherine-Minneapolis, 601 25th Avenue South (two blocks north of the 25th Avenue/Riverside intersection). Next Reading sponsored by Cross-Cultural Poetics: June 29, 1:00 pm, Room 250, College of St. Catherine-Minneapolis DAN FEATHERSTON & CHARLES ALEXANDER For further information about Cross-Cultural Poetics readings and publications, please contact Mark Nowak at 612-690-7747. Or e-mail him at MANOWAK@alex.stkate.edu I hope anyone on the poetics list visiting or living near here will come. I'll post more before the June 29th reading. charles alexander chax press chax@mtn.org ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:50:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin Subject: clamdiggers (fwd) This one's from Marisa Januzzi, whose machine apparently needs to be fed. JL. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- It's Maine, so we're supposed to wear clam diggers, right Kevin? (Dodie-- can I answer the post in person!?) If I ever finish my grades I will be in Orono too, Kerouac paper, time recently unsettled & rescheduled for undetermined reasons. (Anyone looking for summer reading-- MEXICO CITY BLUES, SUBTERRANEANS, TRISTESSA, OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT, and VSIONS OF GERARD... are all truly great, and this from someone who once couldn't read Kerouac for sexism...) Maybe we should designate a poetics reef & then all go meet on it? Re: LeSueur-- some of her stuff is available through SPD, including the pamphlets (just got "Women on the Breadlines"). I'd love to hear more about her being alive. Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected &where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?) Also, has anyone else read Emily Holms Coleman (esp. THE SHUTTER OF SNOW)? Ciao, & drowning in work, and on notice that my server is down after 10AM tomorrow until Orono..... bleh! --Marisa Januzzi ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:57:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: Standing Stones Press Special Offer SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS SUBSCRIBER Standing Stones Press Publications Tom Ahern, _Skippy Taggart's Wife_ Curt Anderson, _Umbra_ Dennis Barone, _The Masque Resumed_ Jonathan Brannen, _Crunching Numbers_ Gerald Burns, _Probability and Fuzzy Dice_ Cydney Chadwick, _The Gift Horse's Mouth_ o.p. Mark DuCharme, _Contractng Scale- Peter Ganick, _IT OR S/HE_ Geof Huth, _To a Small Stream of Water (or Ditch)_ H.T. (Heather Thomas), _Circus Freex_ Stephen-Paul Martin, _Crisis of Representation_ Michelle Murphy, _The Tongue in its Shelf_ Sheila E. Murphy, _Wind Topography_ John Perlman, _Anacoustic_ Susan M. Schultz, _Earthquake Dreams_ Mark Wallace, _In Case of Damage to Life, Limb or This Elevator_ (forthcoming, June 1996) All publications are $4.00 or any four for $12.00 (postage included except on foreign orders). Also available from Standing Stones: Jonathan Brannen, Thing Is The Anagram Of Night (Texture Press, 1996), $6.00 nothing doing never again (Score Press, 1996), $8.00 SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS SUBSCRIBERS: $3.00 each or FOUR FOR $10.00 !!! Thing Is The Anagram Of Night (Texture Press, 1996), $4.00 and nothing doing never again (Score Press, 1996), $5.00. Plus a free copy of Gerald Burns Probability and Fuzzy Dice (upon request and while supplies last) with any order !!! Offer good until July 15, 1996. Very limited quanities of some titles. Order from jbrannen@infolink.morris.mn.us (I'll include the bill when I ship the order) or from: Standing Stones Press 7 Circle Pines Morris, MN 56267 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:01:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) Well--someone told me one should pack a lot of BUG SPRAY for MAINE... so I might hit someone up for this. Didn't Emerson say something like "If one goes for a walk in the woods, one must feed mosquitos" (which I translate as): "if one goes for a walk in a city, one must feed quarters to payphones"----cs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:32:28 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Ira Lightman wrote: Ken, could you detail a few of the poets here, as you say, who engage intelligently with langpo, which books or poems? (ie in the UK) Well, first among them I would place Allen Fisher. He and I have had numerous conversations about langpo type poets since, I think, the early 1980s, and I'm indebted to him and to his vast book collection in this respect. Cris Cheek (hi Cris!) has had strong transatlantic links for many years, including with langpo. Tom Raworth is notoriously US- and langpo-friendly -- one of the most open and generous souls around. Maybe one of the few Brits who has actually influenced the langpo scene at source. Wendy Mulford has corresponded for many years with the grouping of poets around Kathleen Fraser and Susan Gevirtz's How(ever) and is well acquainted with, particularly, the women in the langpo camp and around it. Maggie O'Sullivan has collaborated on a book with Bruce Andrews and reads avidly in and out of langpo as far as I know. I'm particularly grateful to her for introducing me to the work of current Canadian "experimental" women poets. A number of the poets associated with the London SubVoicive/Writers Forum crowd are knowledgeable about it. Among these I'd mention Adrian Clarke and Robert Sheppard, who edited the Potes & Poets anthology of London poets "Floating Capital" -- also Johan de Wit, Ulli Freer, Lawrence Upton, and of course Bob Cobbing, also one of the least prejudiced guys around, who published that Maggie/Bruce collaboration. Peter Middleton is clearly keen on that stuff. So is Miles Champion, I'd say. Finally Robert Hampson and I were probably the first to publish some of the Americans, even before they were labelled "language", back in the 1970s. Lyn Hejinian, Alan Davies and James Sherry made appearances in our long-dead magazine Alembic. Sorry to go on. Of course, this list isn't exhaustive. As for "which books or poems", well I wouldn't presume to trace influences that closely -- you'll have to decide. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 18:45:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Dear ken Edwards--- Could you elaborate on Miles Champion. The little I've seen is interesting and it was good to see your willingness to include him, while Ira, I think, seemed less to......cs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:42:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) >Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected >&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?) Some large assemblage of Ark (perhaps all of it) is due imminently from University of New Mexico Press. The cook books are great. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:28:42 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Communications Decency Act This is Dodie Bellamy. I received the following from another list I'm subscribed to. It's not about poetics, but I thought it might be of interest. PHILADELPHIA (Reuter) -- In a ground-breaking decision on free-speech rights over the Internet, a special U.S court panel blocked as unconstitutional a new federal law prohibiting indecency on computer networks. The three-judge panel issued Wednesday a preliminarly injunction blocking enforcement of portions of the Communications Decency Act, signed by President Clinton Feb. 8, which prohibit the distribution to minors of indecent or "patently offensive" materials over computer networks. The court let stand prohibitions against obscenity and child pornography, types of speech that are not constitutionally protected and were not challenged by the act's opponents. "The Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation," U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell, a member of the panel, said in his opinion accompanying the decision. "The government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion," he said. Also on the panel were U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Buckwalter and Dolores Sloviter, chief justice of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. In its legal conclusion, the court said the blocked portions of the act were unconstitutional on their face. The injunction was issued in response to a lawsuit against the U.S. Justice Department challenging the act. The challenge was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and groups representing libraries, publishers and the computer on-line industry. A Justice Department spokesman said the agency had no immediate comment on the ruling. The ruling sets the stage either for a trial on whether the act should be permanently blocked, or a direct appeal of the preliminary injunction to the U.S. Supreme Court under expedited provisions written into it. "The court has reaffirmed what our founders 200 years ago bequeathed as our greatest liberty, and that's free speech," said Stefan Presser, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which filed the original suit. Bruce Taylor, chief counsel for the National Law Center for Children and Families, which supports the act, said of the ruling, "I don't consider this a setback." The act has already heightened awareness of content unsuitable for minors on the Internet, and prompted development of technology that will make it possible to screen and block material for suitability for minors, he said. Such technology will undermine arguments by the act's opponents that it is impossible to enforce, he said. In addition, he said, state laws already on the books can also be used. "The states can do what this ruling said the federal government can't do yet," he said. The ACLU immediately posted the court's opinion and order, which total 177 pages, on its World Wide Web site, said Christopher Hansen, attorney for the national ACLU. The address of the site is http://www.aclu.org. In the event of a government appeal, Hansen said, "We'll certainly defend the conclusion vigorously." ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:57:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) >Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected >&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?) I notice in the new Small Press Distribution Catalog that Gus Blaisdell's Living Batch Press in Albuquerque has brought out the whole (I believe) of Ronald Johnson's ARK. So contact SPD at 1814 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA 94702. And on that SPD catalog check out the drawings of writers on the cover, done by Gary Sullivan. High groove factor, as Gary might say himself. Ronald Johnson's first southwestern cookbook is a classic. I know that there is a more recent edition of that, and others, but I don't know about them. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 20:10:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) >>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected >>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?) > >Some large assemblage of Ark (perhaps all of it) is due imminently from >University of New Mexico Press. The cook books are great. apologies for repeating myself, but I wanted to make it clear. It's not the University of New Mexico Press, it's a new press, LIVING BATCH BOOKS (many of you I am sure know the long-lived Living Batch Bookstore in Albuquerque), run by Gus Blaisdell, which has, according to the announcement in the Small Press Distribution Spring 1996 catalog which just arrived, "just published one of the extraordinary long poems of the past quarter-century in Ronald Johnson's ARK. Early versions of Johnson's great, elegant long poem are all out-of-print. This new book presents the full poem for the first time, a true heir to Louis Zukofsky's "A," Basil Bunting's BRIGGFLATTS, George oppen's and Lorine Niedecker's longer series, and Robert Duncan's PASSAGES and STRUCTURE OF RIME, but with a music and architecture unique in American poetry." And more complete SPD ordering info: 1814 San Pablo Avenue Berkeley, CA 94702-1624 tel. 510.549.3336 fax 510.549.2201 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:28:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Comments: To: chax@tmn.com Charles, I'm sure you're right. The SPD catalog hasn't shown up here yet & when I checked locally after seeing a reference to Ark somewhere (?), the book store came up with it as being from UofNM Pr. In any case, I'm glad I don't have to wait much longer to read it all. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 23:12:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Romana Christina Huk Subject: Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives For those who wish to attend _Assembling Alternatives: An International Poetry Conference/Festival_ (29 Aug.- 2 Sept.) but can't afford the price of accommodation and/or meals, new options have been created that allow for use of a local campsite or, for a more limited number, guest housing with faculty and students in the area. Those who intend to camp and not take meals with the group will only pay $15.00 per day ($60.00 for the whole event); this includes transportation to and from the conference site, and coffee/tea-breaks during the days, but does not include the costs required by the campsite itself. They have given us rates at approx. $18.00 per night per "couple" in a tent (it pays to double-up with someone); the rental of any equipment needed is up to campers. Further details can be retrieved by calling the campsite directly; do so by asking about the "safari site"(!) reserved by Romana Huk at UNH for the poetry conference/festival on the above dates: Lamprey River Campground, 16 Campground Road, LEE, NH 03824; tel.: 603 659 3852. The grounds have full Facilities (toilets, showers). Tents, however, are hard to find for rent in this area, but Eastern Mountain Sports in the local Fox Run Mall (603 433 4764) reports to have enough tents for approx. 30 people camping in sets of two and three; they go for between $25.00 and $30.00 for the full stint. To reserve any of these you must act _soon_. Those who intend to pay the full $270.00 commuter fee for taking all meals with the group for these 5 days and 4 nights will be up first for placement in people's homes (in order to help reduce their overall costs and relieve our volunteer hosts' anxieties about feeding, etc.). Anyone interested in either new option must still go through the University Conferences Office to secure a seat at the conference itself (which is very important given our limited space): Univ. Conferences Office, Univ. of NH, 11 Brook Way, Room 121, Durham, NH 03824-3509; tel.: 603 862 1900; fax: 603 862 0245. If you wish to pay the commuter fee to take all meals with the group, you will need a registration form from the Office. Those who hope to be placed in guest housing must contact myself, Romana Huk, conference organizer, as soon as possible; I can be reached before 27 June either at this e-mail address or at UNH (603 862 3992). After that I leave for six weeks in England, cut off from e-mail, I think (though I'll keep you posted). I can be reached either through the Conferences Office (who can in a pinch fax or call me) or, after the 1st of July, I can be contacted by phoning Gonville & Caius (pronounced "Keyes") College, Cambridge, England (44 1223 332400) and leaving your phone number in a message for me to call you. The conference/festival is developing beautifully despite funding woes on all our parts. Its schedule begins at 2:00 with registration on the 29th of August;at that time the book exhibit/sales area will be getting set up, and the Great Bay Room (our largest) will, I hope, be hung and otherwise transformed by artworks made in response to these poetries, if we can get artists and the New England Center staff to agree on what can be done to the walls. At 5:00 an informal reception will lead into dinner at 6:00, after which we'll have our first night of performances in the Great Bay Room. I'll be finalizing the readings in the next several days; several of the most well-known will be on that night so it's not one to be missed. The readings will be free and open to the public. Remember that although our focus is the U.S., U.K., Canada and Ireland, other poetries will be represented and become part of the conversation. Among those thus far scheduled to give talks or performances are (and this can't be a full list, so I'm about to choose randomly): Charles Bernstein, Karen Mac Cormack, Sean O'hUigin, Tom Raworth, Carla Harryman, Nicole Brossard, Maurice Scully, Allen Fisher, Rae Armantrout, Steve McCaffery, Maggie O'Sullivan, Denise Riley, Joan Retallack, Peter Quartermain, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Middleton, Bob Perelman, Juliana Spahr, Jeff Derksen, Peter Gizzi, Miles Champion, Caroline Bergvall, cris cheek, Catherine Walsh, Steve Evans, Miriam Nichols, Alan Golding, Trevor Joyce, Kathleen Fraser, Rod Mengham, Barrett Watten, Abigail Child, Paul Dutton, Lee Ann Brown, Ken Edwards, John Cayley, Jim Rosenberg, Steve Benson, Wendy Mulford, Leslie Scalapino, Robert Sheppard, Fiona Templeton, Loss Glazier, Louis Cabri, Andrew Levy, Philip Mead, John Kinsella, Barbara Godard, David Bromige, Hazel Smith, Susan Schultz, John Wilkinson, Mary Margaret Sloan, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Billy Mills, Linda Kinnahan, Lynn Keller, Geoffrey Squires, Keith Tuma, Shamoon Zamir, Brian Lynch, Christian Bok, Charles Altieri, David Annwn, Tony Lopez, Donald Wesling, Burton Hatlen, and more. In general outline, the conversation begins on Friday with discussion of differing contexts and relationships of these poetries to institutions in those contexts. On Saturday issues of poetic politics and imaginings of the subject arise, as well as the relationship between these poetries and their respective "mainstreams"; key problems of gendered and racial difference arise as well. On Sunday new forms of electronic and performance work enter in, and on Monday, our last day, almost all of it comes back in talk about where we stand at the "millennium" (or don't). On Sunday night we take a break from UNH's confines to have our dinner and readings in Portsmouth, the area's cultural center on the water. This will of course happen as part of the full conference fee paid by those taking meals with the group; transportation will be provided for all, even those not eating with the rest. I hope that's enough information at the moment for those interested. I'm terribly sorry to have to take off for six weeks: but again, after the 27th you should be able to either fetch the details you need from the Conferences Office or reach me overseas. My address there, if you don't want to phone, will be : Romana Huk, Director, UNH Summer Program, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA, England. It takes about a week for letters to make it over. Remember to include your phone number in correspondence. And spread the news about the book exhibit! All presses are welcome to contribute. Wishing good summers to all of you, Romana Huk ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 23:59:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) Johnson's Ark's out just this week-- it's paperback, $25.00. It's not published by New Mexico, but distributed by them. Rod ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 11:45:11 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ira Lightman Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Ken, thanks for your rollcall of names, I'm extremely grateful. Could I add to Chris' request, and probe a little further: I will cease to push for books or poems but could you specify a little how the British poets you've cited and their American friends, beyond mutual encouragement and citing of each other to interested parties, have shown LangPo qualities in their own work, along the lines I mentioned in my original post: "the attitude to language or presence, in any number games, paragraph organisation, or relation of page to page, or dual columns, in the way that it is in any of the poets mentioned" (eg, I mean, that the pastiche of a voice of an Other actually bleeds into and could be the voice of the poet) Do any of them, for example, in your view, write the New Sentence? Chris, by the way, I would like to say that I am impressed by the way that Miles Champion borrows models from LangPo, his book "Sore Models" was borrowed from Kit Robinson's Ice Cubes, for example. My worry is that his work reminds me of several New Zealand poets' use of the sonnet, eg James Baxter or Vincent O'Sullivan, in that what seems to me to be is happening is a kind of stand-up comedian Woody Allen nebbishy, or Peter Cook cod-Shakesperean, voiceover draped over the form. Whereas, Shakespeare's sonnets, and Robinson's Ice Cubes, seem to me to hang on ideas about which the poet is really anxious, upon which the poet's sanity and life seem to rest, questions like "am I a man unable to give in to the real martyrdom of love" or "do my silly relationship problems distract me from action to improve my world" where this is felt as a paradox of two conflicting, equally *pressing" problems. My personal difficulty with Miles' work is that, unlike Rob McKenzie's (and I should stress here that Rob is a keen fan of Miles, so this my beef only), he seems to have the "postmodern" embarrassed thus flip take on earnestness about love (it's a cliche, an overused word etc), and rarely seems to be serious about anything. I don't even find that in the great clown Ashbery. I just worry that the general atmosphere of send-up in Miles' work is what genuinely endears him to Brits who hate and avoid LangPo, who think that Miles, like Rodefer, is using LangPo only to send it up - and I know that isn't Miles' attitude, as his estimable magazine that he edits does sterling work presenting LangPo; so maybe I worry *for him*, that he faces trauma ahead in having to either junk LangPo or offend some of his friends (not Ken, not Chris, and not, incidentally, me). Very best, Ira On Wed, 12 Jun 1996 18:45:29 -0500 Chris Stroffolino wrote: > > Dear ken Edwards--- > Could you elaborate on Miles Champion. The little I've seen is interesting > and it was good to see your willingness to include him, while Ira, I > think, seemed less to......cs ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:30:54 CDT Reply-To: tmandel@cais.cais.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: reading / listening to music Has anyone read the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard? He's pretty great; I keep seeing his books on remainder tables in english editions that must have their last resort in nw dc. he is a great writer, really; a destructive constructivist. In his will he forbade any further works of his to be published or printed in Austria or that his estate accept any prizes or honors therefrom -- those who know me will know that to be good enough for me! Music: I suppose everyone on this list knows the work of john zorn, but I've been listening to his series of CDs with his band, Masada, and they are great. esp. Gimel. Pierre Joris's list of mostly european music was a gift from this list. In return, let me ask whether -- assuming to head one's ears in a different direction from Cage for a moment -- anyone knows the music of Bohuslav Martinu? Or the recently revived music of Erwin Schulhoff? I'm preaching to the choir? Let me continue by assuming out loud that many among you know the opera "The Cunning Little Vixen" by Janacek? The Schubert piano trios? Totally great is Kurtag's "Hommage a R. Sch." (Robert Schumann) collected with some other wonderful chamber pieces of his and of Schumann on ECM 78118-21508-2 (why does it take so many numbers?). Also Ulstvoldskaya's complete piano sonatas played by Frank Denyer on Conifer 75605 51262 2 Music for clarinet by poulenc or buddy defranco is good too. Tom Mandel ************************************************* Tom Mandel * 2927 Tilden St. NW Washington DC 20008 * tmandel@1net.com vox: 202-362-1679 * fax 202-364-5349 ************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:37:33 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives Hi Romana, well this sounds like the option I'm dying for. Can I pay for the food, therefore eat with everyone and get into the guest housing please? If you can take me onto that it would help a great deal. If it's a yes, do I still need to register, being one of your advertised delegates? Do I need to call them. Sorry, but as an indieer-outsider it's a touch confusing. Not your information, but our responsibilities. Did you get my posts? WOuld you rather I talked about the range e-poetry work? Got the feeling it wasn't what you wanted (although I'b be likely to use slides / computer voice ala Hawking in my intervention ) tant pis. Really looking forward to seeing you. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 09:16:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Barker Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 11 Jun 1996 to 12 Jun 1996 Please de-subscribe me from the list. Nothing personal, just too much. SB At 12:00 AM 6/13/96 -0400, you wrote: >There are 26 messages totalling 1015 lines in this issue. > >Topics of the day: > > 1. what matter who's speaking (6) > 2. various cages - newspaper reviews > 3. various cages - Europera 5 > 4. various cages > 5. Miscellaneous stuff (2) > 6. poetry reading > 7. summary reading > 8. against summer reading > 9. readings/twin cities > 10. clamdiggers (fwd) (5) > 11. Standing Stones Press Special Offer > 12. post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes (2) > 13. Communications Decency Act > 14. > 15. Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:00:32 -0400 >From: Rod Smith >Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking > >Tim wrote-- >>Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry >>about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty >>damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I >>wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing. > >Don't know what you mean by lacking content. How cld it be? Do you mean >narrative? Also don't understand "playing in lack of selfhood." How cld it >be? or not be? > >Rod > >------------------------------ > >Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:45:51 +0000 >From: Joseph Zitt >Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking > >On 11 Jun 96 at 22:50, Tim wood wrote: > >> Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry >> about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty >> damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I >> wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing. > >Well, not for me. I love Beckett (have several settings of Beckett >texts for voice and whatever sitting in drawers somewhere), but I >don't find the "detached" Cage depressing at all. But then, I've >never been much of a content fan (I get this image of the content >hitting the...), and I find a lot of Beckett quite funny. > >(I get this goofy image of someone a hundred years down the line >doing a paper viewing the Thoreau-based pieces that you and I are >writing for Question Authority, The in the light of our respective >views of Beckett and Cage... Maybe we gotta work Satie in somehow.) >---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- >|||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| >||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| >|/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:16:52 GMT+1200 >From: wystan >Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking > >Dear Rod, > Good posts. Your mention of Johns reminds me of the >Beckett/Johns collaboration: FOIRADES/FIZZLES. Johns who is clearly >creatively comfortable with both Cage and Beckett, can serves as a >useful bridge figure here. Since for all three what content is is a >question, it is not useful to compare them on the basis of how much any >one of them has of it. Although, it is useful to see how putting the >question is different depending on the art form in which it is put. >And pessimism/optimism aside, the main thing is that putting content in >question is a means of restoring the authority of the creative. >... leastways it did that for me. > Wystan > >------------------------------ > >Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:38:25 -0700 >From: Herb Levy >Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking > >I don't know of any direct connection between Cage's use of silence/nothing >& Beckett's, but there is a direct connection between Beckett & Morton >Feldman, who has earlier come up in connection with Cage. > >One of Beckett's last texts was "Neither" written specifically for >Feldman's opera of the same name & in gratitutde for this text, one of >Feldman's later pieces, for chamber orchestra, was dedicated, and titled, >"For Samuel Beckett." > >>Regarding what people are reading, I've been going through Beckett's trilogy >>(Molloy, Malone Dies (I'm on this), and The Unnameable), and I was >>curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon >>contemporary writing. Particularly, I was struck by the way that "silence" and >>"nothing" are such central terms at about the same time for Cage and >>Beckett, but Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian >>types--am I wrong? If not, is the reason something like, they both >>intuited the impossibility of big-S Selfhood, but what was an opportunity >>for Cage was an intolerable threat for Beckett, and so he seems >>rear-guard? Or were they talking about totally different things under the >>same names? >>It's fascinating to me how liminal Beckett seems--both totally >>constructed and always seemingly on the verge of disintegration. But >>does the construction belie the desperation? Or vice versa? >> >>Thanks, >>John > > >Herb Levy >herb@eskimo.com > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 02:39:04 -0400 >From: Charles Smith >Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking > >as to: "I was >curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon >contemporary writing. " > >For one, it's hard for me to imagine the writing of Clark Coolidge without >the example & explorations of Beckett. > >Charles Smith > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:24:50 -0700 >From: Herb Levy >Subject: Re: various cages - newspaper reviews > >I have a lot of different things to say in response to the ongoing >discussion of Cage here. I've split my comments on the Cage discussion >into several parts, cause this one got to be pretty long. It's about the >value of newspaper reviews. > >The following is based not only on my own twelve years producing and >presenting concerts of post-Cageian (wait, I think there were two concerts >which included works by Cage, so they weren't all literally post-Cageian) >new music, but also on my serving as board member of the now defunct New >Music America festival for six or seven years & on my reading of the press >kits of countless composers and performers of new music, dance, etc. as >well. > >Also this applies most particularly to the situation in the United States, >but in my limited experience it doesn;t seem to be too different in much of >the developed world. > >Clearly the content, tone, etc. of Page's review were abominable, but it >was a review in a daily paper. It isn't an academic or artistic critique >of Cage, it's a newspaper review & the rules are very, very different. >Newspaper reviews don't really mean anything, it's simply not worth the >trouble to take them seriously. > >I don't think that experimental writers are used to dealing with newspaper >reviews very often, so I guess I can understand wanting to treat it as >serious criticism, but it's simply absurd to do so. Newspapers don't carry >arts criticism, they have entertainment reviews. If the fact that >sometimes these reviews of entertainment are about events that you consider >art confuses you, this is your problem & not the problem of the newspaper. > > >No one (except the uncle who lives in the town in which you are unlikely >enough to be reviewed & he just wants to know why you aren't calling your >parents more often anyway) remembers newspaper reviews, they are strictly >filler that is only useful to the artist if the information about any >future events, recordings or publiations is accurate. > >Particularly (but not exclusively) when they are about "avant garde" work, >EVEN when the review is positive, a newspaper review is almost always just >as full of errors of fact as when the review is negative. In virtually all >instances where a review is not incorrect, it has been cribbed from the >press release & does not reflect the thinking of the reviewer. > >People who write reviews of the performing arts for newspapers, many of >whom are great people and good writers, are almost never specialists in >"experimental" work. Even in the rare cases in which they are familiar >with this kind of art, they were hired to write about mainstream movies or >classical music or best sellers. So you frequently read reviews of jazz >concerts by someone who knows about painting, reviews of paintings by >former sports writers, reviews of theater by someone who knows about >classical music, etc. > >That's the way it is in the newspaper world. The idea is that anyone who >is a journalist can write about anything, because they are trained to cover >the five W's before the deadline. > >Also, in this climate, writers who are supportive of unusual kinds of >events are often seen as partisan, and in the wonderful world of >journalistic ethics, that often means that they are not objective enough to >review something. > >Anyway, editors will rarely assign reviews of "experimental" work unless >the performance is running for more than one night (as a kind of consumer >report for those who might want to go after the opening night) & the editor >usually assumes (usually correctly) that most of the "regular" people who >read his paper would think that this event was a pile of crap, anyway. > >&, even if an experimental event is running for more than one night, an >editor will usually only assign a review of work like this if 1) it is >being presented by an organization he cannot otherwise ignore, 2) if there >are no other arts events that week for a salaried reporter to cover or, 3) >there was a preview of the event in a competing paper that he can't ignore. > > >Is this depressing enough yet? > >I don't know of an equivalent resource for Cage, so let me suggest that >someone go to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Web site >( it's worth looking at anyway) & look up the tour >history of the company. Then go to a good research library and look up the >reviews in the daily papers for each performance/residency by the company. >Count the ones that are factually accurate (don't expect them to be >informed as to the aesthtic issues involved in what Cunningham et al are >about) & let me know the percentage. I'll be very very surprised if it's >higher than 10-15%. > >The fact that there's some coverage of the "experimental" performing arts >in daily newspapers IS different than the usual case for "experimental" >literary arts. But, because there's so little context for the work in the >daily lives of most of the people who read these reviews, they are >meaningless attempts at filling the space around the department store >advertisements, and they are treated as such by most editors and writers. > >If you want to bang your head against this wall, you'd better believe that >it has almost nothing to do with a despicable review by Tim Page, and >everything to do with the general state of culture. The situation is so >globally fucked up, that to get a wild hair up your butt about a literally >stupid review seems like a misplacement of effort. > >The problem isn't that newspapers don't treat the avant garde with respect, >it's that newspapers like the rest of the society we live in, don't treat >any kind of art with respect, even the popular arts like television. > >& that's a whole other letter to the editor. > > > >Herb Levy >herb@eskimo.com > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:25:33 -0700 >From: Herb Levy >Subject: Re: various cages - Europera 5 > >Mark, have you heard Europera 5, on CD or in performance? > >I've heard a LOT of John Cage's music, I've heard the Europera 5 CD by the >musicians for whom the work was created, as well as a local performance of >the work, & I'd be quite hesitant to spend a lot of time defending the >composition. There's plenty to be said about the work, especially in light >of it's structural relation to the previous works in the Europera series. >Plenty to be said, but, for many people, I doubt this would include "I >really want to hear that piece again." I can think of hundreds of things >(including hearing/seeing a performance of Europera 1& 2) that I'd rather >do than to hear another performance of Europera 5. > >The work was made as a sort of small-scale performable version of the >earlier incarnations of Europera: 1& 2, a major composition for extremely >large forces (full orchestra, 19 singers, complex staging, lighting, etc.) >in a very fully equipped theater (many opera houses aren't suited for the >work, let alone more general theaters) & 3 & 4, already created for smaller >performing ensembles. There's a discussion of the process of creating this >piece in Musicage, the book of conversations between Joan Retallack & John >Cage, that Rod has often refered to here. > >In many ways, Europera 5 is a minor work, & I don't think it's all that >successful. Few of Cage's compositions that use other music as source >material depend so much on the recognizability of the original for their >effect. Even the other Europeras as denser, allowing for the awareness of >other textures & structures out of the found material. In making Europera >5 as sparse as it is, Cage was faced with the same problem that many >composers who use digital samples of other music face, how to create >something that is unrecognizably new, while using source material that is >recognizably old. The excerpts in Europera 5 rarely overlap & are so much >a part of the works from which they come that comparatively little synergy >arises out of the mix. It seems like nothing so much as a poorly received >radio station playing excerpts from various operas in sequence. > >Does Europera 5 deserve to be brutally & ignorantly savaged in a review, >probably not? Does such a review of this work deserve an all-out shrill >call to arms in defense against an embattled "avant garde"? Again, >probably not. > >I really don't think that any stance which must defend all works under the >rubric of the "avant garde" against all attacks is a useful one. > >In the case of Europera 5, there are simply other fights that are more >important and other fights more likely to be won. > > >Herb Levy >herb@eskimo.com > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 04:10:33 -0400 >From: Carnography >Subject: Re: various cages > >mark wallace typed: > >>intellectual slander IS a significant litmus test of whether one >>deserves respect. > >Or rather: > >Intellectual slander is the misdemeanor of critics. >Its penalty is the loss of the reader's respect. >The quickest way to regain respect: to acknowledge >one's wrong and re-evaluate the object of slander. > >(Provisional Ethics 1-1) > >http://www.interport.net/~scrypt > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 03:22:07 -0700 >From: Ron Silliman >Subject: Miscellaneous stuff > >Chris, > >No, I did not know Poulin, but yes, he did do BOA. The obit in the >Times was so cloying, it was hard to fathom (odd for a publication that >prides itself in its usual critical distance). Hart published a >newsletter out of his home in Marin in the mid-80s that attempted to >scold all of us barbarians for failing to understand the true meaning >of modernism. By comparison to the fugitives, he was a progressive, but >that was always the context the work seemed to seek out. I think I've >noted here before that Robert Barlow, the poet-anthropologist who was a >fellow traveler with the Activist Poets, was somebody whom Olson >mentions trying to seek out while in Mexico, somewhere in the Mayan >Letters. > >Orono folks, > >For those of us (and I suspect we are many on this list) who have, as >yet, to see a single word explaining what this conference there might >be or be about, we hope you will provide the in-depth coverage we are >growing used to here. Details, detail, details! > > >Summer Reading List... > >Just finished Carole Maso's Ava, which makes Beckett safe for PBS (that >is, to be less snide, she uses the same pallet of devices, but does so >to construct a decidedly unified, even romanticized, subjective whole). >It brought up for me the whole question of recycled modernism, thinking >of Alice Walker's uses of Faulkner in The Color Purple or Ondaatje's >Hemingway in The English Patient. In each instance, the techniques are >used to much more conservative ends than those for which they had >originally been elaborated. > >The whole question of a poet's prose or a poet's fiction makes enormous >sense to me, Wystan, from Joyce forward. I think that Primary Trouble >is right on target to include Dodie Bellamy in its anthology of poetry. >(Great selection too, by the way.) > >Next book is Langston Hughes' The Big Sea, which I picked up in SF last >month. > >All best, > >Ron Silliman >rsillima@ix.netcom.com > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:02:18 EDT >From: Daniel Bouchard >Subject: poetry reading > >JOHN ASHBERY EATS FIDDLEHEADS > >You are invited >to a poetry reading >where five Boston cats* are blowing their poetry > REAL HARD > >Ange Mlinko >Damon Krukowski >Sianne Ngai >Daniel Bouchard >Chris Stroffolino > >10 Oxford Street- REAR, Somerville, MASS. > >Monday, June 17 >8:30 PM > >Nothing has been so good >since Wieners retired >_____________________ > >* OK, so Stroffolino is an Albany cat not a Boston cat (and soon to be a Jersey >City or Brooklyn cat anyway) but such an opportunity for palimpsest rarely >occurs. > >On your way to Orono (or just hanging around New England?) and want to start >the week off right? > >Here's your opportunity to see/hear some real Boston. > >Call for details: 617-351-5792. > > >daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:29:42 +0100 >From: Kevin Killian >Subject: Re: Miscellaneous stuff > >At 3:22 AM 6/12/96, Ron Silliman wrote: > >>Just finished Carole Maso's Ava, which makes Beckett safe for PBS (that >>is, to be less snide, she uses the same pallet of devices, but does so >>to construct a decidedly unified, even romanticized, subjective whole). >>It brought up for me the whole question of recycled modernism, thinking >>of Alice Walker's uses of Faulkner in The Color Purple or Ondaatje's >>Hemingway in The English Patient. In each instance, the techniques are >>used to much more conservative ends than those for which they had >>originally been elaborated. > > >Thanks Ron. Now I feel less guilty that I'm reading _House of Mirth_ right >now rather than "keeping up." > >x, >Dodie Bellamy > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:31:12 -0500 >From: Chris Stroffolino >Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking > > Hey Rod--- > Is BRECHT part of the B-effect? It would seem that Bernstein in this > schema would be more a CHARLES (more C than B) in terms of darkness, > while Perelman would be more a BOB (B)--I've been thinking about the > BECKETT connection with AKA (who brought that up?). It seems that > AKA is less, er, "stream of consciousness" though than more Bruce > Andrews-like in the way it reads. By Andrews like I mean, the emphasis > is on the sentence (not emotional) rather than paragraph. Beckett's > emphasis seems more on the accumulative rush effect. > (again, i'm speaking primarily of the trilogy era Beckett... > and I haven't read AKA in years....so I think I know what I'm going > to read today......cs > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:32:08 -0700 >From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" >Subject: Re: summary reading > >OOOPS! I'm actually getting to Maine Tues. night, as my panel is the next >day -- will also be in gang reading Friday night -- maybe we should all >wear colors! > > >and today's reading: > >Juan Felipe Herrera -- _The Roots of a Thousand Embraces_ Manic D Press > >available from SPD -- it's great -- > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:19:56 -0500 >From: Jordan Davis >Subject: against summer reading > >I am leaning to the left against my summer reading: >a very large (1000 pages?) blank book, extraordinarily >popular delusions, The Life of Johnson, etc, and >what good poems it's making me flee to read--Frank >O'Hara's poem up in the subway, contrarian and >personist in the best of spirits, Karen Volkman's >national poetry series book _Crash's Law_ >the presense of which can only mean >that Juliana Spahr's NPS book is preparing >to knock New York City over like the cardboard diorama >we know it is, oh and god! Laura Moriarty's >book _Symmetry_ thank you Rod! for sending it - >I've never seen anybody get knocked out the way >it happens all the time on tv, how does anybody >get any reading done when they own a tv, >someone like Melanie Neilson makes a poem >and the credit card offers, are they nefarious? >Do you find out about yourself when you consume >the endless electrons? It's something you can >turn on, the Baudelaire of you, but when you >find out the 'off' switch is symbolic at best, >a surrealist at most, a batter in a cage, >is she bored? Not Melanie but >the manic imperative, the one up >the street we'll have to go visit when they get >here, deferring to the expert light >of some characters we know, Ringo, Paul, John, >Morton, etc. That ought to be something exciting. > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:33:37 -0500 >From: Charles Alexander >Subject: readings/twin cities > >A POETRY & MULTIMEDIA READING BY SPENCER SELBY & ERIK BELGUM > >sponsored by Cross-Cultural Poetics and the College of St. Catherine-Minneapolis > > >SATURDAY, JUNE 15 >ROOM 250 >COLLEGE OF >ST. CATHERINE >MINNEAPOLIS >1:00 p.m. > > > > > >SPENCER SELBY >Spencer Selby's books of poetry include Instar (SINK Press, 1989), Barricade >(Paradigm Press, 1990), House of Before (Potes & Poets Press, 1991), Sound >Off (Detour Press, 1993), and No Island (Drogue Press, 1995). His visual >poetry includes Stigma (Score, 1990), and Malleable Cast (Generator, 1995). >In the middle 1980's Spencer Selby began SINK Press in San Francisco, where >he still resides, and he coordinated the Canessa Park Reading Series from >1987 - 1993. In 1993 Selby created The List of Experimental Poetry/Art >Magazines, a noncopyrighted, freely circulating document that tracks over >250 publications around the world. > >ERIK BELGUM >Erik Belgum's experimental fiction has appeared in over two dozen journals >since 1985. Most recently he has been seen in literary journals such as >Avec, Chicago Review, Red Bass, Central Park, Black Ice, and Caliban. His >fiction will appear this year in an anthology of experimental fiction from >the publishers of Avec, as well as in upcoming issues of Central Park and >Asylum Annual. In his Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993), Richard >Kostelanetz called Belgum one of "the best of the younger writers of >fiction, let alone experimental fiction." Belgum's literary/audio/soundtext >works have been played throughout the United States, in concert, on radio, >and also recently on the CD audio magazine Aerial. Recent commissions >include spoken word pieces commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers through >a Jerome Foundation grant and another by Corn Palace Productions performed >at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. > > >This reading is FREE and is held at the College of St. >Catherine-Minneapolis, 601 25th Avenue South (two blocks north of the 25th >Avenue/Riverside intersection). > > >Next Reading sponsored by Cross-Cultural Poetics: >June 29, 1:00 pm, Room 250, College of St. Catherine-Minneapolis > > DAN FEATHERSTON > & > CHARLES ALEXANDER > > >For further information about Cross-Cultural Poetics readings and >publications, please contact Mark Nowak at 612-690-7747. Or e-mail him at >MANOWAK@alex.stkate.edu > >I hope anyone on the poetics list visiting or living near here will come. >I'll post more before the June 29th reading. > > >charles alexander >chax press >chax@mtn.org > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:50:28 -0400 >From: Jonathan A Levin >Subject: clamdiggers (fwd) > >This one's from Marisa Januzzi, whose machine apparently needs to be fed. >JL. > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- > >It's Maine, so we're supposed to wear clam diggers, right Kevin? >(Dodie-- can I answer the post in person!?) If I ever finish my grades >I will be in Orono too, Kerouac paper, time recently unsettled & >rescheduled for undetermined reasons. > >(Anyone looking for summer reading-- MEXICO CITY BLUES, SUBTERRANEANS, >TRISTESSA, OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT, and VSIONS OF GERARD... are all truly >great, and this from someone who once couldn't read Kerouac for sexism...) > >Maybe we should designate a poetics reef & then all go meet on it? > >Re: LeSueur-- some of her stuff is available through SPD, including the >pamphlets (just got "Women on the Breadlines"). I'd love to hear more >about her being alive. > >Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected >&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?) > >Also, has anyone else read Emily Holms Coleman (esp. THE SHUTTER OF >SNOW)? > >Ciao, & drowning in work, and on notice that my server is down after 10AM >tomorrow until Orono..... bleh! > >--Marisa Januzzi > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:57:01 -0500 >From: Jonathan Brannen >Subject: Standing Stones Press Special Offer > >SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS SUBSCRIBER > >Standing Stones Press Publications > >Tom Ahern, _Skippy Taggart's Wife_ >Curt Anderson, _Umbra_ >Dennis Barone, _The Masque Resumed_ >Jonathan Brannen, _Crunching Numbers_ >Gerald Burns, _Probability and Fuzzy Dice_ >Cydney Chadwick, _The Gift Horse's Mouth_ o.p. >Mark DuCharme, _Contractng Scale- >Peter Ganick, _IT OR S/HE_ >Geof Huth, _To a Small Stream of Water (or Ditch)_ >H.T. (Heather Thomas), _Circus Freex_ >Stephen-Paul Martin, _Crisis of Representation_ >Michelle Murphy, _The Tongue in its Shelf_ >Sheila E. Murphy, _Wind Topography_ >John Perlman, _Anacoustic_ >Susan M. Schultz, _Earthquake Dreams_ >Mark Wallace, _In Case of Damage to Life, Limb or > This Elevator_ (forthcoming, June 1996) > >All publications are $4.00 or any four for $12.00 >(postage included except on foreign orders). > >Also available from Standing Stones: >Jonathan Brannen, Thing Is The Anagram Of Night (Texture Press, 1996), $6.00 > nothing doing never again (Score Press, 1996), $8.00 > >SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS SUBSCRIBERS: $3.00 each or FOUR FOR $10.00 !!! >Thing Is The Anagram Of Night (Texture Press, 1996), $4.00 and nothing doing >never again (Score Press, 1996), $5.00. > >Plus a free copy of Gerald Burns Probability and Fuzzy Dice (upon request >and while supplies last) with any order !!! Offer good until July 15, 1996. >Very limited quanities of some titles. > >Order from jbrannen@infolink.morris.mn.us >(I'll include the bill when I ship the order) or from: > >Standing Stones Press >7 Circle Pines >Morris, MN 56267 > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:01:33 -0500 >From: Chris Stroffolino >Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) > > Well--someone told me one should pack a lot of BUG SPRAY for MAINE... > so I might hit someone up for this. > Didn't Emerson say something like > "If one goes for a walk in the woods, one must feed mosquitos" > (which I translate as): > "if one goes for a walk in a city, one must feed quarters to > payphones"----cs > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:32:28 EDT >From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> >Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes > >Ira Lightman wrote: >Ken, could you detail a few of the poets >here, as you say, who engage intelligently with >langpo, which books or poems? > >(ie in the UK) > > >Well, first among them I would place Allen Fisher. He and I have had numerous >conversations about langpo type poets since, I think, the early 1980s, and I'm >indebted to him and to his vast book collection in this respect. > >Cris Cheek (hi Cris!) has had strong transatlantic links for many years, >including with langpo. > >Tom Raworth is notoriously US- and langpo-friendly -- one of the most open and >generous souls around. Maybe one of the few Brits who has actually influenced >the langpo scene at source. > >Wendy Mulford has corresponded for many years with the grouping of poets around >Kathleen Fraser and Susan Gevirtz's How(ever) and is well acquainted with, >particularly, the women in the langpo camp and around it. > >Maggie O'Sullivan has collaborated on a book with Bruce Andrews and reads avidly >in and out of langpo as far as I know. I'm particularly grateful to her for >introducing me to the work of current Canadian "experimental" women poets. > >A number of the poets associated with the London SubVoicive/Writers Forum crowd >are knowledgeable about it. Among these I'd mention Adrian Clarke and Robert >Sheppard, who edited the Potes & Poets anthology of London poets "Floating >Capital" -- also Johan de Wit, Ulli Freer, Lawrence Upton, and of course Bob >Cobbing, also one of the least prejudiced guys around, who published that >Maggie/Bruce collaboration. > >Peter Middleton is clearly keen on that stuff. So is Miles Champion, I'd say. > >Finally Robert Hampson and I were probably the first to publish some of the >Americans, even before they were labelled "language", back in the 1970s. Lyn >Hejinian, Alan Davies and James Sherry made appearances in our long-dead >magazine Alembic. > >Sorry to go on. Of course, this list isn't exhaustive. As for "which books or >poems", well I wouldn't presume to trace influences that closely -- you'll have >to decide. > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 18:45:29 -0500 >From: Chris Stroffolino >Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes > > Dear ken Edwards--- > Could you elaborate on Miles Champion. The little I've seen is interesting > and it was good to see your willingness to include him, while Ira, I > think, seemed less to......cs > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:42:21 -0700 >From: Herb Levy >Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) > >>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected >>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?) > >Some large assemblage of Ark (perhaps all of it) is due imminently from >University of New Mexico Press. The cook books are great. > > >Herb Levy >herb@eskimo.com > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:28:42 +0100 >From: Kevin Killian >Subject: Communications Decency Act > >This is Dodie Bellamy. I received the following from another list I'm >subscribed to. It's not about poetics, but I thought it might be of >interest. > >PHILADELPHIA (Reuter) -- In a ground-breaking decision on free-speech >rights over the Internet, a special U.S court panel blocked as >unconstitutional a new federal law prohibiting indecency on computer >networks. > > The three-judge panel issued Wednesday a preliminarly injunction blocking >enforcement of portions of the Communications Decency Act, signed by >President Clinton Feb. 8, which prohibit the distribution to minors of >indecent or "patently offensive" materials over computer networks. > >The court let stand prohibitions against obscenity and child pornography, >types of speech that are not constitutionally protected and were not >challenged by the act's opponents. > >"The Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide >conversation," U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell, a member of the panel, >said in his opinion accompanying the decision. > >"The government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As >the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet >deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion," he said. > > Also on the panel were U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Buckwalter and >Dolores Sloviter, chief justice of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. > > >In its legal conclusion, the court said the blocked portions of the act >were unconstitutional on their face. > >The injunction was issued in response to a lawsuit against the U.S. Justice >Department challenging the act. The challenge was filed by the American >Civil Liberties Union and groups representing libraries, publishers and the >computer on-line industry. > >A Justice Department spokesman said the agency had no immediate comment on >the ruling. > >The ruling sets the stage either for a trial on whether the act should be >permanently blocked, or a direct appeal of the preliminary injunction to >the U.S. Supreme Court under expedited provisions written into it. > >"The court has reaffirmed what our founders 200 years ago bequeathed as our >greatest liberty, and that's free speech," said Stefan Presser, legal >director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which filed the original suit. > >Bruce Taylor, chief counsel for the National Law Center for Children and >Families, which supports the act, said of the ruling, "I don't consider >this a setback." > >The act has already heightened awareness of content unsuitable for minors >on the Internet, and prompted development of technology that will make it >possible to screen and block material for suitability for minors, he said. > >Such technology will undermine arguments by the act's opponents that it is >impossible to enforce, he said. > >In addition, he said, state laws already on the books can also be used. >"The states can do what this ruling said the federal government can't do >yet," he said. > >The ACLU immediately posted the court's opinion and order, which total 177 >pages, on its World Wide Web site, said Christopher Hansen, attorney for >the national ACLU. The address of the site is http://www.aclu.org. > >In the event of a government appeal, Hansen said, "We'll certainly defend >the conclusion vigorously." > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:57:54 -0500 >From: Charles Alexander >Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) > >>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected >>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?) > > >I notice in the new Small Press Distribution Catalog that Gus Blaisdell's >Living Batch Press in Albuquerque has brought out the whole (I believe) of >Ronald Johnson's ARK. So contact SPD at 1814 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA >94702. And on that SPD catalog check out the drawings of writers on the >cover, done by Gary Sullivan. High groove factor, as Gary might say himself. > >Ronald Johnson's first southwestern cookbook is a classic. I know that there >is a more recent edition of that, and others, but I don't know about them. > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 20:10:53 -0500 >From: Charles Alexander >Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd) > >>>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected >>>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?) >> >>Some large assemblage of Ark (perhaps all of it) is due imminently from >>University of New Mexico Press. The cook books are great. > > >apologies for repeating myself, but I wanted to make it clear. It's not the >University of New Mexico Press, it's a new press, LIVING BATCH BOOKS (many >of you I am sure know the long-lived Living Batch Bookstore in Albuquerque), >run by Gus Blaisdell, which has, according to the announcement in the Small >Press Distribution Spring 1996 catalog which just arrived, "just published >one of the extraordinary long poems of the past quarter-century in Ronald >Johnson's ARK. Early versions of Johnson's great, elegant long poem are all >out-of-print. This new book presents the full poem for the first time, a >true heir to Louis Zukofsky's "A," Basil Bunting's BRIGGFLATTS, George >oppen's and Lorine Niedecker's longer series, and Robert Duncan's PASSAGES >and STRUCTURE OF RIME, but with a music and architecture unique in American >poetry." > >And more complete SPD ordering info: > >1814 San Pablo Avenue >Berkeley, CA 94702-1624 > >tel. 510.549.3336 >fax 510.549.2201 > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:28:21 -0700 >From: Herb Levy >Subject: > >Charles, > >I'm sure you're right. > >The SPD catalog hasn't shown up here yet & when I checked locally after >seeing a reference to Ark somewhere (?), the book store came up with it as >being from UofNM Pr. > >In any case, I'm glad I don't have to wait much longer to read it all. > > > >Herb Levy >herb@eskimo.com > >------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 23:12:27 -0400 >From: Romana Christina Huk >Subject: Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives > >For those who wish to attend _Assembling Alternatives: An International >Poetry Conference/Festival_ (29 Aug.- 2 Sept.) but can't afford the price >of accommodation and/or meals, new options have been created that allow >for use of a local campsite or, for a more limited number, guest housing >with faculty and students in the area. Those who intend to camp and not >take meals with the group will only pay $15.00 per day ($60.00 for the >whole event); this includes transportation to and from the conference >site, and coffee/tea-breaks during the days, but does not include the >costs required by the campsite itself. They have given us rates at >approx. $18.00 per night per "couple" in a tent (it pays to double-up >with someone); the rental of any equipment needed is up to campers. >Further details can be retrieved by calling the campsite directly; do so >by asking about the "safari site"(!) reserved by Romana Huk at UNH for >the poetry conference/festival on the above dates: Lamprey River >Campground, 16 Campground Road, LEE, NH 03824; tel.: 603 659 3852. The >grounds have full Facilities (toilets, showers). Tents, however, are >hard to find for rent in this area, but Eastern Mountain Sports in the >local Fox Run Mall (603 433 4764) reports to have enough tents for >approx. 30 people camping in sets of two and three; they go for between >$25.00 and $30.00 for the full stint. To reserve any of these you must >act _soon_. > >Those who intend to pay the full $270.00 commuter fee for taking all >meals with the group for these 5 days and 4 nights will be up first for >placement in people's homes (in order to help reduce their overall costs >and relieve our volunteer hosts' anxieties about feeding, etc.). > >Anyone interested in either new option must still go through the >University Conferences Office to secure a seat at the conference itself >(which is very important given our limited space): Univ. Conferences >Office, Univ. of NH, 11 Brook Way, Room 121, Durham, NH 03824-3509; tel.: >603 862 1900; fax: 603 862 0245. If you wish to pay the commuter fee >to take all meals with the group, you will need a registration form from >the Office. Those who hope to be placed in guest housing must contact >myself, Romana Huk, conference organizer, as soon as possible; I can be >reached before 27 June either at this e-mail address or at UNH (603 862 >3992). After that I leave for six weeks in England, cut off from e-mail, >I think (though I'll keep you posted). I can be reached either through >the Conferences Office (who can in a pinch fax or call me) or, after the >1st of July, I can be contacted by phoning Gonville & Caius (pronounced >"Keyes") College, Cambridge, England (44 1223 332400) and leaving your >phone number in a message for me to call you. > >The conference/festival is developing beautifully despite funding woes on >all our parts. Its schedule begins at 2:00 with registration on the 29th >of August;at that time the book exhibit/sales area will be getting set >up, and the Great Bay Room (our largest) will, I hope, be hung and >otherwise transformed by artworks made in response to these poetries, if >we can get artists and the New England Center staff to agree on what >can be done to the walls. At 5:00 an informal reception will lead into >dinner at 6:00, after which we'll have our first night of performances in >the Great Bay Room. I'll be finalizing the readings in the next several >days; several of the most well-known will be on that night so it's not >one to be missed. The readings will be free and open to the public. > >Remember that although our focus is the U.S., U.K., Canada and Ireland, >other poetries will be represented and become part of the conversation. > >Among those thus far scheduled to give talks or performances are (and >this can't be a full list, so I'm about to choose randomly): Charles >Bernstein, Karen Mac Cormack, Sean O'hUigin, Tom Raworth, Carla Harryman, >Nicole Brossard, Maurice Scully, Allen Fisher, Rae Armantrout, Steve >McCaffery, Maggie O'Sullivan, Denise Riley, Joan Retallack, Peter >Quartermain, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Middleton, Bob Perelman, Juliana >Spahr, Jeff Derksen, Peter Gizzi, Miles Champion, Caroline Bergvall, cris >cheek, Catherine Walsh, Steve Evans, Miriam Nichols, Alan Golding, Trevor >Joyce, Kathleen Fraser, Rod Mengham, Barrett Watten, Abigail Child, Paul >Dutton, Lee Ann Brown, Ken Edwards, John Cayley, Jim Rosenberg, Steve >Benson, Wendy Mulford, Leslie Scalapino, Robert Sheppard, Fiona >Templeton, Loss Glazier, Louis Cabri, Andrew Levy, Philip Mead, John >Kinsella, Barbara Godard, David Bromige, Hazel Smith, Susan Schultz, John >Wilkinson, Mary Margaret Sloan, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Billy Mills, Linda >Kinnahan, Lynn Keller, Geoffrey Squires, Keith Tuma, Shamoon Zamir, Brian >Lynch, Christian Bok, Charles Altieri, David Annwn, Tony Lopez, Donald >Wesling, Burton Hatlen, and more. > >In general outline, the conversation begins on Friday with discussion of >differing contexts and relationships of these poetries to institutions in >those contexts. On Saturday issues of poetic politics and imaginings of >the subject arise, as well as the relationship between these poetries and >their respective "mainstreams"; key problems of gendered and racial >difference arise as well. On Sunday new forms of electronic and >performance work enter in, and on Monday, our last day, almost all of it >comes back in talk about where we stand at the "millennium" (or don't). >On Sunday night we take a break from UNH's confines to have our dinner >and readings in Portsmouth, the area's cultural center on the water. This >will of course happen as part of the full conference fee paid by those >taking meals with the group; transportation will be provided for all, >even those not eating with the rest. > >I hope that's enough information at the moment for those interested. I'm >terribly sorry to have to take off for six weeks: but again, after >the 27th you should be able to either fetch the details you need from the >Conferences Office or reach me overseas. My address there, if you don't >want to phone, will be : Romana Huk, Director, UNH Summer Program, >Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA, England. It takes about a >week for letters to make it over. Remember to include your phone number >in correspondence. > >And spread the news about the book exhibit! All presses are >welcome to contribute. > >Wishing good summers to all of you, > >Romana Huk > >------------------------------ > >End of POETICS Digest - 11 Jun 1996 to 12 Jun 1996 >************************************************** > > ================================= Stephen Barker Associate Dean and Interim Chair of the Department of Studio Art School of the Arts sfbarker@uci.edu ================================= ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 09:25:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: NEW AMERICAN WRITING #14 In-Reply-To: <960612213227_100344.2546_EHQ103-1@CompuServe.COM> NEW AMERICAN WRITING #14 is now available. The issue contains long sections with commentary by Paul Beatty, Charles Bernstein, Gabrielle Glancy, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Anselm Hollo, Paul Hoover, Art Lange, Ann Lauterbach, Elizabeth Robinson, Susan Schultz, and Gustaf Sobin--poetry. Stories by Gloria Frym, Michelle Carter, and Wendell Mayo. Cover by Kenward Elmslie. Order for $8 from NAW, 369 Molino Avenue, Mill Valley CA 94941, or get it at your local bookstore. Thanks, PH and MC ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 10:27:23 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: SPT--oportunity knocks This is Dodie Bellamy. I'm putting together Small Press Traffic's reading series for the coming year, and I am open to suggestions. I'm planning to continue our Small Press Partners reading series in which we feature readers from targeted small presses. As part of this series books from featured presses are reviewed in _Traffic_, the SPT newsletter. The next issue of _Traffic_, which will be out in August, will feature reviews of O-Books, Kelsey St., and Hard Press books. We are particularly interested in small presses which have published writing by minority writers working in nontraditional forms. Any presses interested in being considered for this series should contact me. Now that SPT is more firmly settled at New College, I want to return to SPT's long-time (22 year) committment to promoting emerging writers. I, for one, gave my first reading at Small Press Traffic. I'm considering an Introductions reading series in which we pair a more established writer with an up-and-coming writer. Also, I'm planning to re-establish our more intimate Poetry and Prose series, which will serve two purposes: (1) to provide readings for "younger" writers (younger not necessarily referring to age) and (2) to provide a space for arranging more last-minute readings for writers who happen to be coming to San Francisco. A number of writers from out of the area contacted Kevin and me this past year, wanting readings, and, we usually set them up with readings at other locations. Now we will be able to offer them readings at New College as well. So, any writers planning trips to the West Coast this coming year, and who are interested in a reading while you're here, backchannel me or call SPT: 415/437-3454. Thanks. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 12:58:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Oren Izenberg Subject: research query In-Reply-To: <199606131616.AA05971@e4e.oac.uci.edu> Can anyone help me get my hands on an issue of, I believe, Occident, with a number of readings/reviews of Michael Palmer's SUN? I would be happy to purchase it-- or pay for xeroxing, or simply borrow it. Interlibrary loan is no help, and even the Library of Congress has left me in the lurch. Backchannel is fine-- I appreciate the help. O. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:52:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: hairs, and dead horses Dear herb Levy: Thanks for your post about the way reviewing on newspapers works. I myself have worked on newspapers for about a decade, and the situation you describe seems pretty accurate to me. Of course, the circumstances are somewhat different when a musician and art critic (like Tim Page, I understand?) who supposedly has some respect outside the newspaper environment you describe decides to take advantage of the environment you're speaking about in order to assault someone's work. That's not a fucked-up and unchangeable world press situation--that's someone who should know better acting like a jerk. Of course, I wasn't really all that "angry" about it to begin with--I just presented some rather choice paragraphs from that foolishness. Then it seemed to me (and I may have misread intentions here, so for that I would apologize) that at least one person seemed to suggest that the review actually was a reasonable and well-considered critical position, and not the piece of bogus entertainment assault on art that you have clearly said it was. But I wonder--and here's my question for you--at what point do we write off such things as irrelevant nonsense, and ignore them? That is, do we only respond to people who speak about arts who are in the arts environment, or do we make some attempt, however limited, to assert in other contexts that such behavior is unacceptable, whether anybody's listening or not? I think letters to the editor are in some cases actually a good idea--there may be someone who does see that letter who learns something they otherwise might not. For instance, I've published several letters to the editor in the past year, and have had students and even several administrators at the places where I work (people who would otherwise never read my work) not only tell me "way to go etc etc" but also that they hadn't quite realized what the position of "the other side" might be. I think it's actually a good idea to take on ignorance when one encounters it, even in the newspapers, because in fact you never know who might be listening. While I certainly enjoy the discussions of various informed people on this list, I also feel something of an inclination to try to spread that information around, whenever possible. As to whether Europera 5 is a great Cage piece or not, the point actually seems moot to me. I haven't heard it, but a number of people who have have written me to say how much they like it. I didn't write a letter to an editor this time around (the debate has actually all been here), but if somebody had, there is a possibility that someone else would have seen that letter and thought there was perhaps some reason for going to see the performance. They then could have decided for themselves. mark wallace ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 18:06:17 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Hi, firstly apologies for my dirty conference washing being fenced through this line. That's the downside of simply punching the reply button. See some of you in New Hamshire then. I've not wanted to get involved here on this topic. The framing of movements gives me jip enough. So the 'lang-po' (still that intrepid band of brigands from the water margins who came to the aid of the oppressed with their deadly martial skills) is a possibly useful short-hand beyond which specific differences come into play. I tend more towards the account of exchange and interaction between poetries operating in very different political, social and cultural contexts in the cases of UK and US. In that sense I agree with Ken, there has been a liberal smattering of interaction between these poetries. I also agree with the drift of Ira's push, the real pith behind which lies a getting at different practices. Ken's focii of connection aside, the overall reaction towards writers such as Watten, Silliman, Harryman, Benson, Hejinian, Bernstein, Andrews, di Palma, McCaffery, Ward, Robinson, Perelman, Darragh, Inman, Seaton, Sherry, Davies, Mason, Piombino (those who i first had any contact with and read during the later 1970s) that i've experienced in England, has been a mixture of suspicion coupled with denial, gradually mellowing to grudging acceptance without tangible enthusiasm. Fairly typical British retentive states. I'm not aware, on the qeustion of 'fakes' that there are poets in the UK who claim to be writing, or to have written, 'language' poetry ever. For me, rather than specifically the Vietnam War, a defining cultural politics was 1976 punk and reggae, (when i started publishing in a kind of DIY fervour and incidentally first met Charles Bernstein) and the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives in 1979 (when, effectively - after a period of intense collaboration in the US around Baltimore - I published a biggish collection 'a present' and then basically stopped publishing; what tiny things have been in the past couple of years are a refurbishment of hope). 'a present' is a book that bears hallmarks of the interaction with 'language'poetry. There is a splice column piece, for example, dedicated to Steve Benson to whose work I was drawn and felt close through aspects of syntax of improvised speech in performance and swerves of intimacy and distance in realtion to personalised everyday perceptual materials as much as anything else. In fact Steve, Allen Fisher and myself did a performance together in July 1984 'Assumptions Table' (it's published in full in Sulfur 18). I'm quoting from that piece deidicated to Benson in 'a present' (Bluff Books,1980) - 'fume basic': 'fan in the rhythm of the fan dancing, dorsal tenacious too obscure, finis. i ought explain. make out. lob. naked. fish pass under grass reflection, into major traffic. does oppose. some would. welcome laurel. have a smoke. come closer than. save 10 cents. and, what color are the. be possible. . . . pulse out. pulse, skin. the somewhat breakwater form from ocean lapping both, either. mean the leaves were bruising each other and the smell was coming into the house. my quivering n erves in my direction turn, face - to the washing up. as yet, as though we shave the different parts of each day are unglued. the bonding lips kiss table. or waters that fire imaginations' There are here, elements of north american diction - some of the twists of that vernacular, filtered through an english heart. I would agree with Ira, no 'new sentence'. But then Ron identified, correctly in my opinion, that 'new sentence' as being a Bay area phenomenon. In the absence of twentieth century British models for performance writing / poetic practice that really turned me on (aside from Ivor Cutler, Samuel Beckett, Tom Raworth, Tom Leonard, Allen Fisher) in the mid 1970s, it was refreshing to find a concern with the micro-politics of language, the de-constructive powers of syntax, the re-generative humours of rangey and interrogative thought, that did not have an overbearing tyranny of 'knowledge' as central to its project. Contrary to what might be received opinion, it's been my pleasurable experience to find that Language writers are some of the most humane and funny and rigorously perceptive people that i know. The work in UK writing is different. Issues of urban collapse, neo and post-colonialism, 'centralisation' as parochialism, cultural 'editing', everyday 'composition', re-integrating (navigating) beyond the over-fetishised fragments of the over-binarised post-modern. Signifier and signified simply won't do any more. Performance Writing is what's happening here for me, for others that will not be so - difference continues to be manufactured. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 16:24:41 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes >The framing of movements gives me jip enough... likewise, i think... my british slang dictionary lists, under "jip": "india ink" (yep, that fits), also "energy" (australian, not as close but still)... care to help me update th entry? lbd ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 12:40:02 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking Seeing W for Godot at Royal Court while still plagued with adolescent acne is still memorable -- partly because I wanted to leave em to it, let em wait, I wanted to walk out, about three-quarters of the way thru. Cdn't handle it. Realised that was significant but took a while for it to register on me. Perhaps that's why I liked Coolidge's work immediately on encountering it. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 14:04:23 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Typo Rod Smith mentioning Joan Retalack reminds me I found 3rd impression of Strachey's translation of Freud's Traumdeutung (1957?) p.207 "...........................................to a remark I had de in which........................................................." & p.209 " ..................................opposition journalists made okes over Count Thun's name............................" best , and perhaps Rod or someone cd pass this on to Joan R. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 21:32:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: singnafump > When one is stopped by a cop or a deconstructionist around YALE, > all one needs do is yell "OPPEN YOU" or "OPPEN SESAME" and this > can be quite seedy if novel... Odd, the cultural differences. I just came back from Seattle (saw games 3 and 4), and heard a taxi driver shout at a civilian driver "Reznikoff you, pal!" .......................... "Silence, sole luxury after rimes . . ." --Mallarme George Bowering. 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 06:05:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: dead horse hairs Mark - > But I wonder--and here's my question for you--at what point do we >write off such things as irrelevant nonsense, and ignore them? That is, >do we only respond to people who speak about arts who are in the arts >environment, or do we make some attempt, however limited, to assert in >other contexts that >such behavior is unacceptable, whether anybody's listening or not? It's not a matter of only speaking with the converted (which in the context of Cage, or most any other "experimental" artist, is a very, very small subset of "those who are in the arts environment"). There are simply more productive ways to make a public space for the work we want to see and read and hear, than getting your underwear in a knot about bad press. Most readers won't remember a bad review they saw a week ago, especially if it was about something they've never heard, read, or seen. They simply have no reference point. The people who are motivated one way or another by newspaper reviews are usually those people who already have an idea what they think. Nobody's mind gets changed, & to most people it looks like an insular catfight about some esoterica, that isn't a tenth as important as where Dennis Rodman will get his next piercing when the Bulls beat the Sonics, or, if it's Wednesday, what's on sale at the supermarket. It's much better to get actual new work in front of new audiences, people who don't know if they'll like it. Performances in unusual public areas, posting broadsides around town, getting things seen or heard on local tv & radio, etc. Everyone exposed to new work in this way WON'T like it, let's not kid ourselves, but some of them will and those folks may come back for more & they'll pay for it. To paraphrase something Ron Silliman has written several times to the list and elsewhere, you build an audience one person at a time. & more than anything it's the work itself that's going to build that audience, not reviews, whether they're positive or negative. I don't see much value in beating up on someone for having a different opinion than you do. I don't agree with him, you don't agree with him, but you're very unlikely to change Page's mind on this. He's an adult and he's quite possibly heard lots more of Cage's music than you have, and no matter how wrong you think he is, he has a right to his opinion. Mark, you must know that Page is not the only person out there who does not like most of Cage's music. These people are not all idiots, they just don't like what they've heard. Hell, there are still people who think Stravinksy's music is too weird, just as there are people, who otherwise seem rational and intelligent, who think that Finnegans Wake, or Ulysses, for that matter, are mistakes by a pretty good realistic writer, or that Pop Art was nothig more than a wishy-washy sellout after the heroic vigor of Abstract Expressionism, or that the early Beatles were better than the early Rolling Stones. I mean, I hope it's not news to you that not everyone on this list is totally sold on the work of, say, Susan Howe or Bruce Andrews. I'm just not ready to put these folks into re-education camps until they see the error of their ways. Rather than writing cranky letters to the editor (really far more than a full time job, anyway), complaining about the reviewers who are already in place, it makes more sense to me to try to cultivate writers or editors to produce a context for alternative work. It's much more important to find someone to give the work some kind of support than to get into a hissy fit with the writers who dis it. Probably this can't be done in the Post, but maybe there's someone at the Reader who'd be more open to the work on a ongoing basis. Besides, there are few newspaper reviewers that are hardline about this kind of thing & you may find Page an unexpected ally later on, if you don't piss him off. There's one reviewer in Seattle who had said almost nothing positive about ANY music written in the last seventy-five years, until she wrote a rave review of a performance of Morton Feldman's For Philip Guston (four and a half hours of shimmering, rotating mobiles of melody), a concert that I was surprised she even bothered to come to, let alone that she'd love it. So go figure. Bests Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 10:34:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: cultivating good reviewers I'm a fan of Neil Strauss's music reviews for the New York Times. Strauss, editor of the sublime _Radiotext(e)_ anthology (check out especially "Frequency Modulation or Fallen Man", a tribute to the inventor of FM), covers everything from the local pirate radio to bhangra to Bruce Springsteen, without resorting to cribs from the press release or even a momentary waver from his calm intelligent enthusiasm for both the old and great and the new and great. Strauss's prose is exceptional considering the rate at which for most reviewers there tha Times' requisite cool slopes into dorkiness, middling prose, and received ideas (torpor)--the retired Frank Rich being the big exception. Rich's review of Sting in Three Penny Opera is my standard for meanness; it begins like this-- 'Returning home from the new staging of TPO, the theatergoer rushes to put the original (1950s) cast soundtrack on the turntable. Not to relive the evening's high points--there aren't any--but to reassure oneself that one is among the living.' What I would really enjoy is to encourage a very good book reviewer working at a high circulation newspaper to read and write about poetry. All I do now is glare at my Voice whenever Peter Schjeldahl uses the word 'poetry' (triggering his subroutine about poetry being over) to talk about some new catastrophe in art. Jordan Davis (That reminds me. I can think of a couple people who write in more public places very well if only occasionally about poetry--Albert Mobilio and Geoffrey O'Brien. O'Brien's piece on Susan Howe in the Voice six years ago was responsible for building more audience for her work in New York than anything that side of the Susan Howe issue of Talisman. And Mobilio's much-missed magazine columns in the VLS were the most reliable way to find out when Hambone was about to arrive--it's difficult to imagine the VLS under its current benighted regime deigning to print anything about poetry not written by or about poets published by the major houses--by which I mean those famous poets Newhouse and Murdoch. So much for independence!) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 10:41:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Heller Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jun 1996 to 13 Jun 1996 In-Reply-To: <199606140403.AAA23819@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> If some one has Rob Wilson's e-mail address, or if Rob is tuning in, please post it to me. Michael Heller hellerm@is2.nyu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 05:31:18 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert J Wilson Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jun 1996 to 13 Jun 1996 In-Reply-To: Michael, Yes, I am out here in a lifeboat at and around and off Bamboo Ridge, working to deform US cultural poetics inside a sovereign Hawaiian nation inside the postcoldwar empire of the sign. Just in case you were wondering, and the 'Dante boy' poetics is nowhere to be found. Send me an email missive at: rwilson@hawaii.edu to keep me posted on NYC developments and your latest forays. Susan Schultz and the Tinfish gang (as we work amping up Tinfish #3 for global [www] and local [sexy little chapbook, with new cover by HR editor Sean MacBeth] call it the Death Of Captain Cook School of Global/Local Poetics or, more simply, the PostLocal Local. Hope you are doing well, Rob Sean Wilson On Fri, 14 Jun 1996, Michael Heller wrote: > If some one has Rob Wilson's e-mail address, or if Rob is tuning in, > please post it to me. > > Michael Heller > > hellerm@is2.nyu.edu > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:32:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs NOW HERB, the early Beatles WERE better than the early Stones, read a good review the other day making just that point... >I don't see much value in beating up on someone for having a different >opinion than you do. Yes, I'll go along with this. >Rather than writing cranky letters to the editor (really far more than a >full time job, anyway), complaining about the reviewers who are already in >place, it makes more sense to me to try to cultivate >writers or editors to produce a context for alternative work. It seems to me part of the work of creating an audience IS writing cranky letters to the editors. A better example than Page of the extremely conservative views on the arts forthcoming from the Post is book reviewer Jonathan Yardley. Sure, he has a right to his views, however noone with opposing views (i.e. noone as far left as he is right-- & in some ways this IS quantifiable) has any of the cultural capital this bloke's accrued. Unfortunately, he does have an impact, which goes unchallenged, & if it's unquestioned, people believe it-- just like the NYT version(s) of "history." Obviously, it's not ok. I will agree with you that the most effective way to change this is by going around them, "one person at a time." Yet, I do think they have an impact on what people think. They make the work of building an audience much harder. Rod ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:45:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences i've been watching the thread about a harsh review, and wrestling with a review i have to write a book of poetry (though not, jordan, for a major venue!) for some time, and it finally occurred to me that this list might be a good place to put the ethics and questions of the problem out for discussion. imagine you were given a bad book to review, the book of a writer (poetry and academic) who has, heretofore, produced somewhat interesting though not stellar work. imagine this writer teaches creative writing, and has produced a "How-To" text (with someone else) on writing although the writer's credentials are not strong. further, the book to be reviewed has poems which even venture to lecture, for example, on the importance of technique while the lack of same has plagued every poem. the badness of the writing is such that you knew, before you read the biographical sketch, that the writer must teach creative writing to beginners because there are so many "ok everyone i'm going to be creative here" lines, poems that make a great big overwritten fuss about nothing, and overused and even trite phrases and images. but the writer also comes from a much under-represented sector of writers (though none of the experience arising from that context is explicitly present in the current book). further, the writer's publisher is a small, underfunded press which has taken on a very worthy publishing venture, one you wish to support and most off the problems might have been cleared away had the book a bang-up editor (which the press does not have the money to hire). does one write the scathing blast which seems to work it's way into every sentence (despite efforts to be moderate)? is there something unendurabaly prissy about condemning another writer for not trying hard enough and publishing a very very poor book while there exists great writers under all sorts of pressure who don't publish until they have work that is really worthwhile, silent sometimes until their death. imagine you are new to reviewing, aware that you might have the overzealousness common to the fresh and idealistic, and almost certainly are in a vulnerable position professionally -- is honesty really important or effective here? does someone have to stand up and say when something is really awful? should that someone be not well-known writer? or, in retrospect, is one (at that stage) usually happier about those chapters in which one is moderate, merciful, and/or discreet? should david engage goliath, especially without an omnipotent fixer? i find myself thinking, on the one hand, of a writer's story of a workshop where someone gave out a perfectly awful poem for discussion. the group sat around for about ten minutes trying to give very careful, serious, and ultimately not very direct suggestions on how to improve the poem. finally a woman who had been silent the entire time exploded, saying something like "i can't believe you all -- for ten minutes you have been treating this poem as if it were really good. but it is terrible, and it is an insult to this writer to patronize him by not saying so." but i also think of friends whose professional discretion make them an incredible asset to any committee or group or project, aboutut the strong reaction here to the negative article. and about herb's feeling that reviews are not, ultimately, going to alter anyone's opinion or guide them (though i disagree -- if a trustworthy source pans a movie, depending on the direction of the critique, i might well not go to it without some other strong motivation). there is also his point that reviewers essentially are preaching to the converted, if they are heard at all. what aboutthe possibility of reviews being stained by reviewer's preferences -- what is a yardstick for knowing when our distaste for something comes from distorting theoretical loyalties rather than fundamental principles and basics of art? have you ever strongly panned a text? if so, did you regret it later? or did you feel a negative review was best? did it have unpleasant consequences? if so, could you or would you have done anything to mitigate them? so you wish you had tried? if there were no unpleasant consequences from the negative review, was there anything you did that might have helped avert them? does any of it really matter -- are these reviews tempests in teapots and not to be taken seriously? e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 13:08:23 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:32:02 -0400 from On Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:32:02 -0400 Rod Smith said: > >It seems to me part of the work of creating an audience IS writing cranky >letters to the editors. Crank 'em out, fellas. BUILD them audience muscles! >opposing views (i.e. noone as far left as he is right-- & in some ways this >IS quantifiable) has any of the cultural capital this bloke's accrued. >Unfortunately, he does have an impact, which goes unchallenged, & if it's >unquestioned, people believe it-- just like the NYT version(s) of "history." >Obviously, it's not ok. I will agree with you that the most effective way to >change this is by going around them, "one person at a time." Yet, I do think >they have an impact on what people think. They make the work of building an >audience much harder. Come here, you. I said YOU. Gonna read you this sonnet - you, audience! Listen up! Hey! Come back here! This art biz is righteous work, leftover! You gotta rhyme it EVERY day in EVERY way! DAmn the torpid newsbuzzers! Full beats ahood! Hey - that's part a my poem! Get back here! Gonna free your mind with my Venetian blind....yeah (c.f. early Trashmen) - Henri leGoulash ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 13:21:49 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:45:55 -0400 from My advice if you want the truth is just shake the dice outa both sides of yr mouth thumbs down to some thumbs up to the dumb and if you think that's terrible go check out a parable - Hank the rank Think-Tank ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 14:12:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: Typo Tony Green typed: > Rod Smith mentioning Joan Retalack reminds me I found 3rd impression > of Strachey's translation of Freud's Traumdeutung (1957?) > > p.207 > "...........................................to a remark I had de > in which........................................................." > p.209 > " ..................................opposition journalists made > okes over Count Thun's name............................" You know, Perry Meisel often compares Strachey's translations of Freud to _Mrs. Dalloway_ and now I know why. I don't know about Joan R., but you *have* managed to forward this to Mr. Rothenberg. Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 13:16:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: reviews -- a query about ethics, con Comments: To: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Hello everyone. I'm new to the List and will here venture a response to Eliza's very pertinent query. As a reviewer for various papers and mags, most recently the American Book Review, for some years now, I will emphatically say that yes it does matter; whatever the faults of the system, reviewing plays an important role in the publishing/reading world as a whole which we can't seem to get along without. Most of the time, as with the NYTBR, it seems like little more than an adjunct (not to the Muse's diadem) but to the PR depts. of Random House, S&S, et al. But intelligent, thoughtful reviews can boost sales of a little known book and moreover, can mean a lot to a writer who has labored in obscurity and feels rather isolated from things. I try to keep in mind what Malcolm Cowley once told some students of his at Stanford: Always remember that it takes as much hard work to write a bad book as it does a good one. I have panned books in the past, sometimes savagely (e.g. Bob Shacocis' "Swimming in the Volcano"). I feel it's something I've grown out of. I no longer need the sense of vindication that seems to be the natural response to a book which arouses genuine indignation. Taking a tip from Auden, I no longer review books I don't like. There's plenty of good ones which need all the support they can get. And while this will probably strike some as corny and decidedly ante-postmodern, I find that sincerity can make up for a plethora of other faults, while no amount of artifice can take the place of honest intentions. Which opens up another can of worms entirely about how we assess intentionality vis-a-vis literary personas, etc. You mention the intentions of the publisher: I find that to be irrelevant. A work should be judged on its own merit. There are of course mitigating factors and these can and should be mentioned to "soften the blow," if it feels appropriate. What counts is the end result, though. Otherwise, there'd be no end of "masterpieces", my own included. It's the job of a reviewer to praise what he or she feels to be good and to say what is bad, inferior or just doesn't work. DHL said all good criticism is subjective. I would not shirk from calling a bad book bad. I just don't go out of my way looking for them. Fortunately my various editors let me pick and choose. The worst response I got from a bad review - it was a mixed negative of Ginsberg's last book - was a crisp letter from a highly respected poet which gave me serious food for thought. We have since become friends. So go figure... Best advice: Reviewing is highly political, in one sense, but should be practiced as though it isn't. It's a rare book that is completely bad; somewhere there's bound to be at least the suggestion of an interesing if poorly expressed idea, though not always. Find that and use it. In the end, pulling punches does you no good and is a disservice to writers everywhere. ---------- From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS Subject: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences Date: Friday, June 14, 1996 12:16PM i've been watching the thread about a harsh review, and wrestling with a review i have to write a book of poetry (though not, jordan, for a major venue!) for some time, and it finally occurred to me that this list might be a good place to put the ethics and questions of the problem out for discussion. imagine you were given a bad book to review, the book of a writer (poetry and academic) who has, heretofore, produced somewhat interesting though not stellar work. imagine this writer teaches creative writing, and has produced a "How-To" text (with someone else) on writing although the writer's credentials are not strong. further, the book to be reviewed has poems which even venture to lecture, for example, on the importance of technique while the lack of same has plagued every poem. the badness of the writing is such that you knew, before you read the biographical sketch, that the writer must teach creative writing to beginners because there are so many "ok everyone i'm going to be creative here" lines, poems that make a great big overwritten fuss about nothing, and overused and even trite phrases and images. but the writer also comes from a much under-represented sector of writers (though none of the experience arising from that context is explicitly present in the current book). further, the writer's publisher is a small, underfunded press which has taken on a very worthy publishing venture, one you wish to support and most off the problems might have been cleared away had the book a bang-up editor (which the press does not have the money to hire). does one write the scathing blast which seems to work it's way into every sentence (despite efforts to be moderate)? is there something unendurabaly prissy about condemning another writer for not trying hard enough and publishing a very very poor book while there exists great writers under all sorts of pressure who don't publish until they have work that is really worthwhile, silent sometimes until their death. imagine you are new to reviewing, aware that you might have the overzealousness common to the fresh and idealistic, and almost certainly are in a vulnerable position professionally -- is honesty really important or effective here? does someone have to stand up and say when something is really awful? should that someone be not well-known writer? or, in retrospect, is one (at that stage) usually happier about those chapters in which one is moderate, merciful, and/or discreet? should david engage goliath, especially without an omnipotent fixer? i find myself thinking, on the one hand, of a writer's story of a workshop where someone gave out a perfectly awful poem for discussion. the group sat around for about ten minutes trying to give very careful, serious, and ultimately not very direct suggestions on how to improve the poem. finally a woman who had been silent the entire time exploded, saying something like "i can't believe you all -- for ten minutes you have been treating this poem as if it were really good. but it is terrible, and it is an insult to this writer to patronize him by not saying so." but i also think of friends whose professional discretion make them an incredible asset to any committee or group or project, aboutut the strong reaction here to the negative article. and about herb's feeling that reviews are not, ultimately, going to alter anyone's opinion or guide them (though i disagree -- if a trustworthy source pans a movie, depending on the direction of the critique, i might well not go to it without some other strong motivation). there is also his point that reviewers essentially are preaching to the converted, if they are heard at all. what aboutthe possibility of reviews being stained by reviewer's preferences -- what is a yardstick for knowing when our distaste for something comes from distorting theoretical loyalties rather than fundamental principles and basics of art? have you ever strongly panned a text? if so, did you regret it later? or did you feel a negative review was best? did it have unpleasant consequences? if so, could you or would you have done anything to mitigate them? so you wish you had tried? if there were no unpleasant consequences from the negative review, was there anything you did that might have helped avert them? does any of it really matter -- are these reviews tempests in teapots and not to be taken seriously? e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:57:05 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: voice reviewers Jordan, Perhaps the deterioration is because the Voice is free now from currency and hasn't been spotted since late April in Manhattan David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:07:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: dead horse hairs Herb Levy typed: >To paraphrase something Ron Silliman has written several times to the list >and elsewhere, you build an audience one person at a time. & more than >anything it's the work itself that's going to build that audience, not >reviews, whether they're positive or negative. Lynne Tillman likes to talk about the pleasure she derives from people who speak of their "audience"--of a pre-existing group of people who are thought to gather for some new work of hers. A publisher says, "but your audience!" She replies, "Before I publish a book, my audience doesn't exist!" She also loves it when a colossal Hollywood sequel flops and film people, who had thought that the film *already had an audience*, are mystified. All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:14:15 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: dead horse hairs In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:07:07 -0400 from On Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:07:07 -0400 Carnography said: >Lynne Tillman likes to talk about the pleasure she derives from people >who speak of their "audience"--of a pre-existing group of people who >are thought to gather for some new work of hers. A publisher says, >"but your audience!" She replies, "Before I publish a book, my >audience doesn't exist!" Maybe this is relevant: Schubert on the water, Mozart in birds' clatter, and Goethe whistling on a winding path, and Hamlet meditating with anxious steps, all counted the crowd's pulse, believed the crowd. Maybe, before there were lips, there was a whisper, and before there were trees there were leaves whirling, and those to whom we dedicate this our experiment, before the experiment, have accumulated eyes and noses and mouths. O. Mandelstam, trans.Burton Raffel {though I like James Greene's better) - H. Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:27:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences Eliza: > does one write the scathing blast which seems to work its way into > every sentence (despite efforts to be moderate)? I try not to blast a writer who is doing anything even remotely ambitious. I also consider the books that might be written *after* the book I dislike--after the book I don't want said writer to choke on first. Best, I think, to save your harshest criticisms for private conversations. Editors love harsh reviews and controversy, but that's because they aren't signing their own names to such reviews. Anger can give you amazingly clear vision, but your vision won't necessarily be balanced. Personally, I still wince at the harshest criticisms I've made in public. I hate discouraging people over trifles. After all, in the words of Montaigne's medallion, "What do I know?" > is there something > unendurabaly prissy about condemning another writer for not trying > hard enough and publishing a very very poor book while there exists > great writers under all sorts of pressure who don't publish until they > have work that is really worthwhile, silent sometimes until their > death. Not prissy, just misguided. Since the book is already published, slamming it won't do anything for yet-unpublished books. You'd have to be an editor at a publishing house for this sort of reasoning to apply. > is honesty > really important or effective here? does someone have to stand up and > say when something is really awful? Honesty is important. Tactlessness isn't. > have you ever strongly panned a text? if so, did you regret it later? > or did you feel a negative review was best? did it have unpleasant > consequences? See above. if so, could you or would you have done anything to > mitigate them? so you wish you had tried? if there were no > unpleasant consequences from the negative review, was there anything > you did that might have helped avert them? Bottom line: I don't believe in discouraging other artists. I do offer concrete criticisms and suggestions where I think they might be helpful. But I don't believe I've ever said or written, "_.......__ sucks" unless it was partly an ideological/sociological matter. All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:49:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: reviews -- a query about ethics, con From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest >have you ever strongly panned a text? if so, did you regret it later? >or did you feel a negative review was best? did it have unpleasant >consequences? if so, could you or would you have done anything to >mitigate them? so you wish you had tried? if there were no >unpleasant consequences from the negative review, was there anything >you did that might have helped avert them? > >does any of it really matter -- are these reviews tempests in teapots >and not to be taken seriously? > >e I've been reviewing poetry for various venues now for about 15 years, and negative reviews are always harder to write than positive ones. They are, however, in some cases necessary. What do I mean by "in some cases?" Well, while I don't see the point in demolishing a first book by a new writer, (I've seen some good -- if not spectacular -- fledgling poets get royally whomped in big-name journals by big-name poets/critics, and it can really hurt their future reception, no matter how good their subsequent work becomes), there are lots of naked emperors out there, and I'd really like to see reviewers give them a bit more in the way of honest criticism than they're getting. In other words -- they should pick on poets their own size. It's easy to trash Mr. or Ms. Whothehellizzat with a first book from Cleveland State, but a Sharon Olds or a John Hollander or a Richard Howard? Gulp. Forget about someday seeing your own work in _Paris Review_ (or whatever mag the criticized or friend-of-the-criticized poet edits) if you do. That's part of the problem: many reviewers are themselves poets, and feel that they have to be careful about whose tree they shake. What I'd like to see -- up front -- are admissions that the reviewer was a poet's student (or teacher), or spouse, or departmental colleague, etc. When I see best buddies reviewing each other's books, I'm inclined to take the review just a little less seriously -- as little more than an extended blurb -- which is why I return review copies of books by people I'm more than only marginally acquainted with, even if I like the work. Still, reviews -- even mixed or less-than-favorable ones -- are very important for any poet; they're part of the paper trail of existence, confirmation that someone at least noticed another's attempt to contribute to the culture. P.S. One negative review I wrote was never printed. Turned out that the editor of the mag was having lunch with the publisher, and inadvertently let the person eyeball the review. He made such a row that the mag scrapped the piece to appease him, even though the editor professed that the review was civil and fair, and that she agreed with it. What's even more ironic -- the author was dead and the press was really little more than a vanity outfit. Go figure. *********************** Fred Muratori "Certain themes are incurable." (fmm1@cornell.edu) Reference Services Division - Lyn Hejinian Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 16:57:14 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Chris Stroffolino wrote: Dear ken Edwards--- Could you elaborate on Miles Champion. The little I've seen is interesting and it was good to see your willingness to include him, while Ira, I think, seemed less to......cs Miles' book from Carcanet is, as I posted before, called _Compositional Bonbons Placate_. Great cover by Trevor Winkfield. Don't know how easy it is for you to get Carcanet books over there -- probably SPD is the place. Miles also has a chapbook from Cris Cheek's press Sound & Language, _Sore Models_. Later this year, he will be included in a mini-anthology of four poets from my own press, Reality Street Editions, probably to be titled _Sleight of Foot_. Miles is an enthusiast for the work of Teds Berrigan and Greenwald, as well as Raworth, Ashbery et al, all of whose influences I think can be discerned in his work, which is oblique, fast-moving, amusing, uneven but definitely sparky. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 18:34:32 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Amen to Cris' post. I couldn't agree more. When I spoke of "intelligent engagement" with language poetry by British poets, Ira, I did not mean slavish imitation -- that wouldn't be very intelligent. Like Cris, I can think of none of us who imitates language poetry or could be accurately described as a language poet. But some are more open to foreign models than others. Also some of the traits you discern in language poetry are independently discernible in some of the poetry being originated here. (eg quote "the attitude to language or presence, in any number games, paragraph organisation, or relation of page to page, or dual columns, in the way that it is in any of the poets mentioned" -- well, see Allen Fisher, passim) Ira, I don't agree with your assessment of Miles Champion, that he is being flip or embarrassed: rather I see in him an (engagingly boyish?) enthusiasm for life and letters. He does imitate the objects of his enthusiasm from time to time, I'll grant you, but that's no bad thing necessarily, as Ted Berrigan has pointed out. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 09:24:17 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: post language 'jip' definitions Comments: To: Robert Drake Hi Bob, re - 'jip', if you've got a tendency in your back muscles for postural punishment and every so often , or some days rather than others your back feels like it's playing up you might say 'my back's giving me jip'. I've heard the term used more in connection with physical problems or procedural functions (my printer is giving me jip' than with interhuman communication. But i guess, although I haven't heard this - other brits here might testify - it's possible to say 'my boss is giving me jip'. I've avoided the boss scenarios most of my life and don't intend to restart now. Certainly if you were using a nibbed pen with india ink and (as has been my experience with nibbed pens from time to time) you were subjected to uninvited blotting due to some malfunctioning aspects between the pen and yourself, you might well say 'this pen's giving me jip'. So in terms of the slang dictionary definitions that you offer - it would be something like: jip - adjectival noun. Non-exquisite interference, or niggling awareness of energetic displacement, somewhat like an unintentional ink blot (should such a thing exist). An irritating tending to focus away from intention. Not very satisfactory i know. Maybe others can add. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:03:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Susan Howe and Samuel Beckett Dear Herb Levy: Well, actually it seems to me that the value of the work of Susan Howe or Samuel Beckett (or many others, maybe) is not only obvious, but something that it would be pretty hard to argue against very successfully. One can, I suppose, have reasonable questions about the limitations of their work, but as to dismissing it entirely, I'm still under the impression that that's an opinion I don't really have to respect too much. It's quite possible not to like John Cage's work, but to blatantly and obviously misrepresent it seems to me is another matter. Whether one likes Cage's work or not, to come to the conclusion that he's doing "nothing" when he spent years elaborating what he's doing does not seem a matter of opinion to me--I suppose one has the right to be of any "opinion" one wants, but if it's blatantly and purposefully disinformational, that's not an opinion that counts for much. Disagree with Cage, sure, that's fine. But pretend as if it's okay to act as if he never said anything at all? No way. I think I'll continue to be as angry about that as I want to be. Actually, I appreciate your recent comments, because it gives me the wonderful opportunity to be a hard-liner again. One of the early virtues of this poetics list was that it was a forum where one didn't have to endlessly justify the basic value of avant garde poetry. Whatever the limits and problems of that poetry, at least on this list one didn't have to spend a lot of time stating obvious things like "well you know Susan Howe's actually a pretty good writer"--one could assume that the poetics forum was a place where something as obvious as that would be a given. Perhaps you're right, and this poetics list is not such a place any longer, but nonetheless I think I'm going to act as if it is. I'm interested, I suppose, in all sorts of discussion about poetry, but the underlying assumption that I see emerging, which is that the value of this work has to be endlessly justified to others even when they refuse to engage it seriously, as Tim Page has, seems to me so much hogwash. I think I'm going to continue to assume that the importance of John Cage's work is blatant and obvious, and if someone else doesn't understand that, tough. A work of art can't defend itself, I suppose, but actually it seems to me much more reasonable to suggest that people on this list would justify themselves in the face of Cage's work, or Beckett's. Does this make me an authoritarian postmodern hard-line anti-relativist? With any luck it does. Newspapers, publishing houses (and their reviewers and art critics, most of them anyway) need to justify themselves in the face of works of art that have demolished their most basic assumptions. That such entities ignore and, when questioned, deny that they have this obligation is tantamount to an admission that they have no defence, and that they should end their own existence as quickly as possible. They won't, I know, choose to end themselves, but morally, there seems to be no question that they SHOULD. Such a position on my part is not only completely REASONABLE, but the fact that it may not seem reasonable suggests instantly the level of confusion and corruption that marks the world I live in. So (and this has been a lot of fun), anyone who thinks that Susan Howwe, or Samuel Beckett, or John Cage, have not done significant work, are WRONG and deeply confused, and obviously need me to tell them so. "I have not yet begun to be an extremist" Mark Wallace ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:17:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: Freud:Woolf::Heidegger:Stein In-Reply-To: <199606150407.AAA10103@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Funny, cuz I was reading Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" the other night and got the distinct impression that it was really Gertrude Stein speaking: Thinking acts insofar as it thinks....But all working or effecting lies in Being and is directed towards beings. Thinking, in contrast, lets itself be claimed by Being so that it can say the truth of Being. Thinking accomplishes this letting. (tr. Capuzzi/Gray, _Basic Writings_ 1977 ed., 193-94) Tom Orange tmorange@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca ------------------------------ On Sat, 15 Jun 1996, Hardin wrote: > Tony Green typed: > > > Rod Smith mentioning Joan Retalack reminds me I found 3rd impression > > of Strachey's translation of Freud's Traumdeutung (1957?) > > > > p.207 > > "...........................................to a remark I had de > > in which........................................................." > > > p.209 > > " ..................................opposition journalists made > > okes over Count Thun's name............................" > > You know, Perry Meisel often compares Strachey's translations of Freud to > _Mrs. Dalloway_ and now I know why.... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 12:57:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: McGuire Jerry L Subject: query about ethics Hi, folks. Jerry McGuire, new to the list. I've been lurking for a few days to get the feel of the thing--it's like just before the inkling-moment of a new love affair, no?--and am hauled in by the thoughtful responses to Eliza McGrand's questions about writing a negative review. My first feeling was that these were generally so sharp that the topic was quickly tied off. But here are just a couple more observations: Eliza's predicament is so _specific_--a "bad" How-To book (is there any other kind?) co-authored by a poet/academic whose prior work she evaluates as "somewhat interesting though not stellar" (so from the outset we're situated with reference not to an equal, but to a mediocrity); much of the offensiveness is metapoetic biz about "technique" that seems self-evidently knuckleheaded. And then there are the complications: the writer is identified as belonging to "a much underrepresented sector of writers" (I'm not sure what E.M. means by "sector" here, and it may matter), and the book comes from a non-hegemonic press. Furthermore, Eliza says she's herself as "new to reviewing" and professionally "vulnerable." Any of these observations might lead a reviewer into trails of inquiry that would be worth anyone's time. It seems to me there's a contradiction between Eliza's atypical willingness to ask these questions in the first place and her desire for the clarity felt by her exemplary workshop assassin, who unambiguously declares an awful poem not worth anyone else's time. (If I read Pat Pritchett and Rob Hardin's responses properly, I'd say that they have both written hostile reviews about which they've had some second, and possibly painful second, thoughts, and so have I.) All this points up the variety of motivations that enter into reviewing. Some respondents think of it as a service performed for writers; but clearly there are cultural, psychological, and professional gains at issue, too. One reason to write a review is that it's more lasting, more respectable, and more profitable (though not by much) than flaming. The review seems to me a relatively _little_ thing caught in a web of institutional motivations linking individual creative artists, the publishing industry, and the academy, both in its management of culture and in its maintenance of internal hierarchies of power. That Eliza claims to be (and no doubt is) "vulnerable" is evidence that more than absolute declarations of objective worth are at stake--and probably invite her nostalgia for tough talk. But the review that is worth one's work is the one that sets aside the easy brutalities of the institutional workshop (isn't it?) as well as evaluation, understood as any kind of simple matter whatsoever, and that attempts instead to discuss the text in relation to the contexts in which it's entangled. E.M. doesn't need more clarity, she requires a determination to take her self- reflection further, into institutional analysis. I think she needs to resist the evaluative tendency, and her own hostile feelings, entirely. Unless it really is just enemies' lists we're constructing in our reviews. (I think that if she plugs the proper names from her review into the set of questions she posted to this list, she'd be well on the way to writing a better review than most of those we see or write). I'm sorry I've gone on at such length--I'll try to be briefer from now on. But one other thing I wanted to mention. Concerning Rob Hardin's claim that "Editors love harsh reviews and controversy, but that's because they aren't signing their own names to such reviews," I'm sure that's true for some. But when I was processing (fond term) reviews for _College Literature_, I and everyone else reading them were aware that hostility almost always coincides with a slackening of precision, a strutting of careless assumptions, and generally a bunch of ego-building exercises quite detached from the task of exploring a text and committing oneself to a reasoned position on it that others might respond to. And while we were nearly as agreeable to negative reviews as positive, we always discouraged hostility for its own sake, or for mere ideological and rhetorical advantage. All best-- Jerry McGuire jlm8047@usl.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 18:52:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carnography Subject: Re: query about ethics Jerry McGuire typed: > Concerning Rob Hardin's claim that > "Editors love harsh reviews and controversy, but that's because they aren't > signing their own names to such reviews," I'm sure that's true for some. Spec: 1. Iconclastic academic magazines--here nameless because some of you write for the same ones I do and I'd rather not argue about them in public--and 2. Mainstream crossover magazines, such as _Spin_ and the _Village Voice_--which, antithetically to _The Nation_, _The Baffler_ and _Z Magazine_, torch individual artists while leaving commercial bureaucracies and conglomerates unscathed. While there is always an interest in being factually accurate and in avoiding lawsuits, the eds I've known are usually interested in generating controversy and sales without alienating their audience. The reviewee who suffers is usually the last one who should: a moderately-known writer with a certain degree of so-called underground success, or a new writer who has published a first novel. Often, writers get trashed in the service of fashion: the reviewer has heard/read too much about a writer and therefore feels said writer is due for a drubbing. Thus, the writer gets dissed for the same reason that people once wore and stopped wearing green Levi's. I'm not denying that editors discourage flaming, ie, mindless vicious attacks. But in my experience, they do like rude dismissals of writers who deserve far better. That is because most established would-be downtown magazines like _The Voice_ endorse mediocrity no matter what their politics might seem to suggest. And as I've said before, the defining act of mediocrity is to refuse to acknowledge good work. All the best, Rob Hardin http://www.interport.net/~scrypt ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 22:45:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: re-evaluating values In-Reply-To: <199606160407.AAA12227@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> One part of Mark's post caught my eye immediately -- I agree that howe etc. are wonderful writers, I agree that writers should not be dismissed out of hand without serious consideration, and I agree that it's not a good thing to misrepresent someone's work -- BUT I'm intrigues at the idea of Howe's value, for instance, being "obvious." I think any number of presuppositions have to be in place all ready to bring that obviousness into view -- and I think one of the problems in a writer like Page is his unwillingness to examine his own presuppositions -- Ideology is that which is taken for granted as "obvious," as non-ideological, etc. -- intrigued, actually -- not intrigues at all -- already -- and despite what you may read in the _Washington Post_, one need not be an absolute relativist to think this way -- But Mark, what really intrigues me is disagreements among people who, at first blush, might appear to share several aesthetic assumptions -- what of the people, and there are some, who, say, think Cage's writing is just hunky-dory, but who don't think it so obvious that Howe is a wonderful poet -- (my own inclination is in the opposite directions, by the way -- though I love Cage's music --) how do we go about negotiating conflicts over the terrain of the obvious? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 07:43:05 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: Performance Writing On Thursday, June 13, cris creek wrote, "Performance Writing is what's happening here for me, for others that will not be so - difference continues to be manufactured." chris, Could you elaborate on your understanding of performance writing and how it relates to contemporary British work? I've gotten a sense tangentially from some of your previous posts, but I'd be interested in knowing more. It seems to me that the context and history of performance writing is quite different if we compare, say American with European practice. In continental Europe the link back to sound poetry and even for some, Fluxus-type actions, of the '60s and earlier (I'm thinking here of the Wiener Gruppe, Doc(k)s related artists etc.) is still more or less intact, while in the U.S. the notion of performance is more strongly connected to performance art as it emerged and developed in the '60s and '70s. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this? Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 07:55:45 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: hatchet job Dear cris cheek, I'm very sorry for the hatchet job on your name in my previous post. I somehow got the h's and the r's all mixed up. Yours, Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 08:30:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Gallery Blazes (fwd) Thot the attached of some interest -- Pierre ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 20:35:20 -0700 (PDT) From: { brad brace } To: avant-garde@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Subject: Gallery Blazes (fwd) DALLAS - Three women were arrested Monday for questioning in connection with the burning of at least one of two Art Galleries set ablaze overnight, officials said. The New Gallery of Art and the Gallery of the Living Curator were set on fire in the town of Whiteville, about 40 miles east of Dallas, the latest in a long string of blazes at art-galleries across the country. Fire chief George Wood said police arrested three artists and were questioning them about at least one of the fires. They were arrested on an unrelated traffic offense at around 1 a.m. and their car matched the description of witnesses who said they saw it parked outside the New Gallery of Art shortly before it went up in flames at around midnight. The blaze at the nearby Gallery of the Living Curator was reported at around 3 a.m., after the three women were arrested, but foul play is also suspected there. ``Both fires are considered to be acts of local vandalism,'' Wood told a news conference. He said he hoped they were not linked to the arson attacks against about 30 art institutions and galleries across the nation in the last 18 months. Gallery curators met with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno on Sunday to demand greater priority be placed on the investigation into the fires. Neither of the two Whiteville galleries was totally destroyed in the latest blazes and nobody was hurt but the buildings suffered serious damage. Residents told reporters they saw two young women running away from the scene of the first fire. __ --- from list avant-garde@lists.village.virginia.edu --- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 12:49:51 -40962758 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Rosenberg Subject: Handling the Verticals Today I find the following line in Blaser's poem "Mappa Mundi": "Olson once said he wished he could learn how to handle verticals from Boulez ..." If anyone can help me locate the source of this in Olson somewhere I would be much obliged. -- Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/ CIS: 71515,124 WELL: jer Internet: jr@amanue.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 13:34:10 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: Gallery Blazes (fwd) Comments: To: Pierre Joris I have a feeling that this may be a gag. I live in Dallas, and hadn't heard of this, or of the supposed town of Whiteville. I think it's an adaptation of news reports about the recent torching of churches in Greenville (which is where the article says Whiteville is). But quite possibly either everyone knew this, or I missed a real news report. ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 17:19:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes Pierre--- GALLERY OF THE LIVING CURATOR? (in CHRIST?) is zitts right? it seems joke.... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 20:18:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carla Billitteri Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: Handling the Verticals > Today I find the following line in Blaser's poem "Mappa Mundi": > > "Olson once said he wished he could learn how to handle verticals > from Boulez ..." > > If anyone can help me locate the source of this in Olson somewhere I would be > much obliged. No doubt Olson said this to Blaser in person, or in a letter, but see also Olson's 22 August 1951 letter to Creeley (vol. 7 of the correspondence, p. 120): When I go horizontal--literally fall, lacking, the standing- up-- If I could once more write as vertical as I take it Boulez has, in, that 2nd Sonata--as, indeed, I take it I did In Cold Hell--which, by God, if I don't write that poem, I'll inscribe (when somebody else but that prick Emerson prints it) "to Pierre Boulez, for, his 2nd Sonata" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 14:51:55 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs Stones vs Beatles (early) and an afterthot or 2: It was jus that The Beatles new LP wd always come out 1 week earlier than the Stones new LP, mid 60's, Christmas time year after year. The Stones sounded raw, and looked nice and ugly, and beat, while the Beatles were so clean and tidy, ready to meet showbiz of the time half way, it seemed. The STones maybe gave an impression of being more dangerous (rightly or wrongly). The Strachey translation was 1954, not 1957. And I wonder whether jip, as in giving one pain shouldn't be sperllt "gyp". I never saw it written down. Best Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:27:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century At 11:51 AM 5/30/96 EST, Burt Kimmelman wrote: >I am slated to teach an interdisciplinary course called "The Twentieth >Century World"; the course is global in scope. I realize how fashionable it is to focus on the modern and the postmodern, but I have to question if there is enough material here to sustain an entire semester's course. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 17:43:44 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: wystan Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs Comments: To: t.green@auckland.ac.nz Dear Tony, Had the same thought re-the spelling: is it JIP or GYP? I recall the word as a verb: the bastard gyped me!! That is ripped me off. And as a noun: he gave me THE gyp. But not as an adjective. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 18:00:49 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: wystan Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century Comments: To: bernstei@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:27:23 -0400 >Reply-to: UB Poetics discussion group > >From: Charles Bernstein >Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century >To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS > > >At 11:51 AM 5/30/96 EST, Burt Kimmelman wrote: > >>I am slated to teach an interdisciplinary course called "The Twentieth >>Century World"; the course is global in scope. > >I realize how fashionable it is to focus on the modern and the >postmodern, >but I have to question if there is enough material here to sustain an >entire >semester's course. > O Charles, it's not like you to be so negative ...give the boy his head. Burt, i've just curated this exhibition called THE WORLD OVER.Art in the Age of Globalisation. If you are in the Southern hemisphere, get over to Wellington--its on at the City Gallery there until August 11, and for the Northern hemisphere folks, it opens on June 28th in Amsterdam, at the Stedelijk Museum. And if you can't get to either, the website should be up soon. I'll post it later. Wystan, The Worldlywise. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 03:26:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Paul, Sail On - Paul, Sail On If I gather up, will you bury me, will you bury me if I gather up Your ambergris, your bronze helmet, your amber, your bronze Swollen by river's wake by cavern opening cavern awakened by the river's swell Motivated by gutted reeds cut stuttered clay, read in gorgeous monuments gone motivated If I lie with you, will you lie with me, if I lay with you will you lay with me Near the pregnant cow near the gutted horse near the emptied house by the coward's prayer Through the dim dark night by the knight's despair by the armor there If I wash for you by the river's edge and I wash for you by the same edge of the river Where down the river there is a gathering of knights and women, I think they are celebrating Telipinu at the moment Yes, I will lie with you, I will lay with you, I will sacrifice, you will sacrifice Your horse, your cow, yourself, against my golden hair, my eyes of blue Sparkling in the waters pooling by the marshes, waters sprinkled with blood, swollen with whitened Bones you have slaughtered, your bones you have slaughtered While I, while I I'm leaving for Telipinu. __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 16:16:06 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19960617042723.006b2ab4@pop.acsu.buffalo.edu> On Mon, 17 Jun 1996, Charles Bernstein wrote: > At 11:51 AM 5/30/96 EST, Burt Kimmelman wrote: > > >I am slated to teach an interdisciplinary course called "The Twentieth > >Century World"; the course is global in scope. > > I realize how fashionable it is to focus on the modern and the postmodern, > but I have to question if there is enough material here to sustain an entire > semester's course. > I presume, of course, that you will have to spend at least 60% of the time covering the 19th century, in order to establish the context for properly understanding the twentieth. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 04:46:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century "enough material"---- too much is definitely not enough..... when i lack self-esteem, a self to confide in that ' is not JUST a brick wall, i wish i was better at generalizations.... ah, ubi sunt WCW's "universality of the local" when one needs it.... sew what ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 07:58:10 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Susan Howe and Samuel Beckett In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:03:36 -0400 from On Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:03:36 -0400 Mark Wallace said: > > Actually, I appreciate your recent comments, because it gives me >the wonderful opportunity to be a hard-liner again. One of the early >virtues of this poetics list was that it was a forum where one didn't >have to endlessly justify the basic value of avant garde poetry. Whatever >the limits and problems of that poetry, at least on this list one didn't >have to spend a lot of time stating obvious things like "well you know >Susan Howe's actually a pretty good writer"--one could assume that the >poetics forum was a place where something as obvious as that would be a >given. Perhaps you're right, and this poetics list is not such a place >any longer, but nonetheless I think I'm going to act as if it is. You mean it's too bad it's not a cozy little nest anymore, where you can pat each other on the back & not have to justify yourselves, like those nasty newspapermen should? > A work of art can't defend >itself, I suppose, but actually it seems to me much more reasonable to >suggest that people on this list would justify themselves in the face of >Cage's work, or Beckett's. Does this make me an authoritarian postmodern >hard-line anti-relativist? With any luck it does. Newspapers, publishing >houses (and their reviewers and art critics, most of them anyway) need to >justify themselves in the face of works of art that have demolished their >most basic assumptions. That such entities ignore and, when questioned, >deny that they have this obligation is tantamount to an admission that >they have no defence, and that they should end their own existence as >quickly as >possible. They won't, I know, choose to end themselves, but morally, >there seems to be no question that they SHOULD. Such a position on my >part is not only completely REASONABLE, but the fact that it may not seem >reasonable suggests instantly the level of confusion and corruption that >marks the world I live in. The world is corrupt because it doesn't seem as reasonable as you are? That doesn't follow. I have followed this thread with one eye open. It seems to me that you are perfectly correct to respond angrily & publicly to misrepresentations of an artist's work; also, to beg to differ publicly with reviews or evaluations you think miss the mark. What bores me is this eternal yeast of embattled-artist-selfrighteousness, that would rather efface all newspapers from the earth than admit to the contingency of culture-at-large. The FACT is, all you glorious "audience-builders" out there have absolutely no control over free aesthetic response - and that's ALL TO THE GOOD. You will never solve the problems of debased & tamed cultural atmosphere; but then again, maybe audiences should have to work a little to achieve the experimentalist's heights; maybe masterpieces NEED to hide themselves; and maybe art doesn't need so many so-called defenders - it just needs searchers & finders. These opinions emanate from one who understands very well the overwhelming dead weight of our corporate sponsors. When the real poets come, you will think you've entered a laughter-tornado, until you begin to weep. The poem is a stone fallen from heaven; no one will judge it. [O. Mandelstam] - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:19:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century Wystan, Sounds great, but I'll have to settle for the web site, alas. As for Charles, I guess his comment is the height of postmodernity or something. Charles, you are kidding, of course, but then one has to ask why you bothered to say anything of this sort, that is, that not enough has happened in the twentieth century to warrant a substantial investigation of it. this is what happens when we start to talk seriously about uncertainty, chaos theory, langpo, hi-tech ethnic cleansing, and the like. To quote Creeley, "and *and* becomes just so" Burt (mr. enigmatic) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:47:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: When the real poets come Mark, Herny, Chas, C(h)ris, Steve, Marisa, Ann, Deirdre, Herb, Wystan, Joe, Carla, Tan, Jeff, Bob, Simon, Pierre, Burt, Maria, Ed, Rod, Larry, Bill, Juliana, Louis, Kenny, Garrett, Alan, Joe, Tom, Rob, Ken, Jorge, Fred, Ron, Jerry, Dan, Dodie, Kevin, Marjorie, Michael, George, Tony, Ira, Romana, Andrew, Jonathan, Ursula, Charles, David, Laura, Aldon, Daniel, Keith, Eliza, Emily, Mike, Dave, Annie, Is James Joyce really a great writer? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:11:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "J.V. Kinsella (by way of Charles Bernstein )" Subject: Equipage (UK) catalogue EQUIPAGE / Microbrigade a series of pamphlets of contemporary poetry -------------------------------------------- Prices include p&p if ordered direct TO ORDER FROM EQUIPAGE: cheques payable to Equipage C/- Rod Mengham, Jesus College, Cambridge CB5 8BL 24 April 1992 House Breaking Apart in Slow Motion by Geoff Ward A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 31 May 1992 The Nile by John Wilkinson A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 3 August 1992 Lative by D.S. Marriott A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 31 August 1992 Stair Spirit by Denise Riley A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 15 September 1992 Blue Screen by Tom Raworth A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds 28 September 1992 Sliverfish Macronix by Out To Lunch A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds 9 October 1992 Leaving by Stephen Rodefer A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 27 November 1992 Sand Poles by Ulli Freer A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 30 December 1992 Reasonable Distance by Alan Halsey A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 31 December 1992 Feuds by Rod Mengham A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds (The Equofinality book re-set, with new cover) 28 January 1993 Not-You by J.H. Prynne A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds 19 February 1993 Satyrs and Mephitic Angels by Drew Milne A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds 23 April 1993 Tense Fodder by Ian Patterson A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 23 April 1993 Alien Skies by Andrew Duncan A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds 23 April 1993 C.C.C.P. 3 Programme & examples of current work by participants in the Third Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry. Poems by Thomas A. Clark, Ian Davidson, Andrew Duncan, Allen Fisher, Ulli Freer, Barbara Guest, Susan Howe, Billy Mills, Drew Milne, Alice Notley, Douglas Oliver, Stephen Rodefer, John Wilkinson, Silvia Ziranek. Drawing by Stephen Rodefer. Cover by Helen Macdonald. A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 24 July 1993 Strange Passage by Caroline Bergvall A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 29 August 1993 Four Poems by Michael Haslam A5, 36pp, price 2 pounds 5 October 1993 The Edge by David Chaloner A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 13 November 1993 Lecture by Peter Riley (poems) A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 26 November 1993 Viola Tricolor by Grace Lake A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 23 February 1994 Torn Off a Strip by John Wilkinson A5, 36pp, price 2 pounds 25 February 1994 Survival by Tom Raworth A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds 4 March 1994 Milk of Late anthology edited by Antonio Bellotti Five poems by Stephen Rodefer; five poems by Tony Lopez; five pages of 'TM' by Ulli Freer; 'The Hungry Form' (study) by Caroline Bergvall; 'Kobro' by Rod Mengham; three poems by Christopher Cook; five poems by Antonio Bellotti; cover by Gale Lickfold. A5, 60pp, price 2 pounds 21 April 1994 Erasers by Stephen Rodefer A5, 40pp, price 2 pounds 22 April 1994 C.C.C.P. 4 Programme & examples of current work by participants in the Fourth Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry. Poems & texts by Pierre Alferi, Derek Bailey, Olivier Cadiot, David Chaloner, Simon Fell, Barbara Guest, Michael Haslam, Peter Hughes, Fanny Howe, Grace Lake, R.F. Langley, D.S. Marriott, Peter Riley, Jacques Roubaud, Iain Sinclair, Ben Watson. Cover by Grace Lake. A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 20 May 1994 Her Weasels Wild Returning by J.H. Prynne A5, 12pp, price 2 pounds 17 June 1994 How Peace Came by Drew Milne A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 29 November 1994 BLVD.S by Ulli Freer A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds 29 November 1994 Turnpike Ruler by Out To Lunch A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds 17 March 1995 Negative Equity by Tony Lopez A5, 40pp, price 2 pounds 28 April 1995 C.C.C.P. 5 Programme & examples of current work by participants in the Fifth Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry. Poems & texts by Pierre Alferi, John Beck, Steve Benson, Miles Champion, Joseph Guglielmi, John Kinsella, Tony Lopez, Richard Makin, Rod Mengham, Christopher Middleton, Maggie O'Sullivan, Anne Portugal, Geoff Ward. A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds 28 April 1995 Bernache Nonnette by Grace Lake A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 28 April 1995 f):w3:d by Richard Makin A5, 48pp, price 2 pound 1 May 1995 Psyche in the Gargano by Peter Hughes A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 1 November 1995 Pearl by Barry MacSweeney A4, 28pp, price 3 (three) pounds 9 December 1995 Paul Klee's Diary by Peter Hughes A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds 2 February 1996 Agile by Mas Abe A5, 12pp, price 2 pounds 23 February 1996 The Radnoti Poems by John Kinsella A5, 56pp, price 2 pounds 29 March 1996 Rilke's Duino Elegies 'barbarously recast' by Geoff Ward A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds 27 April 1996 Prag by Keston Sutherland A5, 12pp, price 2 pounds 27 April 1996 Spirit Level by Simon Perril A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds C.C.C.P.6 Programme & work by participants at the Sixth Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds *************************************************** Microbrigade ------------ Publications in Print: Chris Cheek, Cloud Eyes Ulli Freer, Run the Disinfectant Rod Mengham, Take A Bite Aaron Williamson, Malediction These publications are priced at 1 pound 25 pence (inc. inland p&p) Equipage & Microbrigade Audio Editions 01 Tom Raworth, Big Slippers On (fourteen poems) 02 Rod Mengham, Speaking Tackle (nine poems) c30 chrome tape 3 pounds inc. inland p&p TO ORDER FROM MICROBRIGADE: cheques payable to Microbrigade C/- Ulli Freer, 7 Highwood Avenue, London N12 8QL United Kingdom TO ORDER FROM EQUIPAGE: cheques payable to Equipage C/- Rod Mengham, Jesus College, Cambridge CB5 8BL end of catalogue ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:41:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: "He's So Heavy, He's My Sokal" (song) HE=92S SO HEAVY, HE=92S MY SOKAL after Danny Kaye and Milton Schafer Please, please don=92t Sokal me Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest But don=92t, don=92t Sokal me I=92m laughing so hard I could cry If I Sokaled you You wouldn=92t like it You wouldn=92t approve If I Sokaled you You=92d Sokal so hard you would split O, O let go of my =91no=92 It isn=92t so funny you goof Oh, no I=92ve misplaced the sunny Stop or I=92ll fall up through the roof But please, please don=92t Sokal me Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest Sokal your mother, Sokal your brother,=20 Sokal some other guy But don=92t, don=92t Sokal me I=92m laughing so hard I could sigh Cut it out now, cut it out now! I=92m historicized, I can=92t take it anymore! Come on, beat it, get out of here! You=92re symtomizing me! I=92m practically reified! Wait until I get you, you piece of =85. Cut it out =92cause I=92m getting sore And please, please don=92t Sokal me Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest Sokal your father, Sokal your sister,=20 Sokal some other guy But don=92t, don=92t Sokal me I=92m laughing so hard I could cry =A9 1996 by Poets=92 Ludicrously Aimless Yearning (PLAY) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:46:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Sonnet!: What to Name the 20th-century World-Baby? Mark, Herny, Chas, C(h)ris, Steve, Marisa, Ann, Deirdre, Herb, Wystan, Joe, Carla, Tan, Jeff, Bob, Simon, Pierre, Burt, Maria, Ed, Rod, Larry, Bill, Juliana, Louis, Kenny, Garrett, Alan, Joe, Tom, Rob, Ken, Jorge, Fred, Ron, Jerry, Dan, Dodie, Kevin, Marjorie, Michael, George, Tony, Ira, Romana, Andrew, Jonathan, Ursula, Charles, David, Laura, Aldon, Daniel, Keith, Eliza, Emily, Mike, Dave, Annie, James Joyce Jordan __________________________________________ or, early Stones > early Beatles > James Joyce ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Emily Lloyd emilyl@erols.com "Fist my mind in your hand."-Rukeyser ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:34:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: When the real poets come In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:47:38 -0500 from On Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:47:38 -0500 Jordan Davis said: >Is James Joyce really a great writer? Well, a number of people have thought so, especially in the 20th century, paradoxically. Nevertheless, Mr. Joyce himself always felt, and likewise said, to many friends and acquaintances, and I quote: "Life and labor bring their many and varied rewards as we journey on its highways and quaint byways -- but the greatest aim in my life has been simply this: to be a decent humming bean." - J-squared ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 15:36:12 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs And I wonder whether jip, as >in giving one pain shouldn't be sperllt "gyp". I never saw it >written down. Best > > >Tony Green, Gyp it is Tony, indeed. I worry about that spelling though, it having a common with gypsy - and since one dictionary def. of gyp gives cheat and swindler there seems to be heavy prejudice there. Hence the 'jip'. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:22:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: pcoet and tlooth Pcoet an Tlooth wer waking don th' stree. Pcoet sad t' Tlooth, 'Come th' rev'lution, w'll b seing th' ral pots.' Tlooth, sd, sad t' Pcoet, 'Bt hard laugter torndo ccompanies r'volution. Don' th't scar yu?' 'Na! Jus wee litle.' ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:32:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Sonnet!: What to Name the 20th-century World-Baby? the early stones are james to the early beatles joyce...... should we rip off motown or should we rip off muddy waters perhaps is the question? so silly to take sides, of course, though my heart of course with lennon when he snaps at reporter in 1965 interview "the rolling stones are NOT a protest group"--- the kinks? animals? etc. blow up the BINARY pretty much or the zombies. susan howe would not be dusty springfield in such a context (neither would fanny)--but nor would she be charlie rich-- the pre-smaltzy famous charlie rich which is actually suprisingly good on my tapedeck now and really challenging my prejudices and making me redraw my mental conceptual map at least as much as the world-baby ODORONO conference which I am off to now will (in fact, just found out I MAY be able to see Hank Lazer's panel now and that JOHN SHOPTAW cancelled out---which points me on a ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:04:54 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Baratier Subject: Re: when the real poets come Jordan Is James Joyce really a great writer? In answer, yesterday I not only was allowed a glimpse of his magnitude as a literary technician but also finally understood his grasp of the oral tradition through the aged patrons of the Rosenbach Library in Philly (which houses the original manuscript of Ulyssess) who sat around most of bloomsday drinking free harp, guiness and delivering Ulysses in 10 minute speaker, singer, mutterer, change-ups. To contain such a multiplicity of voices within the reading of one text, now I fully comprehend what you weirdo big-city avant-guardists are talking about. David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:54:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: When the real poets come >Mark, Herny, Chas, C(h)ris, Steve, Marisa, Ann, Deirdre, Herb, Wystan, Joe, >Carla, Tan, Jeff, Bob, Simon, Pierre, Burt, Maria, Ed, Rod, Larry, Bill, >Juliana, Louis, Kenny, Garrett, Alan, Joe, Tom, Rob, Ken, Jorge, Fred, Ron, >Jerry, Dan, Dodie, Kevin, Marjorie, Michael, George, Tony, Ira, Romana, >Andrew, Jonathan, Ursula, Charles, David, Laura, Aldon, Daniel, Keith, >Eliza, Emily, Mike, Dave, Annie, >Is James Joyce really a great writer? >Jordan is he? _______________________________________________________________ O tell me all about Anna Livia! I want to hear all about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now. You'll die when you hear. Well, you know, when the old cheb went furt and did what you know. Yes, I know, go on. Wash quit and don't be dabbling. Tuck up your sleeves and loosen your talktapes. And don't butt me -- hike! -- when you bend. Or whatever it was they threed to make out he thried to two in the Fiendish park. He's an awful old reppe. Look at the shirt of him! Look at the dirt of it! He has all my water black on me. And it steeping and stuping since this time last wik. How many goes is it I wonder I washed it? I know by heart the places he likes to saale, duddurty devil! Scorching my hand and starving my famine to make his private linen public. Wallop it well with your battle and clean it. My wrists are wrusty rubbing the mouldaw stains. And the dneepers of wet and the gangres of sin in it! What was it he did a tail at all on Animal Sendia? And how long was he under loch and neagh? It was put in the newses what he did, nicies and priers, the King fierceas Humphrey, with illysus distilling, exploits and all. But toms will till. I know he well. Temp untamed will hist for no man. As you spring so shall you neap. O, the roughty old rappe! Minxing marrage and making loof. . . . __________________________________________________________________ yes, i think so. at least, to me, he's great fun to read, and more charles ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:49:36 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Glover, Albert" Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 15 Jun 1996 to 16 Jun 1996 In-Reply-To: In reply to your message of Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:04:22 EDT I agree with Carla Billitteri's post about Olson's remark to Robin. Anyone interested in the Olson/Blaser/Boulez 2nd Sonata confluence might be interested in Robin's Bach's Belief, #10 of A Curriculum of the Soul, available for $10 from Glover Publishing, RI 203 / SLU, Canton, NY 13617 Looking forward to Orono reports. Al Glover aglo@ccmaillink.stlawu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 13:01:09 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Goulding Subject: Re: pcoet and tlooth In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:22:10 -0500 from On Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:22:10 -0500 Jordan Davis said: >Pcoet an Tlooth wer waking don th' stree. Pcoet sad t' Tlooth, 'Come th' >rev'lution, w'll b seing th' ral pots.' Tlooth, sd, sad t' Pcoet, 'Bt hard >laugter torndo ccompanies r'volution. Don' th't scar yu?' 'Na! Jus wee >litle.' Twas a way lighter wee doom the trialfather Pcoat duffered so: "Torn ala nudo! Wheelye yon bakers, dozin in the ray! Spanner that spindial, yeh spokeyed spoffer!" Beetred and bettered, Tlooth did sigh: "Quizzical meat? Wrother bothy thy forktong and wed a buffalo tune!" Sodalitassled, they onword dallied into the fernbread corn. - Hailie Goulding ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:30:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: everywhere the obvious was becoming less so In-Reply-To: <199606170407.AAA08049@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> One couldn't ask for better illustration of the points I was making -- what has to be in place for the "obviousness" of the gallery fires gag to be apparent? For how many readers will the report of initical arrests of artists as suspects track with the FBI's investigations of the congregants of the churches burned? ("initial," not "initical etc. for all "obvious" errors to follow) -- When the "authorities," having arrested people who have burned black churches comment that they are not sure that racial motives were in play, why is it not obvious to them that most white people (even in the South) would probably have found a white church more readily at hand for burning if simple vandalism were the intent? The L.A. Times this morning carries a short follow-up on the obviously distrubed thirteen-year-old girl who was arrested for one of the fires -- In the first line of the story they report that the girl expresses anti-religious sentiments. They mention that the authorities doubt that the girl was racially motivated, and they report doubts that the girl knew that black people attended the church. THEN they report that the girl also expresses strong anti-black beliefs. If racism is not the motive in these fires, wouldn't we expect a considerably larger number of white churches to be burning? Why is it not obvious to most "authorities" and the